I already can't browse those sites. I won't run flash because it's proven to be insecure. And y'know what? The most significant site I had trouble with was http://www.dubyadubyadubya.com. Do you call that a "very significant portion of the web."? I don't. -russ
Here's a definition of email spam. A confirmation isn't bulk, so it's not spam. Did anybody make that point to the judge? That spam is not just any old unwanted email? -russ
No, I believe that's the whole point. Who's going to be better at "the real world"? Some kids who have been locked up inside a school all day long and who are so impolite that nobody wants to talk to them? Or kids who have been out dealing with the real world?
ostracized when he leaves your protective bubble for being "older than everyone his age"
You are speaking from ignorance, and your words show it. My daughter is going to be a co-leader of the high school program at the Quaker Gathering next summer. That's not exactly "ostracized".
It's funny how you turn a positive attribute (maturity) into a negative one. If schools aren't supposed to help children grow, what ARE they doing?
a room full of strangers their own age
Where are they going to find a room full of strangers their own age? The only place you find something so unnatural and unusual is in a school. You defend schools for teaching a skill which is only useful in a school!
normally-schooled kid
I've seen "normal" and I don't like it. I want better for my kids. I think most parents want the best for their kids.
do you think homeschooled kids would still clean up?
Of course. Government-schooled children don't have the time to pursue their interests. They're forced to learn the curriculum. How would changing the teacher-student ratio change that fact? -russ
Ignorant homeschool question #2: "What about socialization?"
You have, unfortunately, not only shown your ignorance, but you have paraded it around the town square with a megaphone. The short, sweet, and simple answer to "What about socialization" is "Socialization? In school, they call it ``talking in class'', and they forbid it."
The more serious answer is this: If you want socialized children, you don't put them in with a bunch of other unsocialized children and expect them to be polite and well-mannered. You put them in the company of people older than themselves, who are already socialized. You get them out in the world, doing things, real things, that help people. "Schooling" only takes about two hours a day, tops. That the school system can manage to stretch it out to 7 hours (10 if you count homework) is a sign of their inefficacy. Homeschooled children have the time to pursue their interests, to volunteer, to play. That's why an incredible proportion of homeschooled children win 4-H public presentation contests (last year at the New York State Fair, ALL five of the presenters in the senior division were home-schooled.) That's why the national spelling bee has been won a number of times by home-schoolers. That's why so many home-schoolers win at the National Junior Horticultural Association.
As long as politicians have something to sell, tehre will be people willing to pay their price. What they have to sell is interference in the free market. If we had an amendment fo the constitution which insisted on a free market, then we would have a lot fewer corrupt politicians.
If you think this is a crazy idea, consider that a few hundred years ago, freedom of religion was thought to be crazy. -russ
What ever happened to America? People used to *walk* across America in the search of a new frontier. A bunch of them died. Nobody urged more caution, more safety, and government interference.
People are going to die developing private spaceflight. This is a given. Get over it, and tell the public to get over it. -russ
There is no private spaceflight. Private spaceflight is ILLEGAL. Against the law. You fly a spacecraft, you get arrested. Now, I'm not saying that businessmen don't do illegal things, but there has to be a lot of profit in them. There isn't enough profit in spaceflight yet to justify breaking the law.
Subsidy is not a requirement. Not killing the market is a prerequisite for private spaceflight. -russ
Indeed. It is competition which forces innovation. Those companies which try to protect their internal power structures by not picking up innovations will lose to their competition. -russ
Obviously, you didn't get the point of the essay. NASA was never the right way to advance spaceflight. Legislated monopolies don't need to be innovative. Innovation threatens their power structure. Read Guns, Germs, and Steel. -russ
Yup. I offered to Larry to run boa specially for boa.org, but he said "Thanks; I'm already asking enough of you just to host the website for me." -russ
Thanks, Larry. Remember that I offered to run boa for boa.org after I switched to binding Apache on a per-IP address basis? I'm still happy to do that. It wouldn't have helped, though. boa.org is only a 166Mhz machine with 64MB RAM connected via 2 T-1's. Hardly up to even a minimal slashdotting. -russ
You could argue that XXX is today's version of James Bond. They even have a version of Q. I love how he modified the Pontiac with all sorts of gadgets, which were so far from self-explanatory that it needed a user's manual. So he's driving along at whatever speed while she's trying to figure out how to use the car's gadgets. -russ
You seem to miss my point. What does inflating your currency (which is what Argentina did) have to do with free market policy (which is what you say Argentina did)? Argentina, like Turkey, is in trouble because its government thought that it could pay for everything by printing up money. Any free market liberal will tell you that inflating your currency is the road to rack and ruin. I really don't know if the World Bank told Argentina to inflate its currency. I hope not. In any case, Argentina did inflate (as did Turkey, just to replicate the experiment) and now their economy is in the dumps. Had they consulted even the least capable free-market economist, he would have predicted this future.
As for whether Economics is a science or not, well, a science makes predictions, and you can judge the scientific value of a theory by whether its predictions come true. Certainly there is a lot of folk-economics and faux-scientific economics. Such economics fails to pan out. You've seen that, I can tell. That doesn't mean that all economics is crap. Here's one prediction that's true: to the extent that it raises people's wages, a minimum wage law creates unemployment.
One type of economics which fails to suck over the long-term is free-market economics. Why? Because freedom lets everyone solve problems in parallel. You know,.......... like the world's largest Beowulf cluster. I had to say that, sorry. I've written an explanation of why a free market produces better results than centralization. Go read my analysis of the problem.
And what were you doing for the environment while walking to the shop? Nothing. There's still an opportunity cost involved in returning the DVD back to the shop. -russ p.s. it's obvious when non-economists get involved in economic thinking: you get an oxymoron.
Silly git. You're ignoring the cost of taking the DVD back to the shop. If you have to drive even a mile, it's better for the environment to landfill the DVD. -russ
Some of the Indian coders of my acquaintance wear saris (and not just the cross-dressers). My point is that a dhoti is unmistakably an Indian garment, therefore someone wanting to make an Indian Tux would reasonably put him in one. And yet... nobody has. -russ
Sure, but this story is about India, as if India was already a hotbed of Linux dwellers. I offer as proof of an absence of any significant number of Indian Linux developers the total lack of any Indian-themed Tuxes. Ever seen a tux wearing a dhoti?? I didn't think so. -russ
Slashdot Mirror
I already can't browse those sites. I won't run flash because it's proven to be insecure. And y'know what? The most significant site I had trouble with was http://www.dubyadubyadubya.com.
Do you call that a "very significant portion of the web."? I don't.
-russ
Macromedia and Microsoft would make a good match. They both publish insecure software.
-russ
Here's a definition of email spam. A confirmation isn't bulk, so it's not spam. Did anybody make that point to the judge? That spam is not just any old unwanted email?
-russ
I think I'd rather import smart people than import stupid ones.
-russ
Are they civil? That's another issue...
No, I believe that's the whole point. Who's going to be better at "the real world"? Some kids who have been locked up inside a school all day long and who are so impolite that nobody wants to talk to them? Or kids who have been out dealing with the real world?
ostracized when he leaves your protective bubble for being "older than everyone his age"
You are speaking from ignorance, and your words show it. My daughter is going to be a co-leader of the high school program at the Quaker Gathering next summer. That's not exactly "ostracized".
It's funny how you turn a positive attribute (maturity) into a negative one. If schools aren't supposed to help children grow, what ARE they doing?
a room full of strangers their own age
Where are they going to find a room full of strangers their own age? The only place you find something so unnatural and unusual is in a school. You defend schools for teaching a skill which is only useful in a school!
normally-schooled kid
I've seen "normal" and I don't like it. I want better for my kids. I think most parents want the best for their kids.
do you think homeschooled kids would still clean up?
Of course. Government-schooled children don't have the time to pursue their interests. They're forced to learn the curriculum. How would changing the teacher-student ratio change that fact?
-russ
Ignorant homeschool question #1: "Is it legal?"
Ignorant homeschool question #2: "What about socialization?"
You have, unfortunately, not only shown your ignorance, but you have paraded it around the town square with a megaphone. The short, sweet, and simple answer to "What about socialization" is "Socialization? In school, they call it ``talking in class'', and they forbid it."
The more serious answer is this: If you want socialized children, you don't put them in with a bunch of other unsocialized children and expect them to be polite and well-mannered. You put them in the company of people older than themselves, who are already socialized. You get them out in the world, doing things, real things, that help people. "Schooling" only takes about two hours a day, tops. That the school system can manage to stretch it out to 7 hours (10 if you count homework) is a sign of their inefficacy. Homeschooled children have the time to pursue their interests, to volunteer, to play. That's why an incredible proportion of homeschooled children win 4-H public presentation contests (last year at the New York State Fair, ALL five of the presenters in the senior division were home-schooled.) That's why the national spelling bee has been won a number of times by home-schoolers. That's why so many home-schoolers win at the National Junior Horticultural Association.
Feh on your ignorant opinions.
-russ
As long as politicians have something to sell, tehre will be people willing to pay their price. What they have to sell is interference in the free market. If we had an amendment fo the constitution which insisted on a free market, then we would have a lot fewer corrupt politicians.
If you think this is a crazy idea, consider that a few hundred years ago, freedom of religion was thought to be crazy.
-russ
What ever happened to America? People used to *walk* across America in the search of a new frontier. A bunch of them died. Nobody urged more caution, more safety, and government interference.
People are going to die developing private spaceflight. This is a given. Get over it, and tell the public to get over it.
-russ
There is no private spaceflight. Private spaceflight is ILLEGAL. Against the law. You fly a spacecraft, you get arrested. Now, I'm not saying that businessmen don't do illegal things, but there has to be a lot of profit in them. There isn't enough profit in spaceflight yet to justify breaking the law.
Subsidy is not a requirement. Not killing the market is a prerequisite for private spaceflight.
-russ
Indeed. It is competition which forces innovation. Those companies which try to protect their internal power structures by not picking up innovations will lose to their competition.
-russ
Obviously, you didn't get the point of the essay. NASA was never the right way to advance spaceflight. Legislated monopolies don't need to be innovative. Innovation threatens their power structure. Read Guns, Germs, and Steel.
-russ
Are you a leech if you use open-source software without paying the creator for the use of it?
-russ
Yup. I offered to Larry to run boa specially for boa.org, but he said "Thanks; I'm already asking enough of you just to host the website for me."
-russ
Thanks, Larry. Remember that I offered to run boa for boa.org after I switched to binding Apache on a per-IP address basis? I'm still happy to do that. It wouldn't have helped, though. boa.org is only a 166Mhz machine with 64MB RAM connected via 2 T-1's. Hardly up to even a minimal slashdotting.
-russ
Will the last SPI board member standing please remember to transfer opensource.org to OSI?
-russ
You could argue that XXX is today's version of James Bond. They even have a version of Q. I love how he modified the Pontiac with all sorts of gadgets, which were so far from self-explanatory that it needed a user's manual. So he's driving along at whatever speed while she's trying to figure out how to use the car's gadgets.
-russ
You seem to miss my point. What does inflating your currency (which is what Argentina did) have to do with free market policy (which is what you say Argentina did)? Argentina, like Turkey, is in trouble because its government thought that it could pay for everything by printing up money. Any free market liberal will tell you that inflating your currency is the road to rack and ruin. I really don't know if the World Bank told Argentina to inflate its currency. I hope not. In any case, Argentina did inflate (as did Turkey, just to replicate the experiment) and now their economy is in the dumps. Had they consulted even the least capable free-market economist, he would have predicted this future.
.......... like the world's largest Beowulf cluster. I had to say that, sorry. I've written an explanation of why a free market produces better results than centralization. Go read my analysis of the problem.
As for whether Economics is a science or not, well, a science makes predictions, and you can judge the scientific value of a theory by whether its predictions come true. Certainly there is a lot of folk-economics and faux-scientific economics. Such economics fails to pan out. You've seen that, I can tell. That doesn't mean that all economics is crap. Here's one prediction that's true: to the extent that it raises people's wages, a minimum wage law creates unemployment.
One type of economics which fails to suck over the long-term is free-market economics. Why? Because freedom lets everyone solve problems in parallel. You know,
Don't miss his Dilbert scuptures. He has Dilbert, the Pointy-haired Boss, and Wally.
-russ
I offer a different analysis.
-russ
And what were you doing for the environment while walking to the shop? Nothing. There's still an opportunity cost involved in returning the DVD back to the shop.
-russ
p.s. it's obvious when non-economists get involved in economic thinking: you get an oxymoron.
Silly git. You're ignoring the cost of taking the DVD back to the shop. If you have to drive even a mile, it's better for the environment to landfill the DVD.
-russ
Do you have any evidence that that is actually what Argentina did?
-russ
Some of the Indian coders of my acquaintance wear saris (and not just the cross-dressers). My point is that a dhoti is unmistakably an Indian garment, therefore someone wanting to make an Indian Tux would reasonably put him in one. And yet ... nobody has.
-russ
Rediffmail.com is India's largest email server and it runs entirely on Linux.
-russ
Sure, but this story is about India, as if India was already a hotbed of Linux dwellers. I offer as proof of an absence of any significant number of Indian Linux developers the total lack of any Indian-themed Tuxes. Ever seen a tux wearing a dhoti?? I didn't think so.
-russ