I remember in high school the who baby care/egg care thing where you (and a pair of classmates) had to take turns watching a fake baby or an egg for a few days.
We had to care for the egg? Man, no wonder I flunked that class.
The terms of Congressmen in both houses are set by the Constitution. Any attempt to change those terms or enact term limits would require an amendment to the Constitution. Your plan would be dead on arrival.
The reason money rules the lives of politicians is because of the vast sums spent on campaigning. Even with term limits, it would still cost the same to run an election, because a candidate still needs to get his name out in front of the voters. About the only way you could lower those requirements would be to have more Representatives, so that a given representative would only have to get his/her message in front of 100,000 people instead of the 600,000+ needed today.
Sadly, there's nothing that can be done about the Presidential and Senatorial elections, unless we want to amend the Constitution to have more than two Senators per state and split the Presidency into two Proconsuls, with concurrent terms.
Ooh, I bet you could get their address by mashing up their MySpace, with a whois query on their IP address, and then tie it into Google Maps! Then cross check that with Twitter, and bam! You've got an interactive slide show of their every move.
(If you're a VC, please make the check out to 'Creative Applications Serving Humanity'...CASH for short.)
There's a place for all of those skills, in different realms of politics. No one person can do it all. If you see the need for those skillsets in elected officials, you know what the solution to the problem is.
Besides, I really have no interest in the Executive side of the government, and the knowledge domains you listed fall more within that sphere. I'm more interested in the Legislative or Judicial sides.
With that being said, it doesn't help that system to get the green card/citizenship is a royal PITA. But tens of thousands of immigrants manage to go through it successfully every year.
As someone above stated: when one person breaks the law, you broke it; when everyone breaks the law, the law is broken. I understand, and agree with, the need to make sure that violent criminals aren't coming into the country (we have enough of those already). But making it painful to get a visa is just going to force otherwise law-abiding people to break poorly written laws, and encourages them not to integrate into society. Some sanity in our immigration laws would go a long to fixing both of those problems, and their attendant complications.
In addition, I find your comment to be pretty pointless because it does not describe an actual need. "Moving an e-mail to a folder" is not an information- or user-oriented need, it is a tool. It is a means not an end.
That's an excellent point. However, given how common that interface is, I think the Gmail UI does need to take it into account. At the least, provide a method to drag an email onto a tag; or override the alt click mouse event (it may already do this, I didn't try it). Something a little more intuitive that will help new users migrate to their new way of thinking about information storage, search, and retrieval.
You're absolutely right, every solution that our politicians are offering is just "more government", even though it's never been shown to solve anything.
I was listening to some idiot on talk radio tonight, talking about how passing more laws would stop illegal aliens from coming into the country (never mind that they're already breaking one immigration law, why not two?) He seemed to think that requiring even more paperwork and proof of citizenship from new employees would accomplish something. I was struck by how far this country has come, when the concept of requiring huge amounts of papers to prove you have the right to a job is now a respectable enough position for people not to be shouted down over it instantly. Who in their right minds thinks that requiring (people claiming to be) citizens to produce evidence of their citizenship just to earn a living is a good thing?
People need to stop thinking government has the answers. It barely even understands what the questions are.
Screw that, voting probably won't help.* Do what I'm doing:
I never got around to finishing my bachelor's because, frankly, I was too busy working. Now I'm doing it. And once that's done, I'm going to law school. Once I have a few years of experience with the law, I'm running for office, and I'm going to do everything I can to fix what's wrong with our government.
If every decent, respectable, person on Slashdot did the same thing, we could make some real changes in this country.
*I say this because we're not guaranteed of getting the right kind of people in office, unless we are those people. Don't wait for someone to fix all the problems we have, start being a part of the solution.
Except that you've completely broken the file paradigm that's dominated people's understanding of information storage for the last several millennia. I'll use another webmail service, Yahoo Mail, as a counterpoint since I'm familiar with both (I assume you are; if not, they're both free to sign up for).
In Gmail, when I want to "move" an email to a "folder", I have to: 1: Open the file, or check the box next to it. 2: Click on 'More actions' 3: Click on the label I want to assign 4: Click on 'Archive'
In Yahoo Mail, to accomplish the same task, I: 1: Click on the message 2: Drag-and-drop it to the new folder
Half the number of steps, and it doesn't require learning a new paradigm.
You need to go relearn the definitions of "seamlessly", "easily", and "completely".
It's really surprising just how much we disconnect ourselves from our many social inhibitions when communicating over the internet versus when we're actually interacting with others in public
I know what you mean: I'm naked while typing this.
That said, I can't see the utility of something like this being all that high. Sure, it'll appeal to the posers who want to be seen in the right places; but the truly cool people don't need a device to tell them where the parties are, and the truly nerdy don't care.
Come to think of it, the terrorists would be doing us a favor if they bombed the places frequented by those types. Let's turn it on and watch the species evolve ever higher!
Reading through the comments so far, it seems like/. is the middle of a lovefest for their one-time enemy, Bill Gatus of Borg. Come on, where are the FOSS zealots who will scream and yell and rave about what an evil person he is? Someone restore my faith in geekdom!
Sales tax is almost never applied to food and other necessities. A "rich" person who spends $10k per year on a hobby (like, say, buying two Warhammer armies) is going to pay a lot more in tax than a poor person who can barely keep his family fed. So how is it not "progressive"?
Whatever reason people have for not upgrading, the fact remains, they're not upgrading. And that's troubling because Microsoft wants people to upgrade to IE7 (as demonstrated by their statements that they won't support IE6 or earlier past a certain date). It's also a problem because, as certain websites grow more popular and require more advanced features of their browser, the people who haven't already upgraded IE might be directed to download and use Firefox, instead. Just look at all the links in Google to go download Firefox to make sure the latest bit of Google magic works correctly.
Not to mention, it says something very interesting about the level of loyalty different people have to their browsers. In Microsoft's camp are the "eh, whatever came with the computer is OK, I guess" people; in Firefox's are the "OMG, this is the awesome!" people. Which group would you rather have using your product?
Any sort of contribution or gift to a politician, monetary or otherwise, will be seen as a bribe and prosecuted as high treason.
What if I set up a web page critical of Obama? Would that be considered a "contribution" to McCain? If so, you've just destroyed the 1st Amendment. If not, there's no point not to allow contributions to the candidate, because people will just donate their own ads instead of money, and make sure the candidate knows how much they spent.
Face it, it's impossible to take the money out of politics, and it's pointless to try. The only thing you can do is make everyone disclose how much they've gotten, from whom, and let the voters make their own decisions based on those facts. "The answer to bad speech is more speech, not less."
Malthus published his famous two centuries ago. If he had been even close to being right, Western civilization would not currently exist. The fact that you and are here, having this discussion, shows that he wrong in nearly all his assumptions.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember in high school the who baby care/egg care thing where you (and a pair of classmates) had to take turns watching a fake baby or an egg for a few days.
We had to care for the egg? Man, no wonder I flunked that class.
Oh well, a man's gotta eat.
The terms of Congressmen in both houses are set by the Constitution. Any attempt to change those terms or enact term limits would require an amendment to the Constitution. Your plan would be dead on arrival.
The reason money rules the lives of politicians is because of the vast sums spent on campaigning. Even with term limits, it would still cost the same to run an election, because a candidate still needs to get his name out in front of the voters. About the only way you could lower those requirements would be to have more Representatives, so that a given representative would only have to get his/her message in front of 100,000 people instead of the 600,000+ needed today.
Sadly, there's nothing that can be done about the Presidential and Senatorial elections, unless we want to amend the Constitution to have more than two Senators per state and split the Presidency into two Proconsuls, with concurrent terms.
Seriously? Your argument is that we should oppose the [RI|MP]AA "for the children"?
Ooh, I bet you could get their address by mashing up their MySpace, with a whois query on their IP address, and then tie it into Google Maps! Then cross check that with Twitter, and bam! You've got an interactive slide show of their every move.
(If you're a VC, please make the check out to 'Creative Applications Serving Humanity'...CASH for short.)
Maybe they'd be more open to a Slashdot PAC? Couldn't hurt to ask.
There's a place for all of those skills, in different realms of politics. No one person can do it all. If you see the need for those skillsets in elected officials, you know what the solution to the problem is.
Besides, I really have no interest in the Executive side of the government, and the knowledge domains you listed fall more within that sphere. I'm more interested in the Legislative or Judicial sides.
With that being said, it doesn't help that system to get the green card/citizenship is a royal PITA. But tens of thousands of immigrants manage to go through it successfully every year.
As someone above stated: when one person breaks the law, you broke it; when everyone breaks the law, the law is broken. I understand, and agree with, the need to make sure that violent criminals aren't coming into the country (we have enough of those already). But making it painful to get a visa is just going to force otherwise law-abiding people to break poorly written laws, and encourages them not to integrate into society. Some sanity in our immigration laws would go a long to fixing both of those problems, and their attendant complications.
In addition, I find your comment to be pretty pointless because it does not describe an actual need. "Moving an e-mail to a folder" is not an information- or user-oriented need, it is a tool. It is a means not an end.
That's an excellent point. However, given how common that interface is, I think the Gmail UI does need to take it into account. At the least, provide a method to drag an email onto a tag; or override the alt click mouse event (it may already do this, I didn't try it). Something a little more intuitive that will help new users migrate to their new way of thinking about information storage, search, and retrieval.
You're absolutely right, every solution that our politicians are offering is just "more government", even though it's never been shown to solve anything.
I was listening to some idiot on talk radio tonight, talking about how passing more laws would stop illegal aliens from coming into the country (never mind that they're already breaking one immigration law, why not two?) He seemed to think that requiring even more paperwork and proof of citizenship from new employees would accomplish something. I was struck by how far this country has come, when the concept of requiring huge amounts of papers to prove you have the right to a job is now a respectable enough position for people not to be shouted down over it instantly. Who in their right minds thinks that requiring (people claiming to be) citizens to produce evidence of their citizenship just to earn a living is a good thing?
People need to stop thinking government has the answers. It barely even understands what the questions are.
I didn't say there would be many of us. ;)
Screw that, voting probably won't help.* Do what I'm doing:
I never got around to finishing my bachelor's because, frankly, I was too busy working. Now I'm doing it. And once that's done, I'm going to law school. Once I have a few years of experience with the law, I'm running for office, and I'm going to do everything I can to fix what's wrong with our government.
If every decent, respectable, person on Slashdot did the same thing, we could make some real changes in this country.
*I say this because we're not guaranteed of getting the right kind of people in office, unless we are those people. Don't wait for someone to fix all the problems we have, start being a part of the solution.
Except that you've completely broken the file paradigm that's dominated people's understanding of information storage for the last several millennia. I'll use another webmail service, Yahoo Mail, as a counterpoint since I'm familiar with both (I assume you are; if not, they're both free to sign up for).
In Gmail, when I want to "move" an email to a "folder", I have to:
1: Open the file, or check the box next to it.
2: Click on 'More actions'
3: Click on the label I want to assign
4: Click on 'Archive'
In Yahoo Mail, to accomplish the same task, I:
1: Click on the message
2: Drag-and-drop it to the new folder
Half the number of steps, and it doesn't require learning a new paradigm.
You need to go relearn the definitions of "seamlessly", "easily", and "completely".
-- godwin filter removed reference to unethical but successful leader --
Since when is FDR part of Godwin's Law?
"Functionally" is not a synonym for "completely", "easily", or "seamlessly".
It's really surprising just how much we disconnect ourselves from our many social inhibitions when communicating over the internet versus when we're actually interacting with others in public
I know what you mean: I'm naked while typing this.
Or terrorists, for that matter.
That said, I can't see the utility of something like this being all that high. Sure, it'll appeal to the posers who want to be seen in the right places; but the truly cool people don't need a device to tell them where the parties are, and the truly nerdy don't care.
Come to think of it, the terrorists would be doing us a favor if they bombed the places frequented by those types. Let's turn it on and watch the species evolve ever higher!
Reading through the comments so far, it seems like /. is the middle of a lovefest for their one-time enemy, Bill Gatus of Borg. Come on, where are the FOSS zealots who will scream and yell and rave about what an evil person he is? Someone restore my faith in geekdom!
Bill Murray once observed, if you want to be rich and famous, try being rich first. See if that's enough.
Sales tax is almost never applied to food and other necessities. A "rich" person who spends $10k per year on a hobby (like, say, buying two Warhammer armies) is going to pay a lot more in tax than a poor person who can barely keep his family fed. So how is it not "progressive"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_H._Greene
You're missing the point of the comparison.
Whatever reason people have for not upgrading, the fact remains, they're not upgrading. And that's troubling because Microsoft wants people to upgrade to IE7 (as demonstrated by their statements that they won't support IE6 or earlier past a certain date). It's also a problem because, as certain websites grow more popular and require more advanced features of their browser, the people who haven't already upgraded IE might be directed to download and use Firefox, instead. Just look at all the links in Google to go download Firefox to make sure the latest bit of Google magic works correctly.
Not to mention, it says something very interesting about the level of loyalty different people have to their browsers. In Microsoft's camp are the "eh, whatever came with the computer is OK, I guess" people; in Firefox's are the "OMG, this is the awesome!" people. Which group would you rather have using your product?
Judge Green called, he said you need to read up on the history of AT&T.
Any sort of contribution or gift to a politician, monetary or otherwise, will be seen as a bribe and prosecuted as high treason.
What if I set up a web page critical of Obama? Would that be considered a "contribution" to McCain? If so, you've just destroyed the 1st Amendment. If not, there's no point not to allow contributions to the candidate, because people will just donate their own ads instead of money, and make sure the candidate knows how much they spent.
Face it, it's impossible to take the money out of politics, and it's pointless to try. The only thing you can do is make everyone disclose how much they've gotten, from whom, and let the voters make their own decisions based on those facts. "The answer to bad speech is more speech, not less."
Not to be snippy or anything, but going by Dr. de Grey's photo on Wikipedia, I'm not so sure he's much of an expert on aging.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey
The guy is only 45, and looks like he's in his 60s. You'd think if he had made any real success by this point, he'd look a lot healthier and younger.
Malthus published his famous two centuries ago. If he had been even close to being right, Western civilization would not currently exist. The fact that you and are here, having this discussion, shows that he wrong in nearly all his assumptions.