"Concede" actually means to acknowledge a truth, in this case that your opponent has won. When this takes place in a friendly contest, such as a fencer saying "touche", it ends the match, as the loser has admitted that he has been beaten (he has not just given up because he thinks he'll lose!) would certainly not lie and is in the best position to determine that he has lost. It's the sportsmanlike thing to do when you've been fairly beaten.
To withdraw before the victory is established is not properly called a concession, but a surrender, or simply a withdrawal.
At any rate, this is not a friendly match, but a very serious matter. The "rulebook" in this case doesn't consider the loser the best judge of his own defeat. A concession has no legal force, Gore did not withdraw from the running, but rather (mistakenly or not) concurred with Bush's belief that Bush had won.
In your example of why you think it's a bad idea, did you consider that the same thing would happen with the rankings? If someone's main objective is to vote against Gore, he'd give Gore the lowest ranking, to make sure that no matter how close it came, his vote wouldn't promote Gore over anyone else.
1. Bush
2. Some guy I vaguely recognize who isn't Gore.
3. I dunno who he is, but he's not Gore.
4. I think this guy's a fascist, but he doesn't really have a snowball's chance in Hell, and he's not Gore.
5. Gore.
I really think that in that system, people would have this issue pointed out to them, and they'd bother to learn who all the candidates on the ticket are (or at least the majority would vote strongly against all the ones who they don't recognize).
(Canadians, please bear with me through the background)
In Canada, we have a Parlimentary system, which means we have one body like Congress but which has all legislative power (in theory, we also have a Senate, but it doesn't really do anything). Each seat is given to the candidate with the largest number of votes in a given riding (riding == congressional district).
The Prime Minister is just the guy who leads the party with the largest number of Parliament seats; he isn't seperately elected and has no special veto power (although he has some other special roles). The funny thing is that lately the P.M. has had a majority in the Parliament, so he pretty much rules like a king and the whole discussion process in Parliament has been a pathetic joke.
Now, in the last election, Reform was the official opposition (that's the party with the second largest number of Parliament seats). The Liberals had a majority. However, they did not have a majority of the popular vote (as pointed out above). Also, the Conservatives had a significant portion of the popular vote (I believe somewhere between 10% and 25%; I should look it up, but I'm feeling lazy and Gundam Wing is on) but an insignificant number of parliament seats.
The change we need to make is to adopt the South American system: a Parliament corrected to reflect popular-vote. Half of the seats are elected regionally, and the other half are given out to the parties which recieved a greater proportion of popular vote than regional parliament seats. So in the last election, the Liberals wouldn't have a majority, there would be a three-way standoff between the Conservatives, the Liberals, and Reform, requiring an alliance between any two to win (I think; it may have been more complicated with the involvement of the Bloc). So we'd have a real Parliament, not a king who could expensively cancel needed military contracts and bring in a system of gun registration on a whim.
Nader won't win. This has been clear for some time. The majority isn't interested in anyone but the Democrats and Republicans.
Under these circumstances (taking either a Gore or Bush victory as given, knowing that voting for any other party is effectively equivalent to not voting), a vote for Nader, from a person who would prefer Gore over Bush, really is equivalent to a half-vote for Bush. You can make the statement that you are willing to vote for a third party in other ways (especially in those pre-election polls; always say who you'd like to vote for when they ask for who you intend to vote for).
The election system is severely screwed up, creating this situation. If there was a simple candidate-ranking scheme (rate each from 0-10, highest average wins; unmarked counts as 5), you wouldn't have this problem. You could vote Bush=0, Nader=10, Gore=5, and actively oppose Bush without promoting Gore over Nader.
OTOH, true democracy can't work. However, the defacto system of influence auction seems to work fairly well. Don't get too worked up over who wins. They're pretty much the same, and either will keep the old system grinding along.
"Democracy can't work... Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is that of the wisest man in a given group. But a democratic form of government is okay, as long as it doesn't work."
I was wrong, Gore is getting the chick vote, if the exit polls are accurate.
Just goes to show how much I know about what women find attractive... (or, of course, the whole "majority resorting to primitive instincts" theory is wrong)
Sure, with the chick vote making the difference, usually it's the taller guy, but Al Gore has the personality and charm of a wooden plank.
Let's say roughly 90% of people are too dumb to follow the issues. The 45% dopey men are influenced by a variety of factors, but mostly it's pack-think and they vote for the man they'd like as the captain of their football team; the important thing here is that the male candidates understand these factors, and the Democrats and Republicans are about equally good at fighting over them. The 45% dopey women judge the men as members of the opposite sex, and vote for the one they'd rather mate with, which usually means the better looking one, but they must be able to have some sort of emotional connection, and Al Gore has no warmth. The candidates don't understand the women's vote as well, which is why it tends to be the deciding factor.
Don't laugh, I'm not joking: Clinton got in last time on "bad boy" sex appeal.
As for the 10% of men and women bright enough to form a reasoned opinion based on the issues, they are irrelevant when the other 90% are voting Gore or Bush (who are pretty much the same). They are bright enough to recognize that there aren't enough of them to bring in another party, and try to shift the balance; once you decide that you have to choose the lesser of two evils, there's so little to recommend either one that this vote is split, too (and a significant number end up just saying "to hell with it, I'd rather pretend it's meaningful and vote for who I really want", or just choosing not to vote).
Adults don't bother DoSing IRCs, or committing other acts of petty vandalism.
It's like asking "Why is it always 'some kid' who spraypainted 'Sckool Suks!' on the cafeteria wall?"
Adults commit crimes for profit or principle, make annoying fools of themselves in public, or play mean and petty pranks on individuals who they feel have wronged them, but it is vanishingly rare for one to anonymously commit an act of public vandalism. Attacking the whole community out of pure spite is something that can't possibly produce any useful effect or profit, and even the worst "veteran jerks" learn this by their early 20's.
If the GPL was just a way to keep all derivative works freely distributable, it wouldn't say anything about the source.
It's really about documentation. Not only must you allow people to copy the software, you must give them all your notes on how you constructed it so they can see everything you did, and make any changes they wish.
That's what source code is: documentation. It's a formal explanation of what the software is intended to do. Actual construction of software from good plans is so trivial that we tend to dismiss it and treat the design as construction, but that is not accurate. Note that the GPL forbids stripping comments, mechanically obfuscating source, and distributing unedited translator output. That has nothing to do with being able to recompile at will, it's purely a requirement to leave your notes in.
Without copyright, it would be entirely possible to build elaborate copy protection schemes, user-spyware, advertising, and restrictions to using it only with "approved" services and hardware into proprietary software based on free software. Removing such things would then be a difficult problem of reverse engineering. More importantly, hardware interfaces could be obfuscated to the point where it would take longer to reverse engineer than to come out with next year's model.
GPL protection extends far beyond what free software would have without copyright. The GPL is not made necessary by copyright (it is not necessary at all), it is made relevant by copyright. Closed source software would continue to thrive in the absence of copyright.
Personally, I believe in public domain software. For one thing, I suspect that in today's legal/political climate, with MS being split up for, of all things, giving away a free piece of software, that GPL may well be ruled to be public domain. But questions of enforceability are only one issue. The big one for me is license incompatibility, though the overhead of trying to sort out what is and isn't allowed is another significant issue.
Sure, with public domain, people can take what you've written and hide rotten things in it. All the more reason for users to avoid proprietary software. I feel no particular need to try to directly force other programmers to change what they do with their work. The advantages of public domain, open source software speak for themselves. If someone is willing to write it, it only makes sense that people will eventually catch on and start using it.
that those without balls, i.e. women and unix (with a good CLI, the only ball on the system, the one in the mouse, is not needed), are the only ones who can stand against the creeping forces of invasion of their personal computers.
Maybe there's a promotional campaign in this...
Fight Microsoft! Be more like a woman! You don't really need your balls, so join the ranks of Unix!
Hmm, I don't think those slogans are going to make Linux much more popular.
Non-firewalled home users run them for a few hours in the evening (if that), connect to the internet for part of that time, then turn them off.
Linux users, OTOH, tend to spring for high-speed permanent internet connections on the best hardware they can afford, and leave their computers on for months at a time. And, of course, only a minority of Linux home users know anything about security, and plenty of default installations are full of holes. Furthermore, the Linux boxes are full of toys like compilers and network utilities.
Which sounds more tempting for someone who wants to subvert other people's equipment for their own purposes? An unstable mishmash of proprietary apps, or a perfectly stable long-term hacking platform where every application has the source available so he can control all local displays to hide the fact that he's in there?
Cable-modem, static IP, default install, Redhat Linux boxes are a cracker's bonanza.
Mind you, "one of the best systems in the world" doesn't mean "best possible system". All rich countries have extremely regulated healthcare, so there are no real-world examples to contrast with.
For example, the American system isn't actually any better just because they pretend it's a free market, it's so absurdly overregulated that there's no room for profitable price reduction (however they reduce quality of service with profitable spending reduction), and the "insurance" system is practically equivalent to a tax-supported system (hired central management isn't any smarter than elected central management). But they at least let the extremely rich pay for operations that are too expensive for the general population. These early adopters fund a lot of research and development.
We don't give enough credit for the progress of medicine to developments in the USA. It scares me to think that they might be adopting something like our system soon, as it could really hurt the whole world's hospitals. What would MRI prices be without those crazy rich Yankees having their pets scanned?
What really bugs me is all the talk about how we mustn't allow private hospitals and "two-tier health care". It's not like people who can afford private health care can't afford plane tickets! They just go to other countries (mostly the USA) when they want treatment that the government won't pay for. What would be so wrong about letting them do it here, and keep their money in the country?
It doesn't pay to check facts when you want a +5 funny! The moderators don't read the article, so why should I?
Now, go buy a "What Would Jeebus Do?" mousepad, to compensate for interfering with my tasteless, yet ineffective commercial exploitation of slashdot.
(Anyway, Alberta's the "freak province" with heavily taxed oil wealth; if prices went up much more, they could put every legal citizen in the whole province on welfare and break even by taxing foreign oil extractors. It's to Canada as Canada is to the world: a huge bundle of natural resource wealth with a tiny population that can get away with practically any ridiculous economic policy by just selling off those resources in raw form to foreigners. We're the feudal nobility of the world, living high by taking a share of the profits from any use of the land, which is conveniently defended for us by our friendly, uncovetous neighbor, the world's greatest military power, which has it's own racket. Which, incidentally, is why you need a Jeebus coffee mug and a matching Jeebus sweater; welfare doesn't include GHz processors and cable modems yet.)
My gripe with real, professional ergonomics is that it reeks of cargo cultism (which is what I meant by "psuedoscience"). They try to make it a science, when good design of comfortable equipment is an art.
All that analysis of body types and measurement of pressure levels produces inferior results to simple testing and using intuitive judgement.
Good "ergonomic" equipment is still a result of talent, experience, and lots of testing, not number crunching or years of book-study. There are a huge number of people trained in ergonomics, and only a few produce good designs, while comfort:price ratio has gone down in general since people started talking about "ergonomics" and taking courses in it. It's a ridiculous farce for the useless special ergonomic training to claim credit for the good results of a small percentage of its students. They succeed in spite of, not due to, the time spent (wasted) on this training.
To extend the cargo cult metaphor, it's like claiming that the runway incantation works because planes are occasionally shot down in the area now that it has been built.
Ergonomics, like software engineering and teacher training, is a sham field which attempts (despite their insistence to the contrary) to replace natural talent and hard-won experience with systematic methods, and so increase the supply of competent individuals. They get off the ground by attracting talented individuals, who are naturally drawn to things which may increase their already considerable abilities, and so produce misleadingly positive results when compared to those who aren't drawn in. However, once established, they draw students from the general population, and it becomes evident to the analytical mind that it does not deserve its reputation (however, most people have rather weak logic skills, so to them: "good designers studied or did research on ergonomics" implies "studying ergonomics makes people into good designers").
This is what I love about Canada: getting all these great things handed to us for far under cost, if not altogether free!
Education, health care, even food and shelter (if you can't afford it yourself). What a generous government to give so freely of its own money! I sure wouldn't give my money away like that!
I look forward to the inevitable day when our wonderful government gives us everything we need, and none of us need to work. I'm definitely voting Liberal!
"Ergonomics" is a alternatively a meaningless buzzword attached to oddly shaped products, or a pseudoscience of comfort. Either way, it's obvious why it has no rules.
If you are experiencing lower back pain from sitting, even though you have a comfortable chair, you don't need a new, special "ergonomic" chair, you need to get more exercise. Your back is too weak to support you in an upright sitting position.
This isn't rocket science, folks. It's common sense: buy high quality furniture/equipment (higher quality is recognizable by the fact that it immediately feels better when you first change to it, and it feels worse when, after using for several hours, you switch back to a lower-quality piece), rest and stretch when you start to get sore, and get enough exercise. People buy "ergonomic" equipment when they're too cheap to spring for good gear, too impatient to take the necessary rest, or too lazy to get proper exercise. They ignore what common sense tells them is necessary when a group of professional deceivers tell them that there's an easy way out.
As with many of life's problems, the real answers are simple and obvious, just not necessarily cheap or easy.
Examples of the victory of "ergonomics" over common sense:
-a plethora of bizarrely shaped rubber-dome keyboards that don't function nearly as well as the old standard buckling-spring keyboards
-$300 chairs that are adjustable 27 ways with carefully shaped surfaces, but that are underpadded, need constant readjustment because they don't hold their settings, and can be ripped apart with your bare hands
-$60 shaped rounded, asymmetric mice, that are harder to use than $6 nearly square mice
There aren't always ideal solutions that are the best for everyone, but there is plenty of idiotic trash that is worse than useless, and most of it is labeled "ergonomic".
...is that a person is raised into a religion, but enters into a cult of his own free will as a responsible adult.
I'm sure this is a moderately famous quote, but I can't seem to find through google. R.A. Heinlein used it in an essay about the cultural decay of America (unfortunately I don't have the book - Expanded Universe - it's in right now).
He added words to the effect that a religion is a comfortable habit in a stable culture of a man who goes to church every Sunday. He has a vague sort of belief he avoids openly questioning (in fact he views any attempt to apply logic to his religion as boorish), but generally when he goes to church he is more concerned with keeping in touch with the community and next week's church picnic than the promise of glorious life everlasting and the threat of eternal torment in hell.
Regardless of which religion, or how devout the worshipers, it is a good sign for the community for these things to be stable, for the herd to all change attitudes gradually in the same way, not for individuals to be rejecting it and heading off on their own.
Hypocracy in religion is healthy.
So an American raised in a Christian community taking up Buddhism is joining a cult, and so is a Mongol who decides to get baptized into some sect of Christianity. These are people who look at a religion from the outside, as grown, presumably reasonable adults, with a clear view of all the contractions and persecutions of the past, with the certain knowledge that it will cause awkwardness in social life, and says "This is for me!"
There are two main reasons for this: honest belief in the religion, or wishing to set oneself apart from their society. Whichever is the case, cult popularity is a very bad sign for the culture it is happening in. In the first case, it shows that people are being poorly educated: the culture has failed in both vital tasks of indoctrinating them in the norms of society, and in imbuing them with a capacity for reason. In the second case, it shows that people are viewing their culture as something they don't want to be associated with. Very bad signs indeed.
This isn't to say that the cults themselves (and all such radical rejection of cultural norms) are necessarily destructive, but a symptom of a deeper problem. Christianity couldn't have gained a foothold in the Roman Empire unless it was a seriously sick society (bread and circuses, vote selling, debasement of coins, et c.).
It'd take a lot of money to buy significant voting shares, and a lot of trouble to actually go down and pester them. Nobody is actually spending millions of dollars protesting, boycotting, etc. The money isn't there.
Even if you could scrape it up, it'd all be going into the pockets of earlier investors; the people who supported this crap in the first place. Now they have been rewarded.
What a precedent! "Do something evil, we'll buy your stock!"
No, I think the correct methods are indeed market pressure, legal support, and political lobbying.
IMHO, any licensing restrictions intended to preserve freedom are self-defeating. There's only one kind of licensing restriction I agree with, the kind Knuth uses: for God's sake, don't change my stuff and release it under the same name, as if I (and the people I work with, whose work I approve of) wrote it! It's just a matter of honest identitification, and could be based on trademark rather than copyright law.
Even so, there is some question as to whether even this license restriction is necessary (or legally binding on its own). Modifying someone else's work, and redistributing it as the same work could be fraud, slander, or any of another nasty things that can result from impersonating someone.
You still have some rights as the author of a public domain work, though you've waived your copyright.
If everyone would just release their code into the public domain we wouldn't have any of these idiotic license disputes. You could just spend your time coding, not worrying about whose toes you're stepping on.
Best of all, when you release code into the public domain, it can be included in GPL'd work, MIT license work, X license work, or anything. It's the ultimate in free software.
The GPL serves one purpose alone: to attack proprietary software developers, withholding the benefits of your work to the "Great Satan" (evil people who don't release their source code for software they're trying to sell; you know, programmers like John Carmack, Tim Paterson, Dan Bricklin, and Bob Frankston). Why bother?
I'm not complaining about people who really understand what the GPL is for - they wrote the software, it's their right to choose the license. I'm trying to talk to the people who just GPL everything because "that's the license we use for free software". It's not the only way to go; consider public domain, to avoid licensing headaches and release your code for the eternal free use of all mankind for any purpose (including the creation of GPL'd software), and without hostile intent (what else can you call cloning someone's proprietary product, with a license that is specifically aimed at preventing them from learning from your clone to improve the original?).
Slashdot Mirror
"Concede" actually means to acknowledge a truth, in this case that your opponent has won. When this takes place in a friendly contest, such as a fencer saying "touche", it ends the match, as the loser has admitted that he has been beaten (he has not just given up because he thinks he'll lose!) would certainly not lie and is in the best position to determine that he has lost. It's the sportsmanlike thing to do when you've been fairly beaten.
To withdraw before the victory is established is not properly called a concession, but a surrender, or simply a withdrawal.
At any rate, this is not a friendly match, but a very serious matter. The "rulebook" in this case doesn't consider the loser the best judge of his own defeat. A concession has no legal force, Gore did not withdraw from the running, but rather (mistakenly or not) concurred with Bush's belief that Bush had won.
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In your example of why you think it's a bad idea, did you consider that the same thing would happen with the rankings? If someone's main objective is to vote against Gore, he'd give Gore the lowest ranking, to make sure that no matter how close it came, his vote wouldn't promote Gore over anyone else.
1. Bush
2. Some guy I vaguely recognize who isn't Gore.
3. I dunno who he is, but he's not Gore.
4. I think this guy's a fascist, but he doesn't really have a snowball's chance in Hell, and he's not Gore.
5. Gore.
I really think that in that system, people would have this issue pointed out to them, and they'd bother to learn who all the candidates on the ticket are (or at least the majority would vote strongly against all the ones who they don't recognize).
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(Canadians, please bear with me through the background)
In Canada, we have a Parlimentary system, which means we have one body like Congress but which has all legislative power (in theory, we also have a Senate, but it doesn't really do anything). Each seat is given to the candidate with the largest number of votes in a given riding (riding == congressional district).
The Prime Minister is just the guy who leads the party with the largest number of Parliament seats; he isn't seperately elected and has no special veto power (although he has some other special roles). The funny thing is that lately the P.M. has had a majority in the Parliament, so he pretty much rules like a king and the whole discussion process in Parliament has been a pathetic joke.
Now, in the last election, Reform was the official opposition (that's the party with the second largest number of Parliament seats). The Liberals had a majority. However, they did not have a majority of the popular vote (as pointed out above). Also, the Conservatives had a significant portion of the popular vote (I believe somewhere between 10% and 25%; I should look it up, but I'm feeling lazy and Gundam Wing is on) but an insignificant number of parliament seats.
The change we need to make is to adopt the South American system: a Parliament corrected to reflect popular-vote. Half of the seats are elected regionally, and the other half are given out to the parties which recieved a greater proportion of popular vote than regional parliament seats. So in the last election, the Liberals wouldn't have a majority, there would be a three-way standoff between the Conservatives, the Liberals, and Reform, requiring an alliance between any two to win (I think; it may have been more complicated with the involvement of the Bloc). So we'd have a real Parliament, not a king who could expensively cancel needed military contracts and bring in a system of gun registration on a whim.
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Nader won't win. This has been clear for some time. The majority isn't interested in anyone but the Democrats and Republicans.
Under these circumstances (taking either a Gore or Bush victory as given, knowing that voting for any other party is effectively equivalent to not voting), a vote for Nader, from a person who would prefer Gore over Bush, really is equivalent to a half-vote for Bush. You can make the statement that you are willing to vote for a third party in other ways (especially in those pre-election polls; always say who you'd like to vote for when they ask for who you intend to vote for).
The election system is severely screwed up, creating this situation. If there was a simple candidate-ranking scheme (rate each from 0-10, highest average wins; unmarked counts as 5), you wouldn't have this problem. You could vote Bush=0, Nader=10, Gore=5, and actively oppose Bush without promoting Gore over Nader.
OTOH, true democracy can't work. However, the defacto system of influence auction seems to work fairly well. Don't get too worked up over who wins. They're pretty much the same, and either will keep the old system grinding along.
"Democracy can't work... Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is that of the wisest man in a given group. But a democratic form of government is okay, as long as it doesn't work."
-Robert A. Heinlein
Glory Road
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I was wrong, Gore is getting the chick vote, if the exit polls are accurate.
Just goes to show how much I know about what women find attractive... (or, of course, the whole "majority resorting to primitive instincts" theory is wrong)
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Sure, with the chick vote making the difference, usually it's the taller guy, but Al Gore has the personality and charm of a wooden plank.
Let's say roughly 90% of people are too dumb to follow the issues. The 45% dopey men are influenced by a variety of factors, but mostly it's pack-think and they vote for the man they'd like as the captain of their football team; the important thing here is that the male candidates understand these factors, and the Democrats and Republicans are about equally good at fighting over them. The 45% dopey women judge the men as members of the opposite sex, and vote for the one they'd rather mate with, which usually means the better looking one, but they must be able to have some sort of emotional connection, and Al Gore has no warmth. The candidates don't understand the women's vote as well, which is why it tends to be the deciding factor.
Don't laugh, I'm not joking: Clinton got in last time on "bad boy" sex appeal.
As for the 10% of men and women bright enough to form a reasoned opinion based on the issues, they are irrelevant when the other 90% are voting Gore or Bush (who are pretty much the same). They are bright enough to recognize that there aren't enough of them to bring in another party, and try to shift the balance; once you decide that you have to choose the lesser of two evils, there's so little to recommend either one that this vote is split, too (and a significant number end up just saying "to hell with it, I'd rather pretend it's meaningful and vote for who I really want", or just choosing not to vote).
Democracy just doesn't work.
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Adults don't bother DoSing IRCs, or committing other acts of petty vandalism.
It's like asking "Why is it always 'some kid' who spraypainted 'Sckool Suks!' on the cafeteria wall?"
Adults commit crimes for profit or principle, make annoying fools of themselves in public, or play mean and petty pranks on individuals who they feel have wronged them, but it is vanishingly rare for one to anonymously commit an act of public vandalism. Attacking the whole community out of pure spite is something that can't possibly produce any useful effect or profit, and even the worst "veteran jerks" learn this by their early 20's.
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Well, it's finally all over. The vandal moderators outnumber the responsible moderators.
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God, I hate the "overrated" moderation setting.
At +2 it's overrated? +2 is my default posting!
Why not try to give a real reason, and see how the metamoderators react, eh?
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If the GPL was just a way to keep all derivative works freely distributable, it wouldn't say anything about the source.
It's really about documentation. Not only must you allow people to copy the software, you must give them all your notes on how you constructed it so they can see everything you did, and make any changes they wish.
That's what source code is: documentation. It's a formal explanation of what the software is intended to do. Actual construction of software from good plans is so trivial that we tend to dismiss it and treat the design as construction, but that is not accurate. Note that the GPL forbids stripping comments, mechanically obfuscating source, and distributing unedited translator output. That has nothing to do with being able to recompile at will, it's purely a requirement to leave your notes in.
Without copyright, it would be entirely possible to build elaborate copy protection schemes, user-spyware, advertising, and restrictions to using it only with "approved" services and hardware into proprietary software based on free software. Removing such things would then be a difficult problem of reverse engineering. More importantly, hardware interfaces could be obfuscated to the point where it would take longer to reverse engineer than to come out with next year's model.
GPL protection extends far beyond what free software would have without copyright. The GPL is not made necessary by copyright (it is not necessary at all), it is made relevant by copyright. Closed source software would continue to thrive in the absence of copyright.
Personally, I believe in public domain software. For one thing, I suspect that in today's legal/political climate, with MS being split up for, of all things, giving away a free piece of software, that GPL may well be ruled to be public domain. But questions of enforceability are only one issue. The big one for me is license incompatibility, though the overhead of trying to sort out what is and isn't allowed is another significant issue.
Sure, with public domain, people can take what you've written and hide rotten things in it. All the more reason for users to avoid proprietary software. I feel no particular need to try to directly force other programmers to change what they do with their work. The advantages of public domain, open source software speak for themselves. If someone is willing to write it, it only makes sense that people will eventually catch on and start using it.
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that those without balls, i.e. women and unix (with a good CLI, the only ball on the system, the one in the mouse, is not needed), are the only ones who can stand against the creeping forces of invasion of their personal computers.
Maybe there's a promotional campaign in this...
Fight Microsoft! Be more like a woman! You don't really need your balls, so join the ranks of Unix!
Hmm, I don't think those slogans are going to make Linux much more popular.
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Non-firewalled home users run them for a few hours in the evening (if that), connect to the internet for part of that time, then turn them off.
Linux users, OTOH, tend to spring for high-speed permanent internet connections on the best hardware they can afford, and leave their computers on for months at a time. And, of course, only a minority of Linux home users know anything about security, and plenty of default installations are full of holes. Furthermore, the Linux boxes are full of toys like compilers and network utilities.
Which sounds more tempting for someone who wants to subvert other people's equipment for their own purposes? An unstable mishmash of proprietary apps, or a perfectly stable long-term hacking platform where every application has the source available so he can control all local displays to hide the fact that he's in there?
Cable-modem, static IP, default install, Redhat Linux boxes are a cracker's bonanza.
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Less talky, more spendy!
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Mind you, "one of the best systems in the world" doesn't mean "best possible system". All rich countries have extremely regulated healthcare, so there are no real-world examples to contrast with.
For example, the American system isn't actually any better just because they pretend it's a free market, it's so absurdly overregulated that there's no room for profitable price reduction (however they reduce quality of service with profitable spending reduction), and the "insurance" system is practically equivalent to a tax-supported system (hired central management isn't any smarter than elected central management). But they at least let the extremely rich pay for operations that are too expensive for the general population. These early adopters fund a lot of research and development.
We don't give enough credit for the progress of medicine to developments in the USA. It scares me to think that they might be adopting something like our system soon, as it could really hurt the whole world's hospitals. What would MRI prices be without those crazy rich Yankees having their pets scanned?
What really bugs me is all the talk about how we mustn't allow private hospitals and "two-tier health care". It's not like people who can afford private health care can't afford plane tickets! They just go to other countries (mostly the USA) when they want treatment that the government won't pay for. What would be so wrong about letting them do it here, and keep their money in the country?
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I'm just trying to sell T-shirts here.
It doesn't pay to check facts when you want a +5 funny! The moderators don't read the article, so why should I?
Now, go buy a "What Would Jeebus Do?" mousepad, to compensate for interfering with my tasteless, yet ineffective commercial exploitation of slashdot.
(Anyway, Alberta's the "freak province" with heavily taxed oil wealth; if prices went up much more, they could put every legal citizen in the whole province on welfare and break even by taxing foreign oil extractors. It's to Canada as Canada is to the world: a huge bundle of natural resource wealth with a tiny population that can get away with practically any ridiculous economic policy by just selling off those resources in raw form to foreigners. We're the feudal nobility of the world, living high by taking a share of the profits from any use of the land, which is conveniently defended for us by our friendly, uncovetous neighbor, the world's greatest military power, which has it's own racket. Which, incidentally, is why you need a Jeebus coffee mug and a matching Jeebus sweater; welfare doesn't include GHz processors and cable modems yet.)
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My gripe with real, professional ergonomics is that it reeks of cargo cultism (which is what I meant by "psuedoscience"). They try to make it a science, when good design of comfortable equipment is an art.
All that analysis of body types and measurement of pressure levels produces inferior results to simple testing and using intuitive judgement.
Good "ergonomic" equipment is still a result of talent, experience, and lots of testing, not number crunching or years of book-study. There are a huge number of people trained in ergonomics, and only a few produce good designs, while comfort:price ratio has gone down in general since people started talking about "ergonomics" and taking courses in it. It's a ridiculous farce for the useless special ergonomic training to claim credit for the good results of a small percentage of its students. They succeed in spite of, not due to, the time spent (wasted) on this training.
To extend the cargo cult metaphor, it's like claiming that the runway incantation works because planes are occasionally shot down in the area now that it has been built.
Ergonomics, like software engineering and teacher training, is a sham field which attempts (despite their insistence to the contrary) to replace natural talent and hard-won experience with systematic methods, and so increase the supply of competent individuals. They get off the ground by attracting talented individuals, who are naturally drawn to things which may increase their already considerable abilities, and so produce misleadingly positive results when compared to those who aren't drawn in. However, once established, they draw students from the general population, and it becomes evident to the analytical mind that it does not deserve its reputation (however, most people have rather weak logic skills, so to them: "good designers studied or did research on ergonomics" implies "studying ergonomics makes people into good designers").
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This is what I love about Canada: getting all these great things handed to us for far under cost, if not altogether free!
Education, health care, even food and shelter (if you can't afford it yourself). What a generous government to give so freely of its own money! I sure wouldn't give my money away like that!
I look forward to the inevitable day when our wonderful government gives us everything we need, and none of us need to work. I'm definitely voting Liberal!
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"Ergonomics" is a alternatively a meaningless buzzword attached to oddly shaped products, or a pseudoscience of comfort. Either way, it's obvious why it has no rules.
If you are experiencing lower back pain from sitting, even though you have a comfortable chair, you don't need a new, special "ergonomic" chair, you need to get more exercise. Your back is too weak to support you in an upright sitting position.
This isn't rocket science, folks. It's common sense: buy high quality furniture/equipment (higher quality is recognizable by the fact that it immediately feels better when you first change to it, and it feels worse when, after using for several hours, you switch back to a lower-quality piece), rest and stretch when you start to get sore, and get enough exercise. People buy "ergonomic" equipment when they're too cheap to spring for good gear, too impatient to take the necessary rest, or too lazy to get proper exercise. They ignore what common sense tells them is necessary when a group of professional deceivers tell them that there's an easy way out.
As with many of life's problems, the real answers are simple and obvious, just not necessarily cheap or easy.
Examples of the victory of "ergonomics" over common sense:
-a plethora of bizarrely shaped rubber-dome keyboards that don't function nearly as well as the old standard buckling-spring keyboards
-$300 chairs that are adjustable 27 ways with carefully shaped surfaces, but that are underpadded, need constant readjustment because they don't hold their settings, and can be ripped apart with your bare hands
-$60 shaped rounded, asymmetric mice, that are harder to use than $6 nearly square mice
There aren't always ideal solutions that are the best for everyone, but there is plenty of idiotic trash that is worse than useless, and most of it is labeled "ergonomic".
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Hypocracy in religion is healthy.
That's "hypocrisy".
with a clear view of all the contractions and persecutions of the past
That's "contradictions".
Sorry.
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...is that a person is raised into a religion, but enters into a cult of his own free will as a responsible adult.
I'm sure this is a moderately famous quote, but I can't seem to find through google. R.A. Heinlein used it in an essay about the cultural decay of America (unfortunately I don't have the book - Expanded Universe - it's in right now).
He added words to the effect that a religion is a comfortable habit in a stable culture of a man who goes to church every Sunday. He has a vague sort of belief he avoids openly questioning (in fact he views any attempt to apply logic to his religion as boorish), but generally when he goes to church he is more concerned with keeping in touch with the community and next week's church picnic than the promise of glorious life everlasting and the threat of eternal torment in hell.
Regardless of which religion, or how devout the worshipers, it is a good sign for the community for these things to be stable, for the herd to all change attitudes gradually in the same way, not for individuals to be rejecting it and heading off on their own.
Hypocracy in religion is healthy.
So an American raised in a Christian community taking up Buddhism is joining a cult, and so is a Mongol who decides to get baptized into some sect of Christianity. These are people who look at a religion from the outside, as grown, presumably reasonable adults, with a clear view of all the contractions and persecutions of the past, with the certain knowledge that it will cause awkwardness in social life, and says "This is for me!"
There are two main reasons for this: honest belief in the religion, or wishing to set oneself apart from their society. Whichever is the case, cult popularity is a very bad sign for the culture it is happening in. In the first case, it shows that people are being poorly educated: the culture has failed in both vital tasks of indoctrinating them in the norms of society, and in imbuing them with a capacity for reason. In the second case, it shows that people are viewing their culture as something they don't want to be associated with. Very bad signs indeed.
This isn't to say that the cults themselves (and all such radical rejection of cultural norms) are necessarily destructive, but a symptom of a deeper problem. Christianity couldn't have gained a foothold in the Roman Empire unless it was a seriously sick society (bread and circuses, vote selling, debasement of coins, et c.).
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but I have experimentally confirmed that penguins fall over when you pass over them with a skidoo.
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It'd take a lot of money to buy significant voting shares, and a lot of trouble to actually go down and pester them. Nobody is actually spending millions of dollars protesting, boycotting, etc. The money isn't there.
Even if you could scrape it up, it'd all be going into the pockets of earlier investors; the people who supported this crap in the first place. Now they have been rewarded.
What a precedent! "Do something evil, we'll buy your stock!"
No, I think the correct methods are indeed market pressure, legal support, and political lobbying.
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...meaning continuing to go faster than the speed of sound for a (very) short time following the impact.
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Pressurized suit: $20,000
Extremely high altitude flight: $15,000
Used parachute: $40
Patches for parachute: $5.37
Being the first person to achievesubterranean supersonic travel: priceless.
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IMHO, any licensing restrictions intended to preserve freedom are self-defeating. There's only one kind of licensing restriction I agree with, the kind Knuth uses: for God's sake, don't change my stuff and release it under the same name, as if I (and the people I work with, whose work I approve of) wrote it! It's just a matter of honest identitification, and could be based on trademark rather than copyright law.
Even so, there is some question as to whether even this license restriction is necessary (or legally binding on its own). Modifying someone else's work, and redistributing it as the same work could be fraud, slander, or any of another nasty things that can result from impersonating someone.
You still have some rights as the author of a public domain work, though you've waived your copyright.
If everyone would just release their code into the public domain we wouldn't have any of these idiotic license disputes. You could just spend your time coding, not worrying about whose toes you're stepping on.
Best of all, when you release code into the public domain, it can be included in GPL'd work, MIT license work, X license work, or anything. It's the ultimate in free software.
The GPL serves one purpose alone: to attack proprietary software developers, withholding the benefits of your work to the "Great Satan" (evil people who don't release their source code for software they're trying to sell; you know, programmers like John Carmack, Tim Paterson, Dan Bricklin, and Bob Frankston). Why bother?
I'm not complaining about people who really understand what the GPL is for - they wrote the software, it's their right to choose the license. I'm trying to talk to the people who just GPL everything because "that's the license we use for free software". It's not the only way to go; consider public domain, to avoid licensing headaches and release your code for the eternal free use of all mankind for any purpose (including the creation of GPL'd software), and without hostile intent (what else can you call cloning someone's proprietary product, with a license that is specifically aimed at preventing them from learning from your clone to improve the original?).
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