I've worked as a developer at several IT corporations, and I've noticed that there are very few black geeks.
The blacks that did work for any of the companies typically worked in HR or Sales.
I don't think that the problem is that direct racism is keeping blacks out of tech fields, but that there just aren't a whole lot of blacks who are into tech.
At the last LUG install-fest that I attended, most of the members and visitors were predominantly whites and asians (and a Peruvian Indian?? -- A visiting compsci professor). No blacks?
When I take classes or attend training - No blacks?
The only black geek I ever met worked for a bank. Sadly, he was a VB developer - albiet a pretty good one.
It seems odd that there aren't more blacks in tech fields. Even crappy inner-city schools do not seem like a good reason for their under-representation -- I've worked with developers, sys admins, and network techs who didn't have college degrees, and even a few who didn't graduate high school, for cripes sake!
I'd like to know how many black slashdot readers there are, and what their thoughts on the above are.
"1. In the Age of Gold, the people were not conscious of their rulers; in the
Age of Silver, they loved them, with songs; in the Age of Brass, they
feared them; in the Age of Iron, they despised them. As the
rulers((becoming self-conscious.)) lost confidence, so also did the
people lose confidence in them."
"2. How hesitating did they seem, the Lords of the Age of Gold, speaking with
deliberation, aware of the weight of their word! Thus they accomplished
all things with success; and the people deemed their well-being to be the
natural course of events."
People tend to vote for politicians who promise
to "get things done."
The things that the government(s) "get done" are the source of more problems, sometimes even more severe than the original problem.
Yet, people will still turn to the government to correct the new problem.
The growth of government into tyranny is probably inevitable, given the factors above.
This will remain a problem until the mindset of a citizenry evolves to the point where they realized that the best course action for a government usually involves doing Nothing.
People create operating systems. Thus, operating systems suck.
If a programmer who sucks starts to program on a computer that sucks with an operating system that sucks using a language that sucks in an office environment that sucks while drinking coffee that sucks while reviewing a requirements document that sucks because the language skills of management sucks, then what is the mostly likely end result of his/her effort?
It's freakin' remarkable when anybody does anything right, let alone well, when the banality of the whole suck-ass world is trying to drag you down.
The most interesting thing about the Renaissance is that it marked the end of a long period in Europe in which all technological progress (except possibly military) had ceased/stagnated.
This shift did not occur overnight but gradually, albiet at a speedy pace.
The Renaissance wasn't brought about by any technology, but rather trade and by the contact with foreign cultures that trade brought.
Lack of stimulating trade and contact caused by Feudal goverments and cultures were the primary cause of the "Dark Ages". Even the relatively metropolitan Byzantine Empire had little contact with outsiders beyond military encounters.
Trade created wealth that allowed people to pursue Art, Science, Philosophy, etc, as it had before with the Greeks and Romans.
The technological innovations of the Renaissance (such as the printing press) were results of wealth.
Making analogies between the Renaissance/Printing Press and Modern/Interent is only looking at it in the most shallow way.
The Industrial Revolution began the pace of trade, manufacturing and wealth as it exists (at an even greater pace) today. Even in the earliest days of the I.R. trade was occuring at a rate which would dazzle a Medici.
The prosperity that we see in most nations is a result of 100+ years of Industrial Revolution and machinery-enabled trade. The Internet is a result of this.
Expecting the Internet to bring about a new Renaissance is putting the cart before the horse. The Renaissance is still with us... it never ended.
Governments of any level from local to national typically do not understand (or won't acknowledge) any but the most obvious (or tittilating) cause-and-effect relationships.
Witness the recycling efforts of the Suburban US during the eighties: Many local governments implemented mandatory glass/aluminum/paper recycling programs, with the idea that the revenues collected from the recycled materials would offset the cost of the program. Practically all of them failed to foresee the Invisible Hand driving the revenues down from the hugely-increased supply.
Many governments and private interests have tried to conserve energy and save money by making buildings more weather-proof. Not a bad idea, but these invariably led to a lack of ventilation which assists in turning the building into playground for bacteria and the exposing of occupants to higher levels of interior pollutants. The costs of "Sick Building Syndrome" often more than offset the money & energy saved.
Governments often try to smooth the flow of automobile traffic and increase safety by creating freeways, autobahns, bypasses, etc. These newer routes end up encouraging people to just drive faster, nullifying any safety gains. The inlets & outlets from the new route invariably bog down the traffic on it, anyway.
Polical and social endeavors are filled with examples such as the above. All of these have/had fine intent, but all of them backfired, creating new problems.
What's my point? I'm not sure I really have one. But so it goes.
www.irs.ustreas.gov - Nicely done. Simple yet amusing design. I never knew paying taxes could be so fun(?) And all those downloadable forms and publication! I love downloading free documentation, even if it is for tax publications. Too bad I always feel like I'm somehow being monitored at this site...
www.navy.mil - Another nice one. Effective use of HTML, w/o alot of distracting crap.
www.state.pa.us - ??? Am I supposed to be buying something, here? Nice use of CSS, though.
www.jpl.nasa.gov - Not a whole lot of substance, but nice-looking and easy to navigate.
Simpler tends to be better. And more accessible! Check out w3c's guidelines for tips on accesibility for people with disabilities.
The home of any geek in the middle class neighborhood of Latrobe, PA, should have at least 4 computers, one of which must be a 386 or lesser model.
The basement apartment of Art XIV, rented for two-hundred dollars a month from his great-aunt, prominently features a Mac Plus computer that silently greets vistors from one corner of the living room.
"I just don't have the heart to throw it out, even though the power supply burned out nine years ago." says Art, a Pittsburgh-area web-developer/whore.
Visitors are also greeted by a human-sized plastic blow-up replica of Godzilla. Not the big Iguana in NY one, but the dance-and-shimmy-while destroying-Tokyo Godzilla.
"That piece is a real conversation-starter. I got it a few years back at a Cracker Barrel."
Many visitors are also startled to find nearly every piece of furniture covered with boxes. Boxes and boxes filled with books and magazines.
"This, " explains Art, "is my personal filing system. This box contains all of my old 'Dragon' magazines... every issue since #56. This box is full of books on Apple II computers. This box is full of U.S. Army field manuals and survival guides. You never know when this box will come in handy...
The apartment, though full of interesting items, is poorly-lit and smells moldy. An unhealthy-looking cat coughs dryly from a spot between boxes.
"That's not a problem. All of my friends like to come over here for gaming on Friday nights. They call my place the 'Bat-Cave'
History shows us that poor quality control can be overcome by effective marketing.
Crappy product? No prob! Make some clever commercials and keep a well-compensated sales and marketing staff!
I've been part of several races against completely artibitrary deadlines, (how do execs come up with these?) and have happily survived in a merely broken but not dead condition.
Having taken part in the creation of something crappy makes me consider other career options. A crap project that could have been killer with a little more time... now that's a heart-breaker.
The Open Source movement is (at least in part) an expression of rebellion against the "Ship Now, Test Later" IT/corporate sentiment.
But this problem isn't unique to IT, as the article shows. I just can't wait for the "Ship Now, Test Later" sentiment to be used in bio-tech! Wheeee!
There are two technological paradigms that aren't explained adequately in the mini-series or the David Lynch movie, and the lack of adequate explanation may puzzle those who haven't read the book:
In the Dune mythos, "thinking machines", i.e. robots and computers, are either banned or regarded as an abomination. Neither screen adaptation mentioned this, as far as I can remember.
In the Dune mythos, much fighting is done with knives and low-tech weaponry due to... shields! The shields stop any object that is going beyond a certain speed. Lasers and shields didn't mix in the mythos, either. These shields are seen in both screen versions, but their functionality is never explained.
Overall, I like the mini-series, though. Chani is one sexy babe!
Analyzing the effects of Video Games on youth is about.05% more useful than analyzing the effects of those big, baggy-ass pants alot of them like wear.
So teens think that older generations are dumb? Wow! I remember thinking that when I was a teen! I guess I have alot more in common with teens than they think I do. But of course, after my emancipation from my parents and the assumption of financial responsibility for myself, I began to realize that my parents weren't quite as dumb as I thought they were.
A casual assessment of teens today reveals... nothing. They are just just as vapid and senseless as when I was a teenager!
The time that teens spend playing video games makes them (drumroll, please) good at video games!!
Give kids a freakin' break, already! Quit analyzing them to death! They will become adults soon enough.
<SARCASM>
Don't you realize that this is just another effort by the evil United States Armed Forces to disenfranchise women? To keep women from being an effective voting block by padding them out with foreigners?</SARCASM>
For good or for ill (probably for ill), the Federal government has been taking power away from the states since about two days before the Constitution was ratified. In spite of the 10th Amendment.
Citizens choose candidates based upon the promises of "getting something done", "stopping something," "giving you something" that candidates make.
Invariably, these promises step on the toes of the states, who are either trying to do the same thing, do the opposite, or do nothing at all.
Statism, as opposed to Federalism, is a simple result of the tendency of voters to give away their votes for a buck or a sentiment, sometimes both.
Either quit bitching about the Feds, or learn to vote for candidates who promise to do nothing.
The mini-series seems to come off as being a lot less corny than the movie.
The new Dune seems a lot closer to the spirit of the novel than the movie, which I though was a bit too "Desert-Punk".
I remember seeing the movie with one of my friends when it was released. We left the theater laughing, though not bitterly disappointed. What was up with Paul & the Fremen riding the worms with "Queen" music in the background?
Oh, well. Dune is a splendid classic and it's good to see it given another chance.
The novel(s) I really want to see turned into a movie(s) is Ringworld and Ringworld Engineers! Now that would kick ass!
The real issue here is that certain individuals feel that their language is their culture and that the "uniqueness" of their culture is threatened by outside influences.
People who obsess over Cultural Purity need to get a life.
I'm not saying that cultures are irrelevant, but cultures only matter as they exist at the current moment. A culture's past and present are merely academic concerns.
An indivual culture, much like an individual human, is only healthy as long as it is changing, at whatever pace. The process of growing, adapting, and learning is the very essence of what makes us human beings.
Languages change because the people who speak it are exposed to new influences. They occassionaly need new words to express new concepts, describe new items, or to better differentiate existing ones.
It's not wrong to borrow a word from another language to serve one of the above purposes, by any ethical or objective standard.
English and English dialects are largely composed of words that didn't have an origin with the English. A typical English speaker uses thousands of word that have Latin, Greek, German, French, Arabic, and other roots.
English and most other major languages lose many words from their vocabularies as time passes, but new ones - begged, borrowed, stolen or created - spring into place.
Worrying about the fact that languages change due to foreign ifluences seems to me to have origins in Elitism, Xenophobia, rather than a simple fear of change.
If anything, an interest in the alien & alien vocabularies, and the adaptation of a few terms, is a sign of a healthy and vibrant culture.
Most humans are more than happy to use a "foreign" word for something new if is reasonably easy to pronouce and "sounds" right.
The fact that English technical vocabularies are influencing other languages isn't a sign of Neo-Colonialism so much as a sign that items that they describe happened to originate in English-speaking nations.
And don't confuse culture (as in anthropology) with Culture (as in Arts & Literature). Culture is a product of a culture. Most the great stuff from Culture can be adapted or understood with a little help. Shakespeare has been translated into many languages. Dostoyevsky has been translated into most languages. Kurosawa is available with sub-titles. Music and Art don't need translation.
A lack of growth and change equals stagnation. Stagnation equals death and uselessness.
How many of you have ever been there? I've never been there, but I've seen it in National Geographic, and it looks nice. Kind of like Florida.
And what's all this nonsense about Sun trying to control Java? How could they ever hope to wrestle it away from Indonesia? They have to give Solaris away, for Pete's sake!
Why in HELL would you vote for a person who wants to hold office, anyway? What are you thinking?
A strong lust for polical office immediately makes an individual suspect in my mind. Maybe I'm just paranoid, by why aren't you?
Most of the character traits that people regard as positive, such as honesty, humility, loyalty, etc., become flaws that will prevent a candidate from competing effectively with someone who doesn't possess them.
Certainly our Republic has as good a form of government as many other nations, and one that is better than most. But there has got to be a better way.
I think we'd be better off, and almost certainly no worse off, just randomly selecting people to hold office. Yep, with the nutjobs and all. How scary is a legislative body composed of mostly ordinary people with average intelligence randomly selected from the populace versus a legislative body composed of prostituting lawyers who clawed their way into it?
Re:I agree with premise of The New Geography
on
The New Geography
·
· Score: 1
hmm...
I can't believe that somebody actually took this posting seriously, and modded me down to boot.
I'll try to be less subtle next time.
Meantime, you try to be a little less serious, okay? It's bad for the colon.
A government (yes, even a Polish one) has to tax something now, doesn't it? How else can can a government stay in existence long enough to start wars, arrest people for now wearing seatbelts, and collect more taxes?
A governing body or entity can tax pretty much anything it wants --
Smiling at monkeys.
Use of the color teal.
Body Odor.
Thoughts of sex with persons between the ages of 16 and 18.
Asparagus
The trick is avoid making inordinately large numbers of people feel like they are being singled out, unless the majority of people feel that this group is "bad" or is doing something "bad", like evil, rotten tobacco users (here in the US).
Taxing free software? SCREW YOU! Give up the money, "citizen"!
Slashdot Mirror
I've worked as a developer at several IT corporations, and I've noticed that there are very few black geeks.
The blacks that did work for any of the companies typically worked in HR or Sales.
I don't think that the problem is that direct racism is keeping blacks out of tech fields, but that there just aren't a whole lot of blacks who are into tech.
At the last LUG install-fest that I attended, most of the members and visitors were predominantly whites and asians (and a Peruvian Indian?? -- A visiting compsci professor). No blacks?
When I take classes or attend training - No blacks?
The only black geek I ever met worked for a bank. Sadly, he was a VB developer - albiet a pretty good one.
It seems odd that there aren't more blacks in tech fields. Even crappy inner-city schools do not seem like a good reason for their under-representation -- I've worked with developers, sys admins, and network techs who didn't have college degrees, and even a few who didn't graduate high school, for cripes sake!
I'd like to know how many black slashdot readers there are, and what their thoughts on the above are.
From the Tao Te Ching:
People tend to vote for politicians who promise to "get things done."
The things that the government(s) "get done" are the source of more problems, sometimes even more severe than the original problem.
Yet, people will still turn to the government to correct the new problem.
The growth of government into tyranny is probably inevitable, given the factors above.
This will remain a problem until the mindset of a citizenry evolves to the point where they realized that the best course action for a government usually involves doing Nothing.
People suck.
People design computers. So, computers suck.
People create operating systems. Thus, operating systems suck.
If a programmer who sucks starts to program on a computer that sucks with an operating system that sucks using a language that sucks in an office environment that sucks while drinking coffee that sucks while reviewing a requirements document that sucks because the language skills of management sucks, then what is the mostly likely end result of his/her effort?
It's freakin' remarkable when anybody does anything right, let alone well, when the banality of the whole suck-ass world is trying to drag you down.
The most interesting thing about the Renaissance is that it marked the end of a long period in Europe in which all technological progress (except possibly military) had ceased/stagnated.
This shift did not occur overnight but gradually, albiet at a speedy pace.
The Renaissance wasn't brought about by any technology, but rather trade and by the contact with foreign cultures that trade brought.
Lack of stimulating trade and contact caused by Feudal goverments and cultures were the primary cause of the "Dark Ages". Even the relatively metropolitan Byzantine Empire had little contact with outsiders beyond military encounters.
Trade created wealth that allowed people to pursue Art, Science, Philosophy, etc, as it had before with the Greeks and Romans.
The technological innovations of the Renaissance (such as the printing press) were results of wealth.
Making analogies between the Renaissance/Printing Press and Modern/Interent is only looking at it in the most shallow way.
The Industrial Revolution began the pace of trade, manufacturing and wealth as it exists (at an even greater pace) today. Even in the earliest days of the I.R. trade was occuring at a rate which would dazzle a Medici.
The prosperity that we see in most nations is a result of 100+ years of Industrial Revolution and machinery-enabled trade. The Internet is a result of this.
Expecting the Internet to bring about a new Renaissance is putting the cart before the horse. The Renaissance is still with us... it never ended.
This is pretty typical.
Governments of any level from local to national typically do not understand (or won't acknowledge) any but the most obvious (or tittilating) cause-and-effect relationships.
Witness the recycling efforts of the Suburban US during the eighties: Many local governments implemented mandatory glass/aluminum/paper recycling programs, with the idea that the revenues collected from the recycled materials would offset the cost of the program. Practically all of them failed to foresee the Invisible Hand driving the revenues down from the hugely-increased supply.
Many governments and private interests have tried to conserve energy and save money by making buildings more weather-proof. Not a bad idea, but these invariably led to a lack of ventilation which assists in turning the building into playground for bacteria and the exposing of occupants to higher levels of interior pollutants. The costs of "Sick Building Syndrome" often more than offset the money & energy saved.
Governments often try to smooth the flow of automobile traffic and increase safety by creating freeways, autobahns, bypasses, etc. These newer routes end up encouraging people to just drive faster, nullifying any safety gains. The inlets & outlets from the new route invariably bog down the traffic on it, anyway.
Polical and social endeavors are filled with examples such as the above. All of these have/had fine intent, but all of them backfired, creating new problems.
What's my point? I'm not sure I really have one. But so it goes.
www.irs.ustreas.gov - Nicely done. Simple yet amusing design. I never knew paying taxes could be so fun(?) And all those downloadable forms and publication! I love downloading free documentation, even if it is for tax publications. Too bad I always feel like I'm somehow being monitored at this site...
www.navy.mil - Another nice one. Effective use of HTML, w/o alot of distracting crap.
www.state.pa.us - ??? Am I supposed to be buying something, here? Nice use of CSS, though.
www.jpl.nasa.gov - Not a whole lot of substance, but nice-looking and easy to navigate.
Simpler tends to be better. And more accessible! Check out w3c's guidelines for tips on accesibility for people with disabilities.
The home of any geek in the middle class neighborhood of Latrobe, PA, should have at least 4 computers, one of which must be a 386 or lesser model.
The basement apartment of Art XIV, rented for two-hundred dollars a month from his great-aunt, prominently features a Mac Plus computer that silently greets vistors from one corner of the living room.
"I just don't have the heart to throw it out, even though the power supply burned out nine years ago." says Art, a Pittsburgh-area web-developer/whore.
Visitors are also greeted by a human-sized plastic blow-up replica of Godzilla. Not the big Iguana in NY one, but the dance-and-shimmy-while destroying-Tokyo Godzilla.
"That piece is a real conversation-starter. I got it a few years back at a Cracker Barrel."
Many visitors are also startled to find nearly every piece of furniture covered with boxes. Boxes and boxes filled with books and magazines.
"This, " explains Art, "is my personal filing system. This box contains all of my old 'Dragon' magazines... every issue since #56. This box is full of books on Apple II computers. This box is full of U.S. Army field manuals and survival guides. You never know when this box will come in handy...
The apartment, though full of interesting items, is poorly-lit and smells moldy. An unhealthy-looking cat coughs dryly from a spot between boxes.
"That's not a problem. All of my friends like to come over here for gaming on Friday nights. They call my place the 'Bat-Cave'
And what do the ladies think of Art's castle?
"I wouldn't know."
History shows us that poor quality control can be overcome by effective marketing.
Crappy product? No prob! Make some clever commercials and keep a well-compensated sales and marketing staff!
I've been part of several races against completely artibitrary deadlines, (how do execs come up with these?) and have happily survived in a merely broken but not dead condition.
Having taken part in the creation of something crappy makes me consider other career options. A crap project that could have been killer with a little more time... now that's a heart-breaker.
The Open Source movement is (at least in part) an expression of rebellion against the "Ship Now, Test Later" IT/corporate sentiment.
But this problem isn't unique to IT, as the article shows. I just can't wait for the "Ship Now, Test Later" sentiment to be used in bio-tech! Wheeee!
There are two technological paradigms that aren't explained adequately in the mini-series or the David Lynch movie, and the lack of adequate explanation may puzzle those who haven't read the book:
In the Dune mythos, "thinking machines", i.e. robots and computers, are either banned or regarded as an abomination. Neither screen adaptation mentioned this, as far as I can remember.
In the Dune mythos, much fighting is done with knives and low-tech weaponry due to... shields! The shields stop any object that is going beyond a certain speed. Lasers and shields didn't mix in the mythos, either. These shields are seen in both screen versions, but their functionality is never explained.
Overall, I like the mini-series, though. Chani is one sexy babe!
$posting =~ s/They are just as/Most of them are jus as/ :)
Analyzing the effects of Video Games on youth is about .05% more useful than analyzing the effects of those big, baggy-ass pants alot of them like wear.
So teens think that older generations are dumb? Wow! I remember thinking that when I was a teen! I guess I have alot more in common with teens than they think I do. But of course, after my emancipation from my parents and the assumption of financial responsibility for myself, I began to realize that my parents weren't quite as dumb as I thought they were.
A casual assessment of teens today reveals... nothing. They are just just as vapid and senseless as when I was a teenager!
The time that teens spend playing video games makes them (drumroll, please) good at video games!!
Give kids a freakin' break, already! Quit analyzing them to death! They will become adults soon enough.
I bought the 3rd Edition of Programming Perl, and I think it is a much-needed revision. Better organized.
Python is still replacing Perl in my work, though.
I'm going to miss CPAN, though. CPAN and Larry Wall are Perl's best features.
<SARCASM> Don't you realize that this is just another effort by the evil United States Armed Forces to disenfranchise women? To keep women from being an effective voting block by padding them out with foreigners?</SARCASM>
<SARCASM> tags provided for the irony-challenged.
Really? I don't know if that's better or worse. ;)
I should have said "Queen"-style
For good or for ill (probably for ill), the Federal government has been taking power away from the states since about two days before the Constitution was ratified. In spite of the 10th Amendment.
Citizens choose candidates based upon the promises of "getting something done", "stopping something," "giving you something" that candidates make.
Invariably, these promises step on the toes of the states, who are either trying to do the same thing, do the opposite, or do nothing at all.
Statism, as opposed to Federalism, is a simple result of the tendency of voters to give away their votes for a buck or a sentiment, sometimes both.
Either quit bitching about the Feds, or learn to vote for candidates who promise to do nothing.
The mini-series seems to come off as being a lot less corny than the movie.
The new Dune seems a lot closer to the spirit of the novel than the movie, which I though was a bit too "Desert-Punk".
I remember seeing the movie with one of my friends when it was released. We left the theater laughing, though not bitterly disappointed. What was up with Paul & the Fremen riding the worms with "Queen" music in the background?
Oh, well. Dune is a splendid classic and it's good to see it given another chance.
The novel(s) I really want to see turned into a movie(s) is Ringworld and Ringworld Engineers! Now that would kick ass!
The real issue here is that certain individuals feel that their language is their culture and that the "uniqueness" of their culture is threatened by outside influences.
People who obsess over Cultural Purity need to get a life.
I'm not saying that cultures are irrelevant, but cultures only matter as they exist at the current moment. A culture's past and present are merely academic concerns.
An indivual culture, much like an individual human, is only healthy as long as it is changing, at whatever pace. The process of growing, adapting, and learning is the very essence of what makes us human beings.
Languages change because the people who speak it are exposed to new influences. They occassionaly need new words to express new concepts, describe new items, or to better differentiate existing ones.
It's not wrong to borrow a word from another language to serve one of the above purposes, by any ethical or objective standard.
English and English dialects are largely composed of words that didn't have an origin with the English. A typical English speaker uses thousands of word that have Latin, Greek, German, French, Arabic, and other roots.
"Academy", "discourse", "ninja", "karma", "rendevous", "liason", "justice", "nocturnal", "science", "biology", "pow-wow", "siesta", "canoe", "library", etc...
English and most other major languages lose many words from their vocabularies as time passes, but new ones - begged, borrowed, stolen or created - spring into place.
Worrying about the fact that languages change due to foreign ifluences seems to me to have origins in Elitism, Xenophobia, rather than a simple fear of change.
If anything, an interest in the alien & alien vocabularies, and the adaptation of a few terms, is a sign of a healthy and vibrant culture.
Most humans are more than happy to use a "foreign" word for something new if is reasonably easy to pronouce and "sounds" right.
The fact that English technical vocabularies are influencing other languages isn't a sign of Neo-Colonialism so much as a sign that items that they describe happened to originate in English-speaking nations.
"Lookit!! It's a 'microprocessor'!" (btw - Mikros = greek, processus = latin)
And don't confuse culture (as in anthropology) with Culture (as in Arts & Literature). Culture is a product of a culture. Most the great stuff from Culture can be adapted or understood with a little help. Shakespeare has been translated into many languages. Dostoyevsky has been translated into most languages. Kurosawa is available with sub-titles. Music and Art don't need translation.
A lack of growth and change equals stagnation. Stagnation equals death and uselessness.
Solid facts, red pen, but they can't be adequately considered without pondering the effects of the common Chinese written language. :)
I don't understand all these put-downs of Java.
How many of you have ever been there? I've never been there, but I've seen it in National Geographic, and it looks nice. Kind of like Florida.
And what's all this nonsense about Sun trying to control Java? How could they ever hope to wrestle it away from Indonesia? They have to give Solaris away, for Pete's sake!
- Roseanne Rosannadanna
Why in HELL would you vote for a person who wants to hold office, anyway? What are you thinking?
A strong lust for polical office immediately makes an individual suspect in my mind. Maybe I'm just paranoid, by why aren't you?
Most of the character traits that people regard as positive, such as honesty, humility, loyalty, etc., become flaws that will prevent a candidate from competing effectively with someone who doesn't possess them.
Certainly our Republic has as good a form of government as many other nations, and one that is better than most. But there has got to be a better way.
I think we'd be better off, and almost certainly no worse off, just randomly selecting people to hold office. Yep, with the nutjobs and all. How scary is a legislative body composed of mostly ordinary people with average intelligence randomly selected from the populace versus a legislative body composed of prostituting lawyers who clawed their way into it?
hmm...
I can't believe that somebody actually took this posting seriously, and modded me down to boot.
I'll try to be less subtle next time.
Meantime, you try to be a little less serious, okay? It's bad for the colon.
Quit yer damn bitchin'!
A government (yes, even a Polish one) has to tax something now, doesn't it? How else can can a government stay in existence long enough to start wars, arrest people for now wearing seatbelts, and collect more taxes?
A governing body or entity can tax pretty much anything it wants --
The trick is avoid making inordinately large numbers of people feel like they are being singled out, unless the majority of people feel that this group is "bad" or is doing something "bad", like evil, rotten tobacco users (here in the US).
Taxing free software? SCREW YOU! Give up the money, "citizen"!
Harry Browne for President, 2004
A wise and thoughtful reply... much better than the previous one.
The subject was "tempted" because I did actually vote for Browne, whom I had favored all along.
Thank you for helping me make my case! :)
Don't bother wasting any of your brain power trying to understand why your reply was ironic.
Just pull that "Democrat" lever...