I don't even know where to begin responding to this.
First of all, all programming is "hand-coding". "Productive" is not the same as "writing the same application over and over again", so you can't make those application with code generated by "wizards" -- you have to write it.
Second, number-crunching and algorithms involved in simulations have complex structure WITHIN libraries, those things do not benefit from tools specifically designed to move complexity outside, into the convoluted mess of interfaces. The whole point of Microsoft tools is to guide developer through this mess, so he can have poor idea about infrastructure he is using (or creating). This is the antithesis of HPC applications that have to use clearly defined interfaces and components, so both humans and machines can evaluate and implement them in serialized and parallelized calculations.
On the other hand, some resource allocation has to be done explicitly, and plenty of optimization that separates trivial implementation from efficient one has to be done by programmer making a choice, or writing a program that generates one specifically for the given problem. Pretty GUI does nothing to improve this -- it just wastes space on the screen and distracts programmer from thinking.
Third, you have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA, how much actual optimization work is done within the compiler and is never shown to the user. There is absolutely nothing to look at unless the user wants to learn how exactly the predicted amount of machine cycles matches up so values used in subsequent calculation are determined at the same time, so processor's pipelines and cache are used efficiently.
Personally, the only IDE I use is XEmacs, and my semi-realtime audio applications are doing just fine.
Don't care about their feelings, care about the feelings of the people who you are trying to persuade.
I am not trying to persuade American patriots -- most of them are incapable of changing their opinions. My arguments are intended for the benefit of the observers. I can change my opinion if presented with convincing argument supported by facts, however "How do you dare not to believe in what I believe?!" does not count as such.
Given the wide publication of 'A People's History of the United States' and other similar literature, I would say that is an overbroad generalization.
Publishing dissenting books does not change the prevailing public opinion.
"Yesterday's argument" is explained by the context of that sentence. I am sure that re-reading my post will clear up that difficulty for you.
If you expect me to be able to read your mind, you are sadly misinformed about the nature of my mental abilities. I can only understand what is actually written, not what you assumed when writing it.
I'm sorry if your English isn't very good,
I can assure you that my English is just fine.
but it is not necessary to be a savage to be characterized as having savage behavior. That error almost seems deliberate.
Being someone's enemy does not involve "savage behavior", either. I do not subscribe to the idea that everyone has to pretend being everyone's friend -- I find it to be more honest and even polite to make my position clear and avoid unnecessary confusion. I am not an American. I do not care about anything that distinguishes Americans from the rest of the world. I have witnessed things that directly conradict American version of history. I know that most of Americans' feeling of self-worth and life goals are based on carefully constructed mythology that I am debunking. Obviously I can't expect to be met with anything less than hostility no matter how much I will sugar-coat the truth, so I choose not to do it at all.
Your content is spurious and devoid of anything but self-righteous vitriol.
Actually most of it is historical facts that can be easily verified by checking circumstances of USSR dissolution, economic policies under Brezhnev/Gorbachev/Yeltsin/Putin, declassified documents revealing actual USSR military budget in 80's, etc. Of course, American patriots would rather claim that facts are vitriolic (or, as some American comedian said, reality has bias).
Perhaps you have a problem with only reading what you want to read. Back your assertions. If tens of millions of people agree with you, there should be some indication of that.
If tens of millions experienced high quality of life, it is at least an indication that economy was actually doing well -- you can't turn tens of millions into some kind of shielded privileged class within a country with USSR-style economy. If same tens of millions seen no change at the point when USSR was dissolved, and rapid deterioration of conditions after reforms that were supposed to improve the economy, it's a natural conclusion that USSR dissolution was not caused by any kind of "economic collapse", and subsequent reforms had more to do with 90's crisis than anything USSR-specific.
Probably out of tens of millions you can even find an economist.
As I already established, being a professional economist does not turn a person into instant authority on the subject of economy. What American economists were saying about USSR "collapse" contradicts with evidence.
Hell, you can't even find the "authority figures" you're railing against. Who are you fighting here?
Journalists, economists, politicians, policymakers and writers who planted ideas about "USSR economic collapse", "trickle-down economy", and various implied beliefs of American superiority i
That's pretty much the definition of "grassroots."
No. It would be "grassroots" if it was created by ordinary people, regular members of society as opposed to members of some kind of elite, caste or group of professionals specializing in "making culture". I am describing groups that society places BELOW those "ordinary people" -- it may be a large or small group that is shunned and discriminated, and it may be a large or (more often) small subset of it that is involved in anything creative, however the point is, "grassroots" culture is accepted while those are rejected by society at large.
Oh please. Don't get all elitist on me. There's plenty of great stuff that was derided as "packaged culture" in years past. It's because we refuse to appreciate our American culture that too many people seem to think we don't have any. Culture is what a society is, for good or bad. By definition each society has one.
Mainstream American culture is the perfect target for elitist derision -- whatever in it that is good, does not stay specific to it, and whatever stays specific to US, is not good. Nevertheless it is irrelevant because I am not talking about rejection of new art forms (coming as commercialization of art created by current and former social rejects) by incumbent mainstream and "elite" alike -- I am talking about position of people who initially created those forms. Not all forms fared the same -- for example, jazz was met with hostility from both music elitists (who didn't recognize its value) and racists (who were hostile to the social group that created it), however coincidence with equal/civil rights movement and worldwide recognition made it unnecessary to water it down as an art form. Rock (all forms of it) didn't fare nearly as well.
As an example of something that happened over a much shorter stretch of time and familiar to fellow nerds, I can just point at "The Matrix" trilogy. The first movie was clearly from the culture of true computer nerds of mid-90's -- clever philosophical premise of simulation being more attractive and convincing than reality, people using equipment cobbled together in a way that places them outside of the rules dictated by companies churning out pre-made tightly controlled computers in pre-made tightly controlled world, bits and pieces of styles that many nerds enjoy or accept, value and worlds-changing power of mental abilities vs. hollow success in collecting wealth, recognition and power... One can argue about originality of each part of it or judge the quality of art, but it's undeniable that "The Matrix" represented pieces of our (computer nerds') culture, system of values, worldview and aesthetics.
Now compare this with the rest. Sure, they blessed us with the first sighting of real computer software in a movie in the whole history of cinema, they have story continuity, and the ending kinda clarifies the point that it's not machines that are evil, it's control and denial of knowledge, emotions and creativity that turn humans into slaves. But are those two movies really up to the standard established by the first one?
Does mere incremental improvement in special effects have much to do with computer nerds culture? And, more important, did society accept anything from it other than moving camera angles? Did people change their views of the relevant social group that can be summarized as "rich nerds drive Ferraris, poor nerds live in parents' basements"?
Oh yeah. Experts on US economy. The people who were explaining you under Reagan how trickle down works. The people who were explaining you under Clinton how stock market speculation and some kind of uniquely American capability to profit from technology can sustain your economy forever. The people who were explaining you under Bush how there is no economic ill that can't be solved by a $300 tax refund advance. The people who paraded inflated GDP numbers in front of you without telling you how it includes hidden debt and inflation. The people who declare recessions two years too late after they sort out the numbers doctored over the previous year. The people who pretend that current debt crisis is caused by bad loans as opposed to be the result of the same cause -- the whole economy fueled by overstretching debt and trade deficit.
I see why you believe that it was possible to completely conceal some kind of disaster in USSR economy -- because you project onto others what you don't dare to admit about your own country.
Why should you not be an asshole? Because it's unpleasant to read and does not lend support to your argument. No matter if you've argued with friends in the past over this; they aren't here now, and most people here are either not American or not compelled to be an asshole as a matter of course.
Why would I care about feelings of people whose most dear beliefs and positions I am trying to discredit?
You can't win yesterday's argument
What "yesterday argument"? Americans' unwavering belief in their glorious history is very much the current problem.
by being savage today.
Being someone's enemy does not make me a savage.
Rhetoric is necessary to influence people. It is what distinguishes effective communication from mere words strewn on a page. Concealing fact can fall within the bounds of an effective argument, but this is not generally the case.
I would rather express my idea in the form that can be judged by the content. Smart people will get it, and I am not interested in convincing dumb people, humiliating them is good enough.
Also, there are other ways of concealing fact. Secrecy, for example, is probably far more effective than rhetoric.
Conceal facts that are already announced by your opponents, so rhetoric is used to twist their meaning and distract the observers. I thought, that was pretty obvious.
Eyewitness evidence is notoriously unreliable, and your own unsubstantiated opinion is fit for no purpose that I'm aware of.
As opposed to what, political propaganda that is reliable in being wrong, misleading and manipulative? Appeal to authority when my original claim is that authority figures are lying? It's not like my experience is not backed by tens of millions of other people who had seen the same (though most wouldn't bother talking to Americans unless you ask them).
To promote your view, then, you must have a well-written argument, or have a set of facts that speak for themselves. Since you have no apparent aptitude for the former, the latter is necessary.
Really? Actually I did both, it's just the result is something you don't like, so you can't accept it. Congratulations, you are a true American patriot.
Development tools. Something Microsoft is very, very, good at.
Microsoft development tools are in the category "If this helps you, you are not qualified for this job to begin with". An equivalent would be multiplication table on mathematician's desk or marathon runner on crutches.
Re:Typical dichotomy of people in America
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American Nerd
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Because US culture is competitive, and anyone who does not dedicate all his time to sports and ever-going popularity contest is seen as a loser. Therefore the only way to win is not to play.
I have nothing against healthy social interaction and reasonable efforts toward personal fitness, however this is not what American culture is about, certainly not among teenagers.
Look, I don't care about whatever point you're trying to make. I'm sure you feel very strongly about it, too, but could you please try to be less of an asshole when making your points?
Why would I? Being an asshole is the cornerstone and starting point of every claim that my proud American friends ever made about economy.
Rhetoric used to be an art form. How sad that the educated are not now taught to express themselves.
It is needed as an art form when people have to conceal facts.
If I may weigh in on the topic of your discussion, I would say that both of you need further proofs: neither having lived in a country, nor having a degree are sufficient evidence of much of anything.
Eyewitness evidence is now as bad as regurgitation of propaganda op-ed pieces, right? Great standards you have here...
Since the matter being discussed is mostly a matter of historical fact, you should probably dig up some economic records of some sort. But I suspect you just want to rant and froth a bit; I'll leave you to it.
What records? Volumes of production and government budget from 80's USSR? The figures that became available are nowhere close to claims that American "economists" made at the time, especially claims about huge percentage of military spending (why would it when neither military nor civilian production involves profit?). What else do you want -- my paycheck stubs, university services lists and grocery receipts from 80's? I don't think, I kept those.
Living and working in America doesn't appear to make Americans experts on the situation either.
US economy is not designed as a giant nonprofit with most of the trade limited to domestic economy, like USSR system worked -- in US it's possible to create or conceal massive economic crisis or boom for years by mere manipulation of debt and foreign trade, as we can see on the example of the last two decades. USSR economy, with all its secrecy at the local level, was way too big and way too monopolized by the government to hide anything important -- it was pretty obvious that between 70's slow growth and mild recession in early 80's it could have done better, however if growth of production outpaced growth of population (the only way to truly get in trouble for a "giant nonprofit" like USSR), it would be immediately visible -- there would be shortages of products, unemployment and sudden massive replacement of domestic production with easily recognizable imports in short term followed by visible decrease in quality of life for most of the population. This is not what happened -- oil trade became less profitable, so local industry had to pick up the slack, however merely fixing 70's policies that were widely regarded as irresponsible complacency would be sufficient.
As it was revealed later, Gosplan (the guys with then-state-of-the-art capability to analyze and simulate domestic economy, and with all data about all transactions collected for them by the rest of the government) projected continuation of recession and slow improvement but neither crisis nor boom in the foreseeable future up to the year 2000. Taking into account that they had to be conservative, and could not take into account accelerating progress in technology that only started later (and greatly improved the economy of China, Taiwan, South Korea, etc.), USSR could dedicate a small percentage of its enormous production capabilities to electronics and get far ahead of those predictions -- still with no crisis and minor economic reforms.
However in late 80's population's EXPECTATIONS of the economy changed way before anything changed in the economy itself. After being spooked by visible mild recession, Gorbachev's government performed a massive propaganda campaign promoting supposed wealth and stability of Capitalism, trying to pave a way to its still-undecided-on economic reforms along with their (already successful and welcomed by the population) political reforms. Propaganda campaign included some pretty wild claims about quality of life and availability of consumer products, housing, etc. in "the West" and specifically US, and denigrated everything that was then available in USSR, making an impression that "something has to be done" and "oh noes, I don't have a house and two cars".
Communists thought, it would be a great idea to reuse (again, then-current) Reaganites' anti-Communist propaganda to support their reforms of supposedly "failed system". Much of that spilled into population's consciousness, and this is why Americans heard so much pleasant noises from Russia/USSR at that time. Despite initial acceptance, reforms were a massive failure, and caused real, easily visible slide into poverty and deterioration of infrastructure -- that was visible in mid-90's when USSR and its "nonprofit" economy were all but memory.
It was the greatest weakness of their system that few idiots at the top can cause massive amount of destruction on a whim, however they were hardly unique in this way -- just look what Social Conservatives did to US, and they didn't even have to reform anything.
I'd accept Danish, Belgium, Canadian, English or French universities as well as numerous others.
Aren't those treated in their respective countries as glorified accountants? Certainly in no European country it as a secret that economic policy is dictated by whatever party or coalition of political parties is in charge, and all pretenses that it's somehow "scientific" are seen as quacker
There is a lot of good culture in America. We just tend to underappreciate the work of ordinary people and instead look to grand leaders to create culture, which by its nature is a grassroots phenomenon.
No. Everything in American culture that is not completely worthless was created by social rejects, people who were thrown out of American society and were left with nothing but poverty, scorn or both, and then-current American culture painted them as targets and enemies of "good American people". They had no choice but to create their own culture, untainted by hostility and shallowness of the mainstream. Society accepted pieces of those rejects' culture when it became commercially profitable and politically convenient -- usually at the expense of most of the original meaning. Majority of American population passively consumed that filtered, diluted and packaged culture -- be it music, art, literature, cinema, or anything else.
Morality has nothing to do with religion. Government does (and should) legislate morality all the time -- and as long as its idea of morality is not in conflict with commonly accepted standards, it serves people and society as a whole.
Religion, on the other hand, is a set of institutionally supported false beliefs that pretends to be the source of morality, and are used to establish and maintain control over society. As long as religion and brainwashing exist, the idea of "freedom" is a worthless distraction from the current goal of the people -- to free themselves from brainwashing and indoctrination and gain ability to think for themselves. It's pretty worthless to have formal "freedom" when your rulers can make you think anything they want you to think.
Given that we were there fighting on behalf of that "inferior race" I'd say that you deserved your troll mod. You'd have to look back to the Pacific Front in WW2 to find racial undertones in our campaign against someone.
Oh, Americans, defenders of people of every race again themselves. Why oh why are you hated by all non-Americans?
No, they didn't. The USSR aided North Vietnam primarily to tie down the United States. We did the same thing to them in Afghanistan. This is how Great Powers play the game with other Great Powers in the nuclear age -- because the consequences of going to war directly are too horrible to contemplate.
This is what they told you? Really?
USSR cared as much as those countries were close to USSR borders. Of course, being American you couldn't possibly know that Afghanistan shared a border with USSR. With Vietnam, if anything, USSR cared more about effect on China (that, again, was across the border and had very strained relationship with USSR) than some stupid Yanks scoring some worthless allies in that poor and massively fucked up region.
But nooo, for Americans it's less an embarassment if it was some kind of proxy war and massive conspiracy to make them less glorious than they were supposed to be. What a bunch of losers.
I assumed you were there by your name and knee jerk reactions. It does not mean you knew what the hell happened. You only know what you were told.
Really? Living and working there I would somehow miss important details of economy and structure of USSR/ex-USSR society that some American asshole raised entirely on anti-USSR/anti-Russian propaganda would know? That would require more tinfoil than ever was used (or mentioned) by American conspiracy nuts, and US has plenty of conspiracy nuts.
Maybe if you had degrees in economics and diplomacy I might take you more seriously.
And only from American university, where they stuff your heads with propaganda formulas, right? Don't tell me, "degree in economics" means anything but belonging to one of your conflicting "schools of economics" with purely ideological statements at the core of their dogmas. Oh and diplomacy... like who, Condoleezza Rice?
Nobody in USSR cared about Vietnam (or China, or Yugoslavia, or Cuba, or Nicaragua, or Grenada...) enough to start a nuclear war. It's all an invention of American war-losers who still can't admit that they were beaten by people of "inferior race".
You know what?
THE WHOLE WORLD ALREADY KNOWS THAT US LOST VIETNAM WAR. NO ONE OUTSIDE US WILL EVER BELIEVE YOU IF YOU CLAIM OTHERWISE.
Microsoft has some of hot air and one pilot project in Peru vs. plenty of XO deployments with Sugar (including the same Peru where main government-backed deployment uses Sugar).
"Shock and Awe" was not about maximizing civilian casualties. It was to dishearten the Iraqi regular army.
By doing what, precisely? How do you think, they did it, by shooting from louder guns and launching larger rockets at whatever small amount of tanks and military installations they could find? Or maybe it was by destroying more targets, what would require attacking civilians?
Slashdot Mirror
lol wut
its expected
Wow, just wow.
There are plenty of jobs and projects that shouldn't exist in the first place.
Maybe they don't benefit from it but never tried to work without it, so they have no point for comparison.
Maybe they are actually incompetent.
I have seen both situations.
I don't even know where to begin responding to this.
First of all, all programming is "hand-coding". "Productive" is not the same as "writing the same application over and over again", so you can't make those application with code generated by "wizards" -- you have to write it.
Second, number-crunching and algorithms involved in simulations have complex structure WITHIN libraries, those things do not benefit from tools specifically designed to move complexity outside, into the convoluted mess of interfaces. The whole point of Microsoft tools is to guide developer through this mess, so he can have poor idea about infrastructure he is using (or creating). This is the antithesis of HPC applications that have to use clearly defined interfaces and components, so both humans and machines can evaluate and implement them in serialized and parallelized calculations.
On the other hand, some resource allocation has to be done explicitly, and plenty of optimization that separates trivial implementation from efficient one has to be done by programmer making a choice, or writing a program that generates one specifically for the given problem. Pretty GUI does nothing to improve this -- it just wastes space on the screen and distracts programmer from thinking.
Third, you have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA, how much actual optimization work is done within the compiler and is never shown to the user. There is absolutely nothing to look at unless the user wants to learn how exactly the predicted amount of machine cycles matches up so values used in subsequent calculation are determined at the same time, so processor's pipelines and cache are used efficiently.
Personally, the only IDE I use is XEmacs, and my semi-realtime audio applications are doing just fine.
How else am I supposed to respond when I face a blatant appeal to authority?
Don't care about their feelings, care about the feelings of the people who you are trying to persuade.
I am not trying to persuade American patriots -- most of them are incapable of changing their opinions. My arguments are intended for the benefit of the observers. I can change my opinion if presented with convincing argument supported by facts, however "How do you dare not to believe in what I believe?!" does not count as such.
Given the wide publication of 'A People's History of the United States' and other similar literature, I would say that is an overbroad generalization.
Publishing dissenting books does not change the prevailing public opinion.
"Yesterday's argument" is explained by the context of that sentence. I am sure that re-reading my post will clear up that difficulty for you.
If you expect me to be able to read your mind, you are sadly misinformed about the nature of my mental abilities. I can only understand what is actually written, not what you assumed when writing it.
I'm sorry if your English isn't very good,
I can assure you that my English is just fine.
but it is not necessary to be a savage to be characterized as having savage behavior. That error almost seems deliberate.
Being someone's enemy does not involve "savage behavior", either. I do not subscribe to the idea that everyone has to pretend being everyone's friend -- I find it to be more honest and even polite to make my position clear and avoid unnecessary confusion. I am not an American. I do not care about anything that distinguishes Americans from the rest of the world. I have witnessed things that directly conradict American version of history. I know that most of Americans' feeling of self-worth and life goals are based on carefully constructed mythology that I am debunking. Obviously I can't expect to be met with anything less than hostility no matter how much I will sugar-coat the truth, so I choose not to do it at all.
Your content is spurious and devoid of anything but self-righteous vitriol.
Actually most of it is historical facts that can be easily verified by checking circumstances of USSR dissolution, economic policies under Brezhnev/Gorbachev/Yeltsin/Putin, declassified documents revealing actual USSR military budget in 80's, etc. Of course, American patriots would rather claim that facts are vitriolic (or, as some American comedian said, reality has bias).
Perhaps you have a problem with only reading what you want to read. Back your assertions. If tens of millions of people agree with you, there should be some indication of that.
If tens of millions experienced high quality of life, it is at least an indication that economy was actually doing well -- you can't turn tens of millions into some kind of shielded privileged class within a country with USSR-style economy. If same tens of millions seen no change at the point when USSR was dissolved, and rapid deterioration of conditions after reforms that were supposed to improve the economy, it's a natural conclusion that USSR dissolution was not caused by any kind of "economic collapse", and subsequent reforms had more to do with 90's crisis than anything USSR-specific.
Probably out of tens of millions you can even find an economist.
As I already established, being a professional economist does not turn a person into instant authority on the subject of economy. What American economists were saying about USSR "collapse" contradicts with evidence.
Hell, you can't even find the "authority figures" you're railing against. Who are you fighting here?
Journalists, economists, politicians, policymakers and writers who planted ideas about "USSR economic collapse", "trickle-down economy", and various implied beliefs of American superiority i
That's pretty much the definition of "grassroots."
No. It would be "grassroots" if it was created by ordinary people, regular members of society as opposed to members of some kind of elite, caste or group of professionals specializing in "making culture". I am describing groups that society places BELOW those "ordinary people" -- it may be a large or small group that is shunned and discriminated, and it may be a large or (more often) small subset of it that is involved in anything creative, however the point is, "grassroots" culture is accepted while those are rejected by society at large.
Oh please. Don't get all elitist on me. There's plenty of great stuff that was derided as "packaged culture" in years past. It's because we refuse to appreciate our American culture that too many people seem to think we don't have any. Culture is what a society is, for good or bad. By definition each society has one.
Mainstream American culture is the perfect target for elitist derision -- whatever in it that is good, does not stay specific to it, and whatever stays specific to US, is not good. Nevertheless it is irrelevant because I am not talking about rejection of new art forms (coming as commercialization of art created by current and former social rejects) by incumbent mainstream and "elite" alike -- I am talking about position of people who initially created those forms. Not all forms fared the same -- for example, jazz was met with hostility from both music elitists (who didn't recognize its value) and racists (who were hostile to the social group that created it), however coincidence with equal/civil rights movement and worldwide recognition made it unnecessary to water it down as an art form. Rock (all forms of it) didn't fare nearly as well.
As an example of something that happened over a much shorter stretch of time and familiar to fellow nerds, I can just point at "The Matrix" trilogy. The first movie was clearly from the culture of true computer nerds of mid-90's -- clever philosophical premise of simulation being more attractive and convincing than reality, people using equipment cobbled together in a way that places them outside of the rules dictated by companies churning out pre-made tightly controlled computers in pre-made tightly controlled world, bits and pieces of styles that many nerds enjoy or accept, value and worlds-changing power of mental abilities vs. hollow success in collecting wealth, recognition and power... One can argue about originality of each part of it or judge the quality of art, but it's undeniable that "The Matrix" represented pieces of our (computer nerds') culture, system of values, worldview and aesthetics.
Now compare this with the rest. Sure, they blessed us with the first sighting of real computer software in a movie in the whole history of cinema, they have story continuity, and the ending kinda clarifies the point that it's not machines that are evil, it's control and denial of knowledge, emotions and creativity that turn humans into slaves. But are those two movies really up to the standard established by the first one?
Does mere incremental improvement in special effects have much to do with computer nerds culture? And, more important, did society accept anything from it other than moving camera angles? Did people change their views of the relevant social group that can be summarized as "rich nerds drive Ferraris, poor nerds live in parents' basements"?
Oh yeah. Experts on US economy. The people who were explaining you under Reagan how trickle down works. The people who were explaining you under Clinton how stock market speculation and some kind of uniquely American capability to profit from technology can sustain your economy forever. The people who were explaining you under Bush how there is no economic ill that can't be solved by a $300 tax refund advance. The people who paraded inflated GDP numbers in front of you without telling you how it includes hidden debt and inflation. The people who declare recessions two years too late after they sort out the numbers doctored over the previous year. The people who pretend that current debt crisis is caused by bad loans as opposed to be the result of the same cause -- the whole economy fueled by overstretching debt and trade deficit.
I see why you believe that it was possible to completely conceal some kind of disaster in USSR economy -- because you project onto others what you don't dare to admit about your own country.
Why should you not be an asshole? Because it's unpleasant to read and does not lend support to your argument. No matter if you've argued with friends in the past over this; they aren't here now, and most people here are either not American or not compelled to be an asshole as a matter of course.
Why would I care about feelings of people whose most dear beliefs and positions I am trying to discredit?
You can't win yesterday's argument
What "yesterday argument"? Americans' unwavering belief in their glorious history is very much the current problem.
by being savage today.
Being someone's enemy does not make me a savage.
Rhetoric is necessary to influence people. It is what distinguishes effective communication from mere words strewn on a page. Concealing fact can fall within the bounds of an effective argument, but this is not generally the case.
I would rather express my idea in the form that can be judged by the content. Smart people will get it, and I am not interested in convincing dumb people, humiliating them is good enough.
Also, there are other ways of concealing fact. Secrecy, for example, is probably far more effective than rhetoric.
Conceal facts that are already announced by your opponents, so rhetoric is used to twist their meaning and distract the observers. I thought, that was pretty obvious.
Eyewitness evidence is notoriously unreliable, and your own unsubstantiated opinion is fit for no purpose that I'm aware of.
As opposed to what, political propaganda that is reliable in being wrong, misleading and manipulative? Appeal to authority when my original claim is that authority figures are lying? It's not like my experience is not backed by tens of millions of other people who had seen the same (though most wouldn't bother talking to Americans unless you ask them).
To promote your view, then, you must have a well-written argument, or have a set of facts that speak for themselves. Since you have no apparent aptitude for the former, the latter is necessary.
Really? Actually I did both, it's just the result is something you don't like, so you can't accept it. Congratulations, you are a true American patriot.
Development tools. Something Microsoft is very, very, good at.
Microsoft development tools are in the category "If this helps you, you are not qualified for this job to begin with". An equivalent would be multiplication table on mathematician's desk or marathon runner on crutches.
Because US culture is competitive, and anyone who does not dedicate all his time to sports and ever-going popularity contest is seen as a loser. Therefore the only way to win is not to play.
I have nothing against healthy social interaction and reasonable efforts toward personal fitness, however this is not what American culture is about, certainly not among teenagers.
Oh noes, people disagree with you.
Look, I don't care about whatever point you're trying to make. I'm sure you feel very strongly about it, too, but could you please try to be less of an asshole when making your points?
Why would I? Being an asshole is the cornerstone and starting point of every claim that my proud American friends ever made about economy.
Rhetoric used to be an art form. How sad that the educated are not now taught to express themselves.
It is needed as an art form when people have to conceal facts.
If I may weigh in on the topic of your discussion, I would say that both of you need further proofs: neither having lived in a country, nor having a degree are sufficient evidence of much of anything.
Eyewitness evidence is now as bad as regurgitation of propaganda op-ed pieces, right? Great standards you have here...
Since the matter being discussed is mostly a matter of historical fact, you should probably dig up some economic records of some sort. But I suspect you just want to rant and froth a bit; I'll leave you to it.
What records? Volumes of production and government budget from 80's USSR? The figures that became available are nowhere close to claims that American "economists" made at the time, especially claims about huge percentage of military spending (why would it when neither military nor civilian production involves profit?). What else do you want -- my paycheck stubs, university services lists and grocery receipts from 80's? I don't think, I kept those.
Living and working in America doesn't appear to make Americans experts on the situation either.
US economy is not designed as a giant nonprofit with most of the trade limited to domestic economy, like USSR system worked -- in US it's possible to create or conceal massive economic crisis or boom for years by mere manipulation of debt and foreign trade, as we can see on the example of the last two decades. USSR economy, with all its secrecy at the local level, was way too big and way too monopolized by the government to hide anything important -- it was pretty obvious that between 70's slow growth and mild recession in early 80's it could have done better, however if growth of production outpaced growth of population (the only way to truly get in trouble for a "giant nonprofit" like USSR), it would be immediately visible -- there would be shortages of products, unemployment and sudden massive replacement of domestic production with easily recognizable imports in short term followed by visible decrease in quality of life for most of the population. This is not what happened -- oil trade became less profitable, so local industry had to pick up the slack, however merely fixing 70's policies that were widely regarded as irresponsible complacency would be sufficient.
As it was revealed later, Gosplan (the guys with then-state-of-the-art capability to analyze and simulate domestic economy, and with all data about all transactions collected for them by the rest of the government) projected continuation of recession and slow improvement but neither crisis nor boom in the foreseeable future up to the year 2000. Taking into account that they had to be conservative, and could not take into account accelerating progress in technology that only started later (and greatly improved the economy of China, Taiwan, South Korea, etc.), USSR could dedicate a small percentage of its enormous production capabilities to electronics and get far ahead of those predictions -- still with no crisis and minor economic reforms.
However in late 80's population's EXPECTATIONS of the economy changed way before anything changed in the economy itself. After being spooked by visible mild recession, Gorbachev's government performed a massive propaganda campaign promoting supposed wealth and stability of Capitalism, trying to pave a way to its still-undecided-on economic reforms along with their (already successful and welcomed by the population) political reforms. Propaganda campaign included some pretty wild claims about quality of life and availability of consumer products, housing, etc. in "the West" and specifically US, and denigrated everything that was then available in USSR, making an impression that "something has to be done" and "oh noes, I don't have a house and two cars".
Communists thought, it would be a great idea to reuse (again, then-current) Reaganites' anti-Communist propaganda to support their reforms of supposedly "failed system". Much of that spilled into population's consciousness, and this is why Americans heard so much pleasant noises from Russia/USSR at that time. Despite initial acceptance, reforms were a massive failure, and caused real, easily visible slide into poverty and deterioration of infrastructure -- that was visible in mid-90's when USSR and its "nonprofit" economy were all but memory.
It was the greatest weakness of their system that few idiots at the top can cause massive amount of destruction on a whim, however they were hardly unique in this way -- just look what Social Conservatives did to US, and they didn't even have to reform anything.
I'd accept Danish, Belgium, Canadian, English or French universities as well as numerous others.
Aren't those treated in their respective countries as glorified accountants? Certainly in no European country it as a secret that economic policy is dictated by whatever party or coalition of political parties is in charge, and all pretenses that it's somehow "scientific" are seen as quacker
There is a lot of good culture in America. We just tend to underappreciate the work of ordinary people and instead look to grand leaders to create culture, which by its nature is a grassroots phenomenon.
No. Everything in American culture that is not completely worthless was created by social rejects, people who were thrown out of American society and were left with nothing but poverty, scorn or both, and then-current American culture painted them as targets and enemies of "good American people". They had no choice but to create their own culture, untainted by hostility and shallowness of the mainstream. Society accepted pieces of those rejects' culture when it became commercially profitable and politically convenient -- usually at the expense of most of the original meaning. Majority of American population passively consumed that filtered, diluted and packaged culture -- be it music, art, literature, cinema, or anything else.
Morality has nothing to do with religion. Government does (and should) legislate morality all the time -- and as long as its idea of morality is not in conflict with commonly accepted standards, it serves people and society as a whole.
Religion, on the other hand, is a set of institutionally supported false beliefs that pretends to be the source of morality, and are used to establish and maintain control over society. As long as religion and brainwashing exist, the idea of "freedom" is a worthless distraction from the current goal of the people -- to free themselves from brainwashing and indoctrination and gain ability to think for themselves. It's pretty worthless to have formal "freedom" when your rulers can make you think anything they want you to think.
Given that we were there fighting on behalf of that "inferior race" I'd say that you deserved your troll mod. You'd have to look back to the Pacific Front in WW2 to find racial undertones in our campaign against someone.
Oh, Americans, defenders of people of every race again themselves. Why oh why are you hated by all non-Americans?
No, they didn't. The USSR aided North Vietnam primarily to tie down the United States. We did the same thing to them in Afghanistan. This is how Great Powers play the game with other Great Powers in the nuclear age -- because the consequences of going to war directly are too horrible to contemplate.
This is what they told you? Really?
USSR cared as much as those countries were close to USSR borders. Of course, being American you couldn't possibly know that Afghanistan shared a border with USSR. With Vietnam, if anything, USSR cared more about effect on China (that, again, was across the border and had very strained relationship with USSR) than some stupid Yanks scoring some worthless allies in that poor and massively fucked up region.
But nooo, for Americans it's less an embarassment if it was some kind of proxy war and massive conspiracy to make them less glorious than they were supposed to be. What a bunch of losers.
I assumed you were there by your name and knee jerk reactions. It does not mean you knew what the hell happened. You only know what you were told.
Really? Living and working there I would somehow miss important details of economy and structure of USSR/ex-USSR society that some American asshole raised entirely on anti-USSR/anti-Russian propaganda would know? That would require more tinfoil than ever was used (or mentioned) by American conspiracy nuts, and US has plenty of conspiracy nuts.
Maybe if you had degrees in economics and diplomacy I might take you more seriously.
And only from American university, where they stuff your heads with propaganda formulas, right? Don't tell me, "degree in economics" means anything but belonging to one of your conflicting "schools of economics" with purely ideological statements at the core of their dogmas. Oh and diplomacy... like who, Condoleezza Rice?
I was there, you moron.
Nobody in USSR cared about Vietnam (or China, or Yugoslavia, or Cuba, or Nicaragua, or Grenada...) enough to start a nuclear war. It's all an invention of American war-losers who still can't admit that they were beaten by people of "inferior race".
You know what?
THE WHOLE WORLD ALREADY KNOWS THAT US LOST VIETNAM WAR.
NO ONE OUTSIDE US WILL EVER BELIEVE YOU IF YOU CLAIM OTHERWISE.
Which eventually lead to the solution of bankrupting the USSR. (Something which would have eventually happened anyway, just much slower.)
Or, to be exact, it didn't happen.
Microsoft has some of hot air and one pilot project in Peru vs. plenty of XO deployments with Sugar (including the same Peru where main government-backed deployment uses Sugar).
"Shock and Awe" was not about maximizing civilian casualties. It was to dishearten the Iraqi regular army.
By doing what, precisely? How do you think, they did it, by shooting from louder guns and launching larger rockets at whatever small amount of tanks and military installations they could find? Or maybe it was by destroying more targets, what would require attacking civilians?
Natural rights include the right to life, liberty and property.
Where did that crap come from? Not even US Constitution mentions this particular list.