Um that sounds like a social left wing attitude to me.
Not really. I don't support public funding of abortion in any way, and I'm not afraid to state that, if it was my essence at stake, abortion would be murder. How exactly I would get in a situation requiring an abortion decision is unclear; happily married, I look forward to the blessing of parenthood. While I weep at the thought of others abusing themselves, I'm also aware that external force is exactly that. External force doesn't really bring about the inner maturity needed to do The Right Thing with the gifts we enjoy.
Left wingers want to regulate business and leave us free in our social choices.
Disagree. The left is all about a nanny state that will tell you what you can and can't do. I shudder to think of socialized medicine. After they've lightened the public wallet, and the needed surgeries are somehow unavailable...well...sorry. Guess we shouldn't abdicate our sovereignty to these twits. It's hard for me to grasp how social choices weakening marriage (in its true meaning) are of any long-term help: bad policies lower the birthrate, and hasten the demise of society. One hopes we read the tea leaves of Europe and Russia. But we're kinda myopic, so we likely won't.
Right wingers want to free our economic lives and regulate our social choices
Do you really find substantial difference between either conference of the American Political Football League? How about that fiscal conservative Bush? Oh wait, he figured out how to spend like a Demmy under the heading 'Security'. Brilliant, after a fashion. And what social choices are being regulated? There is the plain, obvious truth, and tolerance of those who choose otherwise. Where there is intolerance, that is a problem. But let us resist all attempts to render falsehood the new truth.
Overall, having been to some other places around the world, the US is no' so bad. Hence the fact even the loudest whiners aren't ejecting, no?;)
Ooo, you're givin' me the fever tonight
I don't wanna give in
I'd be playin' with fire
You forget, I've seen you work before
Take `em straight to the top
Leave `em cryin' for more
I've seen you burn `em before
Chorus:
Fire and Ice
You come on like a flame
Then you turn a cold shoulder
Fire and Ice
I wanna give you my love
But you'll just take a little piece of my heart
You'll just tear it apart
Movin' in for the kill tonight
You got every advantage when they put out the lights
It's not so pretty when it fades away
Cause it's just an illusion in this passion play
I've seen you burn `em before
(Chorus)
So you think you got it all figured out
You're an expert in the field, without a doubt
But I know your methods inside and out
And I won't be takin' in by Fire and Ice
(Chorus)
You come on like a flame
Then you turn a cold shoulder
Fire and Ice
I wanna give you my love
But you'll just take a little piece of my heart
You come on like a flame
Then you turn a cold shoulder
Fire and Ice
You come on like a flame
Then you turn a cold shoulder
Fire and Ice
The only ones browbeaten into submissiveness are the ones who watch too much cable news.
Protest is good. Better still when the protester migrates from mere negative reactionary to someone stepping in to help:
"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."
"Citizenship in a Republic,"
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910
Torture sucks.
But how do you extend Habeas Corpus to enemy combatants without effectively making them fall under the US Bill of Rights?
I feel your "speeding train heading toward a deep dark bridgeless pit" assessment may contain some hyperbole, but I'll agree that there is room to reform the policy in this area.
Without boring anyone with a rather right-wing take on the social issues, my chief complaint is that the public time is wasted on these matters.
The US desperately needs a "separation of bedroom and state".
Voyeurism: just say no!
Without trotting out value judgements or beating anyone down, this separation policy would be a vast improvement in the US, IMHO.
WTF can the government do, besides provide a reasonable equality of opportunity?
If you want to learn in the US, then go learn. Nobody holding back you except you.
Your remark admits the government is unreliable. Screw the whining and quit relying on the government, buster.
Oh, come on. Cliques, factions, unions, and parties are a force multiplier.
People oscillate between the desire to herd and the desire to go solo.
I doubt there is a cure for parties which would not be worse than the disease.
GP contrasts the federal republic governing these United States with the pure Athenian democracy of one citizen, one vote.
Of course, citizenship in the Athenian context mean 'affluent male'.
Irrespective of what spiritual/intellectual/moral leaders you admire, you have to keep in mind that they were all human, and all mortal.
Let's not get caught drinking the kool-aid in public, shall we?
I thought Rand's ideas held together well enough within the laboratory confines of her books' covers.
Mapping those ideas back to reality is another conversation entirely.
Her atheism, in particular, made me yawn.
So, if there is an idea that would help the African situation, but Marx said it, the idea is invalid, and Africa must suffer?
Rand wrote fiction as a means of exposing ideas. You are right: Toohey is a straw man. Unfortunately, his ilk slither about the Washington DC beltway as we write.
You are also right that her 2D charicature of Socialism cannot be confused with the broader spectrum of Socialism. I'll take the hit that I'm guilty of oversimplifying Socialist thought and equating it to a charicature.
Gotta differentiate between baby and bathwater, no?
Oh, there might be some natural abstraction facility, without which you simply can't mentally execute the code to watch the variable 'x' increment in a for/do loop.
I contend (in my arrogance) that the bulk of the population simply doesn't invest the time to nurture that mental facility. We now have a society so advanced that you really can blow off literacy, for example.
My father has been a steam and diesel engineer his entire career. Has this mental block about electricity. "I can't understand it," he whines. Yet the ideas of capacitance, inductance, potential difference, etc. have their analogues in steam engineering. The man just can't get past a self-imposed limitation.
People. Gotta love 'em, or you'd do the unspeakable.;)
Boss, I don't see what any of your points have to do with computer science in the abstract. As I noted in the preceding post, your pain points have to do with people, not CompSci.
Is this an example of Post Soul-Crushing Meeting Disorder? If so, you've my sympathy.
If you consider the law of the land as an "operating system", then the legislators and lawyers are coders, at a higher, messier level of abstraction. They produce and fight for self-modifying code every time they tweak a law. They are engaged in maximizing their resources on the "motherboard" of society.
So, hopefully, the "swapper" process does a decent enough job of making sure that no thread overcomes the rest.
Not really sure this metaphor is useful. Your more insightful post prompted it.
So, her charicature of a spineless leech of a human is useless simply because she said it?
Her philosophy doesn't do much for me, but her critique of Socialism seems accurate.
the vast populace considers things like war and the basic economy important, but unless interest rates go back to 8 or 12%, or they lose their jobs and houses, they're not going to pay attention to a gradually degrading economy. The war? Old news. Software patents? Well, ideas should be patentable, no?
Among the fundamental challenges besetting the US population is a corporate Attention Deficit Disorder.
Neither political party couches its analysis of the Iraq war in broader historical terms. The fact that there is a planned revolution at the ballot box every few years is both the great strength and the crushing weakness of the US.
Possibly the best we can hope for is that the '08 election demonstrates that the will of the people, wrongheaded as you may argue it be, does matter.
Should ideas be patentable? Sure, particularly if there are sunk costs for physically tangible goods involved. Asked a friend once what he thought the last unprecedented invention was in IT. He said, 'the packet-switched network'. Patenting one-click shopping is like patenting a fantasy novel where a lost prince and friends from a variety of species have to travel dangerous lands to acquire a relic and snuff something evil. Software patents? Bollocks.
What's intrinsically hellish about computer science?
The problems I see with it are related to the entropy of the human soul. Gets especially painful when the entropy aggregates into organizational behavior.
I, for one, find reading Knuth a delightful escape from Perry Ferrel's observation: "...and the news is just another show / with sex and violence..."
Possibly not the most important issue (which I don't recall claiming), but it certainly ranks up there with the cancerous growth of federal entitlement programs, earmarks, and such.
Unfortunately, the US electorate's collective head remains focused on the irrelevant. Almost as if someone wanted it that way, no?
I think there are more pressing issues in the world right now.
Possibly in a tactical sense.
Strategically, though, the US is comitting seppuku if it allows a few fat cats to patent obvious things, stifle innovation, destroy productivity, and otherwise distract from useful work. Ellsworth Toohey would be proud of those cretins.
Did not the United States declared independence specifically to end this sort of long-distance pick-pocketing?
What we have is a great opportunity for a Lessig or a Moglen to lead a peaceful overthrow of a sorry state of affairs.
The software patent issue needs to be driven to the front of 2008 election politics.
This is really about knocking back linux's control of the embedded market through a generalized attack.
Fuel prices have radically altered the economics, and some of the patents involved will be used in a new invention that will revolutionize the transportation industry.
Details here: http://www.snopes.com/autos/business/carburetor.as p
When you read that link, remember: False is the new True!
I don't know if it's Cox cable or too much interference, buy I've been having some hellish stability problems lately. May have to go back to wired just so the junk works.
Slashdot Mirror
Whereas I have a cunning plan...
Overall, having been to some other places around the world, the US is no' so bad. Hence the fact even the loudest whiners aren't ejecting, no?
You managed to annihilate heavy metal, country/western, and rap in one swipe.
Good work.
Ooo, you're givin' me the fever tonight
I don't wanna give in
I'd be playin' with fire
You forget, I've seen you work before
Take `em straight to the top
Leave `em cryin' for more
I've seen you burn `em before
Chorus:
Fire and Ice
You come on like a flame
Then you turn a cold shoulder
Fire and Ice
I wanna give you my love
But you'll just take a little piece of my heart
You'll just tear it apart
Movin' in for the kill tonight
You got every advantage when they put out the lights
It's not so pretty when it fades away
Cause it's just an illusion in this passion play
I've seen you burn `em before
(Chorus)
So you think you got it all figured out
You're an expert in the field, without a doubt
But I know your methods inside and out
And I won't be takin' in by Fire and Ice
(Chorus)
You come on like a flame
Then you turn a cold shoulder
Fire and Ice
I wanna give you my love
But you'll just take a little piece of my heart
You come on like a flame
Then you turn a cold shoulder
Fire and Ice
You come on like a flame
Then you turn a cold shoulder
Fire and Ice
Protest is good. Better still when the protester migrates from mere negative reactionary to someone stepping in to help:
Torture sucks.
But how do you extend Habeas Corpus to enemy combatants without effectively making them fall under the US Bill of Rights?
I feel your "speeding train heading toward a deep dark bridgeless pit" assessment may contain some hyperbole, but I'll agree that there is room to reform the policy in this area.
Without boring anyone with a rather right-wing take on the social issues, my chief complaint is that the public time is wasted on these matters.
The US desperately needs a "separation of bedroom and state".
Voyeurism: just say no!
Without trotting out value judgements or beating anyone down, this separation policy would be a vast improvement in the US, IMHO.
WTF can the government do, besides provide a reasonable equality of opportunity?
If you want to learn in the US, then go learn. Nobody holding back you except you.
Your remark admits the government is unreliable. Screw the whining and quit relying on the government, buster.
Oh, come on. Cliques, factions, unions, and parties are a force multiplier.
People oscillate between the desire to herd and the desire to go solo.
I doubt there is a cure for parties which would not be worse than the disease.
GP contrasts the federal republic governing these United States with the pure Athenian democracy of one citizen, one vote.
Of course, citizenship in the Athenian context mean 'affluent male'.
Oops. A further debunking of me as any sort of Rand scholar. Thanks for the correction.
Irrespective of what spiritual/intellectual/moral leaders you admire, you have to keep in mind that they were all human, and all mortal.
Let's not get caught drinking the kool-aid in public, shall we?
I thought Rand's ideas held together well enough within the laboratory confines of her books' covers.
Mapping those ideas back to reality is another conversation entirely.
Her atheism, in particular, made me yawn.
More knowledge is better. ;)
Translate that back to your OS question, and see where it takes you.
So, if there is an idea that would help the African situation, but Marx said it, the idea is invalid, and Africa must suffer?
Rand wrote fiction as a means of exposing ideas. You are right: Toohey is a straw man. Unfortunately, his ilk slither about the Washington DC beltway as we write.
You are also right that her 2D charicature of Socialism cannot be confused with the broader spectrum of Socialism. I'll take the hit that I'm guilty of oversimplifying Socialist thought and equating it to a charicature.
Gotta differentiate between baby and bathwater, no?
Oh, there might be some natural abstraction facility, without which you simply can't mentally execute the code to watch the variable 'x' increment in a for/do loop. ;)
I contend (in my arrogance) that the bulk of the population simply doesn't invest the time to nurture that mental facility. We now have a society so advanced that you really can blow off literacy, for example.
My father has been a steam and diesel engineer his entire career. Has this mental block about electricity. "I can't understand it," he whines. Yet the ideas of capacitance, inductance, potential difference, etc. have their analogues in steam engineering. The man just can't get past a self-imposed limitation.
People. Gotta love 'em, or you'd do the unspeakable.
Boss, I don't see what any of your points have to do with computer science in the abstract.
As I noted in the preceding post, your pain points have to do with people, not CompSci.
Is this an example of Post Soul-Crushing Meeting Disorder? If so, you've my sympathy.
If you consider the law of the land as an "operating system", then the legislators and lawyers are coders, at a higher, messier level of abstraction. They produce and fight for self-modifying code every time they tweak a law. They are engaged in maximizing their resources on the "motherboard" of society.
So, hopefully, the "swapper" process does a decent enough job of making sure that no thread overcomes the rest.
Not really sure this metaphor is useful. Your more insightful post prompted it.
So, her charicature of a spineless leech of a human is useless simply because she said it?
Her philosophy doesn't do much for me, but her critique of Socialism seems accurate.
Neither political party couches its analysis of the Iraq war in broader historical terms. The fact that there is a planned revolution at the ballot box every few years is both the great strength and the crushing weakness of the US.
Possibly the best we can hope for is that the '08 election demonstrates that the will of the people, wrongheaded as you may argue it be, does matter.
Should ideas be patentable? Sure, particularly if there are sunk costs for physically tangible goods involved. Asked a friend once what he thought the last unprecedented invention was in IT. He said, 'the packet-switched network'. Patenting one-click shopping is like patenting a fantasy novel where a lost prince and friends from a variety of species have to travel dangerous lands to acquire a relic and snuff something evil.
Software patents? Bollocks.
What's intrinsically hellish about computer science?
The problems I see with it are related to the entropy of the human soul. Gets especially painful when the entropy aggregates into organizational behavior.
I, for one, find reading Knuth a delightful escape from Perry Ferrel's observation: "...and the news is just another show / with sex and violence..."
Possibly not the most important issue (which I don't recall claiming), but it certainly ranks up there with the cancerous growth of federal entitlement programs, earmarks, and such.
Unfortunately, the US electorate's collective head remains focused on the irrelevant. Almost as if someone wanted it that way, no?
Strategically, though, the US is comitting seppuku if it allows a few fat cats to patent obvious things, stifle innovation, destroy productivity, and otherwise distract from useful work.
Ellsworth Toohey would be proud of those cretins.
What we have is a great opportunity for a Lessig or a Moglen to lead a peaceful overthrow of a sorry state of affairs.
The software patent issue needs to be driven to the front of 2008 election politics.
This is really about knocking back linux's control of the embedded market through a generalized attack.s p
Fuel prices have radically altered the economics, and some of the patents involved will be used in a new invention that will revolutionize the transportation industry.
Details here:
http://www.snopes.com/autos/business/carburetor.a
When you read that link, remember: False is the new True!
I don't know if it's Cox cable or too much interference, buy I've been having some hellish stability problems lately. May have to go back to wired just so the junk works.