The U.S. "democratic republic" is equivalent to a modern liberal democracy. It's all word-play to those who say the U.S. isn't a democracy.
But if you insist on maintaining your illusion, please contact all the politicians representing you and demand they stop calling the U.S. a democracy, as they often do.
The United States, is, and has always been, a democracy and a republic. If it's not really democracy (in your mind), then write your politicians and demand they stop calling it one!
Well, you may want to reconsider buying into that commonly held, yet inaccurate view after considering the following thoughts:
In modern times, the term "republic" has become nearly synonymous with the term "representative democracy" in the Western world.
Was Alexis de Tocqueville delusional when he penned Democracy in America?
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, amongst its descriptions of the government types of various nations, describes the U.S. as a "constitution-based federal republic [with a] strong democratic tradition".
The U.S. Constitution and its Amendments outline universal suffrage and the direct election of Representatives and Senators, while state constitutions likewise mandate similar ideas at the state and local levels. Challenge: Next time you find yourself in a voting booth about to freely choose between politicians, repeat the mantra "republic, not a democracy" and notice how silly you feel. Yes, the choices are often terrible, but they are choices nonetheless.
At least half the U.S. states provide for citizen-sponsored ballot initiatives. And several additional states are considering enacting them. In the many states that have allowed their citizens to exercise this authority for over a century, we haven't exactly witnessed any real breakdown in society.
U.S. politicians from both major parties frequently refer to our nation as a "democracy". Are they just pandering to the masses, or do they actually believe what they're saying?
The "republic, not a democracy" viewpoint can only make sense if it refers to pure direct democracy (virtually a form of anarchy which almost nobody favors) rather than modern liberal democracy. However, those who spread this errant meme don't seem to mind if people are goaded into thinking there's something to despise about contemporary notions of democracy. People are apathetic enough without these continual verbal attacks on the great tradition of democracy in this country.
The bottom line: The United States is a republic and a democracy (albeit an imperfect one).
Isn't this the M.O. of contemporary American domestic policy? The sleazebag politicians are leading us to this grand era of the service economy where the U.S. will be producing nothing of significance, and magically we all* get rich.
I'm just saying that fixating on statistical server performance can distract the developer from concentrating on user perception of performance and the contributing factors to that. Those factors should be addressed first. Also, I used to be a big fan of strong typing, but that was before I realized that I was spending an unreasonable (IMHO, YMMV) amount of development time on typing variables and debugging type-related errors.
Using PHP like server-side includes is a beginner's approach.
PHP can be used like Perl... that is, the pages can be fully scripted. Further, PHP has demonstrated the capability and direction of interacting with other server-side technologies. Also, consider its tremendous library of functions. Last, with PHP5, its OO capabilities are essentially complete. "Beefed up" is really an understatement.
OK. But it would be nice if those who malign "democracy" or say "the U.S. isn't a democracy" would begin to differentiate between "pure direct democracy" and "modern liberal democracy". It borders on alarming to see many who seemingly attack democracy without knowing its many nuances. I don't (now) include you in that category of people.:)
In modern times, the term "republic" has become nearly synonymous with the term "representative democracy" in the Western world.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, amongst its descriptions of the government types of various nations, describes the U.S. as a "Constitution-based federal republic [with a] strong democratic tradition".
The U.S. Constitution and its Amendments outline universal suffrage and the direct election of Representatives and Senators.
At least half the U.S. states provide for citizen-sponsored ballot initiatives.
U.S. politicians from both major parties frequently refer to our nation as a "democracy".
Therefore, the United States is a republic and a democracy (albeit an imperfect one). So, next time you head to the voting booth, repeat your uninformed mantra: The U.S. is a republic, not a democracy.
The question I ask if whether users would notice a performance decline with the use of loose typing over strong typing. I would say a definite No to that. Programmers need to concentrate on the much more significant bottlenecks in software development, and those bottlenecks usually center around data access.
There will always be people that do not trust anything at a higher level of abstraction. It would be foolish to try and talk them out of their command-line interface and machine code nirvana.
No, grasshoppper. It's a matter of what abstraction to trust, and it doesn't have much to do with Microsoft. It's a matter of whether the abstraction is 1) accurate, and 2) adaptive, in a world where (currently) non-IE browsers are being updated at a fast pace, and support of older browsers is oftentimes a must.
Re: your assessment of ASP.NET 2.0, it may or may not fit the bill of "adaptive rendering". Hopefully, any programmer worth their salt will evaluate it to ensure it's accurate and adaptive, and not simply trust it by rote.
"Not trust[ing] anything at a higher level of abstraction" is actually a healthy aspect of a good programmer, and it doesn't mean that abstractions are automatically rejected, as you imply.
why on earth would you not use platform specific features?
Ummm, then what happens when the upper-level PHB mandates that the platform be changed, or the provider of that platform goes asunder (and it will in time, you know it will). I equate getting hooked on platforms to be similar to getting hooked on drugs, in that the pain of getting unhooked is immense, and inevitable.
I like how controversy is addressed in the War on Drugs article. It contains sections "Arguments for the War on Drugs, in whole or in part" and "Arguments against the War on Drugs, in whole or in part". This has got to be the best debate on this subject, ever.
What about using the wiki approach for the formulation of laws?
My political science research project (Democracy 2.0) is looking into doing something like that as part of a future ballot initiative building web application. The site currently only makes a fleeting reference to it, but more information will be added in the near future.
It's not a special interest to fund the development of an encyclopedia, which represents general knowledge. It's rather a very small budgetary consideration that would work to the benefit of all. It's funny how Liberatarians blow up things like this to proportions that most would consider extremely unreasonable.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed... I esp. was sick of all the blatant product placement in the film... it was beyond absurd.
Rabbit Test
Plot (from IMDb): Lionel's life turns around after a one-night stand on top of a pinball table... he becomes the world's first pregnant man!
The U.S. "democratic republic" is equivalent to a modern liberal democracy. It's all word-play to those who say the U.S. isn't a democracy.
But if you insist on maintaining your illusion, please contact all the politicians representing you and demand they stop calling the U.S. a democracy, as they often do.
The United States, is, and has always been, a democracy and a republic. If it's not really democracy (in your mind), then write your politicians and demand they stop calling it one!
A) We don't live in a democracy.
Well, you may want to reconsider buying into that commonly held, yet inaccurate view after considering the following thoughts:
The bottom line: The United States is a republic and a democracy (albeit an imperfect one).
True Freedom = Absolute Freedom
False thought.
Isn't this the M.O. of contemporary American domestic policy? The sleazebag politicians are leading us to this grand era of the service economy where the U.S. will be producing nothing of significance, and magically we all* get rich.
*Everyone's who's already rich.
I'm just saying that fixating on statistical server performance can distract the developer from concentrating on user perception of performance and the contributing factors to that. Those factors should be addressed first. Also, I used to be a big fan of strong typing, but that was before I realized that I was spending an unreasonable (IMHO, YMMV) amount of development time on typing variables and debugging type-related errors.
Using PHP like server-side includes is a beginner's approach.
PHP can be used like Perl... that is, the pages can be fully scripted. Further, PHP has demonstrated the capability and direction of interacting with other server-side technologies. Also, consider its tremendous library of functions. Last, with PHP5, its OO capabilities are essentially complete. "Beefed up" is really an understatement.
OK. But it would be nice if those who malign "democracy" or say "the U.S. isn't a democracy" would begin to differentiate between "pure direct democracy" and "modern liberal democracy". It borders on alarming to see many who seemingly attack democracy without knowing its many nuances. I don't (now) include you in that category of people. :)
The United States is not a democracy.
Therefore, the United States is a republic and a democracy (albeit an imperfect one). So, next time you head to the voting booth, repeat your uninformed mantra: The U.S. is a republic, not a democracy.
As of April, 2002, more web sites across all web servers use PHP than use Microsoft's Active Server Pages.
The question I ask if whether users would notice a performance decline with the use of loose typing over strong typing. I would say a definite No to that. Programmers need to concentrate on the much more significant bottlenecks in software development, and those bottlenecks usually center around data access.
There will always be people that do not trust anything at a higher level of abstraction. It would be foolish to try and talk them out of their command-line interface and machine code nirvana.
No, grasshoppper. It's a matter of what abstraction to trust, and it doesn't have much to do with Microsoft. It's a matter of whether the abstraction is 1) accurate, and 2) adaptive, in a world where (currently) non-IE browsers are being updated at a fast pace, and support of older browsers is oftentimes a must.
Re: your assessment of ASP.NET 2.0, it may or may not fit the bill of "adaptive rendering". Hopefully, any programmer worth their salt will evaluate it to ensure it's accurate and adaptive, and not simply trust it by rote.
"Not trust[ing] anything at a higher level of abstraction" is actually a healthy aspect of a good programmer, and it doesn't mean that abstractions are automatically rejected, as you imply.
why on earth would you not use platform specific features?
Ummm, then what happens when the upper-level PHB mandates that the platform be changed, or the provider of that platform goes asunder (and it will in time, you know it will). I equate getting hooked on platforms to be similar to getting hooked on drugs, in that the pain of getting unhooked is immense, and inevitable.
That's funny... I'm still seeing that bug on the first load of the Slashdot site using Firefox.
There's Mozilla bugs with respect to CSS1/2 compliance as well.
Re: with Google the only way to access it?
As long as there are industry or subject-based portals with links, I don't see this happening.
How about this instead: If you can't beat 'em, leapfrog 'em! :)
I like how controversy is addressed in the War on Drugs article. It contains sections "Arguments for the War on Drugs, in whole or in part" and "Arguments against the War on Drugs, in whole or in part". This has got to be the best debate on this subject, ever.
My political science research project (Democracy 2.0) is looking into doing something like that as part of a future ballot initiative building web application. The site currently only makes a fleeting reference to it, but more information will be added in the near future.
I stand corrected. Thank you.
This of course is part of the authoritarians' reelection plan.
It's not a special interest to fund the development of an encyclopedia, which represents general knowledge. It's rather a very small budgetary consideration that would work to the benefit of all. It's funny how Liberatarians blow up things like this to proportions that most would consider extremely unreasonable.
And the irrationality continues...