And I keep waiting, like everyone else, for Elrond to put on sunglasses and a suit, and start talking addressing Frodo as Mister Baggins... and I know that I'm not the only one.
It's not that he's a bad actor, it's that his performance in the Matrix and iconography of the character of Agent Smith overcomes.
Same thing with Samwise, I think. Although I'm not tempted to think of Ian McKellan as any of his numerous other roles, nor Elijah Wood....
First: Touchy, Touchy. You're seeing a lot in my post that isn't there, and you missed my polite tips of the hat. Now that's telling -- but it's obvious you already have an axe to grind anyway. Advice: try being polite. It'll keep you from being written off as a crackpot who subscribes to a far-out conspiracy theory.
I didn't answer the one question I cared to address directly because I thought it was ill-formed. Again, I'll grant that there well may be political and monetary agendas behind the AIDS research funding. However, it's a rather extraordinary (and unbelievable) to claim that the number of AIDS sufferers, however, is a "handful" -- even if you don't believe that AIDS is actually caused by HIV. And yes, anyone who let that stand would be letting you "get away" with a rather disingenuous statement, unless you've got some rather extraordinary evidence to support that. So essentially, I responded to your question with a question: what makes you think that there are only a "handful" of aids sufferers?
I also granted you that the amount of funding AIDS get is disproportionate to the sufferers. My point in saying that "diseases that attack the immune system are scary" was to say that the concept of a virulent pathogen that can directly attack and destroy the immune system is pretty startling, as much or more so than other pathogens that merely overwhelm the system, or chronic lifestyle related diseases. If such a thing exists -- or even _might_ exist -- it's easy to understand why it might be important to put a lot of effort into understanding it. Is it more important than cancer research? Understanding filoviruses like Marburgh and Ebola? Heart disease, which kills many times more than the above? Automobile safety research? I don't know. As simple as it would be to say that funding should be proportional to sufferers, there's other imprecise factors involved, from guessing how a disease may change and effect human populations in the future, or how human populations might change, or how it might be consciously spread by a terrorist actor, rather than naturally spread, and then there's emotional factors. You're more likely to want to fund AIDS, autism, cancer, heart disease, polio, whatever if someone close to you has been touched by it.
I'd think most people would be open to the idea progressive immune system dysfunction could have roots other than HIV, if you can provide convincing evidence for an alternative theory. But whether or not AIDS=HIV, or HIV is one of many factors causing AIDS, or HIV plays no role at all, immune system dysfunction seems to be pretty real, and characterizing the number of sufferers as a "handful" sure looks like hyperbole at best. And that kind of rhetoric isn't any help in convincing people of your case.
It's quite relevant. One of the points of the article was that I/T configuration is a significant cost for companies, and the poster took it further by pointing out that competent I/T help is a factor that exacerbates the problem. The poster also correctly points out that in some places, Apple faces a severe uphill climb, because they're not even considered by some I/T "professionals" who've never given their products more than a cursory examination. In other places, I/T professionals (actual ones) have a wide grasp of technologies, not tied to a single vendor or platform, and they'll use whichever one seems to be the best value for the investment.
Apple solutions aren't always going to be the best. I'm not claiming that. I'd even go so far as to say that sometimes, using MS stuff is the right thing for a company or project, despite the fact that I detest their business practices (and think they've earned every bit of antipathy they've received). But the bottom line is: there's a world of I/T and software workers out there who'll never even consider (let alone attempt to become proficient with) technologies outside their favorites, and that's simply not professional. No company or platform out there holds a monopoly on good ideas.
Why else would there be such ma$$ive funding with a handful of sufferers?
I think one might be able to get away with the statement that the funding for the disease is disproportionate the number of people suffering, and that there are political or business agendas behind pushing AIDS to the forefront of funded research. Characterizing the number suffering as a "handful" or trivializing their suffering seems wrong, though. Not to mention that diseases that attack the immune system are scary.
(Then again, filoviruses make them look like the sniffles, and I don't know how well-funded that research is...)
Assuming all the hundreds of thousands of readers on slashdot did it, I doubt that would make up a significant enough majority of programmers to make a difference, and some of us are more worried about eating right now.
In general, I rarely recommend MS products or even give in easily to plans to use MS-based solutions when I'm involved, but sometimes, that's just the way things go, and I use the MS solution in order to avoid being naturally selected out of the programmer pool.
I've watched my mother work with programs and helped her solve problems several times. I've come to the conclusion that:
She doesn't want to learn how things work. She just wants to get things done.
If you can design a system that a person who doesn't want to learn how things work can use, you're set. The problem is, any system that's sufficiently powerful to do anything but a small, limited set of things is going to have metaphors that people will have to understand underlying principles in order to use (and especially combine) effectively.
Even the "mouse" metaphor or "dialogue" metaphor, or the "menu" metaphor can really be foreign to someone who simply doesn't care to understand how things work.
Don't get me wrong. I think we can do better. But mostly, I think at some level, some kinds of apps will always be hard to people who don't want to try and fathom a set of underlying principles.
It must be the blackest black -- it doesn't seem to change at all when I turn down the brightness on my monitor!
Re:I'm more amazed....
on
Baked Apple
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· Score: 2, Interesting
This story ran on Metafilter yesterday, and most of the speculations on "why" seemed to run along the same lines as here... except I got the impression from some posts that it's possible the monitor was busted before the baking. At that point, it's pretty much equally cost effective to use the thing as a frisbee or silicon pastry as it is to fix it. (Of course, using it as a desktop might be much more cost effective, even now).
Other potential reasons: powerbook belonged to a disgruntled SO, thieves never look in the oven for valuables, schizophrenia, and just plain insatiable curiosity.
Call your reps today. Ask them if they support this. Make it clear you don't. And I don't mean your national congressional reps. I mean your state reps. The initiative for this is coming from the states, not congress. It might not hurt to call the governors office, too.
A consumption tax makes a certain degree of sense, but that's not what this is being billed as: they're talking about "leveling the playing field". The field is already level, folks. The e-tailers have the no-sales tax advantage, but they have to add in shipping costs, and also have the disadvantage of not having a physical presence, which means customers can't examine merchandise personally and don't have a physically associated point-of-presence for service -- strong draws, especially for heavy investments. Local retailers also have the immediacy of purchase strength -- you buy it, you take it home. Remove the no-sales tax advantage, and you haven't leveled the playing field, you've simply tilted it farther towards the brick-and-mortar end. I don't know if the states in question realize they'll hurt their own e-tailers, too, but it's possible they do. This isn't about leveling the playing field, this is about state revenue streams.
I keep hearing politicians say that small business is the engine of the economy, but I keep missing the policy that supports it.
For instance, suppose there's a market need for 20 commercial/military/ISS flights per year, and the government's willing to pay $500M per launch. That's $500M x 20 = $10B a year in pork to use the shuttle and our current unmanned vehicle capabilities. Against that, nobody is gonna build cheap launch capability, because it'll soon be a better business strategy to simply eliminate anyone who comes close.
And that, my friends, is the dark side of the invisible hand.
As a followup, I happen to think that he sincerely believes that what's good for business interests is good for America, and I don't think he's entirely wrong, even while I disagree with much of the policy his administration has produced. Mostly, I think he's lived his life inside certain circles and doesn't have much appreciation for how things work outside of them.
If a labor-union leader who started as a coal miner was elected president, I think you'd see a different direction, but the same kind of bent.
Why does the above trite and incorrect statement get modded up every time it appears on slashdot?
Because making things better for large business interests -- including domestic oil -- is very clearly part of the Bush administration's priority. It's simply a fact that his policy changes have been designed this way, from tax cuts targeted towards businesses and investors, to removal or ridding-roughshod over environmental considerations.
Whether or not you think that Bush sincerely believes this is what's good for America (and/or concur with him), whether you believe it's to enrich him and his friends, or whether you believe it's because he's a member of a secret cabal bent on world ruin, Bush's policy leanings are reasonably transparent, and catering towards large business interests is clearly a prominent element.
What makes you think corporations aren't concerned about their own IT security?
I have no doubt that most are, though I have severe doubts that most suits really understand the issues involved. I'm a programmer with a strong math background, and half the time, I don't understand the issues (or rather, the complexity boggles my mind).
Why is it that private companies are singled out as a group whose social concerns apparently runs so counter to the ones discussed here?
Because we know that to most large, powerful institutions (government or private), "security" really means "control." And control (other than self-control) does not mean liberty or freedom.
Our current administration's idea of security seems to be to violate any sense of proportionality in punishing a computer crime, and hire experts from the company who has produced some of the world's least secure software. And put together a system that contains every bit of information about you that any private or public entity has.
Are you feeling more secure? For yourself or our nation?
(I might add that I don't think much of administrations that champion things like the Clipper chip, just for balance, but fortunately, that's long dead).
That may be true, but it's as often as not not their choices that make the difference. You may, in the words of Henley, be the captain of your soul, but that's about it. Circumstance is an uncanny beast, and by far the best predictor of socioeconomic success is the socioeconomic success of ones parents.
At what point did you make the choice to better yourself? Abraham Lincoln learned law in his spare time in order to better himself, and that was a choice.
The problem is: on top of the fact that material or financial assets are subject to all kinds of quirks of fate, and some starting stakes are much more favorable than others, any individual's skills/labor -- the only thing you can exchange once your assets are depleted -- can fall below a magic point where they're so ill-valued that said individual is required to sell all their available time to meet minimum obligations for staying alive. Once you pass this point, it's nigh unto impossible to change things. The only way to do it is to find a way to get your support for free while you put time into improving skills. The list of ways of doing this is pretty short: generosity of others, generosity of society, crime, and the armed forces. The later two risk your life and freedom. The former two aren't guaranteed to produce anything, especially if attitudes like yours become pervasive.
And this state can easily come about because of changes in a society which alter demand for skillsets in a way no one might have forseen. I'm a decent programmer with better mathematics and design skills than most, eight years of experience, and a college degree. Finding a software job has been pretty difficult over the last 8 months. I'm fortunate that I've had generous family members to cusion the fall, unemployment to boot, and have skills I can try to fall back on, but the fact is, eight years ago when I made the choice to pursue this, nobody was predicting a dip in demand or glut in the labor market for programmers.
I will admit that there is a miniscule number of people that have just been dealt a really really crappy hand in life, but there is absolutely nothing in this country stopping a person from not being poor.
A larger number than you think. Go read the census data from 2001. 10% of adult men were earning less than $2500. 20% under $10,000. This is choice-between-food-and-health-care conditions, if you're single. If you have a family, I don't know how it works at all.
The good news is that mobility is higher here than many places in the world, and I recognize that personal pluck and responsibility plays a huge role in that mobility. Self-determination is as (or more) possible in American society than it is anywhere else. But the fact remains that your starting stake, sheer fortune (or misfortune), and other things beyond most people's foresight also play big roles, and nobody should be quick to judge anyone lazy because simply because they're down.
That's actual wisdom, and that's assuming your business model is tuned to meeting people's needs, not manipulating them into buying something they don't need.
I disagree that it's bad to accept money to play songs. Let artists put their money where their mouths are if they want airplay.
Do you really want the budget of the content producer to be the biggest factor in what gets airtime?
Markets can be a good tool for determining most valuable use of a scarce resource, but they're not always the best tool. There may well be many worthy voices who don't have as much money as the producers of New Kids on The block did....
Long story short, after 6 days of strong ad-time and experiencing a jump in concert atttendance and merch sales, our ads were pulled (while still having 8 days left on the current ad contract). It turns out that the Indie was receiving complaints from a higher-up and threatened to drop that particular station from his list (which would make the station lose access to the latest hits. Remember that hits=ears=money). We were outraged. We couldn't even bypass the payola system in place, even though we were still paying to get heard on the radio.
And if that's not a poster-child illustration of what's wrong with having large concentration of ownership/influence/control under a single entity, I don't know what is. These guys had something to get out there, and they couldn't pay -- at market values for airtime -- to get it on the air, because it upset those who had an interest in the status quo.
What makes anyone think it couldn't be the same for political speech?
I can't tell if you're a troll or deluded from one too many stories about the invisible hand as a child.
if we decide that we're no longer happy with ClearChannel stations, we can still turn them off and go elsewhere.
Where?
That's the problem, here. Very nearly all of the bandwidth is now owned by 1-2 entities. So other than portion of the spectrum alotted to public radio, there really isn't anything else to listen to on the radio.
"Anti-competitive manner"? Oh, yes, heaven forbid that we allow radio stations to select what to play of their own free will (including taking payments to play certain songs). Must give all the local musicians a fair chance, no matter how much the general populace likes them,
I believe that all the bill in question does is to limit the broadcast spectrum holdings of a single company. No restrictions or mandates about content. I'm not sure where you got the rest of the ideas.
Our government is anti-business, because it leans socialist and will eventually turn outright communist. Any head sticking up above the rest must be chopped off. (Yes, I read the article
You've been reading Ayn Rand, too, and it shows.
I don't mind success or excellence. I mind a single entity controlling of a market or resource -- especially a valuable public and speech-related resource like the EM spectrum. The use of a market is a tool to get efficient and desireable uses out of said spectrum. There's nothing wrong with working out bends with that by setting rules for how the market operates. If one entity controls distribution channels, there's no longer any consumer choice and any optimization effects from a competetive market cease to exist.
In other words, be competitive, but don't excel
And is the only excellence owning everything? Clear Channel will still have an opportunity to demonstrate excellence in operations and programming quality -- in other words, everything that really matters in terms of an end product.
The "marketshare=control=success" meme, near as I can tell, is for those who don't actually want to compete on merits and "excellence", and it's one of the chief problems with commerce today. You want excellence? Put it into your product and/or service, and leave monopolizing distribution channels alone.
Yes, he had the party's nomination. But he tends to bolt the party on votes - to the point that people expected him to switch parties if the Senate came out a tie or near-tie in the last election.
So the republican party is the political equivalent of the Borg, here?
Conservatives have a term for politicians: RINO - for Republican In Name Only. McCain is the current poster-child for the breed.
Near as I can tell, Republican *is* a name only. As is Democrat. Alan Keyes ain't George W ain't Pat Buchanan ain't etc...
Don't get me wrong. I see your point. One of the people I know who work close to congress said he thinks McCain really needs to get his meds worked right, and there's a lot of republicans who feel that way. But being willing to break with the party line on an issue -- to me, that's worthy of respect rather than scorn. Probably because I don't subscribe to the ideology or trust the leadership of any prominent political party these days.
I'm typing this post on a 1999 model Lombard Powerbook -- 333 mhz G3. It was put out one year before OS X went public beta, two before OS X actually came out. I'm running 10.1.5. The only thing I've done is upgrade memory from 96 MB to 384 MB. The only real problem I have with it is the cramped hard drive: 5 GB, but at this point, I'm jobless and can't afford the frivolity -- and actually, 5 GB is reasonably useful, even with the devtools and a boatload of legacy OS 9 applications. You just can't pack digital media on to your heart's content, and you have to actually manage your files.
There is actually one annoyance -- sometimes when I compile things, the whole machine simply freezes. No error messages, doesn't freeze in the same place, usually, it just happens. Nothin' to do but power down and reboot. I haven't met anyone with this problem on the newer hardware, so I suspect it's an OS/HW interaction issue that won't get fixed.:( You may not be compiling things, but there may be a few of these gotchas with older HW.
*MY* mouse is actually an old double registered pipe organ, converted and slightly miniaturized. Cursor movement is accomplished with one set of pedals. Between all the registers and the other pedals, I figure I've got about 200+ different mouse buttons. Shift click, my navel.
Re:Languages for the Java VM...
on
The Future of Java?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Languages for the Java VM...can be found here...
And that page has been up for at least 4 years, and comes up top on the Google search "Languages for the Java VM." So I think the real question is: why does the meme that Java bytecode can only be generated from javacc continue? Even if you regard most of the things on that page as academic, they're at very least proof-of-concept (and ad naseum at that, due to sheer numbers). Not to mention what the presence of clearly non- academic implementations like Jython.
I don't know whether or not Sun intended to design Java so that this was possible or easy. But it seems pretty obvious to me: you can target a VM as easily as you can target a processor, and that's what any compiler does. Why doesn't the Java-only for Java-VM meme die?
Slashdot Mirror
And I keep waiting, like everyone else, for Elrond to put on sunglasses and a suit, and start talking addressing Frodo as Mister Baggins... and I know that I'm not the only one.
It's not that he's a bad actor, it's that his performance in the Matrix and iconography of the character of Agent Smith overcomes.
Same thing with Samwise, I think. Although I'm not tempted to think of Ian McKellan as any of his numerous other roles, nor Elijah Wood....
First: Touchy, Touchy. You're seeing a lot in my post that isn't there, and you missed my polite tips of the hat. Now that's telling -- but it's obvious you already have an axe to grind anyway. Advice: try being polite. It'll keep you from being written off as a crackpot who subscribes to a far-out conspiracy theory.
I didn't answer the one question I cared to address directly because I thought it was ill-formed. Again, I'll grant that there well may be political and monetary agendas behind the AIDS research funding. However, it's a rather extraordinary (and unbelievable) to claim that the number of AIDS sufferers, however, is a "handful" -- even if you don't believe that AIDS is actually caused by HIV. And yes, anyone who let that stand would be letting you "get away" with a rather disingenuous statement, unless you've got some rather extraordinary evidence to support that. So essentially, I responded to your question with a question: what makes you think that there are only a "handful" of aids sufferers?
I also granted you that the amount of funding AIDS get is disproportionate to the sufferers. My point in saying that "diseases that attack the immune system are scary" was to say that the concept of a virulent pathogen that can directly attack and destroy the immune system is pretty startling, as much or more so than other pathogens that merely overwhelm the system, or chronic lifestyle related diseases. If such a thing exists -- or even _might_ exist -- it's easy to understand why it might be important to put a lot of effort into understanding it. Is it more important than cancer research? Understanding filoviruses like Marburgh and Ebola? Heart disease, which kills many times more than the above? Automobile safety research? I don't know. As simple as it would be to say that funding should be proportional to sufferers, there's other imprecise factors involved, from guessing how a disease may change and effect human populations in the future, or how human populations might change, or how it might be consciously spread by a terrorist actor, rather than naturally spread, and then there's emotional factors. You're more likely to want to fund AIDS, autism, cancer, heart disease, polio, whatever if someone close to you has been touched by it.
I'd think most people would be open to the idea progressive immune system dysfunction could have roots other than HIV, if you can provide convincing evidence for an alternative theory. But whether or not AIDS=HIV, or HIV is one of many factors causing AIDS, or HIV plays no role at all, immune system dysfunction seems to be pretty real, and characterizing the number of sufferers as a "handful" sure looks like hyperbole at best. And that kind of rhetoric isn't any help in convincing people of your case.
It's quite relevant. One of the points of the article was that I/T configuration is a significant cost for companies, and the poster took it further by pointing out that competent I/T help is a factor that exacerbates the problem. The poster also correctly points out that in some places, Apple faces a severe uphill climb, because they're not even considered by some I/T "professionals" who've never given their products more than a cursory examination. In other places, I/T professionals (actual ones) have a wide grasp of technologies, not tied to a single vendor or platform, and they'll use whichever one seems to be the best value for the investment.
Apple solutions aren't always going to be the best. I'm not claiming that. I'd even go so far as to say that sometimes, using MS stuff is the right thing for a company or project, despite the fact that I detest their business practices (and think they've earned every bit of antipathy they've received). But the bottom line is: there's a world of I/T and software workers out there who'll never even consider (let alone attempt to become proficient with) technologies outside their favorites, and that's simply not professional. No company or platform out there holds a monopoly on good ideas.
Why else would there be such ma$$ive funding with a handful of sufferers?
I think one might be able to get away with the statement that the funding for the disease is disproportionate the number of people suffering, and that there are political or business agendas behind pushing AIDS to the forefront of funded research. Characterizing the number suffering as a "handful" or trivializing their suffering seems wrong, though. Not to mention that diseases that attack the immune system are scary.
(Then again, filoviruses make them look like the sniffles, and I don't know how well-funded that research is...)
Assuming all the hundreds of thousands of readers on slashdot did it, I doubt that would make up a significant enough majority of programmers to make a difference, and some of us are more worried about eating right now.
In general, I rarely recommend MS products or even give in easily to plans to use MS-based solutions when I'm involved, but sometimes, that's just the way things go, and I use the MS solution in order to avoid being naturally selected out of the programmer pool.
I've watched my mother work with programs and helped her solve problems several times. I've come to the conclusion that:
She doesn't want to learn how things work. She just wants to get things done.
If you can design a system that a person who doesn't want to learn how things work can use, you're set. The problem is, any system that's sufficiently powerful to do anything but a small, limited set of things is going to have metaphors that people will have to understand underlying principles in order to use (and especially combine) effectively.
Even the "mouse" metaphor or "dialogue" metaphor, or the "menu" metaphor can really be foreign to someone who simply doesn't care to understand how things work.
Don't get me wrong. I think we can do better. But mostly, I think at some level, some kinds of apps will always be hard to people who don't want to try and fathom a set of underlying principles.
It must be the blackest black -- it doesn't seem to change at all when I turn down the brightness on my monitor!
This story ran on Metafilter yesterday, and most of the speculations on "why" seemed to run along the same lines as here... except I got the impression from some posts that it's possible the monitor was busted before the baking. At that point, it's pretty much equally cost effective to use the thing as a frisbee or silicon pastry as it is to fix it. (Of course, using it as a desktop might be much more cost effective, even now).
Other potential reasons: powerbook belonged to a disgruntled SO, thieves never look in the oven for valuables, schizophrenia, and just plain insatiable curiosity.
Call your reps today. Ask them if they support this. Make it clear you don't. And I don't mean your national congressional reps. I mean your state reps. The initiative for this is coming from the states, not congress. It might not hurt to call the governors office, too.
A consumption tax makes a certain degree of sense, but that's not what this is being billed as: they're talking about "leveling the playing field". The field is already level, folks. The e-tailers have the no-sales tax advantage, but they have to add in shipping costs, and also have the disadvantage of not having a physical presence, which means customers can't examine merchandise personally and don't have a physically associated point-of-presence for service -- strong draws, especially for heavy investments. Local retailers also have the immediacy of purchase strength -- you buy it, you take it home. Remove the no-sales tax advantage, and you haven't leveled the playing field, you've simply tilted it farther towards the brick-and-mortar end. I don't know if the states in question realize they'll hurt their own e-tailers, too, but it's possible they do. This isn't about leveling the playing field, this is about state revenue streams.
I keep hearing politicians say that small business is the engine of the economy, but I keep missing the policy that supports it.
For instance, suppose there's a market need for 20 commercial/military/ISS flights per year, and the government's willing to pay $500M per launch. That's $500M x 20 = $10B a year in pork to use the shuttle and our current unmanned vehicle capabilities. Against that, nobody is gonna build cheap launch capability, because it'll soon be a better business strategy to simply eliminate anyone who comes close.
And that, my friends, is the dark side of the invisible hand.
go to Utah to drive taxis
They have taxis in Utah? Maybe airport shuttles, but if you came to Utah to drive a cab, I think you'd be sadly disappointed.
Though the rocks really are something else.
He also has a Technician class Ham Radio License
:)
That right there might be the most impressive qualification in the whole list.
Hey folks, remember before you kneejerk -- there are more types of security than what programmers think of when they hear the term.
An excellent post. The thuddding sound you hear is of me nailing my knees to the desk.
As a followup, I happen to think that he sincerely believes that what's good for business interests is good for America, and I don't think he's entirely wrong, even while I disagree with much of the policy his administration has produced. Mostly, I think he's lived his life inside certain circles and doesn't have much appreciation for how things work outside of them.
If a labor-union leader who started as a coal miner was elected president, I think you'd see a different direction, but the same kind of bent.
Why does the above trite and incorrect statement get modded up every time it appears on slashdot?
Because making things better for large business interests -- including domestic oil -- is very clearly part of the Bush administration's priority. It's simply a fact that his policy changes have been designed this way, from tax cuts targeted towards businesses and investors, to removal or ridding-roughshod over environmental considerations.
Whether or not you think that Bush sincerely believes this is what's good for America (and/or concur with him), whether you believe it's to enrich him and his friends, or whether you believe it's because he's a member of a secret cabal bent on world ruin, Bush's policy leanings are reasonably transparent, and catering towards large business interests is clearly a prominent element.
What makes you think corporations aren't concerned about their own IT security?
I have no doubt that most are, though I have severe doubts that most suits really understand the issues involved. I'm a programmer with a strong math background, and half the time, I don't understand the issues (or rather, the complexity boggles my mind).
Why is it that private companies are singled out as a group whose social concerns apparently runs so counter to the ones discussed here?
Because we know that to most large, powerful institutions (government or private), "security" really means "control." And control (other than self-control) does not mean liberty or freedom.
Our current administration's idea of security seems to be to violate any sense of proportionality in punishing a computer crime, and hire experts from the company who has produced some of the world's least secure software. And put together a system that contains every bit of information about you that any private or public entity has.
Are you feeling more secure? For yourself or our nation?
(I might add that I don't think much of administrations that champion things like the Clipper chip, just for balance, but fortunately, that's long dead).
the poor Americans are poor because of choices,
That may be true, but it's as often as not not their choices that make the difference. You may, in the words of Henley, be the captain of your soul, but that's about it. Circumstance is an uncanny beast, and by far the best predictor of socioeconomic success is the socioeconomic success of ones parents.
At what point did you make the choice to better yourself? Abraham Lincoln learned law in his spare time in order to better himself, and that was a choice.
The problem is: on top of the fact that material or financial assets are subject to all kinds of quirks of fate, and some starting stakes are much more favorable than others, any individual's skills/labor -- the only thing you can exchange once your assets are depleted -- can fall below a magic point where they're so ill-valued that said individual is required to sell all their available time to meet minimum obligations for staying alive. Once you pass this point, it's nigh unto impossible to change things. The only way to do it is to find a way to get your support for free while you put time into improving skills. The list of ways of doing this is pretty short: generosity of others, generosity of society, crime, and the armed forces. The later two risk your life and freedom. The former two aren't guaranteed to produce anything, especially if attitudes like yours become pervasive.
And this state can easily come about because of changes in a society which alter demand for skillsets in a way no one might have forseen. I'm a decent programmer with better mathematics and design skills than most, eight years of experience, and a college degree. Finding a software job has been pretty difficult over the last 8 months. I'm fortunate that I've had generous family members to cusion the fall, unemployment to boot, and have skills I can try to fall back on, but the fact is, eight years ago when I made the choice to pursue this, nobody was predicting a dip in demand or glut in the labor market for programmers.
I will admit that there is a miniscule number of people that have just been dealt a really really crappy hand in life, but there is absolutely nothing in this country stopping a person from not being poor.
A larger number than you think. Go read the census data from 2001. 10% of adult men were earning less than $2500. 20% under $10,000. This is choice-between-food-and-health-care conditions, if you're single. If you have a family, I don't know how it works at all.
The good news is that mobility is higher here than many places in the world, and I recognize that personal pluck and responsibility plays a huge role in that mobility. Self-determination is as (or more) possible in American society than it is anywhere else. But the fact remains that your starting stake, sheer fortune (or misfortune), and other things beyond most people's foresight also play big roles, and nobody should be quick to judge anyone lazy because simply because they're down.
That's actual wisdom, and that's assuming your business model is tuned to meeting people's needs, not manipulating them into buying something they don't need.
I disagree that it's bad to accept money to play songs. Let artists put their money where their mouths are if they want airplay.
Do you really want the budget of the content producer to be the biggest factor in what gets airtime?
Markets can be a good tool for determining most valuable use of a scarce resource, but they're not always the best tool. There may well be many worthy voices who don't have as much money as the producers of New Kids on The block did....
Long story short, after 6 days of strong ad-time and experiencing a jump in concert atttendance and merch sales, our ads were pulled (while still having 8 days left on the current ad contract). It turns out that the Indie was receiving complaints from a higher-up and threatened to drop that particular station from his list (which would make the station lose access to the latest hits. Remember that hits=ears=money). We were outraged. We couldn't even bypass the payola system in place, even though we were still paying to get heard on the radio.
And if that's not a poster-child illustration of what's wrong with having large concentration of ownership/influence/control under a single entity, I don't know what is. These guys had something to get out there, and they couldn't pay -- at market values for airtime -- to get it on the air, because it upset those who had an interest in the status quo.
What makes anyone think it couldn't be the same for political speech?
I can't tell if you're a troll or deluded from one too many stories about the invisible hand as a child.
if we decide that we're no longer happy with ClearChannel stations, we can still turn them off and go elsewhere.
Where?
That's the problem, here. Very nearly all of the bandwidth is now owned by 1-2 entities. So other than portion of the spectrum alotted to public radio, there really isn't anything else to listen to on the radio.
"Anti-competitive manner"? Oh, yes, heaven forbid that we allow radio stations to select what to play of their own free will (including taking payments to play certain songs). Must give all the local musicians a fair chance, no matter how much the general populace likes them,
I believe that all the bill in question does is to limit the broadcast spectrum holdings of a single company. No restrictions or mandates about content. I'm not sure where you got the rest of the ideas.
Our government is anti-business, because it leans socialist and will eventually turn outright communist. Any head sticking up above the rest must be chopped off. (Yes, I read the article
You've been reading Ayn Rand, too, and it shows.
I don't mind success or excellence. I mind a single entity controlling of a market or resource -- especially a valuable public and speech-related resource like the EM spectrum. The use of a market is a tool to get efficient and desireable uses out of said spectrum. There's nothing wrong with working out bends with that by setting rules for how the market operates. If one entity controls distribution channels, there's no longer any consumer choice and any optimization effects from a competetive market cease to exist.
In other words, be competitive, but don't excel
And is the only excellence owning everything? Clear Channel will still have an opportunity to demonstrate excellence in operations and programming quality -- in other words, everything that really matters in terms of an end product.
The "marketshare=control=success" meme, near as I can tell, is for those who don't actually want to compete on merits and "excellence", and it's one of the chief problems with commerce today. You want excellence? Put it into your product and/or service, and leave monopolizing distribution channels alone.
Who said McCain was a Republican?
Yes, he had the party's nomination. But he tends to bolt the party on votes - to the point that people expected him to switch parties if the Senate came out a tie or near-tie in the last election.
So the republican party is the political equivalent of the Borg, here?
Conservatives have a term for politicians: RINO - for Republican In Name Only. McCain is the current poster-child for the breed.
Near as I can tell, Republican *is* a name only. As is Democrat. Alan Keyes ain't George W ain't Pat Buchanan ain't etc...
Don't get me wrong. I see your point. One of the people I know who work close to congress said he thinks McCain really needs to get his meds worked right, and there's a lot of republicans who feel that way. But being willing to break with the party line on an issue -- to me, that's worthy of respect rather than scorn. Probably because I don't subscribe to the ideology or trust the leadership of any prominent political party these days.
I'm typing this post on a 1999 model Lombard Powerbook -- 333 mhz G3. It was put out one year before OS X went public beta, two before OS X actually came out. I'm running 10.1.5. The only thing I've done is upgrade memory from 96 MB to 384 MB. The only real problem I have with it is the cramped hard drive: 5 GB, but at this point, I'm jobless and can't afford the frivolity -- and actually, 5 GB is reasonably useful, even with the devtools and a boatload of legacy OS 9 applications. You just can't pack digital media on to your heart's content, and you have to actually manage your files.
:( You may not be compiling things, but there may be a few of these gotchas with older HW.
There is actually one annoyance -- sometimes when I compile things, the whole machine simply freezes. No error messages, doesn't freeze in the same place, usually, it just happens. Nothin' to do but power down and reboot. I haven't met anyone with this problem on the newer hardware, so I suspect it's an OS/HW interaction issue that won't get fixed.
*MY* mouse is actually an old double registered pipe organ, converted and slightly miniaturized. Cursor movement is accomplished with one set of pedals. Between all the registers and the other pedals, I figure I've got about 200+ different mouse buttons. Shift click, my navel.
Languages for the Java VM...can be found here...
And that page has been up for at least 4 years, and comes up top on the Google search "Languages for the Java VM." So I think the real question is: why does the meme that Java bytecode can only be generated from javacc continue? Even if you regard most of the things on that page as academic, they're at very least proof-of-concept (and ad naseum at that, due to sheer numbers). Not to mention what the presence of clearly non- academic implementations like Jython.
I don't know whether or not Sun intended to design Java so that this was possible or easy. But it seems pretty obvious to me: you can target a VM as easily as you can target a processor, and that's what any compiler does. Why doesn't the Java-only for Java-VM meme die?
[Place: Posh RIAA meeting. Time: Sometime after this conversation]
RIAA Exec #1: File sharing is one of the biggest threats to our industry.
RIAA Exec #2: But what do we do about it? We'll be stuck playing perpetual whack-a-mole. Every time we sue one out of existence, another one pops up.
RIAA Exec #1: Well, what if we were to set up some fee structure...
RIAA Exec #2: You mean, just charge everyone?
RIAA Exec #1: Well, ideally yes, but I was thinking maybe of just targetting ISPs.
RIAA Exec #2: Oh, I see, since ISP users are the only ones doing file sharing.
RIAA Exec #1: And we wouldn't even have to figure out who was and wasn't. That'd be the ISPs job.
RIAA Exec #2: So it's sortof like Napster -- but with a subscription fee.
[silence]
RIAA Exec #1: Hmmm. Yeah. Why didn't someone think of that earlier?