We just watched the reform party disintegrate. What makes you think you can do better given the composition of the Green Party? Is it worth it to have 4 to 8 years of clear cut forests and Alaskan oil slicks so that you can get the 5% of the vote necessary to get federal funding for a bunch of poorly tattooed, infrequent bathers? Can you really not see (you're Phi Beta Kappa for gosh sakes) the difference between Gore and Bush or are you just saying that because it sits well with morons?
Congratulations on getting the optimally (pessimally?) wrong answer. Average people make average mistakes. It takes intelligent people like Katz et al to make really huge, embarrassing errors.
Poll after poll shows mistrust, boredom, alienation and disgust with the brawling, negativity, stalemating and irrationality of the process.
Any possibility that most people simply don't understand politics? Has anyone ever heard of sour grapes? (Actually I have found that most people don't know Aesop well enough to know what "sour grapes" really means, but that's another rant.)
It's simple. Most people don't like politics because they don't understand politics. They place themselves above politics because people always try to place themselves above things they don't understand. The fact is that most of the people who say they are not voting are not voting because they are basically immature dummies. Polls asking people to identify whether they are immature dummies are hard to conduct.
Some non-voters _are_ high-minded, of course, but they are the minority -- if an admirable one. I just hate to see them confused with general, garden variety, can't-take-the-heat losers.
The Internet, by the way, is going to become the very medium of e-demagoguery. Most people are going to believe what they want to believe. That's it. With the Internet, this process will only occur a lot faster.
The best thing about being promoted to management is that there is no law saying you have to stay there. You can occupy the job, learn its lessons, succeed at it, and then turn back to technical work. When you return to technical work, particularly as a consultant or contractor your management experience will be of _tremendous_ benefit.
Promotion to a position of responsibility from the technical ranks is not "inevitable" at all. If it happens, especially if it happens early (say in your first 10 years), it distinguishes you as "one of the good ones." Someone voted for you by sharing money and prestige with you -- the real marbles in the game. The value of that for your future can hardly be overstated.
That's why I always recommend that techies seek to deserve promotion to management and accept the position when it is offered. A management job is a great learning experience, great resume fodder, and maybe a great new career path. You really can't lose.
Technology is not to blame for reduced political participation as much as increased complexity in the world. Cynicism about lobbyists and so forth is mainly just an excuse. The only reason well informed citizens can't beat up on lobbyists in the polls is that lobbyists know what they want. The people hardly know who they are anymore.
Answers were a lot easier in the old days. The politics was brutally simple and ugly compared to today. Women stayed home. Minorities kept their place. Gays... you did not even think about, much less talk about. It is easier for a populace to be involved in a political game with simple -- if stupid and cruel -- rules.
Fast forward to today. Every single aspect of politics has become more complicated from the economy to domestic and world affairs. Politics is no longer a dramatic conflict between a few simple philosophies. It has become a complex amalgam of ever shifting coalitions. Nothing is simple about it any more.
Some may say they have given up on the "hopeless political process," but I think that's mostly sour grapes and laziness. I doubt there are any people who really are above politics as the game is played now. I can easily believe that there are a lot of people who can't figure it out -- even when it's not that hard as in this year.
Machines flying between stars is not a lot more efficient than biologicals getting in machines and flying between stars. IMHO, the ETs are much more likely to be programs than anything else. They might be extremely complex object-oriented organisms.
Maybe they will inhabit various physical machines (depending on how much truck they want to have with the "physical" world) but they won't be limited to a single robotic or biological body. They could choose any physical manifestation they needed for a given experience. They would be platform independent.
I didn't get the movie Contact (I didn't read the book). It would not make sense for SETI to pick up plans for a transportation device for a single person. If SETI were to pick up signal from a truly advanced civilization, I would expect the message to be a self-extracting archive of some sort. The message, encoded as a Turing machine in XML, could extract itself, request a connection to it's origin signal source, and download a full-fledged ET for us to chat with.
That's a lot more efficient than trying to push atoms all over the galaxy. Well, it could happen.
In the clip, Gore is rattling off a list of reasons people should vote for him. The Internet comment is spoken in a blase tone in the middle of a list. Gore is just taking credit due him and saying it badly. People overreacted to it -- as people do.
I see why you think he isn't worth defending on this issue, but I respectfully disagree. As other posters note and the record demonstrates, Gore does in fact stand out as a leading force in the creation of the Internet. I put that on one side of the balance and put the superficially annoying quote on the other side and conclude Gore is a good guy, no question.
People make verbal mistakes. It stretches credulity to think that Gore might feel entitled to credit for creating the Internet. A lot of people feel the way you do and I think the reasons are:
They don't know how much credit Gore does deserve (a lot)
They are very suspicious of people taking credit for anything
Gore's statement is poorly worded
Gore made the famous quote to Wolf Blitzer in an interview. Blitzer didn't call Gore on it, and Blitzer is not known to be a shrinking violet. Blitzer probably didn't think much of it, and I don't either. I'm sorry, but one wording goof in one interview should not outweigh years of early, vocal support for the Internet.
The Internet and techies in general have a friend in Al Gore, based on real documented evidence. You don't dump a friend for a syntax error in this community -- or it's not much of a community.
Wonks and geeks are closely related. They like to think a lot and they get a lot of grief from those who don't -- or can't. Terms like "wonk" and "geek" were invented by people with unfurrowed brows like George W. Bush. The terms weren't compliments when first applied.
This election starkly pits a Geek against a PHB. Bush is supposed to be the normal guy pitted against the geeky Gore. It seems impossible for the media to observe that someone can be both likeable _and_ a geek. People who can't find a flaw in Gore's thinking or integrity choose to label him "stiff" or a "wonk." I can't imagine any group more likely to have suffered from this insipid tactic in their own personal experience than Slashdotters.
A Geek who votes for Bush is ratifying the unspoken principle that good people don't think and thinking people aren't good. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, because Bush is PHB all the way on the issues. But there I go name calling.
BTW, how do you delete a post on Slashdot? I mispelled a word in the subject of my last post. Darn!
One fun place to start is SpeakOut's
VoteMatch on the Internet. It asks you several questions and then figures out which candidate most closely matches your views. Got me right.
I would love to see Slashdot geeks get political this season. Did Gore say he invented the Internet? No, but a lot of otherwise informed people think he did. There is no place like Slashdot (chock-a-block with logical folk) to get "news" like that sorted out.
Who does Microsoft want to win? All kinds of stuff like that to think about. Pick the next pres by moderation!
I'm waiting for commercial auto-zap. Connect the Tivo to the Internet and have it consult a directory listing of when commercials occurred on all recorded stations. Then just delete those segments after recording is complete.
Also, where is the mouse wheel on notebooks. Still waiting for the obvious there.
Miguel is putting too much emphasis on code reuse and is basically wrong when he says that there is zero code reuse in popular packages like Netscape and Star Office. Microsoft component reuse is high because of market dominance and because Microsoft actually has a working component model (COM).
Unix, while having no component model, has things going for it that outweigh reuse. The list is ridiculously long but "free" is at the top of my list.
And, surprise, Unix has a component model now -- in fact, two of them. They are called JavaBeans and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB). One for CORBA is in the works. Bye-bye Microsoft.
Folks, if you want rational technical decisions you need to clear the way politically. If Clinton or Gore unilaterally decided to end all export restrictions on all crypto, the GOP cold warriors would have a political field day. The very first encrypted e-mail sent by Osama bin Laden (after repeal of restrictions) would put us in weeks of congressional investigations and calls for an independent counsel.
Tech folk who vote for Republicans or laze out on voting have only themselves to blame. I wish they would just stop whining about it as this topic is starting to become very tiresome.
"Microsoft executives declined to say when C# will be available."
What if Microsoft is just announcing something they won't have for a long time just to undermine competition. Wouldn't that be kind of underhanded? That would be so unlike them...:-)
Microsoft doesn't like their technical position so they fight with vaporware announcements. The truly open technologies like Java, JSP, Servlets, XML, EJB and of course Linux seriously threaten Microsoft -- much more so than Apple did in the pre-Windows past.
It is very, very difficult to believe that C# will be anything but Windows-specific. If they wanted to be open platform proponents they could just abide by their Java license -- and join the rest of the world. No, they are just buying time with vaporware. Microsoft needs something like Microsoft.net to catch on before their entire software base gives way to freeware alternatives.
C# developers should consider the sad fate of J++ developers.
CVS is a super product, and I have used it for years on commercial applications. I just wonder why it hasn't been upgraded in so long. CVS users have been on 1.10 for over a year now.
Even so, it's popularity is clearly growing and deservedly. It is _very_ easy to use, very powerful, and free. There is nothing quite like the feeling of creating a new free build environment instance that works across the hall from the baseline or around the world from it. I have even used CVS to manage source code updates into classified environments.
Could it be better? You bet. Would I use anything else? Not a chance.
Slashdot Mirror
We just watched the reform party disintegrate. What makes you think you can do better given the composition of the Green Party? Is it worth it to have 4 to 8 years of clear cut forests and Alaskan oil slicks so that you can get the 5% of the vote necessary to get federal funding for a bunch of poorly tattooed, infrequent bathers? Can you really not see (you're Phi Beta Kappa for gosh sakes) the difference between Gore and Bush or are you just saying that because it sits well with morons?
Poll after poll shows mistrust, boredom, alienation and disgust with the brawling, negativity, stalemating and irrationality of the process.
Any possibility that most people simply don't understand politics? Has anyone ever heard of sour grapes? (Actually I have found that most people don't know Aesop well enough to know what "sour grapes" really means, but that's another rant.)
It's simple. Most people don't like politics because they don't understand politics. They place themselves above politics because people always try to place themselves above things they don't understand. The fact is that most of the people who say they are not voting are not voting because they are basically immature dummies. Polls asking people to identify whether they are immature dummies are hard to conduct.
Some non-voters _are_ high-minded, of course, but they are the minority -- if an admirable one. I just hate to see them confused with general, garden variety, can't-take-the-heat losers.
The Internet, by the way, is going to become the very medium of e-demagoguery. Most people are going to believe what they want to believe. That's it. With the Internet, this process will only occur a lot faster.
Promotion to a position of responsibility from the technical ranks is not "inevitable" at all. If it happens, especially if it happens early (say in your first 10 years), it distinguishes you as "one of the good ones." Someone voted for you by sharing money and prestige with you -- the real marbles in the game. The value of that for your future can hardly be overstated.
That's why I always recommend that techies seek to deserve promotion to management and accept the position when it is offered. A management job is a great learning experience, great resume fodder, and maybe a great new career path. You really can't lose.
Answers were a lot easier in the old days. The politics was brutally simple and ugly compared to today. Women stayed home. Minorities kept their place. Gays ... you did not even think about, much less talk about. It is easier for a populace to be involved in a political game with simple -- if stupid and cruel -- rules.
Fast forward to today. Every single aspect of politics has become more complicated from the economy to domestic and world affairs. Politics is no longer a dramatic conflict between a few simple philosophies. It has become a complex amalgam of ever shifting coalitions. Nothing is simple about it any more.
Some may say they have given up on the "hopeless political process," but I think that's mostly sour grapes and laziness. I doubt there are any people who really are above politics as the game is played now. I can easily believe that there are a lot of people who can't figure it out -- even when it's not that hard as in this year.
Maybe they will inhabit various physical machines (depending on how much truck they want to have with the "physical" world) but they won't be limited to a single robotic or biological body. They could choose any physical manifestation they needed for a given experience. They would be platform independent.
I didn't get the movie Contact (I didn't read the book). It would not make sense for SETI to pick up plans for a transportation device for a single person. If SETI were to pick up signal from a truly advanced civilization, I would expect the message to be a self-extracting archive of some sort. The message, encoded as a Turing machine in XML, could extract itself, request a connection to it's origin signal source, and download a full-fledged ET for us to chat with.
That's a lot more efficient than trying to push atoms all over the galaxy. Well, it could happen.
In the clip, Gore is rattling off a list of reasons people should vote for him. The Internet comment is spoken in a blase tone in the middle of a list. Gore is just taking credit due him and saying it badly. People overreacted to it -- as people do.
People make verbal mistakes. It stretches credulity to think that Gore might feel entitled to credit for creating the Internet. A lot of people feel the way you do and I think the reasons are:
Gore made the famous quote to Wolf Blitzer in an interview. Blitzer didn't call Gore on it, and Blitzer is not known to be a shrinking violet. Blitzer probably didn't think much of it, and I don't either. I'm sorry, but one wording goof in one interview should not outweigh years of early, vocal support for the Internet.
The Internet and techies in general have a friend in Al Gore, based on real documented evidence. You don't dump a friend for a syntax error in this community -- or it's not much of a community.
This election starkly pits a Geek against a PHB. Bush is supposed to be the normal guy pitted against the geeky Gore. It seems impossible for the media to observe that someone can be both likeable _and_ a geek. People who can't find a flaw in Gore's thinking or integrity choose to label him "stiff" or a "wonk." I can't imagine any group more likely to have suffered from this insipid tactic in their own personal experience than Slashdotters.
A Geek who votes for Bush is ratifying the unspoken principle that good people don't think and thinking people aren't good. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, because Bush is PHB all the way on the issues. But there I go name calling.
BTW, how do you delete a post on Slashdot? I mispelled a word in the subject of my last post. Darn!
I would love to see Slashdot geeks get political this season. Did Gore say he invented the Internet? No, but a lot of otherwise informed people think he did. There is no place like Slashdot (chock-a-block with logical folk) to get "news" like that sorted out.
Who does Microsoft want to win? All kinds of stuff like that to think about. Pick the next pres by moderation!
Also, where is the mouse wheel on notebooks. Still waiting for the obvious there.
Unix, while having no component model, has things going for it that outweigh reuse. The list is ridiculously long but "free" is at the top of my list.
And, surprise, Unix has a component model now -- in fact, two of them. They are called JavaBeans and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB). One for CORBA is in the works. Bye-bye Microsoft.
Tech folk who vote for Republicans or laze out on voting have only themselves to blame. I wish they would just stop whining about it as this topic is starting to become very tiresome.
What if Microsoft is just announcing something they won't have for a long time just to undermine competition. Wouldn't that be kind of underhanded? That would be so unlike them... :-)
Microsoft doesn't like their technical position so they fight with vaporware announcements. The truly open technologies like Java, JSP, Servlets, XML, EJB and of course Linux seriously threaten Microsoft -- much more so than Apple did in the pre-Windows past.
It is very, very difficult to believe that C# will be anything but Windows-specific. If they wanted to be open platform proponents they could just abide by their Java license -- and join the rest of the world. No, they are just buying time with vaporware. Microsoft needs something like Microsoft.net to catch on before their entire software base gives way to freeware alternatives.
C# developers should consider the sad fate of J++ developers.
Even so, it's popularity is clearly growing and deservedly. It is _very_ easy to use, very powerful, and free. There is nothing quite like the feeling of creating a new free build environment instance that works across the hall from the baseline or around the world from it. I have even used CVS to manage source code updates into classified environments.
Could it be better? You bet. Would I use anything else? Not a chance.