Likewise, the United States has abuses (free speech zones, for instance) that would be completely illegal in other countries but are fine here.
Check out the Press Freedom Index and note our unacceptably low ranking (22nd out of 167). If you check out their report, you will find that one of the reasons for this poor ranking was the arrest of journalists during demonstrations against the government.
Sure, we're fairly high on the list, but we rank below Canada, Germany, and France (but above Italy). On the other hand, if we're going to claim to be some sort of beacon of freedom, anything less than a tie for first is an embarrassment.
We already do it now. And the way things are going, it's at least somewhat likely that we'll get worse in the future.
While there are unsavory types in the UN, there are also a lot of reasonable people there... enough that they're not going to be making any policies that restrict anyone's rights (althoughrestriction of speech will continue to be left up to individual countries within their own borders).
ICANN is contracted by the Department of Commerce, which is controlled by -- you guessed it -- Congress. Congress has several times in the past tried to make laws governing Internet content (Communications Decency Act, anyone?). Fortunately, thanks to a sane supreme court, the law was struck down and freedoms were preserved. Unfortunately, however, the Supreme Court isn't guaranteed to remain sane, and I (along with a not insignifican percentage of Americans, and most other people in the world) don't really trust the president to appoint non-wingnuts.
Also, just because political speech is generally protected at the moment doesn't mean our freedoms aren't being eroded. Certain political parodies can result nowadays in run-ins with the police. And if you're a member of the press, Don't try to take pictures of coffins coming home from Iraq. Oh, and if you try to pull any of that peaceful protest stuff where news cameras might see you near the president, don't be surprised if the police escort you off to a 'free speech zone.'
This gets its own paragraph because it's particularly worrisome.
As for other expression involving consenting adults, take a look at the War on Porn, for instance. Porn may not be political expression, but it is expression nonetheless, and tax dollars are being wasted trying to stamp it out because some people disapprove of it on religious grounds. That's to say nothing of the fact that in Texas, anal sex (once again between consenting adults) would still be illegal (yes, on religious grounds again) had the Supreme Court (which, again, isn't guaranteed to remain sane) not stepped in. Sex toys are still illegal in Alabama... what non-religious reason could there possibly be for banning them?
You're right on a few counts: China and Cuba are a lot worse than we are. Also, European anti-hate-speech laws are a violation of free speech. That does not excuse this country's conduct. As long as we aren't the most free country in the world, America has a problem. Say it with me.
America has a problem.
The rest of the world sees it. Half of us see it. We're just not responsible enough to handle control of the internet right now.
This country is starting to look a bit like a fundamentalist theocracy. From a free speech perspective, it's probably better that the UN control it, rather than our own flaky and corrupt congress.
Nintendo, once again, dropped the ball when it comes to ONLINE GAMING....and instead, they left out wireless and released a substantially less expensive product with a much stronger game library.
They didn't drop the ball, they just were better at figuring out what people actually want. I'll get a PSP when a couple games come out for it that strike me as remotely interesting. For the time being, I have a wireless PDA that plays movies and browses the web just fine.
You'd be a hobbyist turned professional, then. Classes are neccesary for two reasons:
- Proving to your employer on paper that you know what you're doing, and
- Filling in all the little gaps in your knowledge that come from being self-taught.
That said, the vast bulk of your knowledge and experience come from your hobby, not your schooling. Classes may force you to push your boundaries a bit, but in the grand scheme of things, classes are short, and most of your growth as a programmer will come from choosing your own direction and pushing your own boundaries.
When someone builds a house, they're given a blueprint, which lists the exact specifications for building said house.
If houses were built like programs are written, it would be a bit more like this...
Client: Build me a house.
Developer: What kind of house do you want?
Client: Oh, the usual. Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living room, that sort of thing.
Developer: Can you be a bit more specific than that?
Client: More specific? I gave you all the information you need.
Developer: *shrug* Okay, we'll see what we can do.
Some months later, a small, nondescript, sturdy house is built. It has a kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a living room. It lacks certain conveniences like air conditioning and a laundry chute, but the client didn't ask for them and didn't pay for them.
Client: Looks okay so far, but where's the laundry chute?
Developer: You didn't ask for one, and we assumed you wanted to keep things simple so you could save money.
Client: You should have anticipated our needs and put one in anyway. Either way, we need you to add one. Oh, and we'd like you to put on a second story. Some more bedrooms, another bathroom, the usual.
Developer: A second floor? The foundation wasn't built to handle that. We may have to change the layout a bit so we can add some addition support to the house. Oh, and there's nowhere to put the laundry chute, so we'll have to maybe bring it down through a closet or something. It'll waste some space, but that's the only way we can do it.
Client: That's fine.
A couple months pass. A second floor is added onto the house, and support beams are put up all over the place, making the place kind of difficult to navigate. A laundry chute is run down through the front closet, using up about half the space inside it and rendering it basically useless.
Client: Well... it's okay so far, but now that we think about it, we'd like to *live* in the basement and do our laundry upstairs. Can you possibly make it so the laundry chute will suck the clothes up through it into the upstairs laundry room? Oh, we'd also like you to put another bedroom on the second floor!
Developer: But there's nothing underneath where the bedroom would go! We'd have to--
Client: Do it! Why wasn't this done months ago? Also, this whole place looks horrible, and I can't even walk around downstairs without running into a support beam. And what kind of idiot assumes [yada yada yada etc]
So, whiny clients, if you can't give us *exact specifications*, then you have to learn to deal with messy software, or be understanding when things have to be restarted from scratch. We can build you the house you want, but that's no help unless we know what it is you want.
Going back in time and changing the past is akin to trying to lift yourself up off of the ground. Both are equally impossible and equally silly; it's just that people understand space better than time, it's not quite so obvious.
I got really pumped at the part where Squall and that soldier are hanging by a wire from that hovercraft thingy, having an aereal fistfight while flying over the gardens. In fact, that entire battle scene just kicked tons of ass.
Get a large number of people to write and submit articles that contain one or two small factual inaccuracies (wrong birthplaces, dates, whatever). Either they'll spend way too much time trying to find and stamp out those inaccuracies (even in legit articles), or they'll just put the inaccurate articles in their encyclopedia without checking them thoroughly. It's a win-win, if you're an evil bastard. >:)
Perhaps this has been done already, perhaps it would be possible for a trusted group of people to start up a feature bounty site. People could place money in escrow to encourage developers to work on certain features. If enough people want something, the money will accumulate, and developers will start to take personal interest.
If this has already been done, do people who work on the major open source projects (GNOME, KDE, Firefox, OpenOffice, etc) actually look at it?
It's always interesting to see the two schools of thought on this:
1. STFU and Fork It - While I disagree with this (for reasons I will outline below), I agree that this is a valid point. For the most part, the people working on these projects are working entirely for free. As such, they have no real "customers" per se, because no one is paying them any money. Hence, they have no real obligation to care or even notice when someone suggests a new feature. The users, who are using software (for free) which was written on donated time, have no right to complain if it doesn't do exactly what they want.
2. Listen to your Users - Forking a project is fundamentally hard. You need, at bare minimum, a ton of extra time, skill in the language(s) the project was written in, and a working knowledge of the project's code base. Additionally, when a project is as widespread as GNOME, it's next to impossible to get any notable linux distributions to include your fork instead of the trunk. X.Org managed to pull this off, but only with the help of a large number of developers. When you tell someone to "STFU and Fork It", you're telling them to do the following:
Quit their day job.
Learn C/C++ along with whatever other libraries the project is based on
Become familiar with the project itself
Gather a bunch of other developers who are prominent enough that the community at large will notice
Work through the politics of getting your fork included in some Linux distros
That's a lot harder than just opening up a text editor, magically finding the right place to add your little snippit of code, and recompiling.
The spatial browsing controversy was what finally convinced me to give up GNOME for KDE. The straw that broke the camel's back was a very condescending article in favor of it that essentially claimed that anyone who didn't like the spatial file manager was using their computer wrong; however, since version 2.0, GNOME has had a history of removing configurability in favor of what the developers believed was simplicity, despite the vehement objections of their user base. The spatial file manager ordeal was just a stark example of a larger pattern.
For those of us who are trying to advocate Open Source, it would be really nice if certain developers were more willing to listen to their users. As a matter of policy, it would be a good idea to set apart a portion of the dev team whose specific duty it is to to proactively study and implement (with a how-can-we-make-your-experience-better attitude, as opposed to stfu-and-do-it-your-goddamn-self) feature requests. Why? Not because you necessarily owe people anything, but because people use your product, and it would be nice if you cared about them.
In the meantime, I've switched to KDE, which has shown itself to be far more responsive to the needs of its users. As things are going right now, GNOME will either adapt to the market or become obsolete, much like X did.
Instead of switching desktops, you can have multiple scaled-down windows on the screen, so you can view your desktop as a whole and then zoom in on windows as you see fit. Great interface for those of us who run many programs at once and would like a convenient way to keep track of them all.
Slashdot Mirror
And how!
Likewise, the United States has abuses (free speech zones, for instance) that would be completely illegal in other countries but are fine here.
Check out the Press Freedom Index and note our unacceptably low ranking (22nd out of 167). If you check out their report, you will find that one of the reasons for this poor ranking was the arrest of journalists during demonstrations against the government.
Sure, we're fairly high on the list, but we rank below Canada, Germany, and France (but above Italy). On the other hand, if we're going to claim to be some sort of beacon of freedom, anything less than a tie for first is an embarrassment.
We already do it now. And the way things are going, it's at least somewhat likely that we'll get worse in the future.
While there are unsavory types in the UN, there are also a lot of reasonable people there... enough that they're not going to be making any policies that restrict anyone's rights (althoughrestriction of speech will continue to be left up to individual countries within their own borders).
ICANN is contracted by the Department of Commerce, which is controlled by -- you guessed it -- Congress. Congress has several times in the past tried to make laws governing Internet content (Communications Decency Act, anyone?). Fortunately, thanks to a sane supreme court, the law was struck down and freedoms were preserved. Unfortunately, however, the Supreme Court isn't guaranteed to remain sane, and I (along with a not insignifican percentage of Americans, and most other people in the world) don't really trust the president to appoint non-wingnuts.
Also, just because political speech is generally protected at the moment doesn't mean our freedoms aren't being eroded. Certain political parodies can result nowadays in run-ins with the police. And if you're a member of the press, Don't try to take pictures of coffins coming home from Iraq. Oh, and if you try to pull any of that peaceful protest stuff where news cameras might see you near the president, don't be surprised if the police escort you off to a 'free speech zone.'
This gets its own paragraph because it's particularly worrisome.
As for other expression involving consenting adults, take a look at the War on Porn, for instance. Porn may not be political expression, but it is expression nonetheless, and tax dollars are being wasted trying to stamp it out because some people disapprove of it on religious grounds. That's to say nothing of the fact that in Texas, anal sex (once again between consenting adults) would still be illegal (yes, on religious grounds again) had the Supreme Court (which, again, isn't guaranteed to remain sane) not stepped in. Sex toys are still illegal in Alabama... what non-religious reason could there possibly be for banning them?
Also, the United States isn't one to talk about human rights violations (is it really just a few soldiers acting on their own, or does it go all the way to the top?). Or internment camps.
Other countries may also be nervous about our constant attempts at setting up massive surveillance networks.
You're right on a few counts: China and Cuba are a lot worse than we are. Also, European anti-hate-speech laws are a violation of free speech. That does not excuse this country's conduct. As long as we aren't the most free country in the world, America has a problem. Say it with me.
America has a problem.
The rest of the world sees it. Half of us see it. We're just not responsible enough to handle control of the internet right now.
This country is starting to look a bit like a fundamentalist theocracy. From a free speech perspective, it's probably better that the UN control it, rather than our own flaky and corrupt congress.
...an evil monster would block your exit until you washed your hands.
Honestly, for the sake of public health, I'd like to see this implemented at theme parks everywhere.
Why not just code up your own custom browser from scratch?
Nintendo, once again, dropped the ball when it comes to ONLINE GAMING. ...and instead, they left out wireless and released a substantially less expensive product with a much stronger game library.
They didn't drop the ball, they just were better at figuring out what people actually want. I'll get a PSP when a couple games come out for it that strike me as remotely interesting. For the time being, I have a wireless PDA that plays movies and browses the web just fine.
You'd be a hobbyist turned professional, then. Classes are neccesary for two reasons:
- Proving to your employer on paper that you know what you're doing, and
- Filling in all the little gaps in your knowledge that come from being self-taught.
That said, the vast bulk of your knowledge and experience come from your hobby, not your schooling. Classes may force you to push your boundaries a bit, but in the grand scheme of things, classes are short, and most of your growth as a programmer will come from choosing your own direction and pushing your own boundaries.
A company cannot be allowed to profit from deceit.
Much better.
When someone builds a house, they're given a blueprint, which lists the exact specifications for building said house.
If houses were built like programs are written, it would be a bit more like this...
Client: Build me a house.
Developer: What kind of house do you want?
Client: Oh, the usual. Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living room, that sort of thing.
Developer: Can you be a bit more specific than that?
Client: More specific? I gave you all the information you need.
Developer: *shrug* Okay, we'll see what we can do.
Some months later, a small, nondescript, sturdy house is built. It has a kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a living room. It lacks certain conveniences like air conditioning and a laundry chute, but the client didn't ask for them and didn't pay for them.
Client: Looks okay so far, but where's the laundry chute?
Developer: You didn't ask for one, and we assumed you wanted to keep things simple so you could save money.
Client: You should have anticipated our needs and put one in anyway. Either way, we need you to add one. Oh, and we'd like you to put on a second story. Some more bedrooms, another bathroom, the usual.
Developer: A second floor? The foundation wasn't built to handle that. We may have to change the layout a bit so we can add some addition support to the house. Oh, and there's nowhere to put the laundry chute, so we'll have to maybe bring it down through a closet or something. It'll waste some space, but that's the only way we can do it.
Client: That's fine.
A couple months pass. A second floor is added onto the house, and support beams are put up all over the place, making the place kind of difficult to navigate. A laundry chute is run down through the front closet, using up about half the space inside it and rendering it basically useless.
Client: Well... it's okay so far, but now that we think about it, we'd like to *live* in the basement and do our laundry upstairs. Can you possibly make it so the laundry chute will suck the clothes up through it into the upstairs laundry room? Oh, we'd also like you to put another bedroom on the second floor!
Developer: But there's nothing underneath where the bedroom would go! We'd have to--
Client: Do it! Why wasn't this done months ago? Also, this whole place looks horrible, and I can't even walk around downstairs without running into a support beam. And what kind of idiot assumes [yada yada yada etc]
So, whiny clients, if you can't give us *exact specifications*, then you have to learn to deal with messy software, or be understanding when things have to be restarted from scratch. We can build you the house you want, but that's no help unless we know what it is you want.
Going back in time and changing the past is akin to trying to lift yourself up off of the ground. Both are equally impossible and equally silly; it's just that people understand space better than time, it's not quite so obvious.
I got really pumped at the part where Squall and that soldier are hanging by a wire from that hovercraft thingy, having an aereal fistfight while flying over the gardens. In fact, that entire battle scene just kicked tons of ass.
Don't buy the camera that doesn't work with the industry standard photo manipulation software package.
Yeah, 'cause ICANN definitely gives a fuck about the little guy.
Get a large number of people to write and submit articles that contain one or two small factual inaccuracies (wrong birthplaces, dates, whatever). Either they'll spend way too much time trying to find and stamp out those inaccuracies (even in legit articles), or they'll just put the inaccurate articles in their encyclopedia without checking them thoroughly. It's a win-win, if you're an evil bastard. >:)
Ironcally, this comment on my page is showing up immediately below the comment with this link here:
http://www.theallineed.com/women/05031804.htm
People *are* asking.
Find CHANDRA X-RAY OBSERVATORY on Ebay!
Find COLON CANCER on Ebay!
Find DOWNLOAD METALLICA MP3S on Ebay!
Yeah, Ebay ads suck.
I fired the video up to watch it for old time's sake, and just when it started playing, my MP3 rotation got to Strong Bad's techno song.
"The system... is down. The system... is down. DUN DUN DUNUN DUN DUN DUNUNNN!"
Nice timing, I thought.
I'm running X.Org as opposed to XFree86 (which is what I was referring to as obsolete, not the X protocol in general. My bad.)
Perhaps this has been done already, perhaps it would be possible for a trusted group of people to start up a feature bounty site. People could place money in escrow to encourage developers to work on certain features. If enough people want something, the money will accumulate, and developers will start to take personal interest.
If this has already been done, do people who work on the major open source projects (GNOME, KDE, Firefox, OpenOffice, etc) actually look at it?
nonsensicle
Mmmm... sweet, frozen nonsense on a stick.
1. STFU and Fork It - While I disagree with this (for reasons I will outline below), I agree that this is a valid point. For the most part, the people working on these projects are working entirely for free. As such, they have no real "customers" per se, because no one is paying them any money. Hence, they have no real obligation to care or even notice when someone suggests a new feature. The users, who are using software (for free) which was written on donated time, have no right to complain if it doesn't do exactly what they want.
2. Listen to your Users - Forking a project is fundamentally hard. You need, at bare minimum, a ton of extra time, skill in the language(s) the project was written in, and a working knowledge of the project's code base. Additionally, when a project is as widespread as GNOME, it's next to impossible to get any notable linux distributions to include your fork instead of the trunk. X.Org managed to pull this off, but only with the help of a large number of developers. When you tell someone to "STFU and Fork It", you're telling them to do the following:
That's a lot harder than just opening up a text editor, magically finding the right place to add your little snippit of code, and recompiling.
The spatial browsing controversy was what finally convinced me to give up GNOME for KDE. The straw that broke the camel's back was a very condescending article in favor of it that essentially claimed that anyone who didn't like the spatial file manager was using their computer wrong; however, since version 2.0, GNOME has had a history of removing configurability in favor of what the developers believed was simplicity, despite the vehement objections of their user base. The spatial file manager ordeal was just a stark example of a larger pattern.
For those of us who are trying to advocate Open Source, it would be really nice if certain developers were more willing to listen to their users. As a matter of policy, it would be a good idea to set apart a portion of the dev team whose specific duty it is to to proactively study and implement (with a how-can-we-make-your-experience-better attitude, as opposed to stfu-and-do-it-your-goddamn-self) feature requests. Why? Not because you necessarily owe people anything, but because people use your product, and it would be nice if you cared about them.
In the meantime, I've switched to KDE, which has shown itself to be far more responsive to the needs of its users. As things are going right now, GNOME will either adapt to the market or become obsolete, much like X did.
A lot of people on Slashdot have tons of experience typing with one hand.
Instead of switching desktops, you can have multiple scaled-down windows on the screen, so you can view your desktop as a whole and then zoom in on windows as you see fit. Great interface for those of us who run many programs at once and would like a convenient way to keep track of them all.