but the question remains: will that result in wiser democratic decisions?
Well, in my view, our government should represent the people, for better or for worse. We are not a democracy if the people, however dumb, do not hold the power. Hopefully they will delegate to those who are much wiser.
If you are a child whose mental capacity is incomplete, others (parents and teachers) can initiate force against you (spanking), even incarcerate you (in your bedroom) without trial.
Children are legal dependents. We're obviously talking about adults of voting age.
If your brain malfunctions, such that you lose your sense of right and wrong, others can initiate force against you, even incarcerate you (in a mental hospital).
Only if you are a physical threat to yourself or others. Your rights are not restricted simply because you are mentally handicapped, but because your handicap has made you a threat.
If your brain is damaged in an accident, or due to old age, and you lose volition, others can initiate force against you, even incarcerate you (in a hospital), even withhold food until you die.
Again, you don't lose your rights simply because you are handicapped, but because you need care and aren't able to handle it yourself.
You're taking the extreme cases and claiming this is standard practice. Basic civil rights should be extended as far as possible, with the exceptions being rare.
What you are advocating is an intelligence test for voting. If that comes to be then who writes the test, or determines how complicated to make the ballot? Those that are in power will decide, and simply limit voting rights to the scale that they see fit to keep them in power. You yourself will eventually be excluded.
After all, what benefit does anybody anyplace get from running our society based on the opinions of people who are too dumb-stupid to solve even a simple concrete problem like "where shall I place an X if I want to vote for candidate Y?"
Even idiots have a right to choose their representatives and president. Fortunately your civil rights are not limited by your mental capacity.
Not really. That wikipedia page was not written by a computer. So it has nothing to do with the semantic web where pages are connected with some form of computer "understanding". Those are humans documenting the semantics, not computers interpreting them.
Social networking links still have no "understanding" for the computer. They just tell you what your friends like, not what they mean.
The only semantics on the web today are human input with no innovative output.
Twine seems to be just a generic contextual search engine, as opposed to a pure keyword search engine. While it's a step, it's a very tiny step.
What I want to see is more about the correlation between topics. For example, if I'm looking into PHP templating and search twine, I get a few people's bookmarks on the topic. Nothing especially useful, and definitely nothing I couldn't find elsewhere. With real semantics I'd want to see a list of various templating engines, pro and con articles grouped for each, and maybe other sections on related design patterns and frameworks.
In other words, I want to see semantics. Context search isn't going to make anyone turn their head.
Typically, with these old systems, adapting to new business needs and adding new functionality are done secondary to the core system. For example, at MasterCard all transactions eventually go through the ancient mainframe system. That feeds daily into a very modern data warehouse, where all the new applications perform reporting and analysis. These newer systems can be changed as often as necessary without any impact to the old mainframes.
Reduced operational costs and reduced consulting fees would very often be offset by the cost of the rewrite and ongoing maintenance of the newer system.
A company can spend a few million dollars rewriting and thoroughly testing a replacement system. Or they can spend less than 10% of that to have one Cobol developer keep the system up and running.
Very often, the old systems have been working smoothly for many years. A rewrite will bring a monstrous amount of headaches and cost, especially for key systems like financial transactions.
At my office we have a few Windows computers just for testing. Those dedicated machines, connected to the internet and with anti-virus, have had a fair amount of issues (suspicious background processes, excessive network usage, etc.). I test with Windows running inside of Parallels, typically only "networking" to localhost, and my copy with no anti-virus has had no problems at all.
So I completely agree with you... even if your post has already been modded flamebait.
So, what's the economic case for sex? What market good does it do?
Child labor. Everything is done for economic value, so when I have kids they're going to run big hamster wheels in my basement to power the house. And when they get tired they can sit and make products that I'll sell over the internet.
I think the more useful solution is multiple wiki's, each geared towards a more specific category of knowledge, and having the appropriate level of requirements for an entry to be considered valid.
That was exactly my thinking when I launched DocForge. Topics for programmers need to have a lot more information than a source like wikipedia can provide. We use some wikipedia articles as a starting point and expand from there. Sometimes opinions, especially pro / con arguments, are preferred for some articles because they provide much more insight than a flat reference. Plus we can collect subjective things like tips that don't belong on wikipedia.
I think this route of categorical wikis is very useful. But unfortunately, you're correct in that most will remain in the shadow of wikipedia for quite some time.
In addition, these should be purely internal systems. So assuming malicious intruders can be kept out, using a separate layer of systems, the risk is greatly reduced.
Certainly there must be a way to offer these "instant on" apps while the rest of the subsystems load in the background. And if that's true then there's no need for an option, just always do it. It sounds like it's only an all-or-nothing proposition because they're copying the way others are currently doing it.
If you cannot answer and account for _every_ detail and circumstance on paper, I do not suggest undertaking something like this.
Actually, if everyone did that for every software project we'd all be a lot better off. Code quality would probably be much higher and maintenance time lower.
At the start of most projects I ask myself if there's an open source application that already exists that fits the requirements very closely. If the requirements are well written (actually, unlikely to significantly change), and an existing CMS fits almost perfectly, I'll use a CMS. But if it looks like additional modules won't do, and I'll have to hack the internals significantly, then I go with a framework.
My company's custom framework gives me something like 80% of what I need to build a simple CMS. Clients are pretty demanding about tweaks. So I've found I'm usually better off building a custom CMS on top of the framework so it's easy to make more custom edits for the client later.
...having served as the leader of the Mambo development team during a critical period of its evolution...
The few times I looked into Mambo code it was horrible. Hopefully his Aliro code is much better.
When it comes to CMSs that I'm building myself, I prefer to use a custom or generic framework and build the CMS completely separate on top of that. As mentioned in this review, there is so much functionality that's generic to all web applications, like basic security. So using a solid base it makes more sense to build the CMS functionality separately.
The new metal 13" macbook is very similar to the pro, just smaller. For a $700 price difference this new model is probably worth it if you don't mind it being a little smaller.
Creative Commons puts out a variety of licenses that have a simple (human readable) version and a complete (legal) version. A logo or link on a site makes it immediately clear which license is being used. The exact same formula would probably work quite well for privacy policies.
Slashdot Mirror
but the question remains: will that result in wiser democratic decisions?
Well, in my view, our government should represent the people, for better or for worse. We are not a democracy if the people, however dumb, do not hold the power. Hopefully they will delegate to those who are much wiser.
So I think we'll just agree to disagree.
If you are a child whose mental capacity is incomplete, others (parents and teachers) can initiate force against you (spanking), even incarcerate you (in your bedroom) without trial.
Children are legal dependents. We're obviously talking about adults of voting age.
If your brain malfunctions, such that you lose your sense of right and wrong, others can initiate force against you, even incarcerate you (in a mental hospital).
Only if you are a physical threat to yourself or others. Your rights are not restricted simply because you are mentally handicapped, but because your handicap has made you a threat.
If your brain is damaged in an accident, or due to old age, and you lose volition, others can initiate force against you, even incarcerate you (in a hospital), even withhold food until you die.
Again, you don't lose your rights simply because you are handicapped, but because you need care and aren't able to handle it yourself.
You're taking the extreme cases and claiming this is standard practice. Basic civil rights should be extended as far as possible, with the exceptions being rare.
What you are advocating is an intelligence test for voting. If that comes to be then who writes the test, or determines how complicated to make the ballot? Those that are in power will decide, and simply limit voting rights to the scale that they see fit to keep them in power. You yourself will eventually be excluded.
After all, what benefit does anybody anyplace get from running our society based on the opinions of people who are too dumb-stupid to solve even a simple concrete problem like "where shall I place an X if I want to vote for candidate Y?"
Even idiots have a right to choose their representatives and president. Fortunately your civil rights are not limited by your mental capacity.
Ah, but does your toaster understant death? Does it question it's place in the universe? Does it ask you why you like your toast extra dark?
If so, I'd be scared of your toaster.
Not really. That wikipedia page was not written by a computer. So it has nothing to do with the semantic web where pages are connected with some form of computer "understanding". Those are humans documenting the semantics, not computers interpreting them.
Social networking links still have no "understanding" for the computer. They just tell you what your friends like, not what they mean.
The only semantics on the web today are human input with no innovative output.
Twine seems to be just a generic contextual search engine, as opposed to a pure keyword search engine. While it's a step, it's a very tiny step.
What I want to see is more about the correlation between topics. For example, if I'm looking into PHP templating and search twine, I get a few people's bookmarks on the topic. Nothing especially useful, and definitely nothing I couldn't find elsewhere. With real semantics I'd want to see a list of various templating engines, pro and con articles grouped for each, and maybe other sections on related design patterns and frameworks.
In other words, I want to see semantics. Context search isn't going to make anyone turn their head.
Amazon a-bombs, Ballmer bombers, Slashdot submarines?
Typically, with these old systems, adapting to new business needs and adding new functionality are done secondary to the core system. For example, at MasterCard all transactions eventually go through the ancient mainframe system. That feeds daily into a very modern data warehouse, where all the new applications perform reporting and analysis. These newer systems can be changed as often as necessary without any impact to the old mainframes.
Reduced operational costs and reduced consulting fees would very often be offset by the cost of the rewrite and ongoing maintenance of the newer system.
Ok, Here's The Joke... And Here's You
Joke -----> *whoosh*
O <--- You
--|--
|
/ \
To learn how to program on Linux years ago I scrapped together some used computer parts, put together a Linux system, and dove into code.
So to learn Cobol I guess I'd go dumpster diving for a mainframe. Hopefully one with some code left on it.
A company can spend a few million dollars rewriting and thoroughly testing a replacement system. Or they can spend less than 10% of that to have one Cobol developer keep the system up and running.
Very often, the old systems have been working smoothly for many years. A rewrite will bring a monstrous amount of headaches and cost, especially for key systems like financial transactions.
At my office we have a few Windows computers just for testing. Those dedicated machines, connected to the internet and with anti-virus, have had a fair amount of issues (suspicious background processes, excessive network usage, etc.). I test with Windows running inside of Parallels, typically only "networking" to localhost, and my copy with no anti-virus has had no problems at all.
So I completely agree with you... even if your post has already been modded flamebait.
So, what's the economic case for sex? What market good does it do?
Child labor. Everything is done for economic value, so when I have kids they're going to run big hamster wheels in my basement to power the house. And when they get tired they can sit and make products that I'll sell over the internet.
I think the more useful solution is multiple wiki's, each geared towards a more specific category of knowledge, and having the appropriate level of requirements for an entry to be considered valid.
That was exactly my thinking when I launched DocForge. Topics for programmers need to have a lot more information than a source like wikipedia can provide. We use some wikipedia articles as a starting point and expand from there. Sometimes opinions, especially pro / con arguments, are preferred for some articles because they provide much more insight than a flat reference. Plus we can collect subjective things like tips that don't belong on wikipedia.
I think this route of categorical wikis is very useful. But unfortunately, you're correct in that most will remain in the shadow of wikipedia for quite some time.
In addition, these should be purely internal systems. So assuming malicious intruders can be kept out, using a separate layer of systems, the risk is greatly reduced.
you don't need to post when you've got nothing to say.
And yet here we are...
Certainly there must be a way to offer these "instant on" apps while the rest of the subsystems load in the background. And if that's true then there's no need for an option, just always do it. It sounds like it's only an all-or-nothing proposition because they're copying the way others are currently doing it.
If you cannot answer and account for _every_ detail and circumstance on paper, I do not suggest undertaking something like this.
Actually, if everyone did that for every software project we'd all be a lot better off. Code quality would probably be much higher and maintenance time lower.
At the start of most projects I ask myself if there's an open source application that already exists that fits the requirements very closely. If the requirements are well written (actually, unlikely to significantly change), and an existing CMS fits almost perfectly, I'll use a CMS. But if it looks like additional modules won't do, and I'll have to hack the internals significantly, then I go with a framework.
My company's custom framework gives me something like 80% of what I need to build a simple CMS. Clients are pretty demanding about tweaks. So I've found I'm usually better off building a custom CMS on top of the framework so it's easy to make more custom edits for the client later.
The part I have to work on now is making the site much more efficient to the average user (IE faster page generation times, fewer queries, etc)
Here's some performance tips for a starting point. Assuming no major database bottlenecks, be sure to look outside your code for quicker page rendering, starting with gzip compression and tweaking KeepAlive.
As for real load testing the only useful services I've found cost serious money.
...having served as the leader of the Mambo development team during a critical period of its evolution...
The few times I looked into Mambo code it was horrible. Hopefully his Aliro code is much better.
When it comes to CMSs that I'm building myself, I prefer to use a custom or generic framework and build the CMS completely separate on top of that. As mentioned in this review, there is so much functionality that's generic to all web applications, like basic security. So using a solid base it makes more sense to build the CMS functionality separately.
The new metal 13" macbook is very similar to the pro, just smaller. For a $700 price difference this new model is probably worth it if you don't mind it being a little smaller.
You made me look up the video. I want the last 6 minutes and 41 seconds of my life back.
Creative Commons puts out a variety of licenses that have a simple (human readable) version and a complete (legal) version. A logo or link on a site makes it immediately clear which license is being used. The exact same formula would probably work quite well for privacy policies.
Agreed. With everything else going on only a tiny portion of the public would care to hear about this issue.
"Glenn Derene is puzzled"? Really?