That's the typical Libertarian point of view, stolen direct from the words of Harry Browne himself. I agree with that point in particular, but I wasn't talking about specifics. I was asking which is easier to change and get rid of should it become necessary. There are lots of personal insults to me in the thread I inadvertently started, and everyone is focusing on some point either for or against business or government.
My question to you is this: We can change the draft laws. We can get rid of the entire government. But the guys with all the money still have all the money. What do we do when *they* hold a gun to us and tell us to defend their property?
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this issue... which is worse, big government or big business? Frankly, as anti-government as I am, I'm starting to think that big business is worse. The main reason is that because corporations have "personhood" under the law, but no one has to pay the price of any wrong they do. Also, these "persons" can afford the best lawyers and the best politicians to get their way. So they have the rights of normal people, but none of the responsibility, and the money to do pretty much anything they want. There's also no way to really attack them, because the corporation can just vanish, and the money it generated can go toward another different corporation with none of the liabilities of the first. Of course it's more complicated than all that, but bottom line is, a corporation is like a super-person... they're too difficult to stop when they're doing something wrong.
Government, on the other hand, is fairly easy to attack should that become necessary. Look at the number of revolutions going on at any given time for proof. They may not all succeed, but at least there are visible targets that once removed, will stop doing whatever it was that drove people to revolt in the first place. Laws can be rewritten and policies changed. In other words, I believe it's easier to dispose of a corrupt government than a corrupt giant business should the need arise.The main difference between them, in addition to one being easier to destroy, is that it is legal for government to have armed enforcers that actually kill you (police, military, etc). Businesses do the same with security guards, etc., but note that in this case, the guard as a person would be responsible for any killing they do in defense of the company, as opposed to the government that ordered the killing on the part of the military or police.
I haven't thought everything through (obviously), but bottom line, in my opinion, don't reject the original comment from a couple posts ago that we may need government to protect us from business. Businesses may be run by "ordinary people" like us, but they don't have the same liability for their actions like we do if those actions are carried out as corporate behavior rather than individual behavior. I think it boils down to which one is easier to make stop doing what it's doing that's causing problems.
They cost $15,000 US for a set of four
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"One thing people could argue is, How can a company own the most important food crop in the world?" said Dr. Rod A. Wing of Clemson University. "In Asia, rice is like a religion. To own a religion, so to speak, that's just a question. Can you do that? I don't think so."
I think L. Ron Hubbard has the answer to that one.
They're the same. There are a couple of "gory" shots, but they're very short either way. It's not watered down at all. The only differences are some of the translation, but the visuals and soundtrack are identical; no cut scenes or anything. The translation differences are small enough to ignore, and mostly involve cultural changes.
Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind was released in an "Americanized" version that truly was terrible compared to the original, having nearly a third of the movie cut, and words not even vaguely close to the original story. However, Disney will be redoing and rereleasing it (the original Americanized version wasn't done by Disney). I hope they do as good a job as they did with Princess Mononoke.
I would tend to disagree about the influence of an individual programmer. Cream rises to the top, to use a cliche. If a tech is good at what he does and an honorable person, his opinions and actions carry more weight. That's true in every programming shop I've worked in, regardless of the position of the programmer. In many cases, the respected tech can influence the manager as well by merely stating opinion.
But in that IBM commercial...
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They showed an African tribesman holding a sign for IBM. Surely this author is mistaken:)
This may include using an updated anti-viral package on Windows and Mac systems.
The sad thing is that signature-based antivirus software is nothing more than a feel-good solution... Antivirus software didn't stop Melissa, nor did it stop ILOVEYOU. By definition it can only respond to the threat, not stop it, and something that spreads as fast as the macro-based viruses has done its damage by the time the antivirus companies can respond. And I would even ask another question: How many true positives have you ever gotten from whatever anti-virus software you use?
So IMHO, requiring people to use Antivirus software would be a big mistake... but you may be right, and by the time the law degrades into regulations, something like that may happen.
Good-natured ribbing, that's all. I'm in the USA, and our neighbors to the North get almost no credit for some of the Insanely Great things created or produced there. So, I was just teasing... and wondering how long after this thing becomes a production-line reality that everyone would just assume it was a product of the USA...
It may sound jaded, but my opinion as to what becomes of the internet is whether or not the geeks continue to maintain some basic control over the medium. We know what the suits do when they get enough control over it (see the RIAA, various federal governments, and my bet is eventually things like the DMCA). The fact is, we geeks tend to be free-information junkies and as far as the suits are concerned, at the risk of sounding silly, dangerous rebels at times. My fear is that eventually as the discovery period closes, the jobs once belonging to geek-types and technology adventurers will become the jobs of journeyman types who are doing their job as a job and not as something they enjoy and beleive in. Many of our managers even now are still geeks and understand and love what we do, but that won't last forever as the money men put their own into management positions and our chosen professions become just another semi-technical line of work. I fear we may not get the say on how it turns out. This may not answer the question as to What technologies do you guys see becoming prevalent, what things will become obsolete... but I fear our type may move on to the Next Big Thing and the internet will become just another commodity. And I also fear that the money men already know this, and the best of them are already planning for it.
Okay, but that wasn't my point. I was talking about back on NT 3.1 when this conversation took place, like in 1993. The point was Microsoft's attitude, not whether in the intervening years they have provided a product to fill that need.
I spoke recently to a co-worker who has known several key MS sales managers over the years, and he says he remembers when this flap came up over not adding NFS support into NT as early as NT 3.1 (which was the 1.0 release of NT). Lots of Unix shops were asking for NFS support so they could continue to access thier currently shared data on NFS while using NT as a client machine. It also seemed logical to my co-worker, and he asked the MS folks he knew why wouldn't they do it? Of course they were capable of it; they have some excellent programmers.
The response was that it wasn't about the feature, it was about forcing the customer to make a choice: Unix or NT? There were even early-on third-party products to provide NFS support for an NT user, but a properly-placed MS sales rep could ask the right person "Come on... this third party product cost $280 per client and the entire client OS only costs $80. Is it really worth it just to use NFS? Wouldn't it make more financial sense just to use file shares via NT?" and thus the beginning of the end for Unix in that shop, whereas if the NFS support had been provided, NT and Unix would have been side-by-side and maybe NT would "lose" at some point in the future.
So is it about standards for MS? Absolutely not. POP3 clients (including mine) all over the world broke with the initial implementation of POP3 by Exchange (one too many carriage returns) when accessing an Exchange server. I mean good grief, it was POP--not exactly hard to get right. It's about sales, and forcing the customer to make a choice. And we all know that when you compare the "back of the box" of an MS product to one of its competitor's products, especially when the person comparing is a PHB, the MS product will win.
Could MS make its Kerberos work with Unix implementations? Absolutely. But the question they're really forcing PHB customers (the ones with the checkbooks) to answer is "Do we like our Unix boxes better overall enough to stand by them over this one little thing" as it will seem to them to be a minor incompatibility. And the client OSwill interoperate correctly, of course... and they've taken away another piece of attractiveness that Unix might hold to a PHB.
Thanks for the info. It just bugged me that his comment had been moderated up as Insightful, so I posted rather than moderating it myself. Oh well. Thanks again.
First off, YOU (yes, YOU) are not interesting enough for them to watch you. Sure, they could, but why would they? Did you e-mail this guy something the secret service didn't like? Do you have a small catchet of U-238 that you keep under your bed "for emergencies"? Arms dealer (no, supercomputers don't count)?
Okay then, why are you worried?
Because once they have established that they can do it, then they can change why they do it. Today it may be looking for "criminals", but tomorrow it may be looking for someone who has fallen out of line with whatever the government has determined is correct. Making something illegal doesn't make it wrong -- many in the US would point to UCITA as an example... so what happens when they start looking for people using DeCSS, or PGP, or smokers, or people ordering out-of-region DVDs, or Catholics, or Protestants, or Indian nationals, or whomever?
Experience has shown that government doesn't give up its power; it expands its power. Causes that may seem good or justifiable at first turn ugly once future politicians modify them. That's why someone should be worried.
I *brought* my own fscking keyboard to work. They wouldn't let me install it.
That changes things. I apologize. Your employer sounds like a real joy to be with. Not.
*How* does legislation that *protects* an employee consitiute 'bullying'?
Because others (taxpayers) must now pay to administer this program, and it expands the reach of the government that much further. The fact is, government is the only organization (other than criminal organizations) that can force a particular set of behaviors on people. There is absolutely no reason to expand the government in things that don't concern national defense. And no, I am not a war-lover. I mean national defense.
Government programs inevitably wind up convoluted and cross-purpose to their original goals. I have had awful employers that essentially enslaved their employees, and my current employer is the most gracious kind company I could ever dream to work for (and no, they don't know who I am here, or my alias here). Government has no place forcing either of them to do anything. The entire concept of government comes to to force, and those who benefit from that or support it are now forcing their will upon others, because if the others don't comply, they will be dealt with by force... fines, more fines, loss of operating license, prison... and that is exactly how it happens.
Is this what you want? Your employer not allowing you to bring use your own keyboard is cruel. Forcing them to allow you to do so is just wrong. Sooner or later you will be the target of this force, if you're not already.
It seems to me that legislation such as this is a *good* thing. If we can prevent these problems before they reach the state that mine has gotten to, where I need a total of two and a half months off work for the surgery and the physical therapy, not only will it benefit the *worker* (no one should ever, *ever* have to physically destroy him or herself for a job) but it will also benefit the corporation (less employee absence, more productivity). Sometimes, legislation is *necessary*. Corporations are unwilling to Do The Right Thing by themselves a lot of the time; it takes a fairly big stick to convince them.
What you're saying is that you think employers should be forced to pay for it, and that I should be forced to pay for administration of it. If you don't like it, either bring your own chair and keyboard, or get a better job. Your employer doesn't sound like much of great employer anyway, based on what you're saying.
By saying you think this legislation is necessary, you're saying that force should be applied to make your way happen. I also suffer RSI, but I brought my own chair and keyboard, and all was better. I would never dream of forcing other people to do things my way just because it would make my life easier. If you do, you're a bully, not a victim. You knew you had RSI when you took the job, and now you're being a complete jerk, apparently, because your employer didn't make the RSI didn't go away. And rather than bring your own equipment to prevent your own bodily pain, you'd rather get the government involved, or as so far, get your physician to "order" your employer around. Thanks for nothing. I'm glad you're not my coworker. You sound like a whiner that won't take responsibility for his own good. I agree that not all people with RSI are whiners. But you quite obviously are.
You claimed sane and sensible guidlines at home, but you'd rather suffer, have surgery, and make trouble for everyone else than to take care of yourself at work, too.
To simplify the selection process, I ripped a bunch of my CDs to MP3 (one style per CD) and burned them to a data CD with an m3u playlist in the root, but without the drive letter coded in the m3u. This way, it's totally portable and not tied to any drive letter, and opening a single m3u file cues a day's worth of music.
For coding that requires problem-solving and deep concentration, I've found Tangerine Dream to be the most relaxing and quick to put me in "the zone" when coding. The same can be said of moderate classical, romantic, baroque, classic japanese, and some pop like 'til Tuesday or The Bangles. Grunt coding works with just about anything; I prefer Rush, Yes, Living Color, and a few others, but it doesn't really matter when the coding doesn't require much creativity.
The point is that history and natural history use the same methods for gathering data (if not interpretting them), and you can't invalidate one without destroying the other. Why not apply the same arguments about the fossil record to the written one? How do you know that ink won't migrate across a page if left alone long enough? When we read old documents we see changes in spelling, grammer and all that and we say the language is evolving, but how do we know the record isn't lying to us?
That's not true. We're not trying to prove a single entity. If we dig up a fossil, there is proof that entity existed, likewise with the written record on George Washington. Evolution is trying to prove that species changed into other species. That has no relationship whatever to whether a single person existed. Finding a fossil does not equal a change in species. You're comparing a single species or entity and a change of species. Your thought on language is a better simile than comparing a single person to a change of species, because the record exists that a language eventually will change over time into in incompatible "species" of language. But this does not compare with showing a single person existed. For every human-like fossil remain we find, there is the proof that its owner existed.
Again, "Washington" is not a scientific principal. He was not a species or change of species.
He is a historical entity, as much as any species.
I agree with that. But we're not talking about the existence of a given species. We're talking about the changing of one species to another. Now if someone had said George Washington changed into Lincoln, your comparison might be more valid. No one, creationists included, can doubt that a given species existed when the fossil record is there. The question is not Did the species exist? but rather Did it evolve into another species? This is why I don't find your use of "prove George Washington" a valid comparison.
Evolution by natural selection happens within historical constraints while creation is unfettered. We have millions of years of history of isolated, maladapted communities getting by because there were no other pressures on them. This is explainable by evolution, but if new organisms can really appear out of thin air, why didn't they appear and wipe out the easy meat?
You're not familiar with creationism are you? It does not claim that new species were created any time after the initial creation. After the initial creation, there were no claims of new species being dropped in. Your characterization of creationism is incorrect. You're arguing against your own characterization, not the Biblical account.
I am comfortable with random chance in physical systems (and even directed creation, albiet I'd need more proof) but we have absolutely no evidence that it has ever occured.
I'd agree with that. We don't have any direct evidence.
If species don't arise by spontaneous generation or by macro-evolution, what is left? Either they came from something that was there before, or not. There is no third choice.
Again, following the initial creation, the Bible does not claim futher spontaneous generation, so you're arguing against a bad characterization of creationism. I have never denied that the evidence exists to suggest macro-evolution. My training was in science and I am as trained in evolutionary biology and genetics as the next physicist , but certainly not as much as a biologist. However, there is not perfect evidence as there is with micro-evolution. That's all I'm saying. A change in species requires essentially that a generation be born that can breed with itself, but not with prior generations that are capable of breeding with themselves. So somewhere along the line, a change must occur that makes a generation incompatible. If that's not akin to spontaneous change after the appearance of the parent species, I don't know what is. So evolution is also asking me to beleive in a "sudden" change. Now this "sudden" change may have occurred over several generations, i.e. a generation can breed with its own generation and its parents' generation, but not with its grandparents' or great grandparents' generations. Another case where this could be is that all offspring of a given individual, rather than a given generation, are incompatible with prior generations, but compatible with one another. So at some point, a genetic difference was common enough to create a new species, and this was supposed to have happened countless times with countless species. It sounds like evolution also requires a great deal of faith.
I want you to experimentally prove George Washington to me.Reproduce the man and all his acomplishments in a lab. We can't, and we can't "prove" he existed, but will still teach it. Natural history got its name for a reason, and like all historical sciences, it is not well suited to laboratory experimentation. Like all geologic-scale systems, it is even less suited to observation.
This invalidates neither the science nor the conclusions we draw from it.
I'm not sure I see the connection to science here. The record on George Washington is fantastic, and witnessed and recorded first-hand. I understand your point about the fossil record having to stand for lack of a better one, but remember all the gaps it contains. However, "George Washington" is not a scientific theory. The scientific method doesn't apply to "reproducing a man and all his accomplishments". In my number of comments on this topic this evening, I have not said that I think macro-evolution is a bad theory. I think that considering the evidence, it is an excellent theory, but that it has failed to prove that changes of species occurred in the case of humans.
We prove Washington existed by looking at the record he left behind, and we can do likewise with previous pecies.
Again, "Washington" is not a scientific principal. He was not a species or change of species.
If spontaneous generation of species occured, something better would have come along and either ate them or starved them out.
And this has happened repeatedly, regardless of how species came to be! What is your point here? I'm not trying to be argumentative; I'm trying to understand how what you're saying relates.
Consider our teeth. I can't explain our teeth from creationism. Why would a benevolent God give us teeth that, without constant care, rot out of our mouths in less than half our life span? Especially when the Supreme Engineer already had a better system in place in sharks? But I can explain them from natural selection. Our teeth lasted for most of our ancestors lives, and certainly all through the breeding years. We don't have better teeth because we didn't need them. We do now, but natural selection, unlike God, has no foresight, so we live with imperfect teeth. A relic of our past.
Well, if you're going to ask those, then there are lots of others to ask too. Thinks like "Why does God let bad things happen to good people", and "how does gravity work anyway?". I certainly don't have the answers. It's entirely possible that natural selection and adaptation explain it perfectly and are 100% correct. Your comment about teeth having been good enough for our ancestor's lifespans is an excellent theory, similar to the one about the fact that women run out of eggs in their ovaries at about the same age that most of our teeth are "beyond hope" . The same explanation sounds excellent for both: our lives were shorter when our modern biology was "cemented". I certainly don't claim to have the answers. My training was in science as well; I am not a "rabid creationist". I am, however flawed it makes me as a scientist, a creationist nonetheless. I fully concede that creationism isn't scientific in the slightest. But my former statements stand as a made them: Macro-evolution isn't necessarily good science either. Time may prove it to be correct, however. Micro-evolution (evolution within a species that doesn't result in the creation of a new species) certainly panned out well.
!? I pay my taxes so that kids can be educated in FACTS not faith.
I agree with you completely, and I'm a creationist. Science class is not the place for creationism. I do know some dim-witted creationists that think creation should be taught in schools, but I don't know any intelligent ones that think that. Creationism will continue to be taught just fine in churches and Sunday schools. Anyone who beleives otherwise is being short-sighted. As one who majored in physics, I agree completely. Science class is a place for science.
How do you know that "gods of Egypt" doesn't just mean the fictional gods that the Egyptians believed in? That's what I've been taught.
Well of course I don't know. But I find it more consistent with the other phrases where other gods are always referred to as existing. When you take all the phrases literally (as in there really were other gods) then you don't have to say "well here He meant money, and there He meant fictitious gods, and there He meant something else" etc. I think that if God had meant "money" or "power" in the first commandment, he'd have said money or power.
Ooo, here's another juicy bit in Bible I just stumbled across in verse 26: "And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness... Cool, what would the fundamentalists think about the evident plurality of Gods as expressed in this particular verse?
You wouldn't offend any intelligent Christians that have read with a critical eye. Consider the first commandment: Exodus 20:2-3 : I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. [3] Thou shalt have no other gods before me. A lot of people think God meant "money" or "power" or a dozen other things here when He said "other gods". But then when taken in context to your comment, and the fact that the seventh plague was done to show that God was more powerful than the god of Egypt... the Bible absolutely admits there are other gods.
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That's the typical Libertarian point of view, stolen direct from the words of Harry Browne himself. I agree with that point in particular, but I wasn't talking about specifics. I was asking which is easier to change and get rid of should it become necessary. There are lots of personal insults to me in the thread I inadvertently started, and everyone is focusing on some point either for or against business or government.
My question to you is this: We can change the draft laws. We can get rid of the entire government. But the guys with all the money still have all the money. What do we do when *they* hold a gun to us and tell us to defend their property?
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this issue... which is worse, big government or big business? Frankly, as anti-government as I am, I'm starting to think that big business is worse. The main reason is that because corporations have "personhood" under the law, but no one has to pay the price of any wrong they do. Also, these "persons" can afford the best lawyers and the best politicians to get their way. So they have the rights of normal people, but none of the responsibility, and the money to do pretty much anything they want. There's also no way to really attack them, because the corporation can just vanish, and the money it generated can go toward another different corporation with none of the liabilities of the first. Of course it's more complicated than all that, but bottom line is, a corporation is like a super-person... they're too difficult to stop when they're doing something wrong.
Government, on the other hand, is fairly easy to attack should that become necessary. Look at the number of revolutions going on at any given time for proof. They may not all succeed, but at least there are visible targets that once removed, will stop doing whatever it was that drove people to revolt in the first place. Laws can be rewritten and policies changed. In other words, I believe it's easier to dispose of a corrupt government than a corrupt giant business should the need arise.The main difference between them, in addition to one being easier to destroy, is that it is legal for government to have armed enforcers that actually kill you (police, military, etc). Businesses do the same with security guards, etc., but note that in this case, the guard as a person would be responsible for any killing they do in defense of the company, as opposed to the government that ordered the killing on the part of the military or police.
I haven't thought everything through (obviously), but bottom line, in my opinion, don't reject the original comment from a couple posts ago that we may need government to protect us from business. Businesses may be run by "ordinary people" like us, but they don't have the same liability for their actions like we do if those actions are carried out as corporate behavior rather than individual behavior. I think it boils down to which one is easier to make stop doing what it's doing that's causing problems.
According to http://www.jjournal.net/jeep/newproducts/Mattracks /, the price is about $15,000US for a set of four.
From the article:
"One thing people could argue is, How can a company own the most important food crop in the world?" said Dr. Rod A. Wing of Clemson University. "In Asia, rice is like a religion. To own a religion, so to speak, that's just a question. Can you do that? I don't think so."
I think L. Ron Hubbard has the answer to that one.
Pimps, prostitutes, mob hits, and the Sprint infrastructure...
Is Richard Hoagland's http://www.enterprisemission.com. One page with a few pictures of these Mars structures is http://www.enterprisemission.com/sequel.htm and others are at Glass Tubes, and Cydonia Triangle. Another site with tons of Mars surface feature images is http://barsoom.msss.com/moc_gallery/index.html.
They're the same. There are a couple of "gory" shots, but they're very short either way. It's not watered down at all. The only differences are some of the translation, but the visuals and soundtrack are identical; no cut scenes or anything. The translation differences are small enough to ignore, and mostly involve cultural changes.
Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind was released in an "Americanized" version that truly was terrible compared to the original, having nearly a third of the movie cut, and words not even vaguely close to the original story. However, Disney will be redoing and rereleasing it (the original Americanized version wasn't done by Disney). I hope they do as good a job as they did with Princess Mononoke.
I would tend to disagree about the influence of an individual programmer. Cream rises to the top, to use a cliche. If a tech is good at what he does and an honorable person, his opinions and actions carry more weight. That's true in every programming shop I've worked in, regardless of the position of the programmer. In many cases, the respected tech can influence the manager as well by merely stating opinion.
They showed an African tribesman holding a sign for IBM. Surely this author is mistaken :)
You know, one for him and one for his balls? They're obviously the size of a Buick!
This may include using an updated anti-viral package on Windows and Mac systems.
The sad thing is that signature-based antivirus software is nothing more than a feel-good solution... Antivirus software didn't stop Melissa, nor did it stop ILOVEYOU. By definition it can only respond to the threat, not stop it, and something that spreads as fast as the macro-based viruses has done its damage by the time the antivirus companies can respond. And I would even ask another question: How many true positives have you ever gotten from whatever anti-virus software you use?
So IMHO, requiring people to use Antivirus software would be a big mistake... but you may be right, and by the time the law degrades into regulations, something like that may happen.
Good-natured ribbing, that's all. I'm in the USA, and our neighbors to the North get almost no credit for some of the Insanely Great things created or produced there. So, I was just teasing... and wondering how long after this thing becomes a production-line reality that everyone would just assume it was a product of the USA...
It may sound jaded, but my opinion as to what becomes of the internet is whether or not the geeks continue to maintain some basic control over the medium. We know what the suits do when they get enough control over it (see the RIAA, various federal governments, and my bet is eventually things like the DMCA). The fact is, we geeks tend to be free-information junkies and as far as the suits are concerned, at the risk of sounding silly, dangerous rebels at times. My fear is that eventually as the discovery period closes, the jobs once belonging to geek-types and technology adventurers will become the jobs of journeyman types who are doing their job as a job and not as something they enjoy and beleive in. Many of our managers even now are still geeks and understand and love what we do, but that won't last forever as the money men put their own into management positions and our chosen professions become just another semi-technical line of work. I fear we may not get the say on how it turns out. This may not answer the question as to What technologies do you guys see becoming prevalent, what things will become obsolete... but I fear our type may move on to the Next Big Thing and the internet will become just another commodity. And I also fear that the money men already know this, and the best of them are already planning for it.
Um, Unix Services for Unix (SFU) supports NFS
Okay, but that wasn't my point. I was talking about back on NT 3.1 when this conversation took place, like in 1993. The point was Microsoft's attitude, not whether in the intervening years they have provided a product to fill that need.
I spoke recently to a co-worker who has known several key MS sales managers over the years, and he says he remembers when this flap came up over not adding NFS support into NT as early as NT 3.1 (which was the 1.0 release of NT). Lots of Unix shops were asking for NFS support so they could continue to access thier currently shared data on NFS while using NT as a client machine. It also seemed logical to my co-worker, and he asked the MS folks he knew why wouldn't they do it? Of course they were capable of it; they have some excellent programmers.
The response was that it wasn't about the feature, it was about forcing the customer to make a choice: Unix or NT? There were even early-on third-party products to provide NFS support for an NT user, but a properly-placed MS sales rep could ask the right person "Come on... this third party product cost $280 per client and the entire client OS only costs $80. Is it really worth it just to use NFS? Wouldn't it make more financial sense just to use file shares via NT?" and thus the beginning of the end for Unix in that shop, whereas if the NFS support had been provided, NT and Unix would have been side-by-side and maybe NT would "lose" at some point in the future.
So is it about standards for MS? Absolutely not. POP3 clients (including mine) all over the world broke with the initial implementation of POP3 by Exchange (one too many carriage returns) when accessing an Exchange server. I mean good grief, it was POP--not exactly hard to get right. It's about sales, and forcing the customer to make a choice. And we all know that when you compare the "back of the box" of an MS product to one of its competitor's products, especially when the person comparing is a PHB, the MS product will win.
Could MS make its Kerberos work with Unix implementations? Absolutely. But the question they're really forcing PHB customers (the ones with the checkbooks) to answer is "Do we like our Unix boxes better overall enough to stand by them over this one little thing" as it will seem to them to be a minor incompatibility. And the client OSwill interoperate correctly, of course... and they've taken away another piece of attractiveness that Unix might hold to a PHB.
Thanks for the info. It just bugged me that his comment had been moderated up as Insightful, so I posted rather than moderating it myself. Oh well. Thanks again.
Experience has shown that government doesn't give up its power; it expands its power. Causes that may seem good or justifiable at first turn ugly once future politicians modify them. That's why someone should be worried.
I *brought* my own fscking keyboard to work. They wouldn't let me install it.
That changes things. I apologize. Your employer sounds like a real joy to be with. Not.
*How* does legislation that *protects* an employee consitiute 'bullying'?
Because others (taxpayers) must now pay to administer this program, and it expands the reach of the government that much further. The fact is, government is the only organization (other than criminal organizations) that can force a particular set of behaviors on people. There is absolutely no reason to expand the government in things that don't concern national defense. And no, I am not a war-lover. I mean national defense.
Government programs inevitably wind up convoluted and cross-purpose to their original goals. I have had awful employers that essentially enslaved their employees, and my current employer is the most gracious kind company I could ever dream to work for (and no, they don't know who I am here, or my alias here). Government has no place forcing either of them to do anything. The entire concept of government comes to to force, and those who benefit from that or support it are now forcing their will upon others, because if the others don't comply, they will be dealt with by force... fines, more fines, loss of operating license, prison... and that is exactly how it happens.
Is this what you want? Your employer not allowing you to bring use your own keyboard is cruel. Forcing them to allow you to do so is just wrong. Sooner or later you will be the target of this force, if you're not already.
It seems to me that legislation such as this is a *good* thing. If we can prevent these problems before they reach the state that mine has gotten to, where I need a total of two and a half months off work for the surgery and the physical therapy, not only will it benefit the *worker* (no one should ever, *ever* have to physically destroy him or herself for a job) but it will also benefit the corporation (less employee absence, more productivity). Sometimes, legislation is *necessary*. Corporations are unwilling to Do The Right Thing by themselves a lot of the time; it takes a fairly big stick to convince them.
What you're saying is that you think employers should be forced to pay for it, and that I should be forced to pay for administration of it. If you don't like it, either bring your own chair and keyboard, or get a better job. Your employer doesn't sound like much of great employer anyway, based on what you're saying.
By saying you think this legislation is necessary, you're saying that force should be applied to make your way happen. I also suffer RSI, but I brought my own chair and keyboard, and all was better. I would never dream of forcing other people to do things my way just because it would make my life easier. If you do, you're a bully, not a victim. You knew you had RSI when you took the job, and now you're being a complete jerk, apparently, because your employer didn't make the RSI didn't go away. And rather than bring your own equipment to prevent your own bodily pain, you'd rather get the government involved, or as so far, get your physician to "order" your employer around. Thanks for nothing. I'm glad you're not my coworker. You sound like a whiner that won't take responsibility for his own good. I agree that not all people with RSI are whiners. But you quite obviously are.
You claimed sane and sensible guidlines at home, but you'd rather suffer, have surgery, and make trouble for everyone else than to take care of yourself at work, too.
What does that make you?
To simplify the selection process, I ripped a bunch of my CDs to MP3 (one style per CD) and burned them to a data CD with an m3u playlist in the root, but without the drive letter coded in the m3u. This way, it's totally portable and not tied to any drive letter, and opening a single m3u file cues a day's worth of music.
For coding that requires problem-solving and deep concentration, I've found Tangerine Dream to be the most relaxing and quick to put me in "the zone" when coding. The same can be said of moderate classical, romantic, baroque, classic japanese, and some pop like 'til Tuesday or The Bangles. Grunt coding works with just about anything; I prefer Rush, Yes, Living Color, and a few others, but it doesn't really matter when the coding doesn't require much creativity.
The point is that history and natural history use the same methods for gathering data (if not interpretting them), and you can't invalidate one without destroying the other. Why not apply the same arguments about the fossil record to the written one? How do you know that ink won't migrate across a page if left alone long enough? When we read old documents we see changes in spelling, grammer and all that and we say the language is evolving, but how do we know the record isn't lying to us?
That's not true. We're not trying to prove a single entity. If we dig up a fossil, there is proof that entity existed, likewise with the written record on George Washington. Evolution is trying to prove that species changed into other species. That has no relationship whatever to whether a single person existed. Finding a fossil does not equal a change in species. You're comparing a single species or entity and a change of species. Your thought on language is a better simile than comparing a single person to a change of species, because the record exists that a language eventually will change over time into in incompatible "species" of language. But this does not compare with showing a single person existed. For every human-like fossil remain we find, there is the proof that its owner existed.
Again, "Washington" is not a scientific principal. He was not a species or change of species.
He is a historical entity, as much as any species.
I agree with that. But we're not talking about the existence of a given species. We're talking about the changing of one species to another. Now if someone had said George Washington changed into Lincoln, your comparison might be more valid. No one, creationists included, can doubt that a given species existed when the fossil record is there. The question is not Did the species exist? but rather Did it evolve into another species? This is why I don't find your use of "prove George Washington" a valid comparison.
Evolution by natural selection happens within historical constraints while creation is unfettered. We have millions of years of history of isolated, maladapted communities getting by because there were no other pressures on them. This is explainable by evolution, but if new organisms can really appear out of thin air, why didn't they appear and wipe out the easy meat?
You're not familiar with creationism are you? It does not claim that new species were created any time after the initial creation. After the initial creation, there were no claims of new species being dropped in. Your characterization of creationism is incorrect. You're arguing against your own characterization, not the Biblical account.
I am comfortable with random chance in physical systems (and even directed creation, albiet I'd need more proof) but we have absolutely no evidence that it has ever occured.
I'd agree with that. We don't have any direct evidence.
If species don't arise by spontaneous generation or by macro-evolution, what is left? Either they came from something that was there before, or not. There is no third choice.
Again, following the initial creation, the Bible does not claim futher spontaneous generation, so you're arguing against a bad characterization of creationism. I have never denied that the evidence exists to suggest macro-evolution. My training was in science and I am as trained in evolutionary biology and genetics as the next physicist , but certainly not as much as a biologist. However, there is not perfect evidence as there is with micro-evolution. That's all I'm saying. A change in species requires essentially that a generation be born that can breed with itself, but not with prior generations that are capable of breeding with themselves. So somewhere along the line, a change must occur that makes a generation incompatible. If that's not akin to spontaneous change after the appearance of the parent species, I don't know what is. So evolution is also asking me to beleive in a "sudden" change. Now this "sudden" change may have occurred over several generations, i.e. a generation can breed with its own generation and its parents' generation, but not with its grandparents' or great grandparents' generations. Another case where this could be is that all offspring of a given individual, rather than a given generation, are incompatible with prior generations, but compatible with one another. So at some point, a genetic difference was common enough to create a new species, and this was supposed to have happened countless times with countless species. It sounds like evolution also requires a great deal of faith.
I want you to experimentally prove George Washington to me.Reproduce the man and all his acomplishments in a lab. We can't, and we can't "prove" he existed, but will still teach it. Natural history got its name for a reason, and like all historical sciences, it is not well suited to laboratory experimentation. Like all geologic-scale systems, it is even less suited to observation.
This invalidates neither the science nor the conclusions we draw from it.
I'm not sure I see the connection to science here. The record on George Washington is fantastic, and witnessed and recorded first-hand. I understand your point about the fossil record having to stand for lack of a better one, but remember all the gaps it contains. However, "George Washington" is not a scientific theory. The scientific method doesn't apply to "reproducing a man and all his accomplishments". In my number of comments on this topic this evening, I have not said that I think macro-evolution is a bad theory. I think that considering the evidence, it is an excellent theory, but that it has failed to prove that changes of species occurred in the case of humans.
We prove Washington existed by looking at the record he left behind, and we can do likewise with previous pecies.
Again, "Washington" is not a scientific principal. He was not a species or change of species.
If spontaneous generation of species occured, something better would have come along and either ate them or starved them out.
And this has happened repeatedly, regardless of how species came to be! What is your point here? I'm not trying to be argumentative; I'm trying to understand how what you're saying relates.
Consider our teeth. I can't explain our teeth from creationism. Why would a benevolent God give us teeth that, without constant care, rot out of our mouths in less than half our life span? Especially when the Supreme Engineer already had a better system in place in sharks? But I can explain them from natural selection. Our teeth lasted for most of our ancestors lives, and certainly all through the breeding years. We don't have better teeth because we didn't need them. We do now, but natural selection, unlike God, has no foresight, so we live with imperfect teeth. A relic of our past.
Well, if you're going to ask those, then there are lots of others to ask too. Thinks like "Why does God let bad things happen to good people", and "how does gravity work anyway?". I certainly don't have the answers. It's entirely possible that natural selection and adaptation explain it perfectly and are 100% correct. Your comment about teeth having been good enough for our ancestor's lifespans is an excellent theory, similar to the one about the fact that women run out of eggs in their ovaries at about the same age that most of our teeth are "beyond hope" . The same explanation sounds excellent for both: our lives were shorter when our modern biology was "cemented". I certainly don't claim to have the answers. My training was in science as well; I am not a "rabid creationist". I am, however flawed it makes me as a scientist, a creationist nonetheless. I fully concede that creationism isn't scientific in the slightest. But my former statements stand as a made them: Macro-evolution isn't necessarily good science either. Time may prove it to be correct, however. Micro-evolution (evolution within a species that doesn't result in the creation of a new species) certainly panned out well.
!? I pay my taxes so that kids can be educated in FACTS not faith.
I agree with you completely, and I'm a creationist. Science class is not the place for creationism. I do know some dim-witted creationists that think creation should be taught in schools, but I don't know any intelligent ones that think that. Creationism will continue to be taught just fine in churches and Sunday schools. Anyone who beleives otherwise is being short-sighted. As one who majored in physics, I agree completely. Science class is a place for science.
How do you know that "gods of Egypt" doesn't just mean the fictional gods that the Egyptians believed in? That's what I've been taught.
Well of course I don't know. But I find it more consistent with the other phrases where other gods are always referred to as existing. When you take all the phrases literally (as in there really were other gods) then you don't have to say "well here He meant money, and there He meant fictitious gods, and there He meant something else" etc. I think that if God had meant "money" or "power" in the first commandment, he'd have said money or power.
Ooo, here's another juicy bit in Bible I just stumbled across in verse 26: "And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness... Cool, what would the fundamentalists think about the evident plurality of Gods as expressed in this particular verse?
You wouldn't offend any intelligent Christians that have read with a critical eye. Consider the first commandment: Exodus 20:2-3 : I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. [3] Thou shalt have no other gods before me. A lot of people think God meant "money" or "power" or a dozen other things here when He said "other gods". But then when taken in context to your comment, and the fact that the seventh plague was done to show that God was more powerful than the god of Egypt... the Bible absolutely admits there are other gods.