Hey, as a pretty dumb user, I actually would like that. The fact is, that the better the installation and configuration GUI becomes, the less the user, who doesn't know Unix/Linux, will learn it. As soon as you want to run your own little network at home and get independent from the "technical" folks, you regret not having learned how to compile etc. I think it always a hassle to find out which app was compiled with what as a default.
No, I disagree that you make money with compiling the whole "mess". Just sell the source without the binaries plus very good tutorials, explaining the "mess" and give advice, when and why and for what you should compile and configure in a certain way. The tutorials should cost a little money.
The web is full of online free tutorials. As much as I love that (and depend on them), I think that is too much to give away.
For example I love rootprompt.org for what they collect and point to. That's a site I actually as a newcomer would already pay some subscription fees to. Just for the convenience.
Thanks God it is not easy ! I hope the more you dig in, the more complex and complicated it gets.
I don't want a solution to this puzzle. I want it to be a perpetuum mobile-style generator of knew questions, new problems, always - for ever and ever.
Aah, what a rare pleasure to see people can read a book properly. Just wanted to add to remember, who owns the archives of millions of posts of the early years of usenet etc., I don't think it's the government, it's owned by businesses. (Alexa by
Amazon.com etc).
If I understand it correctly the files of the "public" domain are owned by private businesses, and can do with them what they want, more or less. Since when is that NOT a threat ?
Only if the government owns our files, we feel threatened, but not if businesses own them ? Why ?
If the government interferes with our privacy rights, you can vote it out. What can you do against a business, abusing your privacy rights ? You NEED your government and your laws to sue them. So, to me, this whole anti-government paranoia is a complete out of whack, knee-jerk reaction.
That is exactly what is so important in Lessig's book, that he understands the counter-balancing check and balance between the four powers he describes within realms of Norm (moral code), Law (legal code), Market and Architecture (digital code).
Should the government step in to limit the power of business to run roughshod over our rights to free speech and privacy ?
That's why we vote to have a government, don't we ? What else is it for ? If it doesn't do, what we want it to do, it's us to make it do, what we need it to do for us. The power of the technology is as dangerous in the hands of an abusive government as it is in the hand of multinational, huge corporations. It's through your government that you can regulate both, government and big business, to check and balance their respective power and protect the individual's civil and privacy rights.
I wonder what "public forum" legally means on the internet ? What is the definition ? The internet is not owned or governed by "the public". How can there be a "public" forum ?
Another off-hand remark. I just found the whole "merger" idiotic from the beginning. I doubted that it could ever work knowing my German homeboys. I feared from the beginning it would turn out that way. This time I feel patriotic for the American guys and blame the Germans for being completely inconsiderate and plain arrogant. Sad, the whole thing.
Just to say "Heads Up". I have seen SuSE boxes only in the CompUSA stores here and found even this already amazing that SuSE got so courageous to tackle the task of distributing their boxes here in the U.S.
European companies here have always the difficulty to understand what it means to distribute something in a _continent_ like the US.
US companies are masters in going from zero to covering each corner in the US in a few months to a few years (look at Starbucks) and they are miserable in detail oriented, local services.
Germans are good at servicing their customers "neatly". If something is a bit sloppy, the quick fix and throw out uncooked versions, would never work with most of Germany's clients.
Germans are not that fanatic and don't expect from companies to give something away at no cost. (Ironically, SuSE's box is much cheaper than RedHat's and I have no idea, why they didn't raise their prices in the US, as the box has definitely an advantage in their documentation). So, I think SuSE will do very fine in Europe and Germany and should stick to that first.
RedHat should become more detail oriented, if it wants to compete in Germany and tone down their rethoric. Who cares about all your "freedom" discussions. In the end, we want something what works and we want to make a living. Nothing wrong with that. What gets thoroughly on my nerves is that the "real Unix hacker style consultant" would tell any youngster, who wants to get help: "There is no free lunch, RTFM", but when it comes to admit that open source code can't survive, if it doesn't get a price tag from somewhere, the logic goes belly down. All of the sudden there is a free lunch possible.
SusE is just plain better in servicing most of
Germany's ISDN customers. It took RedHat too long to come up with an easy and reliable, usable ISDN support. At leasts that it what it looked like to an outsider and "Null acht fuenfzehn" customer.
A formal degree is very useful for a young person but by the time you got one you'd probably be 50.
I am beyond "that fifty-ish chicken age".:-)
No chance with some certificate to cut a job, if no work experience is there. The problem is a twenty year gap between my old scientific education and work experience and no work IT work experience in between. Hey, someone had to get those wizard kids, mocking us oldies, toilet trained. Not only my fault... So...:-)
And I have to admit that I am a lousy golden girl for "volunteer work". I always get upset about the policies, which made those volunteer task forces necessary in the first place. And getting upset is just not the right thingy in my age...and then, if I work, I want to get paid, I think I deserve that...:-) Thanks again for your feedback.
If I had experience in a scientific field (I wish!) I would probably look at the hybrid IT roles and try to find a path in that way
Right, I found something just last week, which brings me back to Europe, but is a nice thing for me. They have some very interesting new curricula combining programming, documentation technology and science (chemistry).
If they could just give me a place in the University, that would be really cool. In Europe (Germany), I could never find a job without a degree, but then it's not that expensive either.
Hi, what do you think is the oldest acceptable and reasonable age to get a degree in CS/IT for a woman ?
I have basically given up and not started, because I don't see it making sense anymore. Strangely enough I have worked in my twenties and thirties exclusively with men (in science) and have never felt in any way as an outsider or slightest uncomfortable (was not U.S. though), but twenty years later trying to imagine to work in the IT field here, having a boss who is may be 27 and imagining to take a job away from a youngster kid (who is definitely smarter, so it would never happen anyhow) has me completely turned around and I discard the IT field for me aside from self-study.
Imagine you didn't have twenty years of experience on your back, would you start at age 45 and up ?
Don't give me sugar-coated, inspirational, coachy stuff, I want a blunt, honest answer from a woman, who knows the industry. Thanks.
Your post is information. Did you get paid for creating it?
Hopefully not...who would want to pay for such crap ? I would love to pay for scientific content
on a per article or per page basis, but certainly not for any average book, which is not necessary for research.
Couldn't the publishers put academic journals on a content management system with integrated shopping carts, getting all libraries as their affiliates, so that actually the user in the library "orders" a page or article of a journal as "hardcopy" (without viewing the actual content, just the title and abstract). The library would take over the printing and the user would pay through his library cards. The publisher would get a fraction of the income the library made through selling the hardcopies of academic journals' articles ?
You can find real scientific journals only in very few (university) libraries. I rather would get more journals and have to pay for them on an article or page basis and get access to them in more libraries, than having to wait for a complete copy or paying a subscription fee for access to the complete journal online.
If they're not smart enough to check up on your work, they really do deserve what they get.
Well, that's why I love open source code so much, you know, it saves me time to check up on the consultant's stupid work - they get what they deserve - an open door to leave.
Are you an open source code consultant ? I think you need to learn a thing or two.:-)
Of course not, but he could become one. I don't buy your argument that a pedophile would choose more likely not to act upon his desires if he had a chance to come out of his closet in public.
In order to identify any real pedophile he must have revealed it to someone, most probably to a scared kid somewhere threatening it, if it would tell anyone.
What is the reason for you to believe that by coming out of the closet the pedophilic desires would disappear or diminish? Gets a gay person less gay, because he came out of the closet telling everyone he/she is gay/lesbian ?
Let's say you would tell me you have pedophelic desires. What do you think that will do ? Most probably I will _think_, get the hell away from my kids, lurk behind your every step in order to see if you act upon your desires. Your coming out would incite manhunts. Of course, most probably I would _tell_ you, go see a doctor, get treatment (is there one ?).
I would foresee a huge complication in coming out of the closet with it. Under the assumptions your arguments are right and a pedophile _can_ choose _not_ to act out his phantasies, well then in my mind he is not a pedophile. The only things which are really completely free are your thoughts, and an inactive pedophile is allowed to think whatever he wants to. How often have you wanted to almost kill someone in your mind without acting it out ? Just because you phantasized about it, doesn't make you a killer. Just because you got some weird
thoughts, which might even scare yourself, when looking at children, doesn't make you a pedophile.
The discussion is not about morally judging a pedophile's desires, it is about allowing to broadcast to millions violance in combination with sexual encounters with "virtual children" and accompanying sound. It's about allowing mind-feeding/brain-washing people due to easy access.
These broadcasts have nothing in common with books artistically describing the issues of humanly possible sexual desires. Literature or a one time movie consumption has a completely different weight with regards to mind altering effects than continous, addictive consumption of violent pornographic videos in combination with sound. Why else would they be made like that, if it were not for the subversive addictive power they have on some people on the long run. Drugs sell well, you know.
I would argue, that if someone detects in himself a sensational attraction to children, then for God's sake I would NOT want to burden that person with easily reachable material, which could further pervert his desires into such heights, where he would kill or torture the child to get the results he wants.
I assume that those cravings for sex with children have an addictive part to it. Feeding an addict, makes him want and need more and barriers to look for the "drug" go down (as with any other drug addiction). I would not play with a human mind, fragile as it is.
Any psychiatrist, who studies addiction to pornography on the net, will tell you that his patients need to get cut off the "drug" the same way any other addict has to get off his drug.
Cold turkey is a must. There is no way to stay sober and drinking at the same time, so to speak. There is a difference of quality in pornography.
If it's just the usual stuff between two consenting adults without violence - ok forget it. If it's anything which needs violence and torture to promote the desired effect in the consumer, that's a whole other issue.
Because consumption is addictive, consumption of material which promotes torture is dangerous. There is no telling when it could spill over from inactive virtual consumption to active real execution. There is no way to deny that - it has happened and will happen again and the link between constant consumption/immersion of such material and inciting actual execution of a crime has been documented). There is no way to argue that the right of a person to have the freedom to step from consumer to executer needs any kind of "first amendment protection". This is IMHO just plain bullshit.
It's a question of broadcast, distribution and access control, not an issue of morality and not an issue of free speech.
May be you read the article in today's Washington Post about the suit against the Rock Band "Death Metal". It sheds some more balanced light on this issue and I would think it answers a couple of questions, which a lot of people seem to deny to acknowledge in defense of the first amendment rights.
Enough braindead stupidities voiced here already.
An interesting by-product to observe though is that people who defend the pedophile's rights with regards to use, produce and broadcast and promote virtual child pornography the most passionately,
are the ones who at the same time think that child molesters should be castrated, shot, executed and what have you. I mean how much more can you reveal about your twisted frame of mind than that ?
Just read the article in the WP and look what people mix up together in violent perversities.
Sarcasm-on: Of course, "artistic expressions" like THAT really need to be protected by the first amendment. Sarcasm-off.
America was/is superior because we attract the best foreigners to work amongst us.
Well, if the Libertarians behave like Nazis that might change. Can you tell me who wants to work with a bunch of shortsighted hate-spitting lunatics who have lost all civility when it comes to define freedom and the normal urge to make a living with what one is doing ?
SuSE is a privately owned company, that has to obey German labor laws, can't hire and fire at will like American companies can and do. Remind you of the very revealing discussion on/. about HOW people in the American IT industry get fired not long ago.
The only thing I can see is that SuSE tries to hold their company together and their employess without a pink slip. What is so bad about that ?
I would prefer in a minute to work for a company like SuSE than for a hot shot what have you.com
who can't survive longer than a year or so, especially not if it has to do because of a failing open source business model.
Last but not least, German engineers are as stupid or smart as American ones, if you ask me, but Germans have definitely better, fairer and more appropriate labor laws, which are by the way very much supported by even the most conservatives among the Germans. Because we have other labor laws and are more protected in our basic rights, we have another attitude and we are differently educated, not better, but differently. We can afford to be more whining, lazy and complacent, because we take many rights for granted. Americans work harder and under much more pressure, the result of their work is not better though, their character strength often much more tested and stronger. Nothing of it is really inate, it's just the result of different laws and cultures.
What the heck are people thinking here ? Amazingly enough the same people bashing here the wrong sort of German guys as Nazis (like people who work for SuSE who are definitely the last group of people any sane person would call NAZIS), are very fast in helping the new generation punk/neonzis creeping up in Germany right now in priding themselves loudly to defend the right of free (hate) speech on the internet any time, all in the name of the good ol' U.S. constitution.
Well, if you don't want to help new NAZIS to fame, then don't throw out the baby with the tab water and be a bit more intelligent about how much freedom actually guarantees to maintain the most freedom for everyone.
Oh, and I can't let that one stand. I am German, and I can't care less whose cars are better, I just care about which country makes the better laws to drive those vehicles in a safe manner and which companies make enough business to keep their workers with a paycheck.
And if you think the distribution war (RedHat versus SuSE, if I understand it correctly) matters at all to a normal person, you make a big mistake.
I am a relative idiot when it comes to Linux, but I have installed and configured SuSE and RedHat and I have no idea, why you think one is better or worse than the other. If you want to compare their
documentation, that might make sense, but other than that, it is really quite irrelevant.
it's a whole company, but do you know how much people they are? Don't always think of giants like Mircosoft or Intel when thinking of companies, MySQL is developed by just a few people (I counted 12 or 13 coders), and they are keeping the whole stuff platform independent, the server and the tools run an Windows, and many flavours of unixes.
On the developer's mailing list of Akopia's Interchange open source e-commerce package, http://developer.akopia.com/archive/interchange-
users/2001/msg00535.html , Monty Widenius said himself last week the following:
Our development has during the last year grown from 2 1/2 to 8 people and we have also got a much bigger market penetration during this time.
If O'Reilly isn't interested then another scientific publisher should jump in. It's a pity to see that printed version of the journal go away. I believe it would have success overseas. And even if Perl resources are all over online, the printed journal is very much appreciated overseas.
For example the German Linux Magazine has regularly an article on Perl. Many in Germany are reading Linux Magazine just for that Perl article. Coulnd't it be sold to a real big technical or scientific publisher (Elsevier, Kluwer, Springer, O'Reilly ?) That's were I would like to see it.
We live in a Federal Republic. A federation of 50 states. 50 seperate / parallel / distributed "countries," joined by a federal government.
So what ? Germany is too and has nevertheless a system, which is balancing out the needs for a system which can produce clear majorities without trading off the proportional representation of the direct vote too much. What your forefathers had in their mind, could be achieved in a many different ways, some being fairer than others, IMHO.
Before you jump into "homebaked" point systems, why not petition for a real scholarly examination in how far the current U.S. electoral system is holding up against basic civil/human rights of providing fair, unbiased, accurate, equally weighted and unbribable results ?
Someone asked here when comes the time where votes can be bought. I have no answer, because it would involve a serious study of your system and it's a job you can't take lightly, but it looks darn close as if almost everything in your current system is somewhat bought and sold.
The whole campaign is nothing but a mediocre sales pitch, the candidates running around like crazy, promising each and every group exactly what they want to hear. Everybody knows in his heart that the whole thing is a sham, but nobody knows how to change the system back into something where the political will of the people is really represented and not bought.
And with regard to the posters, which seem to think being a Republic and being a Democracy is an either/or situation, I have really a problem understanding that. Why would being a Republic
exclude you from being a Democracy ?
I guess I should ask my own government then to open up embassies in Texas and in New York State separately, because what is really left in your Federal system which unites you as ONE country ?
By the nature of your beginnings, the US is the only country in the world, which has "artificially" become the most "diverse" country in the world. You have a tremendous burden to deal with it and I have nothing but utmost respect about the fact that the U.S. IS dealing with that burden at all and considering the difficulties involved so well. Just, I think you could even do a MUCH better job.
It's really doesn not seem THAT helpful to always just resort to the perceived WISDOM of your forefathers. They had their reasons and found methods to deal with their perceived problems, which were appropriate for their times (well, I really don't want to discuss if I really believe in that). But then what is appropriate today ?
Hey, you guys are programmers, right ? How about Perl's slogan: There is more than one way to do it. Start examining the code (may the legal code this time... for a change).
That might be helpful.
http://www.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm4 0/4090/contents.htm.
I disagree. You have a system which prevents a third party (not to speak about a fourth party) of being formed and represented. When those European governments have to form coalitions, that is a very healthy thing and by NO means a chaos.
At least if you have to form a coalition, the voices of third parties are heard and represented in the case the election results end in a tie, where neither of the two big parties gets the absolute majority.
In Germany the Liberals have been for years the deciding factor to mellow down the divisions between the conservatives and the social democrats. The two big parties had to decide (mostly upfront), if they would consider a coalition with any third party, in case one of the big parties alone could not form a government without building a coalition with a small party. And that I consider very healthy. We even had once a situation where both big parties built a coalition.
Just imagine that here in the U.S. Can you imagine Bush and Gore building a cabinet together ? And the funny thing is that their political differences is much smaller than the political differences between the conservatives and social democrats in Germany. So, yes, the U.S. is divided, artificially, but not really in political substance.
Historically, the Liberals (not Libertarians), the Greens and unfortunately lately also the right wing extremists and socialist/communist extremists represent the smaller parties in Germany. They mostly struggle for decades to get more than 5 % of the vote, which by law they must get, in order to be eligible to have seats in the "Bundestag" and function as a coalition partner. That's not chaos, that is representation of diverse political ideas, IMHO.
Contrary I find the U.S. system (due to what your forefathers feared the most: not being able to find ONE candidate everyone, including the small states, could agree upon. Apparently the dividing interests from state to state within the U.S. were so huge, that a voting system was chosen which strongly favored a majority building system trading off a more proportional representation of the popular vote.
If you want to look at a comparison of systems the link on top can give you some insight about the differences.
Anyway, to come back to the real subject of which method of voting and counting is more accurate or better, I still refuse to give it serious thought. Because each system will have a margin of error and each system will cause problems, if the the margin of error is larger than the difference in votes for one of the two parties.
Let's say the popular vote for one candidate would be ONE vote (in the hypothetical situation you could get ever such an exact count out of 200 000 000 million counted votes). Would you deduct there is a mandate for the party who got ONE more vote ? I don't think so.
Another way of solving the problem would be to introduce legislation which would make it mandatory to have a majority in the popular vote larger than the margin of error each voting system (electronic or other) has.
Finally I think that it is far more important to have a system which is least biased than having a system which is most accurate. I could live with a margin of error, as long as that margin of error is across the board the same for all the states within the U.S. Of course an election result must be above the noise level of the voting system's inate margin of error. You wouldn't conclude anything from any scientific experiment, if the results are not statistically significant and above the noise level, right ?
Standardization of procedures Re:Faith in computer
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Wouldn't it be possible to vote electronically and produce a log in paper format as a product, which is kept, counted and used as a proof of a proper procedure ?
And before you discuss paper/punch/pencil voting versus electronic voting and how it could be standardized, why not first standardize the much more important election laws as a whole ?
Put the election laws out of the hands of the states and under federal law. Each state should vote in the same way. If you have really to stick to the EC and I see no compelling reason why, it should be a federal law that electors MUST vote for the candidate the popular vote requires them to vote for.
The lack of standardized and equal election laws throughout the U.S. is the first thing which should be outlawed, because I believe they make not each vote be weighted and counted equally.(IANAL)
What is the whole discussion worth if the electors on December 18h are allowed to vote against the candidate the popular vote demands them to vote for ? That they are "supposed" to do that is not enough. Ethics are fine, but certainly not enough.
The arguments FOR the electorial college as to represent minorities or rural areas fairer seem that much skewed, outdated and unconvincing that I don't believe you could get any foreign country to understand why the U.S. population sticks to saying "the system works".
Well, may be it works, but how ? I mean the amount of denial to face your own flaws in the system is visible to any person watching this debacle. Just because your forefathers all came with traumatic experiences from their home countries they fled and because they had no counter pressure to design a system which suited their needs without much check and balance from parts of the population they didn't represent, doesn't mean, that the each and every part of your constitution is appropriate today.
If the EC is the wisest, fairest and system in the world, then DO discuss it publicly and let the population vote about its appropriateness. May be it turns out the the majority of U.S. citizens, after they have fully heard pros and cons and may have gotten some civic lessons about how other federal republics in the world structured their election laws and voting rights, might actually WANT to change their election laws. The emergency and danger of the current moment would be an excellent opportunity to make the whole world and the whole U.S. population aware of what might be the best voting system and how it could be changed legally and peacefully.
I really would love to see an emergency, nationwide discussion about the electorial college and suggestions how the system could be changed legally without jeopardizing anyone's voting rights and without going through a bunch of stupid recounts, law suits which don't address the real issues. Not the couple of hundred of votes inaccurately counted (will always happen everywhere) will change anything, but the change and standardization of the election laws.
The U.S. has already the mess at his hands, so why not concentrate to cure the system now instead of "gracefully" wash it away and continue to live with a system which can't be considered adaequate ? You know when all is said and done (however and whatever is said and done), there comes the sentence: "The system works".
I am not yet a citizen, but thought about becoming one for quite a while. I have already "given" one son to YOUR military forces". I just would like to be able to say one day:
"Yes, your system works, it can be adjusted where it fails and is stable enough to do so without
jeopardizing the country's peace and the population's civil rights."
Reminds me of software. It seems a bit as if your OS is only working, if you let any bug which is found to live forever, never touch it, never fix it and never uypgrade it. Sure, each and every bug fix might introduce some other bugs. But that's why we have OSS and CVS these days. That seems the best way of keeping a system stable and upgradeable, or not ?:-).
Your arguments are good, the resort into jokes sad, and I just like to remind you that nothing prevents even a true democracy to elect lawfully a dictator. One man - one vote doesn't prevent the majority of the people to vote for someone who might turn out to abuse power and turn a constitutional democracy into a constitutional dictatorship. Example : Hitler, who was elected democratically and had changed laws the minute he came into power.
On the other hand a dictatorship is also capable of using its power to change the dicatatorship into a democracy by changing the constitutional laws into more democratic ones. This almost never happened, but there are examples of so called benevolent dictators who have shown such capabilities (like in some African countries in the sixties and seventies) where democratic elections almost always resulted in electing a dictator which then gets overthrown by a military coup to reinstate another dictator, who has also "the guns under his mattress".
You will observe that mostly in Africa the average population will prefer a "civilian" dictator to a "military dictator" as they have rarely enjoyed the protection of their democratic human and civil rights by any government which was put in power with whatever means, military coup or elections.
Also don't forget that the U.S. president by constitutional design always has the "guns under his mattress". And be aware that foreigners are very aware of that, as well as your own volunteer military forces. I would say nothing in this situation is worth making fun of.
Having said that, I just hope that the current situation will initiate a change in U.S. voting laws, putting the laws under federal law, and getting rid of the EC as you have it. It's way overdue to do so and sad that something like this had to happen to bring this issue into the mind of the whole population.
Let's hope there will be a legal procedure to change the voting laws.
It is one thing to be very careful to solve the current situation/crisis according to the existing voting laws (Florida state law), but it is another thing (and I think the more important thing) to initiate a legal process to change in the voting laws, reassessing the fairness and legality of the EC.
I think this is a god-given opportunity to find legal means to overhaul the voting system in the U.S.
And BTW if you want to declare Hillary Rodham Clinton as your preferred, enlightened Dictator of the U.S., I will send Reno over to straighten you and Hillary out to teach you some lessons. As you might have heard, Reno had argued both, against and for the EC as a highschool girl and won both side's stands (according to what she said today).
I like to declare Reno as our Enlightened Lady, who might be capable of bringing the U.S. laws in sink with what the other Lady, your Statue of Liberty, stands for.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, as a pretty dumb user, I actually would like that. The fact is, that the better the installation and configuration GUI becomes, the less the user, who doesn't know Unix/Linux, will learn it. As soon as you want to run your own little network at home and get independent from the "technical" folks, you regret not having learned how to compile etc. I think it always a hassle to find out which app was compiled with what as a default.
No, I disagree that you make money with compiling the whole "mess". Just sell the source without the binaries plus very good tutorials, explaining the "mess" and give advice, when and why and for what you should compile and configure in a certain way. The tutorials should cost a little money.
The web is full of online free tutorials. As much as I love that (and depend on them), I think that is too much to give away.
For example I love rootprompt.org for what they collect and point to. That's a site I actually as a newcomer would already pay some subscription fees to. Just for the convenience.
I wouldn't moderate that as funny... I think it should be "insightful". Do not forget "Open Source", but forget "free" as in "free beer".
Thanks God it is not easy ! I hope the more you dig in, the more complex and complicated it gets. I don't want a solution to this puzzle. I want it to be a perpetuum mobile-style generator of knew questions, new problems, always - for ever and ever.
If I understand it correctly the files of the "public" domain are owned by private businesses, and can do with them what they want, more or less. Since when is that NOT a threat ?
Only if the government owns our files, we feel threatened, but not if businesses own them ? Why ? If the government interferes with our privacy rights, you can vote it out. What can you do against a business, abusing your privacy rights ? You NEED your government and your laws to sue them. So, to me, this whole anti-government paranoia is a complete out of whack, knee-jerk reaction.
That is exactly what is so important in Lessig's book, that he understands the counter-balancing check and balance between the four powers he describes within realms of Norm (moral code), Law (legal code), Market and Architecture (digital code).
Should the government step in to limit the power of business to run roughshod over our rights to free speech and privacy ?
That's why we vote to have a government, don't we ? What else is it for ? If it doesn't do, what we want it to do, it's us to make it do, what we need it to do for us. The power of the technology is as dangerous in the hands of an abusive government as it is in the hand of multinational, huge corporations. It's through your government that you can regulate both, government and big business, to check and balance their respective power and protect the individual's civil and privacy rights.
I wonder what "public forum" legally means on the internet ? What is the definition ? The internet is not owned or governed by "the public". How can there be a "public" forum ?
Another off-hand remark. I just found the whole "merger" idiotic from the beginning. I doubted that it could ever work knowing my German homeboys. I feared from the beginning it would turn out that way. This time I feel patriotic for the American guys and blame the Germans for being completely inconsiderate and plain arrogant. Sad, the whole thing.
European companies here have always the difficulty to understand what it means to distribute something in a _continent_ like the US. US companies are masters in going from zero to covering each corner in the US in a few months to a few years (look at Starbucks) and they are miserable in detail oriented, local services.
Germans are good at servicing their customers "neatly". If something is a bit sloppy, the quick fix and throw out uncooked versions, would never work with most of Germany's clients.
Germans are not that fanatic and don't expect from companies to give something away at no cost. (Ironically, SuSE's box is much cheaper than RedHat's and I have no idea, why they didn't raise their prices in the US, as the box has definitely an advantage in their documentation). So, I think SuSE will do very fine in Europe and Germany and should stick to that first.
RedHat should become more detail oriented, if it wants to compete in Germany and tone down their rethoric. Who cares about all your "freedom" discussions. In the end, we want something what works and we want to make a living. Nothing wrong with that. What gets thoroughly on my nerves is that the "real Unix hacker style consultant" would tell any youngster, who wants to get help: "There is no free lunch, RTFM", but when it comes to admit that open source code can't survive, if it doesn't get a price tag from somewhere, the logic goes belly down. All of the sudden there is a free lunch possible.
SusE is just plain better in servicing most of Germany's ISDN customers. It took RedHat too long to come up with an easy and reliable, usable ISDN support. At leasts that it what it looked like to an outsider and "Null acht fuenfzehn" customer.
A formal degree is very useful for a young person but by the time you got one you'd probably be 50.
:-)
I am beyond "that fifty-ish chicken age".:-)
No chance with some certificate to cut a job, if no work experience is there. The problem is a twenty year gap between my old scientific education and work experience and no work IT work experience in between. Hey, someone had to get those wizard kids, mocking us oldies, toilet trained. Not only my fault... So...
And I have to admit that I am a lousy golden girl for "volunteer work". I always get upset about the policies, which made those volunteer task forces necessary in the first place. And getting upset is just not the right thingy in my age...and then, if I work, I want to get paid, I think I deserve that...:-) Thanks again for your feedback.
If I had experience in a scientific field (I wish!) I would probably look at the hybrid IT roles and try to find a path in that way
Right, I found something just last week, which brings me back to Europe, but is a nice thing for me. They have some very interesting new curricula combining programming, documentation technology and science (chemistry).
If they could just give me a place in the University, that would be really cool. In Europe (Germany), I could never find a job without a degree, but then it's not that expensive either.
Thanks for the answers, MsMarple and Malor.
When Daimler and Chrysler merged, which company wanted it more, Daimler or Chrysler ? Real question, I didn't follow that in the beginning.
The best line I ever read from some elderly man to some younger guy.
Hi, what do you think is the oldest acceptable and reasonable age to get a degree in CS/IT for a woman ?
I have basically given up and not started, because I don't see it making sense anymore. Strangely enough I have worked in my twenties and thirties exclusively with men (in science) and have never felt in any way as an outsider or slightest uncomfortable (was not U.S. though), but twenty years later trying to imagine to work in the IT field here, having a boss who is may be 27 and imagining to take a job away from a youngster kid (who is definitely smarter, so it would never happen anyhow) has me completely turned around and I discard the IT field for me aside from self-study.
Imagine you didn't have twenty years of experience on your back, would you start at age 45 and up ?
Don't give me sugar-coated, inspirational, coachy stuff, I want a blunt, honest answer from a woman, who knows the industry. Thanks.
Hopefully not...who would want to pay for such crap ? I would love to pay for scientific content on a per article or per page basis, but certainly not for any average book, which is not necessary for research.
You can find real scientific journals only in very few (university) libraries. I rather would get more journals and have to pay for them on an article or page basis and get access to them in more libraries, than having to wait for a complete copy or paying a subscription fee for access to the complete journal online.
Well, that's why I love open source code so much, you know, it saves me time to check up on the consultant's stupid work - they get what they deserve - an open door to leave.
Are you an open source code consultant ? I think you need to learn a thing or two. :-)
Of course not, but he could become one. I don't buy your argument that a pedophile would choose more likely not to act upon his desires if he had a chance to come out of his closet in public.
In order to identify any real pedophile he must have revealed it to someone, most probably to a scared kid somewhere threatening it, if it would tell anyone.
What is the reason for you to believe that by coming out of the closet the pedophilic desires would disappear or diminish? Gets a gay person less gay, because he came out of the closet telling everyone he/she is gay/lesbian ?
Let's say you would tell me you have pedophelic desires. What do you think that will do ? Most probably I will _think_, get the hell away from my kids, lurk behind your every step in order to see if you act upon your desires. Your coming out would incite manhunts. Of course, most probably I would _tell_ you, go see a doctor, get treatment (is there one ?).
I would foresee a huge complication in coming out of the closet with it. Under the assumptions your arguments are right and a pedophile _can_ choose _not_ to act out his phantasies, well then in my mind he is not a pedophile. The only things which are really completely free are your thoughts, and an inactive pedophile is allowed to think whatever he wants to. How often have you wanted to almost kill someone in your mind without acting it out ? Just because you phantasized about it, doesn't make you a killer. Just because you got some weird
thoughts, which might even scare yourself, when looking at children, doesn't make you a pedophile.
The discussion is not about morally judging a pedophile's desires, it is about allowing to broadcast to millions violance in combination with sexual encounters with "virtual children" and accompanying sound. It's about allowing mind-feeding/brain-washing people due to easy access.
These broadcasts have nothing in common with books artistically describing the issues of humanly possible sexual desires. Literature or a one time movie consumption has a completely different weight with regards to mind altering effects than continous, addictive consumption of violent pornographic videos in combination with sound. Why else would they be made like that, if it were not for the subversive addictive power they have on some people on the long run. Drugs sell well, you know.
I would argue, that if someone detects in himself a sensational attraction to children, then for God's sake I would NOT want to burden that person with easily reachable material, which could further pervert his desires into such heights, where he would kill or torture the child to get the results he wants.
I assume that those cravings for sex with children have an addictive part to it. Feeding an addict, makes him want and need more and barriers to look for the "drug" go down (as with any other drug addiction). I would not play with a human mind, fragile as it is.
Any psychiatrist, who studies addiction to pornography on the net, will tell you that his patients need to get cut off the "drug" the same way any other addict has to get off his drug.
Cold turkey is a must. There is no way to stay sober and drinking at the same time, so to speak. There is a difference of quality in pornography.
If it's just the usual stuff between two consenting adults without violence - ok forget it. If it's anything which needs violence and torture to promote the desired effect in the consumer, that's a whole other issue.
Because consumption is addictive, consumption of material which promotes torture is dangerous. There is no telling when it could spill over from inactive virtual consumption to active real execution. There is no way to deny that - it has happened and will happen again and the link between constant consumption/immersion of such material and inciting actual execution of a crime has been documented). There is no way to argue that the right of a person to have the freedom to step from consumer to executer needs any kind of "first amendment protection". This is IMHO just plain bullshit.
It's a question of broadcast, distribution and access control, not an issue of morality and not an issue of free speech.
Enough braindead stupidities voiced here already.
An interesting by-product to observe though is that people who defend the pedophile's rights with regards to use, produce and broadcast and promote virtual child pornography the most passionately, are the ones who at the same time think that child molesters should be castrated, shot, executed and what have you. I mean how much more can you reveal about your twisted frame of mind than that ?
Just read the article in the WP and look what people mix up together in violent perversities.
Sarcasm-on:
Of course, "artistic expressions" like THAT really need to be protected by the first amendment.
Sarcasm-off.
plonk !
Well, if the Libertarians behave like Nazis that might change. Can you tell me who wants to work with a bunch of shortsighted hate-spitting lunatics who have lost all civility when it comes to define freedom and the normal urge to make a living with what one is doing ?
SuSE is a privately owned company, that has to obey German labor laws, can't hire and fire at will like American companies can and do. Remind you of the very revealing discussion on /. about HOW people in the American IT industry get fired not long ago.
The only thing I can see is that SuSE tries to hold their company together and their employess without a pink slip. What is so bad about that ?
I would prefer in a minute to work for a company like SuSE than for a hot shot what have you .com
who can't survive longer than a year or so, especially not if it has to do because of a failing open source business model.
Last but not least, German engineers are as stupid or smart as American ones, if you ask me, but Germans have definitely better, fairer and more appropriate labor laws, which are by the way very much supported by even the most conservatives among the Germans. Because we have other labor laws and are more protected in our basic rights, we have another attitude and we are differently educated, not better, but differently. We can afford to be more whining, lazy and complacent, because we take many rights for granted. Americans work harder and under much more pressure, the result of their work is not better though, their character strength often much more tested and stronger. Nothing of it is really inate, it's just the result of different laws and cultures.
What the heck are people thinking here ? Amazingly enough the same people bashing here the wrong sort of German guys as Nazis (like people who work for SuSE who are definitely the last group of people any sane person would call NAZIS), are very fast in helping the new generation punk/neonzis creeping up in Germany right now in priding themselves loudly to defend the right of free (hate) speech on the internet any time, all in the name of the good ol' U.S. constitution.
Well, if you don't want to help new NAZIS to fame, then don't throw out the baby with the tab water and be a bit more intelligent about how much freedom actually guarantees to maintain the most freedom for everyone.
Oh, and I can't let that one stand. I am German, and I can't care less whose cars are better, I just care about which country makes the better laws to drive those vehicles in a safe manner and which companies make enough business to keep their workers with a paycheck.
And if you think the distribution war (RedHat versus SuSE, if I understand it correctly) matters at all to a normal person, you make a big mistake. I am a relative idiot when it comes to Linux, but I have installed and configured SuSE and RedHat and I have no idea, why you think one is better or worse than the other. If you want to compare their documentation, that might make sense, but other than that, it is really quite irrelevant.
What a shame this whole thread is...
Michael Widenius gave himself some responses, which might be interesting for those following this discussion.
Search http://developer.akopia.com/archive/interchange-us ers for "monty@mysql.com" or read the thread:"[ic] postgres versus mysql"
Please don't post comments to that list if they are not related to "Interchange". Thanks.
On the developer's mailing list of Akopia's Interchange open source e-commerce package, http://developer.akopia.com/archive/interchange- users/2001/msg00535.html , Monty Widenius said himself last week the following:
Our development has during the last year grown from 2 1/2 to 8 people and we have also got a much bigger market penetration during this time.
If O'Reilly isn't interested then another scientific publisher should jump in. It's a pity to see that printed version of the journal go away. I believe it would have success overseas. And even if Perl resources are all over online, the printed journal is very much appreciated overseas.
For example the German Linux Magazine has regularly an article on Perl. Many in Germany are reading Linux Magazine just for that Perl article. Coulnd't it be sold to a real big technical or scientific publisher (Elsevier, Kluwer, Springer, O'Reilly ?) That's were I would like to see it.
We live in a Federal Republic. A federation of 50 states. 50 seperate / parallel / distributed "countries," joined by a federal government.
... for a change).
So what ? Germany is too and has nevertheless a system, which is balancing out the needs for a system which can produce clear majorities without trading off the proportional representation of the direct vote too much. What your forefathers had in their mind, could be achieved in a many different ways, some being fairer than others, IMHO.
Before you jump into "homebaked" point systems, why not petition for a real scholarly examination in how far the current U.S. electoral system is holding up against basic civil/human rights of providing fair, unbiased, accurate, equally weighted and unbribable results ?
Someone asked here when comes the time where votes can be bought. I have no answer, because it would involve a serious study of your system and it's a job you can't take lightly, but it looks darn close as if almost everything in your current system is somewhat bought and sold.
The whole campaign is nothing but a mediocre sales pitch, the candidates running around like crazy, promising each and every group exactly what they want to hear. Everybody knows in his heart that the whole thing is a sham, but nobody knows how to change the system back into something where the political will of the people is really represented and not bought.
And with regard to the posters, which seem to think being a Republic and being a Democracy is an either/or situation, I have really a problem understanding that. Why would being a Republic
exclude you from being a Democracy ?
I guess I should ask my own government then to open up embassies in Texas and in New York State separately, because what is really left in your Federal system which unites you as ONE country ?
By the nature of your beginnings, the US is the only country in the world, which has "artificially" become the most "diverse" country in the world. You have a tremendous burden to deal with it and I have nothing but utmost respect about the fact that the U.S. IS dealing with that burden at all and considering the difficulties involved so well. Just, I think you could even do a MUCH better job.
It's really doesn not seem THAT helpful to always just resort to the perceived WISDOM of your forefathers. They had their reasons and found methods to deal with their perceived problems, which were appropriate for their times (well, I really don't want to discuss if I really believe in that). But then what is appropriate today ?
Hey, you guys are programmers, right ? How about Perl's slogan: There is more than one way to do it. Start examining the code (may the legal code this time
That might be helpful.4 0/4090/contents.htm.
http://www.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm
I disagree. You have a system which prevents a third party (not to speak about a fourth party) of being formed and represented. When those European governments have to form coalitions, that is a very healthy thing and by NO means a chaos.
At least if you have to form a coalition, the voices of third parties are heard and represented in the case the election results end in a tie, where neither of the two big parties gets the absolute majority.
In Germany the Liberals have been for years the deciding factor to mellow down the divisions between the conservatives and the social democrats. The two big parties had to decide (mostly upfront), if they would consider a coalition with any third party, in case one of the big parties alone could not form a government without building a coalition with a small party. And that I consider very healthy. We even had once a situation where both big parties built a coalition.
Just imagine that here in the U.S. Can you imagine Bush and Gore building a cabinet together ? And the funny thing is that their political differences is much smaller than the political differences between the conservatives and social democrats in Germany. So, yes, the U.S. is divided, artificially, but not really in political substance.
Historically, the Liberals (not Libertarians), the Greens and unfortunately lately also the right wing extremists and socialist/communist extremists represent the smaller parties in Germany. They mostly struggle for decades to get more than 5 % of the vote, which by law they must get, in order to be eligible to have seats in the "Bundestag" and function as a coalition partner. That's not chaos, that is representation of diverse political ideas, IMHO.
Contrary I find the U.S. system (due to what your forefathers feared the most: not being able to find ONE candidate everyone, including the small states, could agree upon. Apparently the dividing interests from state to state within the U.S. were so huge, that a voting system was chosen which strongly favored a majority building system trading off a more proportional representation of the popular vote.
If you want to look at a comparison of systems the link on top can give you some insight about the differences.
Anyway, to come back to the real subject of which method of voting and counting is more accurate or better, I still refuse to give it serious thought. Because each system will have a margin of error and each system will cause problems, if the the margin of error is larger than the difference in votes for one of the two parties.
Let's say the popular vote for one candidate would be ONE vote (in the hypothetical situation you could get ever such an exact count out of 200 000 000 million counted votes). Would you deduct there is a mandate for the party who got ONE more vote ? I don't think so.
Another way of solving the problem would be to introduce legislation which would make it mandatory to have a majority in the popular vote larger than the margin of error each voting system (electronic or other) has.
Finally I think that it is far more important to have a system which is least biased than having a system which is most accurate. I could live with a margin of error, as long as that margin of error is across the board the same for all the states within the U.S. Of course an election result must be above the noise level of the voting system's inate margin of error. You wouldn't conclude anything from any scientific experiment, if the results are not statistically significant and above the noise level, right ?
Wouldn't it be possible to vote electronically and produce a log in paper format as a product, which is kept, counted and used as a proof of a proper procedure ?
:-).
And before you discuss paper/punch/pencil voting versus electronic voting and how it could be standardized, why not first standardize the much more important election laws as a whole ?
Put the election laws out of the hands of the states and under federal law. Each state should vote in the same way. If you have really to stick to the EC and I see no compelling reason why, it should be a federal law that electors MUST vote for the candidate the popular vote requires them to vote for.
The lack of standardized and equal election laws throughout the U.S. is the first thing which should be outlawed, because I believe they make not each vote be weighted and counted equally.(IANAL)
What is the whole discussion worth if the electors on December 18h are allowed to vote against the candidate the popular vote demands them to vote for ? That they are "supposed" to do that is not enough. Ethics are fine, but certainly not enough.
The arguments FOR the electorial college as to represent minorities or rural areas fairer seem that much skewed, outdated and unconvincing that I don't believe you could get any foreign country to understand why the U.S. population sticks to saying "the system works".
Well, may be it works, but how ? I mean the amount of denial to face your own flaws in the system is visible to any person watching this debacle. Just because your forefathers all came with traumatic experiences from their home countries they fled and because they had no counter pressure to design a system which suited their needs without much check and balance from parts of the population they didn't represent, doesn't mean, that the each and every part of your constitution is appropriate today.
If the EC is the wisest, fairest and system in the world, then DO discuss it publicly and let the population vote about its appropriateness. May be it turns out the the majority of U.S. citizens, after they have fully heard pros and cons and may have gotten some civic lessons about how other federal republics in the world structured their election laws and voting rights, might actually WANT to change their election laws. The emergency and danger of the current moment would be an excellent opportunity to make the whole world and the whole U.S. population aware of what might be the best voting system and how it could be changed legally and peacefully.
I really would love to see an emergency, nationwide discussion about the electorial college and suggestions how the system could be changed legally without jeopardizing anyone's voting rights and without going through a bunch of stupid recounts, law suits which don't address the real issues. Not the couple of hundred of votes inaccurately counted (will always happen everywhere) will change anything, but the change and standardization of the election laws.
The U.S. has already the mess at his hands, so why not concentrate to cure the system now instead of "gracefully" wash it away and continue to live with a system which can't be considered adaequate ? You know when all is said and done (however and whatever is said and done), there comes the sentence: "The system works".
I am not yet a citizen, but thought about becoming one for quite a while. I have already "given" one son to YOUR military forces". I just would like to be able to say one day:
"Yes, your system works, it can be adjusted where it fails and is stable enough to do so without
jeopardizing the country's peace and the population's civil rights."
Reminds me of software. It seems a bit as if your OS is only working, if you let any bug which is found to live forever, never touch it, never fix it and never uypgrade it. Sure, each and every bug fix might introduce some other bugs. But that's why we have OSS and CVS these days. That seems the best way of keeping a system stable and upgradeable, or not ?
Your arguments are good, the resort into jokes sad, and I just like to remind you that nothing prevents even a true democracy to elect lawfully a dictator. One man - one vote doesn't prevent the majority of the people to vote for someone who might turn out to abuse power and turn a constitutional democracy into a constitutional dictatorship. Example : Hitler, who was elected democratically and had changed laws the minute he came into power.
On the other hand a dictatorship is also capable of using its power to change the dicatatorship into a democracy by changing the constitutional laws into more democratic ones. This almost never happened, but there are examples of so called benevolent dictators who have shown such capabilities (like in some African countries in the sixties and seventies) where democratic elections almost always resulted in electing a dictator which then gets overthrown by a military coup to reinstate another dictator, who has also "the guns under his mattress".
You will observe that mostly in Africa the average population will prefer a "civilian" dictator to a "military dictator" as they have rarely enjoyed the protection of their democratic human and civil rights by any government which was put in power with whatever means, military coup or elections.
Also don't forget that the U.S. president by constitutional design always has the "guns under his mattress". And be aware that foreigners are very aware of that, as well as your own volunteer military forces. I would say nothing in this situation is worth making fun of.
Having said that, I just hope that the current situation will initiate a change in U.S. voting laws, putting the laws under federal law, and getting rid of the EC as you have it. It's way overdue to do so and sad that something like this had to happen to bring this issue into the mind of the whole population.
Let's hope there will be a legal procedure to change the voting laws.
It is one thing to be very careful to solve the current situation/crisis according to the existing voting laws (Florida state law), but it is another thing (and I think the more important thing) to initiate a legal process to change in the voting laws, reassessing the fairness and legality of the EC.
I think this is a god-given opportunity to find legal means to overhaul the voting system in the U.S.
And BTW if you want to declare Hillary Rodham Clinton as your preferred, enlightened Dictator of the U.S., I will send Reno over to straighten you and Hillary out to teach you some lessons. As you might have heard, Reno had argued both, against and for the EC as a highschool girl and won both side's stands (according to what she said today).
I like to declare Reno as our Enlightened Lady, who might be capable of bringing the U.S. laws in sink with what the other Lady, your Statue of Liberty, stands for.
It's the laws, stupid.