Believe me, if you throw enough money it will fix the problems. How? If you doubled the starting salary of teachers how many of the teachers currently working would be in schools five years from now? Maybe 10 percent, The best 10 percent. Right now Teachers work on contract. A school district does not have to hire the same teachers every year, they can hire new ones of keep the old ones. If teaching salaries started in the $70k to $90K range you would have many of the top Ph.Ds graduates in the world competing for entry level jobs in the US public schools.
That would solve most of the problem right there. The same effect would result in most of the administration and staff in public schools being replaced by competent people.
My local school district likes to issue 20 year bonds to get money to buy PCs. Only an idiot, or someone who can not get the money any other way, commits to a 20 year mortgage to buy something with a useful life of 3 years. But, they are both idiots and desperate.
They are also astonishingly arrogant, we had a bond election that included $6 million for a football field to be shared by all the district schools. They spent $26 million to build a professional level (semi-pro anyway) football stadium that goes unused for most of the year. Then they found out the hard way that having been fooled once the people were not interested in being fooled again. It took nearly 10 years before they were able to pass another bond issue. In the mean time the school deteriorated and became grossly over crowded.
But, you get what you pay for. When you put people who make less than a middle school football coach in charge of hundreds of millions of dollars they make the kind of idiot mistakes you expect from idiots.
If we had twice the money per student they would not need to issue bonds to buy computers, they would not be going out for bond elections every couple of years, and we could pay enough to attract competent people to run our schools.
Some one is likely to write in an tell me how the teachers union will stop everything I've described from happening. At first, yes. But, not for long. Unions exists because the workers feel exploited. In the case of teachers are they are being exploited. If you pay more the union will lose its grip and fade away. I've seen that happen in many businesses. If the workers believe the business is dealing with them fairly they will not want a union.
Stonewolf
P.S.
IMHO, the teachers unions are the only group that even tries to maintain the quality of our current schools. Without the unions teacher salaries would be so low that we would not be able to hire college graduates to fill the jobs.
You should look at the copyright law governing games and then talk to an IP lawyer. But, my understanding, and I am not a lawyer, is that so long as you don't copy the look and don't steal any images or sounds made for the original game. You are pretty much in the clear. A spiritual successor is OK. Consider, that anyone can write a story using time travel or warp drive, but you get in trouble if you have warp drive ships named the NCC Enterprise that looks like the one in Star Trek. But, you can have a ship named Enterprise. There have been many ships named Enterprise in real life. Another way to look at it is Doom versus all the other 3d FPS games ever made. They are all spiritual successors to Doom (or that castle game ID did first.) But that was inspired by first person games from way before then. OTOH, it is very hard to make a spiritual successor to Scrabble because you can't do Scrabble any other way. But, it would be easy to do a non-infringing spiritual successor do Risk (Dicewars), or Monopoly, or...
You do need to make sure that there are no patents on the game. If there are, you can just work around them. Or, if the game is old then it the patents may have expired.
Like I said, read the law. It is online. And, if you have any doubts talk to an IP lawyer.
Let's see, how to put this... You want to build a laser that is powerful enough to be seen through cloud cover even when the beam is dispersed over hundreds, or even thousands of square kilometers of land area? OK, You know, President Reagan wanted to do that too... You see, if you just focus that puppy down into a nice tight beam you warning laser would be one of the nicest weapons systems ever built. When you were not using it to warn people about tsunamis you could use it to hold them hostage. You could could...
Well you get the picture. The sarcastic Dr. Evil posts are actually right on target. But, a reference to Star Wars is more accurate. IIRC the direct nuclear pumped laser was the design of choice. The reactor is the laser.
As far as I know such a device could be legally placed in orbit. But, most nations would rather their people die in a Tsunami that face having a nuclear battle star hanging over their heads.
Other than that, not a bad idea.
You could get about the same effect by installing a system of sirens and warning flares along coastal areas. They would cost much less and be much safer.
If you look around at the huge number of completely cross platform apps and tools out there you will find that many of them are sitting on top of SDL (www.libsdl.org). SDL has been providing a cross platform multimedia development platform for so long that an on going maintenance issue is deciding when a platform is really truly dead so that support can be removed.:-)
I thought I'd throw that out as my current favorite example of yet another cross platform tool. I've seen so many of these that I lost count about 20 years ago. The original article (if you can call it that considering how little information it contained) is about as news worthy as "Man Misses Public Urinal".
NASA, and the DOD, do buy a lot of the code, not all by any means. But, they do have a huge amount of experiencing *managing* the development of extremely reliable code and the computers that are needed to run them.
No matter who writes the code it is the management structure, including how specs are written, how testing is done, what methodology is used... you know the list,,, that result in reliable testable code.
Yeah, good programmers make it easier to get good code, but with out an excellent management system in place you do not get reliable code.
I just realized that the first flame I'm going to get is some thing "oh yeah? Then why is open source software so reliable? There's no management controlling that. You insensitive jerk." The answer is that every open source project I have looked at, or done, use peer review, or the fear of peer review as the way to insure good code. That is coupled with the use of trusted committers who ensure that even excellent code only goes in to the code base if it meets the specifications for that section of code. The specification may only exist in the committers head and a few emails or//FIX ME lines in the code. But the committer system, coupled with peer review, results in reliable code.
What this management system isn't very good at is keeping to schedules. While I've brought in software development projects within hours of the original schedule I could only do that because I was able to write the schedule for each section of the project only after completing, and evaluating the previous section. And, I had a usable data base of time-to-complete data for functions of different complexity levels. That and upper level management that allowed us to do a detailed function level design.
Yep, if you are only in it for the money you will not be in it for long no matter what the pay is.
The rest of this is for the folks talking about the abuse that is so often heaped on programmers.
The truth is that people who love to program are the best programmers. These are the folks who can tell a boss to go fuck himself when he demands 40 hours a week of free work over and above the 40 hours of paid work you are already doing. They can do that because, as study after study has shown, good programmers generate 10 to 20 times the usable product that the rest of the crew generates. The good programmers can get paid what they want to get paid even without switching companies. But, you have to be ready to say "Fuck You" to your boss and mean it. Which means you can't be living pay check to pay check...
Good programmers learn new systems on their own time because they love to learn new stuff. The read technical books because they are curious. They may just be crazy enough to do things like code up a mini-interpretor for a language just so they can figure out how it really works. Or code up an algorithm just to see if they can do better than what they saw in a book. A good programmer has programmed in many languages, not just one. A good programmer is the one that the other programmers go to when they can't figure something out. It takes talent, passion, and persistence to become a good programmer. A degree or three helps, but really is not required.
If you are actually valuable to the company they will compensate you based on your value. But, that means you have to be directly involved in developing revenue generating products. Not, doing standard IT crap. You need to be generating stuff that they want to keep as trade secrets or stuff they want to patent. Not just coding updates to the CRM package. You have to be visible and be seen as an asset to the company. You can not just hide in your cube. You have to be able to communicate with people who are not programmers.
But, most importantly, you have to be able to stand up for your self. You have to be able to walk into your bosses office and tell him why you are worth paying more. And, yeah, that means you may have to make a point of ignoring the rule based review process. When you pull of major accomplishment be it a new product or a major save, you need to walk into your bosses office and tell him the dollar value of what you just did. He most likely doesn't care about the technical side, but he sure as hell cares about how much you just made for the company or how much you saved the company.
When you've delivered value significantly higher that your costs you will either get paid very well or you should find another job, After you have another offer that you are happy with tell you boss that you have found another job because your compensation does not match your contribution. Document that my sending your boss a list of the dollars you have made or saved for the company. Offer to stay (if you want to) if they match your pay to your value. (For God's sake never tell them what the other guys have offered! The other guy doesn't really know what you are worth. You are likely worth more to your current company.) If they do not give you the raise you want, you must leave. If you don't you are now, as they say around here, "their bitch".
You can't do this very often. I'd say no more than once ever 4 or 5 years. OTOH, if your compensation starts sliding and your contribution keeps going up (and it will if you are good programmer) then try it again but know they will probably let you take the other job.
So, what did I just say? A good programmer will be paid based on his actual value to the company. But, that will only happen if you grow a pair and demand it. Sometimes you have to make veiled threats and if you do, you have to be willing to follow through.
Here is the last thing, don't be stupid or greedy. If the economy sucks you aren't going to get what you want. Don't ever even hint at doing something illegal. I don't
If the problem is indeed cosmic ray induced mistakes then by far the easiest fix is a combination of error correcting codes applied to the RAM and registers and redundant coding in the processor. If the registers and RAM have say a detect 3 correct 2 ECC system built in then many of those cosmic ray induced errors will just be cleaned out by the ECC hardware. If you just have the computer run the same code 3 times, or even twice, and compare the results, you sill catch transient glitches in much of the code. And, you use watch dog timers to ensure that each part of the code terminates on time. The time for each task should either be a fixed value or should fall within a small range of values. That means that a watch dog timer can be used to detect serious anomalies and active alternate code paths or even a back up processor. Or, even take the computer out of the loop and send control inputs directly to the actuators. The cost of the extra hardware in the volumes used by car manufacturers would be very small. It may not cost anything at all. The cost of the extra code, using a software development methodology that included 100% review coverage of designs, and testing, with a full impact review for all design changes and bug fixes would almost certainly save them mega bucks over just the first few years. Compared to the cost of shutting down their assembly plants and what they are going to pay out fro wrongful death suits treating the code and computers as if they were life critical will cost so little that they will not even notice it on the balance sheet.
But, they have to give a damn first. Toyota is just starting to experience what Ford experienced with the Pinto. In the Toyota case it seems to be most of their models and it looks like they have been covering up the evidence for many years. I say that as the worried owner of a car that has not been recalled...yet.
Oh, yeah. I am really looking forward to what happens when US courts start issuing subpoenas for the source code, all the development documents, and all other records including emails that pertain to the code in those computers. That should be fun to see the records and the reports of the special masters tasked with reviewing the code. If they haven't followed accepted methods established by everyone else who writes life critical code the managers could face negligent homicide charges.
Oddly enough I'm starting to like you.:-) I doubt the opposite it true, but thats OK.
I'm going to try again to explain my point of view. Take it or leave it is your right, but I hope you will consider what I have to say.
Look, I make a strong distinction between socialism as it is defined and as it is practiced in countries such as the UK and Sweden and the totalitarianism that is practiced in so many countries, such as Cuba, China, and North Korea, that claim to be socialist, but are in fact totalitarian states.
In socialism ownership rests in the government. In a democratic state such as the UK, and Sweden, the people are, for the most part, the government. So, as much as is possible, the socialism exists because the people wanted it, they have a lot of control of it. And, they can get rid of it if they so chose.
A lot of states claim to be socialist, and indeed the ownership rests in the government. But, the government consists of only one, or at best a small group of people, and the people have no say in government. This is just like the kingdoms or Europe without the concept noblesse oblige and without the Church to balance it out, and take their cut.
The dictators usually rise to power by starting what they call a socialist revolution. And, yes they immediately disarm the population and censor all information sources. China, Russia, Cuba, are all examples of that tactic. The result is a totalitarianism with a command economic system that is socialist in name only.
Like I said, since the only examples of socialist, or even partially socialist, states we hear about in the US are the dictatorships that claim to be socialist, it is easy to understand why you would think that socialism is what is practiced in those states rather than what it was meant to be.
IMHO a pure socialist state is not possible. It goes against human nature. OTOH, the socialist water system where I live in Texas does a really good job of providing clean water and the socialist road system works very well too. At least it did until they put in all the toll ways and started charging the DPS to patrol them. I guess that is OK, really, I kind of like knowing I can get a way with driving 80 or 90 miles an hour through the city.
The second part, about hate speech. Your friend who calls you fucker is not, as far as I can tell, using hate speech. I have old friends who great me the same way and I great them the same way. It is an indication of the true depth of your friendship. You see the same thing when one black greats another using a phrase like "my N....". You may be best of friends, with both of those guys, but, if you are not black you do not great them that way. OTOH, the do not great me by saying "My Cracker", "Hey Whitey", "hows the old pecker wood hangin'".
Your ex-girl friend is an example of hate speech. To get an idea of what that really feels like imagine that every woman you have ever met, and every woman you will ever meet looks at you with the same hate in their eyes and addresses you the same way. That is what hate speech is really like. It is not from just one person, It is from many people. Not necessarily all people, of course, but many.
I'm a white guy who grew up in one of the whitest states in the country, Utah. Utah was never integrated because there were not enough minorities to make it practical. I am not a Mormon, which made me a small minority at the time. Growing up I had black tightly curly hair. In college I wore it in a 3 foot diameter Afro. Because of hair and my religion I became the local "N". And, that word became my name. Even with my hair kept short strangers would stop me on the street and tell me I looked like some sort of weird "N" and laugh and joke about it. There were people starting in junior high school who tried to get me blocked from using the locker room because I had black curly hair.
Like I said, I white. My ancestry covers all the Celtic lands including the odd combination of being both Irish and Scots Irish. I al
Your description of how a word becomes hateful is exactly correct. The way you describe the difference between using a word with hate and with out is also accurate.
It appears that you do not understand how it feels to be turned from a person into a single hateful word. I've experienced it. I see the effects of it every day in my classes. It is a serious problem in the US.
BTW, you really need to look up "socialism". You are using it as an synonym for "totalitarianism". One is an economic system. One is a governmental system. Socialism and freedom of speech coexist in many countries. I do understand the miss use of the word. There are dozens of totalitarian countries that claim to use either socialist or communist economic systems. You can also have a capitalist totalitarian country. Singapore and China come to mind as examples. Russia is moving that way.
The process you just went through is well known to psychologists. It is called "objectification". That is the process by which you mentally reduce the person you disagree with to a non-human status so that you can disregard them. If done well you can kill them without guilt because they are, in your mind, not a real human. Some good examples of objectification can be found in the history of WWII. The Nazi propaganda concerning Jews, and American propaganda about the Japanese are great sources.
BTW, you might want to look up the origin of the "N" word. It is not what you think it is. It is just one of many words with the same origin that all mean "black". It became a racial slur by being use being used as one. Hate speech becomes hate speech by being use by the haters. That is the same way your favorite words have come to be hate speech.
I guess I should mention that there is nothing in the definition of socialism that fits your description of it.
I have noticed that in all of your replies you have tried to defend your use of the words. But, you have never actually denied that they are hateful. That is a good sign. It is likely that you are reacting the way you are just because you feel embarrassed about being called on it. I would be lying if I claimed I have never done that. It really is easier to just admit the error, or at least not defend it, than to lot someone like me push you further and further into a corner.
Nope, not at all. As you documented so well the words have changed meaning over time. You also documented the fact the you know what they mean now. That means you knowingly used hate speech.
My guess is that you use habitually without ever thinking about it. Until someone does make you think about it you will keep doing.
My mother used the famous "N" word to described anyone with a dark complexion. Sometimes she would stick the words "red" or "yellow" in front of them to describe other people. One of here favorite wild flowers "N" heads and Brazil nuts can in bags labeled as "N" toes.
It took a very long time for her to stop using the word. It was only after riots broke out and cities were burned because a cop used that word on a man who just wouldn't take it any more.
Keep spewing your unthinking hatred. You think people will just stand still for it forever? Eventually you will say the wrong thing in the wrong place and find out that you can not.
Division has never been so slow that you could not use it converting internal binary numbers to decimal numbers. Now on machines with no divide operation you would wind up doing it by repeated subtraction from a table of powers of 10 and even that was fine because the human time scale has always been so slow compared to a computer that you could notice the slow down.
OTOH, division by a constant using shifts and adds may still be faster than using a division instruction.
Among the classes I teach in a junior college is something called "Intro to personal computing". A question that comes up all the time goes something like, "I bought a new hard drive and the PC says it is smaller than the what the box says". Do to the crappy job our modern US educational system does most of these students have never *heard* of the concept of a number base and have no concept of how positional numbers actually work. So, to answer the question I first have to explain how numbers work, and then explain that computer people have used a coincidence the happens to make 2^10 be close enough to 10^3 as an excuse to misuse the standard prefixes and given them a new definition. The usually response is that nerds are stupid...
In the US at least our schools have decided not to teach the basic mathematical concepts that are needed to understand the difference between a "mebi" and a "mega". We might as well just stop using binary based units everywhere.
I'm not sure when the schools in the US stopped teaching arithmetic. When I was teaching in the 1970s I used to assign students to write a program that would read a number base and a number in that base. The program should then read another number base and print the number in that base. (for simplicity I restricted the possible bases to the range 1 to 36 so you could use the digits and the English letters as digits.) This is a trivial assignment that I usually used to introduce recursion and the simplest level of IO. When I gave the same assignment in the early 2000s I got room full of blank looks. One brave student asked what class they were supposed to have taken to learn what a number base was. I learned all this in 4th grade. After asking the class I realized that not one person in the room, including several college graduates, have ever encountered the terms.
you are correct. But, there is another way of looking at it that most people don't seem to understand.
Let me try this on you. If my job is doing X for company Y. That is my job and I get paid for it. If the boss comes in and tells me to train JimBob DumbAss to do my job I have a perfect right to say "no". I also have the right to say, "what is it worth to you?" And, if the boss says something like, "you get to keep you job". You have a perfect right to say "fuck you" and walk away.
I've had a few lessons on what the "boss" thinks he can get away with just because he is the boss and you are the serf. The first time it was over a short pay check. Seems I had worked too many hours one week. IIRC it was 105 hours. I worked it because no one else showed up. I worked it because the owner personally asked me to do it and thanked me for doing it. When I pointed out the difference between what I had been paid and the hours I worked he laughed. He asked me if I could prove I worked those hours? He had the only copy of my time card. I could not prove anything.
You know what? That dumb son of a bitch actually kept me working for him. Why would he not keep me on? I was one of two employees who actually showed up. From then on I kept personal copies of my time cards. Since the statute of limitations has long passed I feel free to say that he actually did pay me for those hours, at double time. I kept careful books to make sure I only got what was owed me. When you treat your employees the way you describe, then they will treat your company the way I did.
Yeah, I was lucky to learn that lesson when I was only 19. It has served me well.
The next time I was part of a software development team working on a product that we were told was critical to the survival of the company. One day we were called into a room and told that from today and until the product shipped we were going to a mandatory 60 hour work week. We would be required to work 12 hours/day. One of the days would be a Saturday or Sunday. We could take one day off during the other 5 week days if we were ahead of schedule and not needed for meetings or scheduled for testing. Turns out there were two scheduled meetings every day. So, we were really being told to work 72 hours/week.
Silence fell over the room like crap out of the back end of a steer. People were looking around at each other. A few people started to say something, but then you would see their shoulders slump and they put their heads down. (I was sitting way in the back of the room so I could only see them from the back.) The boss was starting to look happy when I asked a simple question. You see, I had learned the rules back when I was 19. I asked "What is in this for us?"
"What?" was his reply.
"Right now it looks like I would be better off looking for a new job, Why do you think we are going to do this?"
The boss looked startled and replied "If we don't get this done the division will not make its numbers and the division could be shut down". (It turned out that that really meant that the VP would lose his bonus for the year.)
I turned it around, "so if we do this we get nothing and still might lose our jobs. If we don't do this we get paid until you shut the place down and then you and all the rest of management lose your jobs too." In other words. If we do not cooperate you will lose your job. But, we could lose our jobs whether we do this or not.
"I'm not doing it unless you pay me by the hour for every hour I work. And, I want over time." . Some of the other people in the room were getting a very interesting look in their eyes. The rest were trying to hide under their chairs.
He put on a stern face and in the same tone of voice you use to tell a child that he must finish his home work before he can play video games he said, "you are an exempt employee, you don't get paid by the hour and you don't get over time."
"I do not give a about that are only there to keep me from getting paid for my work. You will pay me by the hour if
I read you reply and I really did laugh out loud. I completely understand why you reacted that.
In my case only perhaps 5% or 6% are related to me and several of those are only related by marriage. The a lot of my facebook friends are old friends from as far back as grade school, former students, folks I have worked with or been in business with.
More than half of my facebook friends are folks I practice Kung Fu and meditate with. It is amazing how close you can get with people you sweat with.
The first Mac was very different from the Apple II. It had a built in screen. A tiny itsy bitsy screen. It had a sealed case. You could not change anything in the hardware without actually *breaking* the case welds. It had not card slots. Card slots were very popular and one of the reasons why people loved the Apple II and why the switched to the PC. I understand the business reasons for those decisions. I also remember that it nearly killed Apple and eventually got Steve Jobs fired.
The main thing that was wrong with the original Mac was that the entire interface was designed by very young people. No one with old eyes ever tested the Mac before it was released. Jerry Pournelle wrote a scathing review of the Max and pointed out that it would never be accepted by managers, and would therefore fail, because it was designed for young eyes. The changes that were made to the Lucid UI are just like those made in the Mac UI in that they all work fine for people with young eyes and no muscle memory of how to use a UI.
Many of the people who *use* Ubuntu, like me, have been using GUI interfaces since the 1980s. I've been using an X based desktop since X11R4. I don't remember UWM, but I was using TWM before it was released to the X consortium. (Tom's cube was just down the way from mine.) The original TWM put buttons on both corners of the screen, but we quickly learned to configure it and... well I can't honestly remember how long it has been since I last used a computer with the window buttons in the upper left hand corner. I will bet that I have been using GUIs since before the designer of the new themes was in kindergarten. Maybe even longer than they have been alive. If you have not done something using a standard interface for 20 or 30 or 40 years (I've been driving for more than 40 years) you do not have any idea what a change like that can do to you. My hand knows where those buttons are. Moving the buttons actually causes me pain in my shoulder and it causes eye strain. (I thought that was very weird too.) Ok, yeah, It didn't take long to fix the problem. But, now I have learned that Shuttleworth plans to put something else in that upper right hand corner. That means I may lose the ability to fix the problem without having to do major surgery. (Which I can do, but why would I waste that much time?)
So why don't I just get used to it? Look up the concept of "muscle memory" and/or wu wei. After you have done something enough times it becomes as natural as breathing or walking. When you get to that point changing can become hard. Imagine if you suddenly found that you had to be able to drive your car you had to change your breathing so that every other breath had to be twice as long as a normal breath? Would you try to adapt or get the idea that the car company had gone insane?
The desktop theme has the same problems. The ultra bright backgrounds cause me eye strain from switching from the bright backgrounds to the neutral applications. The color choices make it hard to read text and to hard to tell the where the frames of stacked windows begin and end. So, to begin to be able to use Lucid I first have to apply a 3rd level gnome wizard spell to move the controls and then change the theme. And, I have to do that while using an interface that has become physically painful to use.
I know these changes were never checked by anyone my age or older. I see this same kind of thing all the time from students who do not understand that the wrong design choices can make a product unusable by the part of the population with the most money to spend. Of course, there is no good way to point out to young designers that they will most likely (if they are lucky) spend 1/2 to 3/4 of their entire life as an "old" person.
What is your problem with the idea that social networks are a good way to meet people who have a lot in common with you? Friends of friends are more likely to be compatible with you and to live near where you live than any other group of people you meet online. Meeting compatible people is the first step to love making. At least that is how it always worked for me and it seems to still work that way for my friends and children. (I've been married for 33 years so I'm not using social networking that way. OTOH, having girl friends from 35 years ago looking you up on facebook can be an "interesting" experience.)
For many people social networks now provide the social function that was filled by schools and churches. Since most of us don't go to church anymore and most of the population is not currently in school, something had to fill that social niche. Social networking seems to do that very well.
No one will remember drives at all. They will be just another part of the chipset like the sound card and Ethernet.
What I am really curious about is whether it will be drives or video cards that disappear first. Storage technology is getting cheaper faster and only needs to optimize price per bit. While video cards are still not capable of all the things we want them to do and have to optimize many different factors. So, I'm betting on storage disappearing first, but I could be wrong.
You do not have to be a programmer to do what HungryHobo suggested. Nothing he described requires any programming knowledge.
What you do have to be is someone who can lead and someone who has enough money to pay to set up the web site. Of course, you can get the website for free.
If you have a good concept and can communicate it effectively you can start an open source project. Open source projects can be based around art, music, hardware, anything at all.
A good leader with a compelling vision will attract the other talents needed to get the project done.
Some people will take risk and just try to do something. If it doesn't work out they chalk it up to experience and move on. Other people think way to long and way to hard about all the reasons they should and shouldn't do something. If they decide to do something, and it doesn't work, they wind up on antidepressants and/or become impotent. The second type loves to laugh at people who have a failed project. The first type laughs at people who are too scared to try.
Some of us measure our lives by the stories we have to tell. Ever had the president and CEO of a hundred million dollar start up pound the floor between you feet with hammer? No? Why not? You don't think CEOs are sane do you?
Dude, the Republicans already did that. Go look at the changes that were made to our patent laws by the Republicans. Look at the tax laws they passed that makes it cheaper for a company manufacture a product outside the US and import it that to manufacture it in the US. Look at the banking rules they killed off and the collapse of the economy that resulted from their actions. The Republicans, with a little help from a few particularly corrupt Democrats have already done everything you are worried about.
I don't know you and you don't know me. You may well be someone I would enjoy drinking beer with and going shooting or hunting with. My family were ranchers until the great depression. My father wound up working on a crew where he was paid 25 cents a carcass to gut and skin his, and everyone else's, heards. Most of my Uncles were underground coal miners.
But, my father went to college and I went to college. So I guess you would call me a pseudo intellectual college moron. You know what? One advantage of a pubic school education back in the '50s and '60s is that I actually learned the meaning of the word "socialism" and I have enough background in history, logic, and law that I can read the Constitution and understand what it says. I didn't get that in college. I got it in junior high and high school. Since then the Republicans in the state I grew up in have gutted the school system and dumbed down the curriculum to the point that high school graduates are lucky if they can read, let alone understand something as complex as the Constitution.
Yeah, I'm no fan of the modern Republican party. I was one once. But they don't want people who ask questions. They just want people who follow orders.
As far as I can see this is by far the least socialist way a bill like this could be written. And, it is at least as constitutional as social security and Medicare. Both of those have been challenged all the way to the Supreme Court and stood up as constitutional. If it were socialist there would be no health insurance companies left after it was signed into law. But, not only are the health insurance companies being left in place, their stock price is zooming up because they are going get 30 or 40 million new customers. That is not socialism.
Here is the definition of socialism:
Main Entry: socialism Pronunciation: \s-sh-li-zm\ Function: noun Date: 1837
1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods 2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state 3 : a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done
This bill will not result in any government owning the health care industry. Doctors will not be forced to work for the government. Counties like the UK do have socialized medicine. In the UK the government owns the hospitals and clinics and the doctors work for the government, where the government says they will work for a salary set by the government. There is nothing like that in this bill. It is a major change in business regulation, but there doesn't seem to be any "socialism" in it anywhere.
You obviously care about America. I'm glad for that. So many people I meet don't seem to care about anything but themselves. But, you might want to look up words to see if they mean what you think they mean rather than what some radio DJ says they mean.
If I had my way they would just have lowered the age for Medicare down to conception. That would be a good way to go.
By the way, I would much rather be called a "Tax and Spend Democrat" than to be a "Borrow and Spend Republican". At least the Democrats want to pay for their programs. The Republicans just seem to want to borrow and borrow and b
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Believe me, if you throw enough money it will fix the problems. How? If you doubled the starting salary of teachers how many of the teachers currently working would be in schools five years from now? Maybe 10 percent, The best 10 percent. Right now Teachers work on contract. A school district does not have to hire the same teachers every year, they can hire new ones of keep the old ones. If teaching salaries started in the $70k to $90K range you would have many of the top Ph.Ds graduates in the world competing for entry level jobs in the US public schools.
That would solve most of the problem right there. The same effect would result in most of the administration and staff in public schools being replaced by competent people.
My local school district likes to issue 20 year bonds to get money to buy PCs. Only an idiot, or someone who can not get the money any other way, commits to a 20 year mortgage to buy something with a useful life of 3 years. But, they are both idiots and desperate.
They are also astonishingly arrogant, we had a bond election that included $6 million for a football field to be shared by all the district schools. They spent $26 million to build a professional level (semi-pro anyway) football stadium that goes unused for most of the year. Then they found out the hard way that having been fooled once the people were not interested in being fooled again. It took nearly 10 years before they were able to pass another bond issue. In the mean time the school deteriorated and became grossly over crowded.
But, you get what you pay for. When you put people who make less than a middle school football coach in charge of hundreds of millions of dollars they make the kind of idiot mistakes you expect from idiots.
If we had twice the money per student they would not need to issue bonds to buy computers, they would not be going out for bond elections every couple of years, and we could pay enough to attract competent people to run our schools.
Some one is likely to write in an tell me how the teachers union will stop everything I've described from happening. At first, yes. But, not for long. Unions exists because the workers feel exploited. In the case of teachers are they are being exploited. If you pay more the union will lose its grip and fade away. I've seen that happen in many businesses. If the workers believe the business is dealing with them fairly they will not want a union.
Stonewolf
P.S.
IMHO, the teachers unions are the only group that even tries to maintain the quality of our current schools. Without the unions teacher salaries would be so low that we would not be able to hire college graduates to fill the jobs.
You should look at the copyright law governing games and then talk to an IP lawyer. But, my understanding, and I am not a lawyer, is that so long as you don't copy the look and don't steal any images or sounds made for the original game. You are pretty much in the clear. A spiritual successor is OK. Consider, that anyone can write a story using time travel or warp drive, but you get in trouble if you have warp drive ships named the NCC Enterprise that looks like the one in Star Trek. But, you can have a ship named Enterprise. There have been many ships named Enterprise in real life. Another way to look at it is Doom versus all the other 3d FPS games ever made. They are all spiritual successors to Doom (or that castle game ID did first.) But that was inspired by first person games from way before then. OTOH, it is very hard to make a spiritual successor to Scrabble because you can't do Scrabble any other way. But, it would be easy to do a non-infringing spiritual successor do Risk (Dicewars), or Monopoly, or...
You do need to make sure that there are no patents on the game. If there are, you can just work around them. Or, if the game is old then it the patents may have expired.
Like I said, read the law. It is online. And, if you have any doubts talk to an IP lawyer.
Stonewolf
Let's see, how to put this... You want to build a laser that is powerful enough to be seen through cloud cover even when the beam is dispersed over hundreds, or even thousands of square kilometers of land area? OK, You know, President Reagan wanted to do that too... You see, if you just focus that puppy down into a nice tight beam you warning laser would be one of the nicest weapons systems ever built. When you were not using it to warn people about tsunamis you could use it to hold them hostage. You could could...
Well you get the picture. The sarcastic Dr. Evil posts are actually right on target. But, a reference to Star Wars is more accurate. IIRC the direct nuclear pumped laser was the design of choice. The reactor is the laser.
As far as I know such a device could be legally placed in orbit. But, most nations would rather their people die in a Tsunami that face having a nuclear battle star hanging over their heads.
Other than that, not a bad idea.
You could get about the same effect by installing a system of sirens and warning flares along coastal areas. They would cost much less and be much safer.
Stonewolf
If you look around at the huge number of completely cross platform apps and tools out there you will find that many of them are sitting on top of SDL (www.libsdl.org). SDL has been providing a cross platform multimedia development platform for so long that an on going maintenance issue is deciding when a platform is really truly dead so that support can be removed. :-)
I thought I'd throw that out as my current favorite example of yet another cross platform tool. I've seen so many of these that I lost count about 20 years ago. The original article (if you can call it that considering how little information it contained) is about as news worthy as "Man Misses Public Urinal".
Stonewolf
NASA, and the DOD, do buy a lot of the code, not all by any means. But, they do have a huge amount of experiencing *managing* the development of extremely reliable code and the computers that are needed to run them.
No matter who writes the code it is the management structure, including how specs are written, how testing is done, what methodology is used... you know the list,,, that result in reliable testable code.
Yeah, good programmers make it easier to get good code, but with out an excellent management system in place you do not get reliable code.
I just realized that the first flame I'm going to get is some thing "oh yeah? Then why is open source software so reliable? There's no management controlling that. You insensitive jerk." The answer is that every open source project I have looked at, or done, use peer review, or the fear of peer review as the way to insure good code. That is coupled with the use of trusted committers who ensure that even excellent code only goes in to the code base if it meets the specifications for that section of code. The specification may only exist in the committers head and a few emails or //FIX ME lines in the code. But the committer system, coupled with peer review, results in reliable code.
What this management system isn't very good at is keeping to schedules. While I've brought in software development projects within hours of the original schedule I could only do that because I was able to write the schedule for each section of the project only after completing, and evaluating the previous section. And, I had a usable data base of time-to-complete data for functions of different complexity levels. That and upper level management that allowed us to do a detailed function level design.
Stonewolf
Yep, if you are only in it for the money you will not be in it for long no matter what the pay is.
The rest of this is for the folks talking about the abuse that is so often heaped on programmers.
The truth is that people who love to program are the best programmers. These are the folks who can tell a boss to go fuck himself when he demands 40 hours a week of free work over and above the 40 hours of paid work you are already doing. They can do that because, as study after study has shown, good programmers generate 10 to 20 times the usable product that the rest of the crew generates. The good programmers can get paid what they want to get paid even without switching companies. But, you have to be ready to say "Fuck You" to your boss and mean it. Which means you can't be living pay check to pay check...
Good programmers learn new systems on their own time because they love to learn new stuff. The read technical books because they are curious. They may just be crazy enough to do things like code up a mini-interpretor for a language just so they can figure out how it really works. Or code up an algorithm just to see if they can do better than what they saw in a book. A good programmer has programmed in many languages, not just one. A good programmer is the one that the other programmers go to when they can't figure something out. It takes talent, passion, and persistence to become a good programmer. A degree or three helps, but really is not required.
If you are actually valuable to the company they will compensate you based on your value. But, that means you have to be directly involved in developing revenue generating products. Not, doing standard IT crap. You need to be generating stuff that they want to keep as trade secrets or stuff they want to patent. Not just coding updates to the CRM package. You have to be visible and be seen as an asset to the company. You can not just hide in your cube. You have to be able to communicate with people who are not programmers.
But, most importantly, you have to be able to stand up for your self. You have to be able to walk into your bosses office and tell him why you are worth paying more. And, yeah, that means you may have to make a point of ignoring the rule based review process. When you pull of major accomplishment be it a new product or a major save, you need to walk into your bosses office and tell him the dollar value of what you just did. He most likely doesn't care about the technical side, but he sure as hell cares about how much you just made for the company or how much you saved the company.
When you've delivered value significantly higher that your costs you will either get paid very well or you should find another job, After you have another offer that you are happy with tell you boss that you have found another job because your compensation does not match your contribution. Document that my sending your boss a list of the dollars you have made or saved for the company. Offer to stay (if you want to) if they match your pay to your value. (For God's sake never tell them what the other guys have offered! The other guy doesn't really know what you are worth. You are likely worth more to your current company.) If they do not give you the raise you want, you must leave. If you don't you are now, as they say around here, "their bitch".
You can't do this very often. I'd say no more than once ever 4 or 5 years. OTOH, if your compensation starts sliding and your contribution keeps going up (and it will if you are good programmer) then try it again but know they will probably let you take the other job.
So, what did I just say? A good programmer will be paid based on his actual value to the company. But, that will only happen if you grow a pair and demand it. Sometimes you have to make veiled threats and if you do, you have to be willing to follow through.
Here is the last thing, don't be stupid or greedy. If the economy sucks you aren't going to get what you want. Don't ever even hint at doing something illegal. I don't
If the problem is indeed cosmic ray induced mistakes then by far the easiest fix is a combination of error correcting codes applied to the RAM and registers and redundant coding in the processor. If the registers and RAM have say a detect 3 correct 2 ECC system built in then many of those cosmic ray induced errors will just be cleaned out by the ECC hardware. If you just have the computer run the same code 3 times, or even twice, and compare the results, you sill catch transient glitches in much of the code. And, you use watch dog timers to ensure that each part of the code terminates on time. The time for each task should either be a fixed value or should fall within a small range of values. That means that a watch dog timer can be used to detect serious anomalies and active alternate code paths or even a back up processor. Or, even take the computer out of the loop and send control inputs directly to the actuators. The cost of the extra hardware in the volumes used by car manufacturers would be very small. It may not cost anything at all. The cost of the extra code, using a software development methodology that included 100% review coverage of designs, and testing, with a full impact review for all design changes and bug fixes would almost certainly save them mega bucks over just the first few years. Compared to the cost of shutting down their assembly plants and what they are going to pay out fro wrongful death suits treating the code and computers as if they were life critical will cost so little that they will not even notice it on the balance sheet.
But, they have to give a damn first. Toyota is just starting to experience what Ford experienced with the Pinto. In the Toyota case it seems to be most of their models and it looks like they have been covering up the evidence for many years. I say that as the worried owner of a car that has not been recalled...yet.
Oh, yeah. I am really looking forward to what happens when US courts start issuing subpoenas for the source code, all the development documents, and all other records including emails that pertain to the code in those computers. That should be fun to see the records and the reports of the special masters tasked with reviewing the code. If they haven't followed accepted methods established by everyone else who writes life critical code the managers could face negligent homicide charges.
Stonewolf
Oddly enough I'm starting to like you. :-) I doubt the opposite it true, but thats OK.
I'm going to try again to explain my point of view. Take it or leave it is your right, but I hope you will consider what I have to say.
Look, I make a strong distinction between socialism as it is defined and as it is practiced in countries such as the UK and Sweden and the totalitarianism that is practiced in so many countries, such as Cuba, China, and North Korea, that claim to be socialist, but are in fact totalitarian states.
In socialism ownership rests in the government. In a democratic state such as the UK, and Sweden, the people are, for the most part, the government. So, as much as is possible, the socialism exists because the people wanted it, they have a lot of control of it. And, they can get rid of it if they so chose.
A lot of states claim to be socialist, and indeed the ownership rests in the government. But, the government consists of only one, or at best a small group of people, and the people have no say in government. This is just like the kingdoms or Europe without the concept noblesse oblige and without the Church to balance it out, and take their cut.
The dictators usually rise to power by starting what they call a socialist revolution. And, yes they immediately disarm the population and censor all information sources. China, Russia, Cuba, are all examples of that tactic. The result is a totalitarianism with a command economic system that is socialist in name only.
Like I said, since the only examples of socialist, or even partially socialist, states we hear about in the US are the dictatorships that claim to be socialist, it is easy to understand why you would think that socialism is what is practiced in those states rather than what it was meant to be.
IMHO a pure socialist state is not possible. It goes against human nature. OTOH, the socialist water system where I live in Texas does a really good job of providing clean water and the socialist road system works very well too. At least it did until they put in all the toll ways and started charging the DPS to patrol them. I guess that is OK, really, I kind of like knowing I can get a way with driving 80 or 90 miles an hour through the city.
The second part, about hate speech. Your friend who calls you fucker is not, as far as I can tell, using hate speech. I have old friends who great me the same way and I great them the same way. It is an indication of the true depth of your friendship. You see the same thing when one black greats another using a phrase like "my N....". You may be best of friends, with both of those guys, but, if you are not black you do not great them that way. OTOH, the do not great me by saying "My Cracker", "Hey Whitey", "hows the old pecker wood hangin'".
Your ex-girl friend is an example of hate speech. To get an idea of what that really feels like imagine that every woman you have ever met, and every woman you will ever meet looks at you with the same hate in their eyes and addresses you the same way. That is what hate speech is really like. It is not from just one person, It is from many people. Not necessarily all people, of course, but many.
I'm a white guy who grew up in one of the whitest states in the country, Utah. Utah was never integrated because there were not enough minorities to make it practical. I am not a Mormon, which made me a small minority at the time. Growing up I had black tightly curly hair. In college I wore it in a 3 foot diameter Afro. Because of hair and my religion I became the local "N". And, that word became my name. Even with my hair kept short strangers would stop me on the street and tell me I looked like some sort of weird "N" and laugh and joke about it. There were people starting in junior high school who tried to get me blocked from using the locker room because I had black curly hair.
Like I said, I white. My ancestry covers all the Celtic lands including the odd combination of being both Irish and Scots Irish. I al
Your description of how a word becomes hateful is exactly correct. The way you describe the difference between using a word with hate and with out is also accurate.
It appears that you do not understand how it feels to be turned from a person into a single hateful word. I've experienced it. I see the effects of it every day in my classes. It is a serious problem in the US.
BTW, you really need to look up "socialism". You are using it as an synonym for "totalitarianism". One is an economic system. One is a governmental system. Socialism and freedom of speech coexist in many countries. I do understand the miss use of the word. There are dozens of totalitarian countries that claim to use either socialist or communist economic systems. You can also have a capitalist totalitarian country. Singapore and China come to mind as examples. Russia is moving that way.
Stonewolf
The "some of my best friends are ..." defense stopped being funny back in the '60s. But, it is a lot better than you have been doing so far.
Well, I'm getting bored with this.
May Coyote guide you all your life,
Stonewolf
The process you just went through is well known to psychologists. It is called "objectification". That is the process by which you mentally reduce the person you disagree with to a non-human status so that you can disregard them. If done well you can kill them without guilt because they are, in your mind, not a real human. Some good examples of objectification can be found in the history of WWII. The Nazi propaganda concerning Jews, and American propaganda about the Japanese are great sources.
BTW, you might want to look up the origin of the "N" word. It is not what you think it is. It is just one of many words with the same origin that all mean "black". It became a racial slur by being use being used as one. Hate speech becomes hate speech by being use by the haters. That is the same way your favorite words have come to be hate speech.
I guess I should mention that there is nothing in the definition of socialism that fits your description of it.
I have noticed that in all of your replies you have tried to defend your use of the words. But, you have never actually denied that they are hateful. That is a good sign. It is likely that you are reacting the way you are just because you feel embarrassed about being called on it. I would be lying if I claimed I have never done that. It really is easier to just admit the error, or at least not defend it, than to lot someone like me push you further and further into a corner.
Stonewolf
Why not?
Unlike you I'm not ashamed of my beliefs.
Stonewolf
Nope, not at all. As you documented so well the words have changed meaning over time. You also documented the fact the you know what they mean now. That means you knowingly used hate speech.
My guess is that you use habitually without ever thinking about it. Until someone does make you think about it you will keep doing.
My mother used the famous "N" word to described anyone with a dark complexion. Sometimes she would stick the words "red" or "yellow" in front of them to describe other people. One of here favorite wild flowers "N" heads and Brazil nuts can in bags labeled as "N" toes.
It took a very long time for her to stop using the word. It was only after riots broke out and cities were burned because a cop used that word on a man who just wouldn't take it any more.
Keep spewing your unthinking hatred. You think people will just stand still for it forever? Eventually you will say the wrong thing in the wrong place and find out that you can not.
Stonewolf
Division has never been so slow that you could not use it converting internal binary numbers to decimal numbers. Now on machines with no divide operation you would wind up doing it by repeated subtraction from a table of powers of 10 and even that was fine because the human time scale has always been so slow compared to a computer that you could notice the slow down.
OTOH, division by a constant using shifts and adds may still be faster than using a division instruction.
Stonewolf
Among the classes I teach in a junior college is something called "Intro to personal computing". A question that comes up all the time goes something like, "I bought a new hard drive and the PC says it is smaller than the what the box says". Do to the crappy job our modern US educational system does most of these students have never *heard* of the concept of a number base and have no concept of how positional numbers actually work. So, to answer the question I first have to explain how numbers work, and then explain that computer people have used a coincidence the happens to make 2^10 be close enough to 10^3 as an excuse to misuse the standard prefixes and given them a new definition. The usually response is that nerds are stupid...
In the US at least our schools have decided not to teach the basic mathematical concepts that are needed to understand the difference between a "mebi" and a "mega". We might as well just stop using binary based units everywhere.
I'm not sure when the schools in the US stopped teaching arithmetic. When I was teaching in the 1970s I used to assign students to write a program that would read a number base and a number in that base. The program should then read another number base and print the number in that base. (for simplicity I restricted the possible bases to the range 1 to 36 so you could use the digits and the English letters as digits.) This is a trivial assignment that I usually used to introduce recursion and the simplest level of IO. When I gave the same assignment in the early 2000s I got room full of blank looks. One brave student asked what class they were supposed to have taken to learn what a number base was. I learned all this in 4th grade. After asking the class I realized that not one person in the room, including several college graduates, have ever encountered the terms.
Ok, I'll stop ranting now.
Stonewolf
"Gay names"
You just lost the war dude. Now shut up, crawl back into your cave the the rest of your hate filled, foul mouthed crew.
Stonewolf
It is a short trip from toady to scapegoat.
Stonewolf
Nope, there is no job security.
Repeat after me, there is no job security, there is no job security, there is no job security.
Repeat it a thousand times. Make it you mantra. When you finally believe it you will have changed your life for the better.
Stonewolf
you are correct. But, there is another way of looking at it that most people don't seem to understand.
Let me try this on you. If my job is doing X for company Y. That is my job and I get paid for it. If the boss comes in and tells me to train JimBob DumbAss to do my job I have a perfect right to say "no". I also have the right to say, "what is it worth to you?" And, if the boss says something like, "you get to keep you job". You have a perfect right to say "fuck you" and walk away.
I've had a few lessons on what the "boss" thinks he can get away with just because he is the boss and you are the serf. The first time it was over a short pay check. Seems I had worked too many hours one week. IIRC it was 105 hours. I worked it because no one else showed up. I worked it because the owner personally asked me to do it and thanked me for doing it. When I pointed out the difference between what I had been paid and the hours I worked he laughed. He asked me if I could prove I worked those hours? He had the only copy of my time card. I could not prove anything.
You know what? That dumb son of a bitch actually kept me working for him. Why would he not keep me on? I was one of two employees who actually showed up. From then on I kept personal copies of my time cards. Since the statute of limitations has long passed I feel free to say that he actually did pay me for those hours, at double time. I kept careful books to make sure I only got what was owed me. When you treat your employees the way you describe, then they will treat your company the way I did.
Yeah, I was lucky to learn that lesson when I was only 19. It has served me well.
The next time I was part of a software development team working on a product that we were told was critical to the survival of the company. One day we were called into a room and told that from today and until the product shipped we were going to a mandatory 60 hour work week. We would be required to work 12 hours/day. One of the days would be a Saturday or Sunday. We could take one day off during the other 5 week days if we were ahead of schedule and not needed for meetings or scheduled for testing. Turns out there were two scheduled meetings every day. So, we were really being told to work 72 hours/week.
Silence fell over the room like crap out of the back end of a steer. People were looking around at each other. A few people started to say something, but then you would see their shoulders slump and they put their heads down. (I was sitting way in the back of the room so I could only see them from the back.) The boss was starting to look happy when I asked a simple question. You see, I had learned the rules back when I was 19. I asked "What is in this for us?"
"What?" was his reply.
"Right now it looks like I would be better off looking for a new job, Why do you think we are going to do this?"
The boss looked startled and replied "If we don't get this done the division will not make its numbers and the division could be shut down". (It turned out that that really meant that the VP would lose his bonus for the year.)
I turned it around, "so if we do this we get nothing and still might lose our jobs. If we don't do this we get paid until you shut the place down and then you and all the rest of management lose your jobs too." In other words. If we do not cooperate you will lose your job. But, we could lose our jobs whether we do this or not.
"I'm not doing it unless you pay me by the hour for every hour I work. And, I want over time." . Some of the other people in the room were getting a very interesting look in their eyes. The rest were trying to hide under their chairs.
He put on a stern face and in the same tone of voice you use to tell a child that he must finish his home work before he can play video games he said, "you are an exempt employee, you don't get paid by the hour and you don't get over time."
"I do not give a about that are only there to keep me from getting paid for my work. You will pay me by the hour if
I read you reply and I really did laugh out loud. I completely understand why you reacted that.
In my case only perhaps 5% or 6% are related to me and several of those are only related by marriage. The a lot of my facebook friends are old friends from as far back as grade school, former students, folks I have worked with or been in business with.
More than half of my facebook friends are folks I practice Kung Fu and meditate with. It is amazing how close you can get with people you sweat with.
Stonewolf
Original Macintosh.
The first Mac was very different from the Apple II. It had a built in screen. A tiny itsy bitsy screen. It had a sealed case. You could not change anything in the hardware without actually *breaking* the case welds. It had not card slots. Card slots were very popular and one of the reasons why people loved the Apple II and why the switched to the PC. I understand the business reasons for those decisions. I also remember that it nearly killed Apple and eventually got Steve Jobs fired.
The main thing that was wrong with the original Mac was that the entire interface was designed by very young people. No one with old eyes ever tested the Mac before it was released. Jerry Pournelle wrote a scathing review of the Max and pointed out that it would never be accepted by managers, and would therefore fail, because it was designed for young eyes. The changes that were made to the Lucid UI are just like those made in the Mac UI in that they all work fine for people with young eyes and no muscle memory of how to use a UI.
Many of the people who *use* Ubuntu, like me, have been using GUI interfaces since the 1980s. I've been using an X based desktop since X11R4. I don't remember UWM, but I was using TWM before it was released to the X consortium. (Tom's cube was just down the way from mine.) The original TWM put buttons on both corners of the screen, but we quickly learned to configure it and... well I can't honestly remember how long it has been since I last used a computer with the window buttons in the upper left hand corner. I will bet that I have been using GUIs since before the designer of the new themes was in kindergarten. Maybe even longer than they have been alive. If you have not done something using a standard interface for 20 or 30 or 40 years (I've been driving for more than 40 years) you do not have any idea what a change like that can do to you. My hand knows where those buttons are. Moving the buttons actually causes me pain in my shoulder and it causes eye strain. (I thought that was very weird too.) Ok, yeah, It didn't take long to fix the problem. But, now I have learned that Shuttleworth plans to put something else in that upper right hand corner. That means I may lose the ability to fix the problem without having to do major surgery. (Which I can do, but why would I waste that much time?)
So why don't I just get used to it? Look up the concept of "muscle memory" and/or wu wei. After you have done something enough times it becomes as natural as breathing or walking. When you get to that point changing can become hard. Imagine if you suddenly found that you had to be able to drive your car you had to change your breathing so that every other breath had to be twice as long as a normal breath? Would you try to adapt or get the idea that the car company had gone insane?
The desktop theme has the same problems. The ultra bright backgrounds cause me eye strain from switching from the bright backgrounds to the neutral applications. The color choices make it hard to read text and to hard to tell the where the frames of stacked windows begin and end. So, to begin to be able to use Lucid I first have to apply a 3rd level gnome wizard spell to move the controls and then change the theme. And, I have to do that while using an interface that has become physically painful to use.
I know these changes were never checked by anyone my age or older. I see this same kind of thing all the time from students who do not understand that the wrong design choices can make a product unusable by the part of the population with the most money to spend. Of course, there is no good way to point out to young designers that they will most likely (if they are lucky) spend 1/2 to 3/4 of their entire life as an "old" person.
Getting old sucks. But, it beats the alternative.
Stonewolf
What is your problem with the idea that social networks are a good way to meet people who have a lot in common with you? Friends of friends are more likely to be compatible with you and to live near where you live than any other group of people you meet online. Meeting compatible people is the first step to love making. At least that is how it always worked for me and it seems to still work that way for my friends and children. (I've been married for 33 years so I'm not using social networking that way. OTOH, having girl friends from 35 years ago looking you up on facebook can be an "interesting" experience.)
For many people social networks now provide the social function that was filled by schools and churches. Since most of us don't go to church anymore and most of the population is not currently in school, something had to fill that social niche. Social networking seems to do that very well.
Stonewolf
No one will remember drives at all. They will be just another part of the chipset like the sound card and Ethernet.
What I am really curious about is whether it will be drives or video cards that disappear first. Storage technology is getting cheaper faster and only needs to optimize price per bit. While video cards are still not capable of all the things we want them to do and have to optimize many different factors. So, I'm betting on storage disappearing first, but I could be wrong.
Stonewolf
You do not have to be a programmer to do what HungryHobo suggested. Nothing he described requires any programming knowledge.
What you do have to be is someone who can lead and someone who has enough money to pay to set up the web site. Of course, you can get the website for free.
If you have a good concept and can communicate it effectively you can start an open source project. Open source projects can be based around art, music, hardware, anything at all.
A good leader with a compelling vision will attract the other talents needed to get the project done.
Some people will take risk and just try to do something. If it doesn't work out they chalk it up to experience and move on. Other people think way to long and way to hard about all the reasons they should and shouldn't do something. If they decide to do something, and it doesn't work, they wind up on antidepressants and/or become impotent. The second type loves to laugh at people who have a failed project. The first type laughs at people who are too scared to try.
Some of us measure our lives by the stories we have to tell. Ever had the president and CEO of a hundred million dollar start up pound the floor between you feet with hammer? No? Why not? You don't think CEOs are sane do you?
What type are you? Me, I've done 5 starts ups.
Stonewolf
Dude, the Republicans already did that. Go look at the changes that were made to our patent laws by the Republicans. Look at the tax laws they passed that makes it cheaper for a company manufacture a product outside the US and import it that to manufacture it in the US. Look at the banking rules they killed off and the collapse of the economy that resulted from their actions. The Republicans, with a little help from a few particularly corrupt Democrats have already done everything you are worried about.
I don't know you and you don't know me. You may well be someone I would enjoy drinking beer with and going shooting or hunting with. My family were ranchers until the great depression. My father wound up working on a crew where he was paid 25 cents a carcass to gut and skin his, and everyone else's, heards. Most of my Uncles were underground coal miners.
But, my father went to college and I went to college. So I guess you would call me a pseudo intellectual college moron. You know what? One advantage of a pubic school education back in the '50s and '60s is that I actually learned the meaning of the word "socialism" and I have enough background in history, logic, and law that I can read the Constitution and understand what it says. I didn't get that in college. I got it in junior high and high school. Since then the Republicans in the state I grew up in have gutted the school system and dumbed down the curriculum to the point that high school graduates are lucky if they can read, let alone understand something as complex as the Constitution.
Yeah, I'm no fan of the modern Republican party. I was one once. But they don't want people who ask questions. They just want people who follow orders.
As far as I can see this is by far the least socialist way a bill like this could be written. And, it is at least as constitutional as social security and Medicare. Both of those have been challenged all the way to the Supreme Court and stood up as constitutional. If it were socialist there would be no health insurance companies left after it was signed into law. But, not only are the health insurance companies being left in place, their stock price is zooming up because they are going get 30 or 40 million new customers. That is not socialism.
Here is the definition of socialism:
Main Entry: socialism
Pronunciation: \s-sh-li-zm\
Function: noun
Date: 1837
1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3 : a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done
This bill will not result in any government owning the health care industry. Doctors will not be forced to work for the government. Counties like the UK do have socialized medicine. In the UK the government owns the hospitals and clinics and the doctors work for the government, where the government says they will work for a salary set by the government. There is nothing like that in this bill. It is a major change in business regulation, but there doesn't seem to be any "socialism" in it anywhere.
You obviously care about America. I'm glad for that. So many people I meet don't seem to care about anything but themselves. But, you might want to look up words to see if they mean what you think they mean rather than what some radio DJ says they mean.
If I had my way they would just have lowered the age for Medicare down to conception. That would be a good way to go.
By the way, I would much rather be called a "Tax and Spend Democrat" than to be a "Borrow and Spend Republican". At least the Democrats want to pay for their programs. The Republicans just seem to want to borrow and borrow and b