Pure, like "ethnic cleansing" is pure? Anything can be rationalized to have a good motive. To judge someone or something you have to look behind their motives and evaluate their agenda and actions by some external standard of morality (such as your own, or the one the church supposedly espouses). There is an old proverb that expresses this succinctly: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
So yes, I agree that they are after souls, but to control in this life, not to free in another. -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
It's not emotional, it's a matter of statistics. I know probably hundreds of people who had a public education, and most of them are well adjusted people. I know about half a dozen who were home schooled, and they are all a little messed up. If there is any superiority complex involved, it is in my definition of "messed up".
Obviously my experience is not a valid statistical model, but it is enough to convince me that the home schooling agenda is seriously myopic. I'm not saying that it isn't possible to raise a well adjusted child who is home schooled, but it seems to me that home schooling movement itself is self-selecting for parents incapable of raising well adjusted children. -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
I recently saw Episode I for the first time. What a steaming pile of bantha fodder! It turned all the depth in the backstory of the first three movies into a lame comic book for children. Jar-jar, mystic technobabble, ethnic stereotypes, and "oh, isn't little Hitler^10 so cute!"... The only reason I kept watching it was to critique the special effects, and to see how whathisface eats it while fighting Darth Maul. Even that was lame.
The only way Lucus could earn my respect now is if Episode II goes straight-to-video. -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Your first reason isn't valid either. Jealousy is a form of incompetence. If a manager can't deal with the fact that the market dictates that an underling make more than he does, then he really can't be all that good. -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Watching the highlights episode recently on PBS, I was reminded just how distinctive his pronunciation was. It isn't the phrase that is so Sagan-esque, but the way you're suppost to say it. And, damn, does he say the world "billion" a lot. -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
With all else being equal (such as familiarity with the tools), anyone who knows the Big-O of heapsort, and can demonstate how that is derived, is going to be a far more competant programmer than someone who simply knows the Collections framework in java.util.*
Learning languages is trivial. Learning tools is trivial. Sure, it takes time, but you are far better off hiring the competent CS grad over the less competant CIS grad who has experience with the technology du jour. Knowledge of theory and programming skill exist across technologies, and it is far cheaper to train a good programmer on the tools in question rather than train someone who's only got the certifications into how to be a good programmer.
Yes, CS and programming are not the same, but good programmers are going to be far more interested in CS (or math, or engineering, or science) than CIS. -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Yes, because as we all know, breaking and entering a public building and disabling censorship software are morally equivalent acts. I say the little punk deserves the chair. -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Because the elves are a bunch of elitist punks, who'd rather see Middle Earth trashed than to risk their precious, immortal hides. They don't even necessarily want Sauron defeated, because destroying the One Ring destroys the three elven rings. It had to be someone as humble as a hobbit, as anyone powerful would have been corrupted by the ring and brought the attention of Sauron. For a children's book, it was certainly a little too complex for you... -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
And how many of those projects really matter? Do you know how large the software industry is? Do you realize how many commercial products and in-house systems there are that don't follow good development and testing guidelines?
There are two ways you get quality in software: have developers who feel proud about their work and put as much quality in it as time allows, and have developers who are paid to put quality in their software it by management who has enough sense to think beyond a single quarter's expenses.
Right now, the former is a superset of the latter and is probably ten times the size, if not more. In open source projects, the lack of money means everything is by the former, so you end up with really high quality stuff, like Linux and Apache, or crufty stuff that pays a lot of attention to testing, like gcc, perl, and XFree86. It makes perfect sense, since you gotta love what you're doing to work on something for free, or at least, for a fraction of what you could make as a hired gun.
Sure, you also have all the dreck on freshmeat. But since no one was paid to write the dreck, there really is no loss. Most of us are not under the illusion that a weekend project is comparible to production-quality software. Besides, the yung'uns have to start somewhere.
-- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
You troll, that's a bunch of FUD. You can read Intel's official statement on their website. -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Re:why abandonware doesn't work like you want it t
on
Warez and Abandonware
·
· Score: 1
First thing I remember was askin' the CEO, "Why?",
For there were many things I didn't know.
And he always smiled; shook me by the hand,
Sayin', "Someday you'll understand."
CHORUS:
Well, I'm here to tell you now each and ev'ry corporate gun
You better learn it fast; you better learn it young,
'Cause, someday never comes.
apologies to John Fogerty:-) -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Re:I know I'll be modded down, but bear with me he
on
Warez and Abandonware
·
· Score: 1
If you can't defend it, you don't own it. Sorry, physics trumps man's law and that fantasy of "natural" law. Any notion of property rights is ideology, and your ideology is just an opinion.
Refute me, putain de karma, without using lame platitudes, emotional appeals, or the word "period". -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Re:Technology isnt everything - competition drives
on
The Renaissance
·
· Score: 1
Probably Guns, Germs, and Steel. -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
I recommend that anyone whose knee-jerk reaction is to flame the above post to read The Transparent Society, by David Brin. It's great book, and unless you're dense as a brick, it will challenge your assumptions on privacy, anonymity, and the role of the citizen on keeping his government and fellow citizens honest. -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Well, duh, Microsoft owns the copyright to text written by the company, but preventing the redistribution of product failure reports?
Geez, isn't that a bit like a car manufacturer notifying the public that their latest SUVs flip over and explode, but preventing anyone from redistributing that notice? Has the software industry become so corrupt that our failure notices are now considered revenue generators and exclusive property?*
What next, a EULA on their website that reads "By using this website, you agree not to disclose the details of these failures to third parties. This information is confidential, and only available to licensees of Microsoft products".
* I forgot about the $90/hour tech support. I called Mickey$oft once to confirm that the behavior I was seeing was in fact a bug in IIS, and the wanker tried to charge me because he offered a half-assed workaround. Then it shows up as one of these bug reports on their website the next day (oh geez, it exists in 5.0 too!). They knew about the bug beforehand, as he had the workaround almost immediately, but did not publish until the prospect of someone else identifying and publishing the bug came up. My experience, and this current issue, says to me that Microsoft is only interested in spin control. -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
And some wanker with a trust fund could buy and sell your ass. Wow, all that hard work, and has it really made you free?
Or, to put it another way, I come from a similar background (not quite poor, but a single income blue collar family). I hardly touched my schoolwork, and I preferred hacking my TRS-80 to hanging out, and when I did, we talking about hacking CoCos and Commies and PCs. The government gave me shitloads of money to go to college. And I'm right where you are. Man, I'm so glad I didn't have to bust my ass to get here.
So far we've established that obsessively hard workers, those with rich parents, and those with a high IQ achieve success. Well, that about covers everybody who deserves it!
Since there are no barriers to entry for anyone capable of achieving success, I guess we can quit that whole wealth redistribution thing. You know, food stamps, public schools, grants, subsidized loans, etc.
Hmm.. but then you and I would probably still be in debt, with less education, and producing less wealth...
Maybe you'd better rethink that righteous indignation you feel everytime someone suggests that maybe, just maybe, some people need a little help to get the ball rolling. -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
No, you have it backwards. They're attributing anxiety where none exists. It's the same as all the fear mongering about criminals with encryption: it is simply an excuse to do what they wanted to do all along.
Besides, what is right is what people want, or do you believe in some silly notion of moral absolutism? I'll laugh when some jack-booted thug asserts his moral justification to beat your face in, troll. -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
The funny thing is, CmdrTaco is probably more recognizable to the stereotypical "Sci-Fi" audience than most of the people in the commercials. The only one I recognized was Moby, and I even hate his music.
Hmm... I see cross-marketing potential here. Imagine Malda and Bates in some Matrix-esque synthetic environment battling evil first-posters and trolls. The camera fades as it zooms out to show them surrounded by old computers and junk food bags, laying on couches with wires coming out of their heads. Cut to a monitor with Mozilla running, and Slashdot loads with the top story "I am Sci-Fi; Posted by CmdrTaco and Hemos". -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Sir, are you mocking me? I'll have you know that making fools of the foolish is a time honoured tradition in rational discourse. It's like me pappy used to say: "Ignorance in defense of freedom is Miami Vice!" -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
I can't stand people who appeal to mysticism to back up their asanine environmentalist agruments (you know, "mother earth" this, and "circle of life" that, "mankind's hubris will be punished", yadda yadda yadda).
And I'm sure the people who modded up the parent post up are nodding their heads right now. Well, newsflash, people, this is no better, it's worse than those sappy Greens. Yea, that's right, this is an appeal to mysticism, or at least, to fate, to fix the things that we fucked up. It's dishonest and cowardly.
"Give time and a little patience, the planet is more than adequate at adjusting itself back to its center"
How do you know that? And how long do you think it will take? Does the word "geological time scale" mean anything to you? Do you think it will fix itself while we keep making things worse? How do you think the people affected by ecological disaster feel about your reassurances?
See kids, the Greens want you think you have no power. They want you to think you're weak compared to Mother Nature, so you'll humble yourself like them, and then respect the environment out of dogmatic brainwashing. That's complete bullshit. We made Mother Nature her our bitch and now we're giving her a good smack around. We can destroy this planet if we want to, so eat that, tofu eaters!
With power comes responsibility. With awareness comes self evaluation. No freakin' animal has that. And right now, we're shitting in our living rooms because we're too fucking lazy to walk to the bathroom. We want to shirk the responsibility of cleaning up the mess, and we do it by corporate whitewashing and holding up the image of the "radical environmentalist" to scare people.
No, I'm not saying you should buy the chicken littles at face value. I'm asking you to give the people who say "don't worry, everything will be alright" the same sort of mocking skepticism. They don't know what the fuck they're talking about anymore than the Greens do. They've swallowed just as much propoganda, and a lot of them have been bought by commercial interests. -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Heheh, that's exactly what I work on. And once you throw CORBA into the picture you're making an entirely different argument.
In the context of the original assertion, there is no comparison between wrapper libraries and having a single, extendable, platform-neutral API for receiving and routing HTTP-based requests. Wrappers generally allow only the lowest common denominator of features if you want to be portable. And the development time for "writing C modules for webservers", even with a wrapper library in place, is something like two to five times longer in my experience. -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Unless its trivial my ass. How much of the Servlet spec don't you understand? How much of the Bean spec don't you understand? If you use any of the vendor-specific stuff you're a moron.
I have written an encapsulation library for CGI, ISAPI, and NSAPI in C++. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever written. But after using servlets for a year I've never looked back. -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
That, in itself, is both an interesting feature and a major, major nightmare for build and configuration management (something I'm paid to do.)
Compared to what, resolving dependancies on header files?
In Java this is easy. Has this file been touched since the class file was written. No? Then leave it alone. Does this file have a dependancy? Yes? Is it compiled? No? Compile that first. javac works this way, and it rocks.
Now, there is a big problem with some optimizations, though, like final static variables of primative types, which are always inlined in the object code. But there is no reason that it can't be recognized by the compiler, they just don't because it requires a reverse-dependancy check, which isn't exactly fast unless the dependancies are pre-computed, or requires every file to be parsed, regarless of its timestamp, which defeats the whole purpose.
Of course, none of this works if you use makefiles and treat javac like a C compiler, but that's why you should be using something like Ant. -- Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Slashdot Mirror
Pure, like "ethnic cleansing" is pure? Anything can be rationalized to have a good motive. To judge someone or something you have to look behind their motives and evaluate their agenda and actions by some external standard of morality (such as your own, or the one the church supposedly espouses). There is an old proverb that expresses this succinctly: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
So yes, I agree that they are after souls, but to control in this life, not to free in another.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
It's not emotional, it's a matter of statistics. I know probably hundreds of people who had a public education, and most of them are well adjusted people. I know about half a dozen who were home schooled, and they are all a little messed up. If there is any superiority complex involved, it is in my definition of "messed up".
Obviously my experience is not a valid statistical model, but it is enough to convince me that the home schooling agenda is seriously myopic. I'm not saying that it isn't possible to raise a well adjusted child who is home schooled, but it seems to me that home schooling movement itself is self-selecting for parents incapable of raising well adjusted children.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
I recently saw Episode I for the first time. What a steaming pile of bantha fodder! It turned all the depth in the backstory of the first three movies into a lame comic book for children. Jar-jar, mystic technobabble, ethnic stereotypes, and "oh, isn't little Hitler^10 so cute!"... The only reason I kept watching it was to critique the special effects, and to see how whathisface eats it while fighting Darth Maul. Even that was lame.
The only way Lucus could earn my respect now is if Episode II goes straight-to-video.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Your first reason isn't valid either. Jealousy is a form of incompetence. If a manager can't deal with the fact that the market dictates that an underling make more than he does, then he really can't be all that good.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Watching the highlights episode recently on PBS, I was reminded just how distinctive his pronunciation was. It isn't the phrase that is so Sagan-esque, but the way you're suppost to say it. And, damn, does he say the world "billion" a lot.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
With all else being equal (such as familiarity with the tools), anyone who knows the Big-O of heapsort, and can demonstate how that is derived, is going to be a far more competant programmer than someone who simply knows the Collections framework in java.util.*
Learning languages is trivial. Learning tools is trivial. Sure, it takes time, but you are far better off hiring the competent CS grad over the less competant CIS grad who has experience with the technology du jour. Knowledge of theory and programming skill exist across technologies, and it is far cheaper to train a good programmer on the tools in question rather than train someone who's only got the certifications into how to be a good programmer.
Yes, CS and programming are not the same, but good programmers are going to be far more interested in CS (or math, or engineering, or science) than CIS.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Yes, because as we all know, breaking and entering a public building and disabling censorship software are morally equivalent acts. I say the little punk deserves the chair.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Because the elves are a bunch of elitist punks, who'd rather see Middle Earth trashed than to risk their precious, immortal hides. They don't even necessarily want Sauron defeated, because destroying the One Ring destroys the three elven rings. It had to be someone as humble as a hobbit, as anyone powerful would have been corrupted by the ring and brought the attention of Sauron. For a children's book, it was certainly a little too complex for you...
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
And how many of those projects really matter? Do you know how large the software industry is? Do you realize how many commercial products and in-house systems there are that don't follow good development and testing guidelines?
There are two ways you get quality in software: have developers who feel proud about their work and put as much quality in it as time allows, and have developers who are paid to put quality in their software it by management who has enough sense to think beyond a single quarter's expenses.
Right now, the former is a superset of the latter and is probably ten times the size, if not more. In open source projects, the lack of money means everything is by the former, so you end up with really high quality stuff, like Linux and Apache, or crufty stuff that pays a lot of attention to testing, like gcc, perl, and XFree86. It makes perfect sense, since you gotta love what you're doing to work on something for free, or at least, for a fraction of what you could make as a hired gun.
Sure, you also have all the dreck on freshmeat. But since no one was paid to write the dreck, there really is no loss. Most of us are not under the illusion that a weekend project is comparible to production-quality software. Besides, the yung'uns have to start somewhere.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
You troll, that's a bunch of FUD. You can read Intel's official statement on their website.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
First thing I remember was askin' the CEO, "Why?",
:-)
For there were many things I didn't know.
And he always smiled; shook me by the hand,
Sayin', "Someday you'll understand."
CHORUS:
Well, I'm here to tell you now each and ev'ry corporate gun
You better learn it fast; you better learn it young,
'Cause, someday never comes.
apologies to John Fogerty
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
If you can't defend it, you don't own it. Sorry, physics trumps man's law and that fantasy of "natural" law. Any notion of property rights is ideology, and your ideology is just an opinion.
Refute me, putain de karma, without using lame platitudes, emotional appeals, or the word "period".
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Probably Guns, Germs, and Steel.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
I recommend that anyone whose knee-jerk reaction is to flame the above post to read The Transparent Society, by David Brin. It's great book, and unless you're dense as a brick, it will challenge your assumptions on privacy, anonymity, and the role of the citizen on keeping his government and fellow citizens honest.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Hello sir, I'm from the Secret Service. Come with me please...
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Well, duh, Microsoft owns the copyright to text written by the company, but preventing the redistribution of product failure reports?
Geez, isn't that a bit like a car manufacturer notifying the public that their latest SUVs flip over and explode, but preventing anyone from redistributing that notice? Has the software industry become so corrupt that our failure notices are now considered revenue generators and exclusive property?*
What next, a EULA on their website that reads "By using this website, you agree not to disclose the details of these failures to third parties. This information is confidential, and only available to licensees of Microsoft products".
* I forgot about the $90/hour tech support. I called Mickey$oft once to confirm that the behavior I was seeing was in fact a bug in IIS, and the wanker tried to charge me because he offered a half-assed workaround. Then it shows up as one of these bug reports on their website the next day (oh geez, it exists in 5.0 too!). They knew about the bug beforehand, as he had the workaround almost immediately, but did not publish until the prospect of someone else identifying and publishing the bug came up. My experience, and this current issue, says to me that Microsoft is only interested in spin control.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Yes, it was morally correct, to a Nazi. Thankfully the rest of us kicked their collective asses because they thought that way.
Oh, wait, Godwin's law... I've already won this argument.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
And some wanker with a trust fund could buy and sell your ass. Wow, all that hard work, and has it really made you free?
Or, to put it another way, I come from a similar background (not quite poor, but a single income blue collar family). I hardly touched my schoolwork, and I preferred hacking my TRS-80 to hanging out, and when I did, we talking about hacking CoCos and Commies and PCs. The government gave me shitloads of money to go to college. And I'm right where you are. Man, I'm so glad I didn't have to bust my ass to get here.
So far we've established that obsessively hard workers, those with rich parents, and those with a high IQ achieve success. Well, that about covers everybody who deserves it!
Since there are no barriers to entry for anyone capable of achieving success, I guess we can quit that whole wealth redistribution thing. You know, food stamps, public schools, grants, subsidized loans, etc.
Hmm.. but then you and I would probably still be in debt, with less education, and producing less wealth...
Maybe you'd better rethink that righteous indignation you feel everytime someone suggests that maybe, just maybe, some people need a little help to get the ball rolling.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
No, you have it backwards. They're attributing anxiety where none exists. It's the same as all the fear mongering about criminals with encryption: it is simply an excuse to do what they wanted to do all along.
Besides, what is right is what people want, or do you believe in some silly notion of moral absolutism? I'll laugh when some jack-booted thug asserts his moral justification to beat your face in, troll.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
The funny thing is, CmdrTaco is probably more recognizable to the stereotypical "Sci-Fi" audience than most of the people in the commercials. The only one I recognized was Moby, and I even hate his music.
Hmm... I see cross-marketing potential here. Imagine Malda and Bates in some Matrix-esque synthetic environment battling evil first-posters and trolls. The camera fades as it zooms out to show them surrounded by old computers and junk food bags, laying on couches with wires coming out of their heads. Cut to a monitor with Mozilla running, and Slashdot loads with the top story "I am Sci-Fi; Posted by CmdrTaco and Hemos".
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Sir, are you mocking me? I'll have you know that making fools of the foolish is a time honoured tradition in rational discourse. It's like me pappy used to say: "Ignorance in defense of freedom is Miami Vice!"
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
I can't stand people who appeal to mysticism to back up their asanine environmentalist agruments (you know, "mother earth" this, and "circle of life" that, "mankind's hubris will be punished", yadda yadda yadda).
And I'm sure the people who modded up the parent post up are nodding their heads right now. Well, newsflash, people, this is no better, it's worse than those sappy Greens. Yea, that's right, this is an appeal to mysticism, or at least, to fate, to fix the things that we fucked up. It's dishonest and cowardly.
"Give time and a little patience, the planet is more than adequate at adjusting itself back to its center"
How do you know that? And how long do you think it will take? Does the word "geological time scale" mean anything to you? Do you think it will fix itself while we keep making things worse? How do you think the people affected by ecological disaster feel about your reassurances?
See kids, the Greens want you think you have no power. They want you to think you're weak compared to Mother Nature, so you'll humble yourself like them, and then respect the environment out of dogmatic brainwashing. That's complete bullshit. We made Mother Nature her our bitch and now we're giving her a good smack around. We can destroy this planet if we want to, so eat that, tofu eaters!
With power comes responsibility. With awareness comes self evaluation. No freakin' animal has that. And right now, we're shitting in our living rooms because we're too fucking lazy to walk to the bathroom. We want to shirk the responsibility of cleaning up the mess, and we do it by corporate whitewashing and holding up the image of the "radical environmentalist" to scare people.
No, I'm not saying you should buy the chicken littles at face value. I'm asking you to give the people who say "don't worry, everything will be alright" the same sort of mocking skepticism. They don't know what the fuck they're talking about anymore than the Greens do. They've swallowed just as much propoganda, and a lot of them have been bought by commercial interests.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Heheh, that's exactly what I work on. And once you throw CORBA into the picture you're making an entirely different argument.
In the context of the original assertion, there is no comparison between wrapper libraries and having a single, extendable, platform-neutral API for receiving and routing HTTP-based requests. Wrappers generally allow only the lowest common denominator of features if you want to be portable. And the development time for "writing C modules for webservers", even with a wrapper library in place, is something like two to five times longer in my experience.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
Unless its trivial my ass. How much of the Servlet spec don't you understand? How much of the Bean spec don't you understand? If you use any of the vendor-specific stuff you're a moron.
I have written an encapsulation library for CGI, ISAPI, and NSAPI in C++. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever written. But after using servlets for a year I've never looked back.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
That, in itself, is both an interesting feature and a major, major nightmare for build and configuration management (something I'm paid to do.)
Compared to what, resolving dependancies on header files?
In Java this is easy. Has this file been touched since the class file was written. No? Then leave it alone. Does this file have a dependancy? Yes? Is it compiled? No? Compile that first. javac works this way, and it rocks.
Now, there is a big problem with some optimizations, though, like final static variables of primative types, which are always inlined in the object code. But there is no reason that it can't be recognized by the compiler, they just don't because it requires a reverse-dependancy check, which isn't exactly fast unless the dependancies are pre-computed, or requires every file to be parsed, regarless of its timestamp, which defeats the whole purpose.
Of course, none of this works if you use makefiles and treat javac like a C compiler, but that's why you should be using something like Ant.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom