I've been using the OpenOffice suite in one of its various previous or successor incarnations for nearly 15 years now, so yeah, its clearly not true that there were no usable Open Source alternatives 2 and a half years ago.
However, what has happened in the last two and a half years is that Google Docs acquired the capability to use old Microsoft formats (in April of 2010 to be precise) and work offline (September of 2011). If they are using Google Docs and consider all its cloud-based collaboration features along with Microsoft file support and/or offline capability essential features that make their new setup worthwhile, then its perfectly fair to point out that this alternative was not available two and a half years ago.
You're absolutely right that periodic recessions are predictable (in that any macro econ 101 student can tell you that another one will happen eventually). What wasn't necessarily so predictable (or at least avoidable w/o government help) was that at this exact moment all credit would dry up. GM and the other automakers were quite capable of borrowing money to restructure so they could make it through the recession shorn but intact. If it were a normal recession, I suspect that would have been exactly what happened. However, nobody was lending money because all the lenders were already way over exposed in the mortgage and mortgage securities markets. So, due to something completely outside of their control, GM was going to go completely under without help.
The different thing about this recession was the credit drought. That isn't normal, even for a recession. The last recession we had like that hit in the 1920's. You're right that bailouts shouldn't become a habit, but extraordinary circumstances sometimes call for extraordinary measures.
But otherwise I agree. Now that the smoke is mostly cleared, IMHO any financial institution that we might in the future feel the need to bail out to save our own economy, needs to be either bought up by the government, split up, or strictly regulated like a utility. This "privatized profits but socialized risks" situation is a crappy deal that we as taxpayers should not ever put up with again.
That said, I can think of a few situations where such a bailout would been justified. If the company's failure were caused by something truly unpredictable
Like say perhaps all credit disappearing due to the credit suppliers own malfeasance in a completely different industry (mortgage lending)? Or does it have to be a meteor?
But all that assumes that for some unexplained reason the demand for cars would just dry up.
The demand for cars had dried up! If you want an explanation (aside from the obvious recession), feel go out and look for one, but it is a full out fact that it happened.
If computer science is a requirement, then how will students in households without a general-purpose computer complete their homework assignments?
Finally, someone understands the general societal unfairness in this. It really drags me down sometimes how folks here act as if everyone in the country comes from a upper-middle class background, and has access to stuff like computers at home when the truth is in my town more than half the kids wouldn't even have enough *food* at home without government assistance. About a quarter of them don't with government assistance.
A lot of households rely on iPhones, iPads, and/or game consoles, which don't offer much in the way of end-user programmability.
The hypocrisy in Oklahoma is this: you can get people to donate money like crazy to erect useless monuments, yet about 1/5th of the state's population doesn't know where their next meal is coming from.
This is one Oklahoma Christian that despises that monument.
Make it two An obsession over the 10 Commandments is a sure sign of either a pretend Christian, or at least one who has no clue what they are talking about.
There's no canonical ordering of them, so different sects order them differently.
They actually appear in two places in The Bible, and are different in those two places.
Jesus gave us Christians two commandments to supersede the 10. (See Matthew 22:37-40)
I'm really just aching for someone to ask one of these state officials the same question asked Jesus: "Which is the greatest commandment?"
For the record, here was his answer:
"‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
So why isn't that being posted, instead of the less important 10 Commandments?
If that's too short for you, how about the Beatitudes? Those are generally considered the centerpiece of Jesus' teachings. How do you think a monument concerned with taking proper care of the hungry, the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned would fly in Oklahoma, with its sky high poverty, hunger, incarceration rates, and lack of health coverage? I think it might do a lot of good, which is why you'll probably never see one. The folks in power here would much rather deal with imaginary Sharia Law threats.
If nothing else, by the standards of the Beatitudes, we are one of the most "blessed" states in the country. So we have that going for us...
"Don't say bad stuff about God (and by extension, his earthly minions),"
Actually, that one is, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain," which again doesn't rule out saying "bad stuff about God;" as the dictionary defines "to take in vain" as "abuse, misuse, and/or perversion," that means that one is not to, say, claim that an act or statement is done in the name of God when it really isn't.
Actually I had a biblical scholar friend (a professor at ORU for what its worth) who insisted this one was actually about not swearing *falsely*. The rationale was that the typical reason for invoking God's name back then would have been to add an air of veracity to a statement (eg: "I swear to God that's what happened!"). So this is basically an injunction against using God's name to help yourself lie successfully. It has nothing whatsoever to do with saying bad things about God (the GP's contention) or using foul language (most naïve Christians' interpretations).
In addition the Founders were distinctly against a privately held central bank such as the Federal Reserve which was also approved in 1913.
Not quite. This was a central tenet of Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party. However, that was only one of two parties at the time, and the other (the Federalists and the Whigs after them), also populated by "founders", not only were for a big central bank, but felt it was essential to promote growth in the new nation.
You really need to quit fetishizing "the founders". They were flawed human beings who disagreed with each other over nearly everything. The effort required to keep looking at them as divinely inspired demigods is going to give you an aneurism one day.
Hell, even here it *ought* to be an issue. My grandfather was a rancher, and owned 5 pickups and one car. Unless he was getting feed or something, every time he went into town, he used the car. Every single truck was covered in dents, because it was a work vehicle, and worked.
He certainly would never have understood all these city folks driving around washed and waxed trucks. Don't even get me started on bedliners. I used to really resent all these cowboy wannebes. But after a few decades I realized that I've got better things to do than drive around ticked all the time. Doesn't mean I have to join the parade of fools though.
For example, I think women are better in roles where they are dealing with people, or in program manager type
This is just complete horseshit.
There might be some genetic predisposition along those lines at the extremities (if nothing else, the prevalence of males in the autism spectrum points that way. But that's a very long way away from being able to generalize away slightly more than half the population of the earth. Women, just like men, have all personality types. About half of everyone (in the USA at least) are introverts, and such people, be they male or female, are not at their best when dealing with large amounts of other people all day.
This whole discussion reminds me of an old newsreel clip I saw about basketball. At the time I guess most of the best players were Jewish. This newsreel reported the accepted rationale for this at the time: that the game of basketball naturally favored being cunning and sneaky (with clips of fast passing around a team)!
Its pretty obvious in hindsight that the clip was saying way more about the common prejudices about Jews back then than it said about why a lot of the best players weren't "normal" WASP people. I'm fairly certain you'll find all this talk about women being natural managers or nurturers or secretaries or whatever the popular stereotype today is (I'm nearing 50, so I have trouble keeping up with the latest fashion in bigotry), is just as much horseshit at that stuff about Jews being naturally awesome basketball players.
Anyone else think of that too.
Tall SUVs ARE the problem
I used to. However, I live in Oklahoma. Here, that would be like saying "Oxygen in the problem". Mostly I have learned to attempt to look through their windows to the other side, and save my ire for SUV's with tinted windows.
This is precisely why a lot of folks prefer cars with manual windows and mirrors. Any automagic electronic doodad is just one more thing that can break.
Serfs were bound by traditional duties, but the same traditions bound their liege lords with obligations and to recognize certain rights. So, for example, you cannot turn a serf off the land his father worked.
...unless it becomes really profitable for you to do so. Then its a simple matter of running off a new law or two.
There's a basic problem with any system of "obligations and rights" against a class that relies on a political system in the hands of that same class for its enforcement. On paper it may not have been that bad, but nobody lives on paper.
These are the daughters of tech people and engineers, so you would expect there to be some interest.
Haven't found much at all. The young ladies prefer fields like lawyers, MBA's, and medical fields. This is a sampling of hundreds.
OK. But have you ever asked yourself why it has to be that way? One of the things I've found with my own daughters is that there's a definite cultural thing going on where girls are not supposed to like math. Just like how in some neighborhoods its uncool to be a good student, among girls its seriously uncool to enjoy math.
If we consider STEM important to our future as a nation (heck, as a species), but our culture prevents half of our best and brightest from going into it, we are effectively fighting with one arm tied behind our back. So this has to be attacked. However, if we are going to fight this culture, we have to go after it where it starts, and thus teachers will have to be involved.
The general argument you hear against Democratic systems is the nebulous "stability" argument.
This of course totally ignores one fact that ought to be blindingly obvious: If your system has no legal way for the people to get rid of leaders they find unacceptable who don't want to leave, then your system is inherently unstable.
This is (to me) substantially similar to those people who frequently call violent crime a "growing problem" and probably comes from the same lazy, sensationalist reporters.
That's actually a matter of reporters reusing stories and bits of stories completely unchanged from the 80's, when it was a growing problem. Thirty years of writing the same story over and over again. That's a whole different level of lazy.
there may be as yet undiscovered primary sources (or even contemporary secondary sources)
Actually, that would be awesome. Seriously. I would love to see that, even it if contradicted everything I said. Heck, particularly if it contradicted everything I said. When you study history, nothing is more wonderful than a new trove of information that completely changes our view of things.
However, right now there are no such sources, and more importantly, this "expert" isn't looking to find them. He's just a guy who's an expert on the legends. His efforts are really less interesting than a guy looking to find the exact birthplace of Paul Bunyan.
but I think the possibility shouldn't be dismissed until everything has been fully explored.
A great idea! I'll tell you what: Just to make things interesting, I'll add a story I heard about Genghis Khan being buried on the moon by passing aliens who were impressed with his military prowress. Its first attestation is today, 800 years after the fact, from someone who wasn't Mongolian. But my story is hardly much less credible than a couple first noted half as many years after the fact from someone else who wasn't Mongolian. So while we are "not dismissing anything until everything has been fully explored", let's not forget to include a mission to the moon.
Just because someone at Fox News put "Noted Authority" on the Chiron under a TV guest doesn't mean they know what they are talking about.
I actually did a fair bit of research myself into this a few months back, to answer a question on History.SE. There is indeed a romantic notion of there being some undiscovered tomb with untold wealth in it. Then there's the reality:
Depositing the corpse in the steppe was meant to sacrifice it to predatory animals. According to Mongolians this is the last virtous act a person can carry out. This idea is much older than Lamaism and exhibits a really strong shamanistic element of spiritual thought.
All the assorted legends about where a supposed tomb might be came out of China (not Mongolia, where it happened) about 300 years after the fact, and describe things much closer to Chinese burial practices than Mongolian. In other words, they show all signs of being entirely made up.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been using the OpenOffice suite in one of its various previous or successor incarnations for nearly 15 years now, so yeah, its clearly not true that there were no usable Open Source alternatives 2 and a half years ago.
However, what has happened in the last two and a half years is that Google Docs acquired the capability to use old Microsoft formats (in April of 2010 to be precise) and work offline (September of 2011). If they are using Google Docs and consider all its cloud-based collaboration features along with Microsoft file support and/or offline capability essential features that make their new setup worthwhile, then its perfectly fair to point out that this alternative was not available two and a half years ago.
You're absolutely right that periodic recessions are predictable (in that any macro econ 101 student can tell you that another one will happen eventually). What wasn't necessarily so predictable (or at least avoidable w/o government help) was that at this exact moment all credit would dry up. GM and the other automakers were quite capable of borrowing money to restructure so they could make it through the recession shorn but intact. If it were a normal recession, I suspect that would have been exactly what happened. However, nobody was lending money because all the lenders were already way over exposed in the mortgage and mortgage securities markets. So, due to something completely outside of their control, GM was going to go completely under without help.
The different thing about this recession was the credit drought. That isn't normal, even for a recession. The last recession we had like that hit in the 1920's. You're right that bailouts shouldn't become a habit, but extraordinary circumstances sometimes call for extraordinary measures.
But otherwise I agree. Now that the smoke is mostly cleared, IMHO any financial institution that we might in the future feel the need to bail out to save our own economy, needs to be either bought up by the government, split up, or strictly regulated like a utility. This "privatized profits but socialized risks" situation is a crappy deal that we as taxpayers should not ever put up with again.
That said, I can think of a few situations where such a bailout would been justified. If the company's failure were caused by something truly unpredictable
Like say perhaps all credit disappearing due to the credit suppliers own malfeasance in a completely different industry (mortgage lending)? Or does it have to be a meteor?
But all that assumes that for some unexplained reason the demand for cars would just dry up.
The demand for cars had dried up! If you want an explanation (aside from the obvious recession), feel go out and look for one, but it is a full out fact that it happened.
If computer science is a requirement, then how will students in households without a general-purpose computer complete their homework assignments?
Finally, someone understands the general societal unfairness in this. It really drags me down sometimes how folks here act as if everyone in the country comes from a upper-middle class background, and has access to stuff like computers at home when the truth is in my town more than half the kids wouldn't even have enough *food* at home without government assistance. About a quarter of them don't with government assistance.
A lot of households rely on iPhones, iPads, and/or game consoles, which don't offer much in the way of end-user programmability.
Oh. Damn. (*slinks off muttering*)
The hypocrisy in Oklahoma is this: you can get people to donate money like crazy to erect useless monuments, yet about 1/5th of the state's population doesn't know where their next meal is coming from.
This is one Oklahoma Christian that despises that monument.
Make it two An obsession over the 10 Commandments is a sure sign of either a pretend Christian, or at least one who has no clue what they are talking about.
I'm really just aching for someone to ask one of these state officials the same question asked Jesus: "Which is the greatest commandment?" For the record, here was his answer:
"‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
So why isn't that being posted, instead of the less important 10 Commandments?
If that's too short for you, how about the Beatitudes? Those are generally considered the centerpiece of Jesus' teachings. How do you think a monument concerned with taking proper care of the hungry, the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned would fly in Oklahoma, with its sky high poverty, hunger, incarceration rates, and lack of health coverage? I think it might do a lot of good, which is why you'll probably never see one. The folks in power here would much rather deal with imaginary Sharia Law threats.
If nothing else, by the standards of the Beatitudes, we are one of the most "blessed" states in the country. So we have that going for us...
"Don't say bad stuff about God (and by extension, his earthly minions),"
Actually, that one is, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain," which again doesn't rule out saying "bad stuff about God;" as the dictionary defines "to take in vain" as "abuse, misuse, and/or perversion," that means that one is not to, say, claim that an act or statement is done in the name of God when it really isn't.
Actually I had a biblical scholar friend (a professor at ORU for what its worth) who insisted this one was actually about not swearing *falsely*. The rationale was that the typical reason for invoking God's name back then would have been to add an air of veracity to a statement (eg: "I swear to God that's what happened!"). So this is basically an injunction against using God's name to help yourself lie successfully. It has nothing whatsoever to do with saying bad things about God (the GP's contention) or using foul language (most naïve Christians' interpretations).
When I was a kid (back in the late 70's) programming was trivial. It was getting the programs to actually work properly that was an ungodly bear.
Today things are a bit different; getting programs to work has gotten a bit harder.
Except the NSA has something like 30,000 people. It's hardly as though every one of them are involved in monitoring US civilian communications.
When the cops raid the whorehouse, they arrest the piano player too.
Yeah, about 1800 years old to be exact, since its from Paul's letter to the Galatians (6:7).
In addition the Founders were distinctly against a privately held central bank such as the Federal Reserve which was also approved in 1913.
Not quite. This was a central tenet of Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party. However, that was only one of two parties at the time, and the other (the Federalists and the Whigs after them), also populated by "founders", not only were for a big central bank, but felt it was essential to promote growth in the new nation.
You really need to quit fetishizing "the founders". They were flawed human beings who disagreed with each other over nearly everything. The effort required to keep looking at them as divinely inspired demigods is going to give you an aneurism one day.
Hell, even here it *ought* to be an issue. My grandfather was a rancher, and owned 5 pickups and one car. Unless he was getting feed or something, every time he went into town, he used the car. Every single truck was covered in dents, because it was a work vehicle, and worked.
He certainly would never have understood all these city folks driving around washed and waxed trucks. Don't even get me started on bedliners. I used to really resent all these cowboy wannebes. But after a few decades I realized that I've got better things to do than drive around ticked all the time. Doesn't mean I have to join the parade of fools though.
For example, I think women are better in roles where they are dealing with people, or in program manager type
This is just complete horseshit.
There might be some genetic predisposition along those lines at the extremities (if nothing else, the prevalence of males in the autism spectrum points that way. But that's a very long way away from being able to generalize away slightly more than half the population of the earth. Women, just like men, have all personality types. About half of everyone (in the USA at least) are introverts, and such people, be they male or female, are not at their best when dealing with large amounts of other people all day.
This whole discussion reminds me of an old newsreel clip I saw about basketball. At the time I guess most of the best players were Jewish. This newsreel reported the accepted rationale for this at the time: that the game of basketball naturally favored being cunning and sneaky (with clips of fast passing around a team)!
Its pretty obvious in hindsight that the clip was saying way more about the common prejudices about Jews back then than it said about why a lot of the best players weren't "normal" WASP people. I'm fairly certain you'll find all this talk about women being natural managers or nurturers or secretaries or whatever the popular stereotype today is (I'm nearing 50, so I have trouble keeping up with the latest fashion in bigotry), is just as much horseshit at that stuff about Jews being naturally awesome basketball players.
Anyone else think of that too. Tall SUVs ARE the problem
I used to. However, I live in Oklahoma. Here, that would be like saying "Oxygen in the problem". Mostly I have learned to attempt to look through their windows to the other side, and save my ire for SUV's with tinted windows.
How do the LEOs know what someone's intention is?
That's easy. They check to see how dark his skin color is.
Leagalese is actually rather easy to understand, once you know the code.
This is precisely why a lot of folks prefer cars with manual windows and mirrors. Any automagic electronic doodad is just one more thing that can break.
Serfs were bound by traditional duties, but the same traditions bound their liege lords with obligations and to recognize certain rights. So, for example, you cannot turn a serf off the land his father worked.
...unless it becomes really profitable for you to do so. Then its a simple matter of running off a new law or two.
There's a basic problem with any system of "obligations and rights" against a class that relies on a political system in the hands of that same class for its enforcement. On paper it may not have been that bad, but nobody lives on paper.
These are the daughters of tech people and engineers, so you would expect there to be some interest.
Haven't found much at all. The young ladies prefer fields like lawyers, MBA's, and medical fields. This is a sampling of hundreds.
OK. But have you ever asked yourself why it has to be that way? One of the things I've found with my own daughters is that there's a definite cultural thing going on where girls are not supposed to like math. Just like how in some neighborhoods its uncool to be a good student, among girls its seriously uncool to enjoy math.
If we consider STEM important to our future as a nation (heck, as a species), but our culture prevents half of our best and brightest from going into it, we are effectively fighting with one arm tied behind our back. So this has to be attacked. However, if we are going to fight this culture, we have to go after it where it starts, and thus teachers will have to be involved.
The general argument you hear against Democratic systems is the nebulous "stability" argument.
This of course totally ignores one fact that ought to be blindingly obvious: If your system has no legal way for the people to get rid of leaders they find unacceptable who don't want to leave, then your system is inherently unstable.
Nah. Just send them to the hereditary monarchial paradise of North Korea.
I don't know if they will like it there or not, but either way we will never have to hear about it again from them.
what's the rationale behind giving them benefits? would they move away if they didn't? unlikely, really
Exactly. Where else in the USA could they possibly find a lower cost of living?
Oh yeah, pretty much everywhere. (Median home price? 1.4 mil)
This is (to me) substantially similar to those people who frequently call violent crime a "growing problem" and probably comes from the same lazy, sensationalist reporters.
That's actually a matter of reporters reusing stories and bits of stories completely unchanged from the 80's, when it was a growing problem. Thirty years of writing the same story over and over again. That's a whole different level of lazy.
there may be as yet undiscovered primary sources (or even contemporary secondary sources)
Actually, that would be awesome. Seriously. I would love to see that, even it if contradicted everything I said. Heck, particularly if it contradicted everything I said. When you study history, nothing is more wonderful than a new trove of information that completely changes our view of things.
However, right now there are no such sources, and more importantly, this "expert" isn't looking to find them. He's just a guy who's an expert on the legends. His efforts are really less interesting than a guy looking to find the exact birthplace of Paul Bunyan.
but I think the possibility shouldn't be dismissed until everything has been fully explored.
A great idea! I'll tell you what: Just to make things interesting, I'll add a story I heard about Genghis Khan being buried on the moon by passing aliens who were impressed with his military prowress. Its first attestation is today, 800 years after the fact, from someone who wasn't Mongolian. But my story is hardly much less credible than a couple first noted half as many years after the fact from someone else who wasn't Mongolian. So while we are "not dismissing anything until everything has been fully explored", let's not forget to include a mission to the moon.
Just because someone at Fox News put "Noted Authority" on the Chiron under a TV guest doesn't mean they know what they are talking about.
I actually did a fair bit of research myself into this a few months back, to answer a question on History.SE. There is indeed a romantic notion of there being some undiscovered tomb with untold wealth in it. Then there's the reality:
Depositing the corpse in the steppe was meant to sacrifice it to predatory animals. According to Mongolians this is the last virtous act a person can carry out. This idea is much older than Lamaism and exhibits a really strong shamanistic element of spiritual thought.