To be fair to the Nazis and Russian Communists, they highly regard their intellectual elite. (I cannot express an informed opinion on Fascist Italy or Rawanda.) USSR put out top notch mathematicians, physicists, and fine arts performers. I'm sure their engineering scientists were okay; they just couldn't surpass the USA. Granted, the Ruskies wanted to make sure the intellesia knew they wouldn't have a higher economic standing that the construction worker, but really, is money the only way to show that you esteem one group's accomplishments over another? Granted, there was that incompetent business with Lysenko, but really, the Communists valued their Intellectual elite. Neither group just could not tolerate the intellectual elite publicly criticizing the central gov't. And the Nazis only had problems dealing with the intellectual elite with Jewish ancestry. So, if you talented and not Jewish or had a problem keeping your opinions to yourself, you prospered as a member of the intellectual elite.
Communist China on the other hand, really f**ked themselves over, thanks to Mao and Maoist ideology. Mao and the Gang had to go before China could fix the technological and intellectual suicide pogrom in the '60's.
The US, on the other hand, really can't compare itself to the Chinese. Revenge of the Nerds would look a lot different if set in '60's China. And its not political ideology that is destroying the intellectual elite. Its cultural stupidity that threatens the intellectual elite.
Until a decade ago, the technological elite was assured of being rewarded for their efforts. Now, HMOs and lawyers are destroying the "Doctor culture", manufacturers not willing to subsidize the development of trained engineers, and the outsource jobs rather than pay higher wages for intellectual scarcity. You'd have to be a fool, if you're ambitious, and think hard work in the technical fields would pay off. So, most of those people decide to spend college majoring in business, psychology, political science, or law.
Ironically, I don't believe the Shiite Christians represent a significant threat to the intellectual elite. The reality is that 0.01% of the population do anything of intellectual significance. People of that intellectual calibre are much like professional athletes. When selected early and nurtured, they will excel. Lets face it, only the filthy rich or scions of academia will be in a position to enter the intellectual elite class. Or, candidates that aren't the first two will possess extremely mild forms of Aspergers, or other social defect that makes them think astronomy is more interesting than learning to outposer your peers. In other words, if you think public education makes the difference between becoming part of the intellectual elite, trust me, you are not part of the intellectual elite.
No, the Shiite Christians attack the tenets of scientific education to the masses, not the intellectual elite. The scientific method does not let you chalk up inconsistencies in data to Jesus screwing with your petrie dish. Also, science class is probably one of the few classes where you're made to think about why your lab experiment got its results. Or how the universe works. It is that education that lets you realize you should not be putting your life savings into a company that makes a machine that can perpetually produce power. Or realize you're better off researching fusion reactors for power rather than capturing the energy of the newly deceased. Or taking money away from meteorlogic research, and put that money into prayer research to mitigate natural phenomenon. Or just not bother putting any money into meteorlogic research, because the weather is God's will; its just too complex to anything more than Intelligent Design.
The problem is that the poorly educated masses will become even more poorly educated. Eventually some will become your local plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics, lab techs, and forensic criminologists. And they all will become the
With commoditization, as you describe it, the common fear is that all the knowledge will one day be lost because no one has to use it anymore. You see this in a lot of B Sci-Fi movies set in the distant future, often leading to religious-based uprising (religion being the clear enemy of science, what?)
What a fascinating explanation for the rise of the Christian Shiite movement in the US. See how their limited governance and enlightened curricula like I.D. will foster the devolution of American technological establishment. So, what's the answer? Put them into secular re-education camps, and feed them only when they master basic math techniques and scientific concepts? Or just sterilize them? Why can't they just volunteer to fight in Iraq???
he average 15 year old doesn't know how his IM works behind the scenes?
I come from an era when one had to cautiously evaluate 15 year olds. The damn youngsters then grew up with the stuff, and actually had the time to break into computer systems. The 15 year olds today are pathetic, clueless, script kiddies.
point to me at some point in the last 100 years where your average person knew to any degree of certainty how their tech worked.
The problem is that you didn't come from the "dinosaur" world and don't understand his perspective. Back then, applications and APIs didn't fall out of the sky or bequeathed to you by Papa Microsoft. Back then, if you needed an application, and it wasn't a word processor or a spreadsheet, you had to either write it yourself (in BASIC), or get a hold of the source code and compile it.
My favorite geek memory at the time was replacing my 8088 chip on my IBM XT clone with a V20 chip, because it would execute code about 10% faster; better yet, 30% faster if you used the special V20 instructions. Yes, it was retarded, but when your machine was running at 8Mhz (not Ghz), you did anything to speed up the damn thing. And yes, I even recompiled uudecode so I could get it to process files 30% faster (though it was more like 20%). This was also before the era where you could afford the hardware "upgrade" (replacement) every 2 years. And yes, you did sort of had to have the knowledge about how everything worked, or else you couldn't do stuff like this.
At the turn of the century, people would have thought you were nuts for owning an automobile if you didn't know how it worked. There weren't that many mechanics back then. He's just feeling the same way about you. We come from an era when applications were not designed to be operated by non-technical users. We today live in an age where "dinosaurs" still exist.
Aside from that, anyone who is actually surprised that people who grew up using a given piece of tech will have different attitudes towards it than the people who've had to adapt to it needs to be locked up someplace where they won't pose a threat to their own well-being. It should be obvious to anyone who hasn't spent their entire life in a coma that this is just how it works.
What a piece of crap you are to advocate locking up your grandparents. It still drives me up the wall that my parents won't get ATM cards. They actually drive up and use a teller during banking hours. *I* still count the money I withdraw from an ATM machine. The world did not work the way you think it did twenty years ago. (And how creepy is it now to be in the webpage business where techniques and standards change every year. I thought java was bad...)
But X11 should not crash/lock up if an application miss behaves in the first place. The whole idea of a stable OS is for the OS (and its interface) to remain up no matter what applications do.
In an ideal world, no, it should not crash. In a world where vendors can rewrite stable drivers for unstable ones in order to pretend their video card is faster than their competitors, you have to realize its not reasonable to blame X11 for such crashes anymore than its fair to judge Windows XP to be a failure when someone replaces DX9 with defective crap. This applies even when a vendor puts out their hack, and it work 99% of the time. Also, you can call it a defect that X11 cannot prevent a programmer from writing defective code that tries to subvert the APIs built into X11, or can't catch such violations, but I don't see anything built into XP that does better.
I don't have any problem with people describing X11 as bloated, obsolete, slow, driver insufficient, etc. etc.. But Xfree/Xorg release versions is the acme of stable and reliable for the hardware its written for. It might have something to do with the fact that it was stable and reliable (in release form) before linux even existed. (X ran on machines like Sun and SGI.) To say otherwise, denotes a lack of experience using X11. I'm pointing out the poser is either being duplicitous for implying he's qualified to make opinions on X's reliability, or such an idiot that he can't figure out that putting in defective drivers or incorrect settings will make X unstable, and then blame X for his stupidity.
You haven't used X11 I take it. It makes Windows 95 look like a quality, well-built OS.
Seriously, if X doesn't get fixed sometime soon, I'm dumping Linux. I like everything about Linux but X, but that's a big but. It's slow, it's unreliable, it's ugly, it's impossible to configure and maintain, it's prone to crashing
I'll readily concede X is slow and ugly, but if its unreliable for you, its because you're a retard who should stay far away from linux systems. The only time I've seen unreliability in X is when one is using proprietary drivers from ATI or NVIDIA, in which case, they're only a little less reliable than the Windoze machines. I have never seen X crash with normal desktop use. When lockups occur, its alway because of the application doing something its not supposed to do. I don't run the application, and golly gee, I never get a crash.
Yeah, if the extent of your computing requirements is to play a computer game with voxels, you shouldn't be using X or linux.
Just accept the fact the U.S. is f*cked.
I feel for this guy, but I feel more for my friend that got a 3.8 GPA as an EE at reputable state U back in the '80s. He busted his ass, and his reward was that he couldn't even get hired for a sh*t engineering job. A rule of thumb is that its takes 5 years of experience before an engineering scrub can even do anything useful out of college to be worth his pay. American business will not make that kind of investment in an employee anymore; even though its critical to long-term survival. He did what all the other educated people did (BS in astronomy, physics, biology, comparative lit, etc.); made money back in the PC gold rush as a programmer or analyst.
The last thing in the world I would do is encourage a brilliant student to enroll in an engineering program. As bad as I feel for the washouts because their educators are research whores and academia is a lie, I feel sorrier for the students that can excel despite that environment, and end up (at best) an insignificant cog while some connected jerk can feel good about being able to hire productive talent for peanuts.
You snot-nosed punks just don't see it. You vote for a clown, and now you don't realize that the U.S. cannot fund an Iraq occupation and rebuild a hurricane devastated region for the people screwed by the lack of adequate preparation. You don't understand that our military is becoming hollow, because we're engaged in a conflict that cannot be sustained by a volunteer military. You can't see the choo-choo train of economic bankruptcy from the national debt, and you're worrying about the nation getting enough engineers to drive manufacturing progress??? Who cares? In a country that insists on teaching I.D. as science? You won't have a student body capable to doing jack.
Who is the idiot that upmodded this anonymous clown?
Is the snappiest distro out there in terms of overall responsiveness?
Yes.
It uses the same damn kernel that comes out of kernel.org that everyone else uses. You're bound to get more tweaks out of Red Hat and SuSE, but neither commercial entity tweaks to run slower. Volkerding doesn't make special changes to the apps or the libraries for performance purposes. You're talking out of your ignorant ass.
Its one thing to hear the cud chewers support politicians because they have "integrity", or "luxury" cars for their "cachet", but what bullshit to see assholes claiming to be technical stating "distro X has more overall responsiveness". There's not that much difference between distros for that quality to make it any form of criteria for choosing between distros.
Because Slack is the most unforgivingly Unix-like of all the distros.
What a horror! "I run Slackware because it most closely resembles UNIX." You'll get a much better luser experience running XP. "Use Mandrake, because it has all these whizzy buttons to do things like mount a filesystem, or burn a CD."
If you want to use Slackware, you'd better be ready to spend a lot of time at the command line
You'll HARDLY use the CLI any more than any another other linux distribution. Awww, go run OSX or XP if you're too illiterate to function by typing in a command.
compiling
That could be true if you MUST have obscure package X, or game Y. If this is such a horror to contemplate, why the hell are you using linux? Because you want to look techno-kuell to your luser friends?
swearing
Only if you're a luser that's better off using XP or OSX.
and learning more about your OS and your computer than you ever wanted to know.
Oh the pain! Look newb, this is Slackware, not Gentoo. If you want to pretend there is no underlying structure, go back to OSX or XP where you belong.
Yes, I was working on UNIX machines before linux was a twinkle in Torvald's eye. But I don't pick Slackware because its snappy (marketing bs), unforgiving, uses the command-line, makes me compile (like gentoo), enjoy swearing, or know everything about UNIX.
I use Slackware because only an old-school UNIX user can appreciate that Slackware is the closest thing on a computer that resembles a finely constructed UNIX distribution by a master craftsman. Volkerding does not push out defective software in order to meet a marketing deadline. Volkerding has a competent enough appreciation of security issues that no software package is shipped with defaults that would lend itself to an exploit. Any software package put in will work as advertised; the only configuration a user do will be because its minimally required. And its so conformant to UNIX standards and philosophy, modifications are "intuitive" for me.
There may be many reasons not to adopt Slackware, but not because of this poser coward's marketing answers.
Also note that Torvald said at the onset of 2.6, that the kernel developer group would not be ultimately responsible for stability issues. (If you have a bug, and they don't see it on their hardware, its not their problem.) He expects the Linux distributors to follow up on undesirable bugs in varying configurations. That is also part of the reason for the four digit releases; they give distributors a way to track their changes to the kernel.
So, when Patrick puts out a 2.6 kernel, if he's only going by what kernel.org releases, there are bound to be bugs; which either he fixes, or you will have to go to Red Hat, SuSE, or someone else's kernel implementation for the fix.
What it means to Slackers: just because its an even number kernel, doesn't mean its a stable kernel, or even a kernel that will not undergo significant change in a few months. Not encouraging for someone who insists on kernel stability and an entity accountable to address bug problems (the OSDL is not). Me? I don't run 2.6 kernels, though I'm looking forward to do so soon (even before 2.7 is official).
I'll grant you that China's nuclear force is a joke as far as the US or Russia are concerned.
Its a joke like the way Internet Explorer was to Netscape Navigator. It only took 2-3 years for IE to eat NN's marketshare.
Realize that its extremely difficult to get accurate numbers on China's nuclear arsenal, and the few players that make it their business to know have no advantage in revealing details. The Chinese are heavily modernizing their nuclear arsenal with technology they got from US vendors like Hughes. China has more than 100 ICBMs, and I'm guessing their nuke force will break 2,000 in less than two years.
Of course that will probably change because some champ got the bright idea of walking away from the ABM treaty and giving them an excuse to start an arms race.
They didn't start building nukes because the Chimp ended the ABM treaty with the Russians. (China was not a signatory, and it didn't do jack to alter current military scenarios.) China's building nukes because they need a credible nuclear deterrent against the US, particularly if they decide to move on Taiwan. They just couldn't afford to build a real force fifteen years ago. Also, because of Jong Il's desire to build nukes as a penis replacement, there is an outside chance Japan will start building nukes. China will be compelled to respond to a Japanese nuclearization.
But the time came (some time ago now) to admit that Sun has in fact missed the boat on Linux.
They may have missed the boat in terms of their strategy to address Linux, but they would have killed themselves with an IBM-like adoption of Linux. As good as the linux kernel may appear to be, it does not have the stability or thoroughness in design or support as Sun has with its kernel. Linux is to Solaris as Microsoft is to Solaris. Linux is more related and less crappy, but neither has anything to offer Sun. Sun could have gone out, improved Linux, and proceeded to slit its own throat by now. Think of Sun as an Apple for financial systems.
The reason why Sun is dead is that they only have credibility with large financial companies. They once owned the webserver market, but they had no low-end strategy that could address Linux/Apache/Intel. I perceive they are going to lose their position as a database platform to Oracle/MySQL/Microsoft(or Linux)/Intel. Sun's system designs and support lend themselves to highly reliable, scalable platforms, but they will be dead meat if IBM can offer a less costly alternative.
I think moving to GNOME/GTK was an excellent decision for them. There was nothing special about their current desktops. Developers will be less intimidated to do cross development for Solaris, because there will be more familiar APIs. Whatever new functionality that gets developed on Linux platforms can be quickly ported over to Sparc. But that's a holding action. It only allows Sun to quickly devise a strategy if they see something pretty on the other side, or need to do a "me-too".
What's killing Sun is that they cannot create or penetrate new markets. Sun's officers apparently have no "vision". Whatever money Sun could have made off of Java, they lost by trying to be too proprietary with it, AND not delivering on Java development. (Frankly, I think Java has been unreliable crap until 1.4, and even then not all that acceptable until 1.5. I cannot believe financial companies chose to develop on it, given its bugs and shifting language definition.) Sun's Raq(?) acquisition (the cute, purple Intel boxes) is an apparent failure, and underscores their lack of vision. Worst of all, their platform is too expensive and obscure for developers to consider working on Solaris for future products. GRID is already a dead end for them, because Linux can do it cheaper. They are the ultimate expression of a product for a niche market, and will go the way of SGI if they cannot change the dynamic.
Do you really want to see our future in space handed over to for-profit companies?
Yes. But only because it looks like NASA will fail to do anything significant to advance space exploration for the forseeable future. Their big failure was the Space Shuttle program. Not because they blow up. Because they deliberately embarked upon a program that did not really serve to advance space exploration.
They chose to put all their resources in a vehicle that could not go out of LEO. A vehicle that could not get to the Moon. A vehicle that costs 8x the amount to send out payload compared to simpler rocket technology. They are a white elephant gov't agency that does not have the vision to do anything significant, at the mercy of legislators who only see it as a pork barrel to be raided for poor investments.
Colonization of space will not happen until there is some form of drive to invest resources to get humans there. So here are the scenarios: You can count on the gov't spending billions of your tax dollars to do it. When it shot itself in the foot when it had a relatively open checkbook in the 70's & 80's, Who you think will now magically get its head screwed on and pick a useful project, like moon mining or a space elevator. Who will not be at the mercy of scumbag legislators.
Scenario 2: a military space race to occur with China. The military's forte is defense, not space exploration. (Star Trek is a TV show; not remotely any representation of reality.) It depends on secrecy and control. If military concerns drives space investment, it will not get Earth beyond GEO.
That leaves the only impetus to drive down launch operation costs and movement to space is commercial ventures. A gold rush to the Moon. Capitalists are scum, but history shows when the target is not benevolent pipedreams, they get the job done.
Leave NASA to run the scientific missions, and get it out of the space launch business as soon they can find a reliable outsource. The military will alway be able to launch its own payloads.
With what we are spending on Iraq we could finish the ISS, save Hubble and have our CEV to go to Mars.
Or rebuild New Orleans. See why the future of mankind cannot be left to the gov't?
ONE "renown" German historian that does not exist on the Internet outside of German language webpage or a German textbook does not get to set the definition of Socialism, or determine that the Nazis were a Socialist gov't. Anymore than ONE "renown" historian (David Irving) denying there was a Holocaust is to be taken as historical fact.
Obviously, you ignore my obvious point that practices that can be construed as Socialist does not mean the political party that enacted them IS Socialist in philosophy. FDR and the American Democratic Party was not a Socialist party, regardless of what you, and some pissed off Hoover Republicans may have felt at the time.
You are so blinded by your fear to have to accept that another murderoeus regime was really guided by your very principles.
1) I am not a Socialist in principle. 2) I do not beleive Socialism "in principle" is INcapable of being a murderous regime. Stalin ran quite a murderous regime, and Communism is not that much different than Socialism. Also, if one is to believe that the USA is a Socialist state (and you seem to think so, given its progressive tax policy, gov't works programs, and "heavy" regulation of private industry), it has conducted quite a few murderous acts in the name of the people. (Whether its conducting syphillis experiments on black people, slaughtering Vietnamese civilians in the name of Democracy, or slaughtering Salvadorian and Nicaraguan civilians.) Yet, an example of a welfare state that conducts mass murder eludes me. Perhaps there is something positive to say about Socialism...
The whole point of my original screed is to recognise there are distinct (if elusive), definitive differences between Fascism, Socialism, and Communism. Each philosophy will conduct similar and dissimilar policies. BUT the specifics of what they do or not do is dependent upon the tenets each philosophy is based. The reason why political scientists makes those distinctions is that it DOES result in differences in how each gov't conducts the specifics of its gov't policies, and its results.
They are ALL arguably UNDESIRABLE. BUT THEY ARE ALL DIFFERENT in the manner of how they are undesirable. I will not tolerate deliberate or ignorant application of terms to either generate a propagandistic knee jerk reaction, OR obfuscate an argument in order to avoid being caught in a logical or argument flaw.
or just a party higher-up will communicate in no uncertain terms that equality within the german population [...] was the ultimate goal of every economic policy.
Please produce a few of these. I agree that would be a tenet of Socialism. (But that's redistribution of wealth to dissolve class distinctions, not progressive tax policy.)
C'mon admit it, you've actually read and believe Carl Marx haven't you?
I am ashamed to admit, I never read direct tracts "from the master". And that's Karl, not Carl.
Communism as described by Marx is the ideal political system.
What's not to like about the equality of citizens? What's so terrible about making sure everyone can be fed? If one is incapable of sustaining their existence (because they are orphans or handicapped), are they human refuse that should starve to death? Is the extent of my human value the effort I expend at my employment? Does that mean a policeman has less value to society than a sports athlete because he's paid less?
In practice the human nature of the (required) party leaders always turns them into manacial dictators, since they have to by definition control EVERYTHING!!
Hmmm. That would explain George W Bush. And given your tenet that human nature makes party leaders maniacal dictators, we should abolish all political parties. Which by the way, is what early Communist thinkers advocated. (The devolution of centralized gov't into popular collectives that locally determined all aspects that affected themselves.) You Communist you...
Marx was an idiot, well intentioned maybe, but an idiot none theless.
Ah, if you're well intentioned, and the concept you present happens to be "wrong", then you are an idiot. Well gee, either I believe Einstein is an idiot, for pursuing a Unified Field Theory and disclaiming Quantum physics (where he was "wrong"), and the other geniuses thoroughout the human civilization that had incorrect theories, or I can believe you are an idiot.
Communist governments that move away from communism always move to a more free market economy (of course its the only direction they can go).
No. Russia is not a "free" market economy. A kleptocracy would be a better description. Its arguable whether the United States is a real "free" market ecnoomy.
While you claim that China is more Fascist than communist and you are correct,
Congratulations. Out of all the turds here, at least YOU can correctly acknowlege when I've said something we agree on...
the Facist leanings come from the fact that they haven't yet completely let go of their control of the people (a holdover from communism).
*Sigh*. No, the Fascist leanings is not a residue of Communism. Fascism is where I believe the Central Committee want China to go. You CAN have aspects of the "free market" in a Fascist gov't. Whether corruption will devolve China's economy enough to proclaim it is not a "free market" remains to be seen. European fascism and war did not allow the gov'ts to last long enough in "normal" conditions to see if devolution of the "free market" was inevitable.
Eventually as the free market economy in China matures, more an more people will gain more economic power and from that they will also eventually gain a voice in their government
Ah, classic Capitalist propaganda and wishful thinking. Economic power is the centralization of wealth. The Chinese central committee uses the gov't to make sure they are in the catbird seat of any major economic enterprise in China; either as shareholders or directors. If a couple of outside individuals gain influence in gov't, does that mean China becomes a classical democracy?
(you are only really pretending that they had one under communism).
Presuming you're a USA citizen, you really pretending you have political power in this country. (Unless you are a major shareholder in a Fortune 100 company, own a major media outlet, or belong to a bloodline of prominent political families.)
you are wrong. Totally, too. Fascism is Socialism plus Nationalism.
Pathetic. Only you could present that utterly incorrect definition, and then claim I am totally wrong. Can you please cite a reference indicating otherwise?
You're telling me that the difference between Fascist Germany and the Soviet Union was that the Soviet Union was not nationalistic? You're telling me the difference between Fascist Italy and Sweden is that Sweden is not nationalistic?
Hitlers government rested fully on the total support of the population which they bought with enourmous government hand-outs
So now you're going to say that the United States was a Fascist or Socialist state during the 1930's?
As for the economoy, price caps, production quotas or out-right nationalization of select industries is certainly not a capitalists wet-dream.
It also does not mean it a Fascist state or a Communist state. That is why each political/economic philosophy connotes specific tenets. The Fascists' highest priority is the health of THE STATE. It is certainly capable of price caps, production quotas, and nationalization of industries. But PHILOSOPHICALLY, its only a MEANS, not an ENDS (Communism). As for calling Fascism a form of Socialism, Socialism does not require "purification" of the people, nor is Socialism's priority the maximization of national productivity.
You do not need price caps, production quotas, and outright federal confiscation of industry to be a Fascist state. Fascism IS a Capitalist wet dream if you're a Capitalist who can call the shots, like Bill Gates. Oh, now you're going to tell me Gates is not a Capitalist? Fascism is not the wet dream for the small business owner, but no country practices Adam Smith economics. Now you're going to tell me the US does not practice Capitalism? Fascism's tenet is "What's good for the country is good for everyone". Fascism favors national elites; that includes Big Business.
Go read some good dammend books on the third reich before you impose your ignorance on the unsupecting public.
Like "The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer"? Like "Inside the Third Reich, by Albert Speer"? Like the political science textbook (who's name excapes me) so I could pass the damn class? I must admit I never got around to reading Mein Kampf, but I would have, if I had an unlimited lifespan....
Btw, the "founders" of fascism agree with me, with is obvious seeing that they named their party National Socialist German Worker Party (Nationalsozialistische deutsche Arbeiter Partei -> NSDAP).
"National Socialism" is Fascism, not Socialism. It was a (poorly, IMO) name used to differentiate their political party from the Communists, and to attract voters AT THE HEIGHT OF AN ECONOMIC DEPRESSION. There is NOTHING I have come across in my limited reading of FASCISM and SOCIALISM that tells me how Nazi Germany practicing price caps, production quotas, and nationalization made it a Socialist state, or how the United States practicing price caps, production quotas, gov't owned industry, made it a Socialist state. It appears to be a contradiction because you are a retard who does not understand the established, academic differentiation between Fascism, Socialism, and Communism. Oh yeah, Moussolini beat "your founder" of Fascism by at least a decade.
Look, you conservative jackoff, everything that is bad is not the definition of Socialism. Socialism nor Fascism is what your Daddy said it was. Fascism is not a subcategory of Socialism. Nazis using the word Socialism in their political party's name does not make it Socialist party. Go take a freaking political science class in an accredited college so you can go flunk the class. Or at least cite references with relevant excerpts that would show you're not a retard.
Now go play with your pinko friends.
I have no pinko friends. Some of my friends are Canadian, does that count? All of my friends are educated, does that count?
Yes, it is jargon, and that jargon has SPECIFIC meaning. When you misuse those terms to argue a position, its nothing more than rhetoric grandstanding to get even more stupid people to agree with you. Frankly, all it probably does is make the poster feel good, thinking he said something intelligent. I just want to make it a painful enough experience that he discontinues his practice of making his stupid statements.
I am not trying to help. I'm trying to make him defend his usage, present a position, so I can rip it to pieces.
Fascism believes in centralized gov't, to benefit commercial enterprise, usually to the expense of the people's welfare and individual rights
What you've described is communism. The "usually to the expense of" part is the reality of human greed setting in over communism.
No, you fucking retard, Communism is the imposition of "equal" redistribution of wealth amongst its citizens. That is accomplished by having the gov't own everything, and since each citizen has an equal vote in the gov't, the citizens now owns an equal share of communal property.
Nowhere in Fascism does it require gov't OWNING commercial industry. It may HEAVILY REGULATE industry, it may pull all sorts of corrupt shit "for the good of the state", but redistribution of property and equality of the citizen is not REMOTELY any tenet of Fascism!
Socialism believes in centralized gov't, to benefit each citizen, regardless of merit, usually to the expense of commercial enterprise, and individual rights
Ignoring completely that every socialist government ever in existence has also exhibited the actions of a communist government.
That is not ignoring anything. It reflects the fact that the terms have been intertwined from the inception of each philosophy. But Sweden did not take EVERYTHING from everyone, and enforce some form of equal redistribution of wealth, UNLIKE the Soviet Union. The Swedes who own shares of Nokia still own more assets than the Swedes who don't own shares of Nokia. One needs to differentiate a "welfare state" from a "communist state", hence the specialization of terms. Your confusion stems from the fact you didn't even know what Communism is. (Wouldn't it be pathetic if you walked away still not grasping the difference?)
Let's get it straight.
Yes, lets.
A communist government exercises powers to control business and the economy.
WRONG. A communist gov't confiscates all industry and thus controls business and the economy.
A socialist government exercises powers to control citizens and behavior.
WRONG. A socialist gov't controls industry, what industry can and can't do to citizens, and redistributes earnings and assets through progressive taxation to provide gov't services to citizens. That's it. It does not abolish the concept of individual ownership of assets, though it can nationalize (confiscate) specific industries. Sweden's teens can fuck like bunnies, kill themselves, and can worship Scientology. That doesn't sound like a gov't that is controlling citizens and their behavior.
A fascist government lies about it by telling the citizens that it's for their own good.
You really think any political scientist uses that to define Fascism? You fucking retard.
Good for you Coward, now other readers don't have to realize the extent to wh
I am not one of these bible thumpers who can stretch open my arms, reach out across the Internet, and determine the heart or political ideology of the poster on the other end. I can only develop an impression based upon WHAT HE SAYS, and that is the whole point of my screed.
If one cannot take the minimal effort read an encyclopedia blurb on political philosophy and the history of each movement, one should not go about defining what is a socialist gov't and what is a fascist form of gov't. They come off as uneducated, mildly retarded individuals. What ever intelligent idea they may have to offer is tarnished with their inability to use correct terms to describe their "worthy" idea. You do not call gov'ts that give benefits to corporations COMMUNIST. You do not call gov't that give benefits to poor people FASCISTS. Worse, they are weeds which choke off any chance at an intelligent discourse in this joke of a forum.
"In fact, he was complaining about republican style "socialism" "
How can I tell?!?! He's not using any of those terms in an applicable manner! If he does not possess a basic knowlege of the terms he is using, he should shut up, or at least realize he's going to be ridiculed for it.
Floodplains are great for quick city growth. So what if every so often, you lose a few thousand people. You can grow beyond a size 6 city without an aqueduct. By the time aqueduct technology rolls around, you never suffer depopulation. Memphis was founded on a floodplain. Where would Egyptian civilization be without it?
"Its just Fascist leaning Socialism where its to the benefit of the wealthy and loyal party members. China is also more Fascist leaning Socialism than Communism these days."
There is no such thing as fascist-leaning Socialism. Fascism and Socialism are two dissimilar political/economic philosophies that differs on its core values. The only thing they arguably have similar is their penchant towards ruthless oppression. Fascism believes in centralized gov't, to benefit commercial enterprise, usually to the expense of the people's welfare and individual rights. Socialism believes in centralized gov't, to benefit each citizen, regardless of merit, usually to the expense of commercial enterprise, and individual rights. China is a formerly socialist state in the process of evolving into a fascist state.
Cuba is a socialist gov't. Venezuela is a democracy teetering towards a more centralized gov't; whether is a socialist state or a fascist state is a matter of conjecture.
Don't spew your right wing crap here, attributing Fascism as a form of Socialism. "Evil" Socialism is not made more "Evil" by demonstrating fascist qualities. Fascism is the desired model of government for an unchecked capitalist class. Its pretty much what the USA is devolving towards.
If you really prefer small gov't that stays out of your life, stop supporting GWB, who supports moneyed interest, wants bible thumpers to tell you how to live your life, and wants to send your children to die overseas for some ragheads' "freedom". Stop supporting Democrats who support moneyed interests, wants atheists to tell you how to live your life, and wants to send your children to die overseas for some ragheads' "freedom". And stop being a parasite of other states.
"Why is it when you have an unpopular view point, you're considered a troll."
Its simple. Quality is in the eye of the beholder. More important, the readership doesn't take its metamoderation duties seriously. When a Linux zealot "unfairly" marks off an article as a troll, the metamoderator is supposed to marked him off as unfair. The zealot should start to lose the opportunity to moderate.
What I see as the problem is that people are so eager to express an utterly unremarkable or weakly humorous post, a good issue is flooded with over a 1000 responses, but only a few are worth reading. , and even worse, a few worth reading is lost in t he chaff. That is the tragedy of Slashdot; it has become so sucessful, it only attracts marginally intelligent geeks who then have to express every incorrect and vacuous opinion. And the current moderation system cannot address this problem.
Even if you have concientious moderators and metamoderators, there aren't enough to make a difference. Thereby rendering the website as useless. Heck, even when I see a hot button issue, I'm not going to wade through 1000 posts. I just scan until I see five posts that I have strong positive or negative opinions. I never get down to the bottom of the list.
What I would like to see is an alternate moderation system without a karma mechanism (perhaps running along with the current system.) Let it only consist of two moderation values "props" and "lame". Let that be open to every member, all the time, in unlimited supply, but can only pos/neg one user once per day. Sure, users will try to abuse it, but they will be compelled to read every article they "lame". People can then filter based on the voting of the entire readership. The win is that I don't have to go through 1000 posts to make the current moderation system work.
Even better, allow users to filter their rankings based on who's making the rating. The newbs and non-account holders need a generic rating to filter worthwhile messages. The "real" readers can take out the trolls with the "friends/foes" feature. The "moderation" data should be cacheable, and the reader can yank it down and process it on their PC if they want it. Hopefully, that wouldn't overly tax server resources.
The real problem is that mangement doesn't give a damn anymore. Its apparent from the quality of stories, the increase in duplicate stories, and this current, broken system.
Can anyone recommend a Slashdot alternative? I really only look at Slashdot now to get a glimpse of a newsworthy geek item. Publication mags just don't do it, and Kuroshin is a tad too dry for my tastes. If enough primary source websites start to RSS, I may just setup a screen to get information that way.
1) If the kid was meant to program, he's gonna program. He doesn't need an adult to muck up his development with his '70-'90's era thinking.
2) Getting a kid to use a computer at the age of three is the same kind of retarded thinking that computers are critical to primary school education. That's idiotic. Reading, writing, arithmetic, science; that's critical. But no, lets lose those textbooks and teachers so we can have an up to date computer lab, along with salaried sysadmin, and chuck that equipment two years later.
3) I never said AVOID computers! I said don't stuff it down the 5 year olds' throat! Its pointless! Technofetish is not education or knowlege. Its as useful as trying to make your kid the next Bobby Fischer.
Back in the '80s, my dad would disparage my interest in computers, which were basically bad video games back then. Anything that looked like a toy couldn't possibly be of use in the future. Yeah, he was wrong and clueless, but I'm not going to make the same mistake my dad did. And that mistake is thinking that the facts and situation of this culture today will be applicable twenty years from now.
You have to stop thinking, "if I can get my kid to be an engineer, or doctor, or computer/electronics whiz, he will have a financially prosperous future.". Its just not true.
It was a great time to be into computers pre-2K. It was an open field. You could start up your own company with a useful app, become filthy rich, and die an alcoholic.
Those days are gone. Even if you have a groundbreaking idea, you'll need major financing to make it happen, and the richer guys will just steal it from you if you haven't covered all bases. That is not what ubergeek training prepares your kid to face.
Training your child to be the penultimate ubergeek only trains him to be a technical cog in the future. Salaried men are not wildly sucessful or significant people. In the future, they will be competing with some form of exploited foreigner for the same crappy job.
That's why CS enrollment is dropping like a rock. Everyone with eyes can see that there is no goldrush in the computer field. Why put yourself $20-40K in hock to be treated like a lowly dork who should volunteer to work 60hr weeks?
He's unlikely to get a job as an engineer, or computer programmer. Asia will own all the manufacturing, and Sony won't hire him. Unless you can invest advanced education into your child, he won't have the academic background of the lowliest asian drudge out of high school. And no, getting an A in "Intelligent Design" will not help change their minds.
If you really cared, you'd chuck that SUV, avoid buying at Walmart, start making politicians' life hell, repeal NAFTA/CAFTA, put tax dollars into education rather than tax cuts, and agitate like hell to get out of Iraq and shrink our military spending, so that money can be put into our infrastructure and science research. (Like it was in the early '90s.) That way, twenty years from now, there would be a healthy economic base to find a job which can pay off a house mortgage.
Why would you think your child is getting any useful training from using computers now??? Computers and computing will be almost unrecognizable in twenty years. But go ahead and teach him how to program in COBOL.
No, don't go looking for ways to teach your kid to program, or use the Internet, or play computer games (unless you want your kid to be a grunt in the Middle East twenty years from now). Get your kid interested in READING, and more important, THINKING. Teach him how to quickly get the answers to everything by himself. And if you can hook him into liking math, you're way ahead of the game.
Sure, let him knock himself out on the IBM PC. Childhood toys are irrelevant to grownups, and the PC will be a cherished toy 20 years from now. But get your head screwed on straight. Its not about making your kid the best ubergeek he can be.
Proably wont win any karma for saying this but what exactly has Alan Kay done in like the last 20 years.
My exact thoughts...
For example what did this HP group do while SUN was inventing Java and Microsoft C#
Get real, they were hardly groundbreaking languages. Java basically wanted to move into that OOPish, procedural language niche C++ occupied, without having to deal with C++'s steep learning investment, and to be a bit more RAD-like in usage, hence its interpreter based origins. The only thing that could be described as cutting edge would be its compiler, but that was hardly an original idea. Microsoft was even less original, they just wanted the same things Java aimed for, and usurp Java from the "backoffice".
Its like saying C was an incredibly original language. No, it was based heavily on the procedural language theory; PASCAL (ugh) could be considered genuinely original. C was implemented to be a practical language; addressing the computing limitations of machines in its day, and be "simple" enough to make it portable over different architectures.
Java & C# was not research; they were marketing driven language designs that catered to less talented programmers. Much like how programmers abandoned assembler programming for COBOL and FORTRAN. (though FORTRAN was a language breakthrough.) Its wasn't the HP research group's job to do technical marketing. Its not RESEARCH. Its the job of the CTO/CEO to decide what research projects to fund, and thus the research direction. But its not to have a distinct payoff in five years. That's not research.
Its like chess. You use the computers to number crunch the advantageous plies. But that's not advancing chess theory. (Good) Human players aren't supposed to be looking only 4 moves, and then go to the next 4 moves. Humans are supposed to evaluate sets of moves in an abstract manner, looking to make the kill 20 moves in advance. That's research.
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To be fair to the Nazis and Russian Communists, they highly regard their intellectual elite. (I cannot express an informed opinion on Fascist Italy or Rawanda.) USSR put out top notch mathematicians, physicists, and fine arts performers. I'm sure their engineering scientists were okay; they just couldn't surpass the USA. Granted, the Ruskies wanted to make sure the intellesia knew they wouldn't have a higher economic standing that the construction worker, but really, is money the only way to show that you esteem one group's accomplishments over another? Granted, there was that incompetent business with Lysenko, but really, the Communists valued their Intellectual elite. Neither group just could not tolerate the intellectual elite publicly criticizing the central gov't. And the Nazis only had problems dealing with the intellectual elite with Jewish ancestry. So, if you talented and not Jewish or had a problem keeping your opinions to yourself, you prospered as a member of the intellectual elite.
Communist China on the other hand, really f**ked themselves over, thanks to Mao and Maoist ideology. Mao and the Gang had to go before China could fix the technological and intellectual suicide pogrom in the '60's.
The US, on the other hand, really can't compare itself to the Chinese. Revenge of the Nerds would look a lot different if set in '60's China. And its not political ideology that is destroying the intellectual elite. Its cultural stupidity that threatens the intellectual elite.
Until a decade ago, the technological elite was assured of being rewarded for their efforts. Now, HMOs and lawyers are destroying the "Doctor culture", manufacturers not willing to subsidize the development of trained engineers, and the outsource jobs rather than pay higher wages for intellectual scarcity. You'd have to be a fool, if you're ambitious, and think hard work in the technical fields would pay off. So, most of those people decide to spend college majoring in business, psychology, political science, or law.
Ironically, I don't believe the Shiite Christians represent a significant threat to the intellectual elite. The reality is that 0.01% of the population do anything of intellectual significance. People of that intellectual calibre are much like professional athletes. When selected early and nurtured, they will excel. Lets face it, only the filthy rich or scions of academia will be in a position to enter the intellectual elite class. Or, candidates that aren't the first two will possess extremely mild forms of Aspergers, or other social defect that makes them think astronomy is more interesting than learning to outposer your peers. In other words, if you think public education makes the difference between becoming part of the intellectual elite, trust me, you are not part of the intellectual elite.
No, the Shiite Christians attack the tenets of scientific education to the masses, not the intellectual elite. The scientific method does not let you chalk up inconsistencies in data to Jesus screwing with your petrie dish. Also, science class is probably one of the few classes where you're made to think about why your lab experiment got its results. Or how the universe works. It is that education that lets you realize you should not be putting your life savings into a company that makes a machine that can perpetually produce power. Or realize you're better off researching fusion reactors for power rather than capturing the energy of the newly deceased. Or taking money away from meteorlogic research, and put that money into prayer research to mitigate natural phenomenon. Or just not bother putting any money into meteorlogic research, because the weather is God's will; its just too complex to anything more than Intelligent Design.
The problem is that the poorly educated masses will become even more poorly educated. Eventually some will become your local plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics, lab techs, and forensic criminologists. And they all will become the
What a fascinating explanation for the rise of the Christian Shiite movement in the US. See how their limited governance and enlightened curricula like I.D. will foster the devolution of American technological establishment. So, what's the answer? Put them into secular re-education camps, and feed them only when they master basic math techniques and scientific concepts? Or just sterilize them? Why can't they just volunteer to fight in Iraq???
I come from an era when one had to cautiously evaluate 15 year olds. The damn youngsters then grew up with the stuff, and actually had the time to break into computer systems. The 15 year olds today are pathetic, clueless, script kiddies.
The problem is that you didn't come from the "dinosaur" world and don't understand his perspective. Back then, applications and APIs didn't fall out of the sky or bequeathed to you by Papa Microsoft. Back then, if you needed an application, and it wasn't a word processor or a spreadsheet, you had to either write it yourself (in BASIC), or get a hold of the source code and compile it.
My favorite geek memory at the time was replacing my 8088 chip on my IBM XT clone with a V20 chip, because it would execute code about 10% faster; better yet, 30% faster if you used the special V20 instructions. Yes, it was retarded, but when your machine was running at 8Mhz (not Ghz), you did anything to speed up the damn thing. And yes, I even recompiled uudecode so I could get it to process files 30% faster (though it was more like 20%). This was also before the era where you could afford the hardware "upgrade" (replacement) every 2 years. And yes, you did sort of had to have the knowledge about how everything worked, or else you couldn't do stuff like this.
At the turn of the century, people would have thought you were nuts for owning an automobile if you didn't know how it worked. There weren't that many mechanics back then. He's just feeling the same way about you. We come from an era when applications were not designed to be operated by non-technical users. We today live in an age where "dinosaurs" still exist.
What a piece of crap you are to advocate locking up your grandparents. It still drives me up the wall that my parents won't get ATM cards. They actually drive up and use a teller during banking hours. *I* still count the money I withdraw from an ATM machine. The world did not work the way you think it did twenty years ago. (And how creepy is it now to be in the webpage business where techniques and standards change every year. I thought java was bad...)
In an ideal world, no, it should not crash. In a world where vendors can rewrite stable drivers for unstable ones in order to pretend their video card is faster than their competitors, you have to realize its not reasonable to blame X11 for such crashes anymore than its fair to judge Windows XP to be a failure when someone replaces DX9 with defective crap. This applies even when a vendor puts out their hack, and it work 99% of the time. Also, you can call it a defect that X11 cannot prevent a programmer from writing defective code that tries to subvert the APIs built into X11, or can't catch such violations, but I don't see anything built into XP that does better.
I don't have any problem with people describing X11 as bloated, obsolete, slow, driver insufficient, etc. etc.. But Xfree/Xorg release versions is the acme of stable and reliable for the hardware its written for. It might have something to do with the fact that it was stable and reliable (in release form) before linux even existed. (X ran on machines like Sun and SGI.) To say otherwise, denotes a lack of experience using X11. I'm pointing out the poser is either being duplicitous for implying he's qualified to make opinions on X's reliability, or such an idiot that he can't figure out that putting in defective drivers or incorrect settings will make X unstable, and then blame X for his stupidity.
I'll readily concede X is slow and ugly, but if its unreliable for you, its because you're a retard who should stay far away from linux systems. The only time I've seen unreliability in X is when one is using proprietary drivers from ATI or NVIDIA, in which case, they're only a little less reliable than the Windoze machines. I have never seen X crash with normal desktop use. When lockups occur, its alway because of the application doing something its not supposed to do. I don't run the application, and golly gee, I never get a crash.
Yeah, if the extent of your computing requirements is to play a computer game with voxels, you shouldn't be using X or linux.
Just accept the fact the U.S. is f*cked. I feel for this guy, but I feel more for my friend that got a 3.8 GPA as an EE at reputable state U back in the '80s. He busted his ass, and his reward was that he couldn't even get hired for a sh*t engineering job. A rule of thumb is that its takes 5 years of experience before an engineering scrub can even do anything useful out of college to be worth his pay. American business will not make that kind of investment in an employee anymore; even though its critical to long-term survival. He did what all the other educated people did (BS in astronomy, physics, biology, comparative lit, etc.); made money back in the PC gold rush as a programmer or analyst. The last thing in the world I would do is encourage a brilliant student to enroll in an engineering program. As bad as I feel for the washouts because their educators are research whores and academia is a lie, I feel sorrier for the students that can excel despite that environment, and end up (at best) an insignificant cog while some connected jerk can feel good about being able to hire productive talent for peanuts. You snot-nosed punks just don't see it. You vote for a clown, and now you don't realize that the U.S. cannot fund an Iraq occupation and rebuild a hurricane devastated region for the people screwed by the lack of adequate preparation. You don't understand that our military is becoming hollow, because we're engaged in a conflict that cannot be sustained by a volunteer military. You can't see the choo-choo train of economic bankruptcy from the national debt, and you're worrying about the nation getting enough engineers to drive manufacturing progress??? Who cares? In a country that insists on teaching I.D. as science? You won't have a student body capable to doing jack.
What a useful device to fling snowballs and polar bears into orbit.
It uses the same damn kernel that comes out of kernel.org that everyone else uses. You're bound to get more tweaks out of Red Hat and SuSE, but neither commercial entity tweaks to run slower. Volkerding doesn't make special changes to the apps or the libraries for performance purposes. You're talking out of your ignorant ass.
Its one thing to hear the cud chewers support politicians because they have "integrity", or "luxury" cars for their "cachet", but what bullshit to see assholes claiming to be technical stating "distro X has more overall responsiveness". There's not that much difference between distros for that quality to make it any form of criteria for choosing between distros.
What a horror! "I run Slackware because it most closely resembles UNIX." You'll get a much better luser experience running XP. "Use Mandrake, because it has all these whizzy buttons to do things like mount a filesystem, or burn a CD."
You'll HARDLY use the CLI any more than any another other linux distribution. Awww, go run OSX or XP if you're too illiterate to function by typing in a command.
That could be true if you MUST have obscure package X, or game Y. If this is such a horror to contemplate, why the hell are you using linux? Because you want to look techno-kuell to your luser friends?
Only if you're a luser that's better off using XP or OSX.
Oh the pain! Look newb, this is Slackware, not Gentoo. If you want to pretend there is no underlying structure, go back to OSX or XP where you belong.
Yes, I was working on UNIX machines before linux was a twinkle in Torvald's eye. But I don't pick Slackware because its snappy (marketing bs), unforgiving, uses the command-line, makes me compile (like gentoo), enjoy swearing, or know everything about UNIX.
I use Slackware because only an old-school UNIX user can appreciate that Slackware is the closest thing on a computer that resembles a finely constructed UNIX distribution by a master craftsman. Volkerding does not push out defective software in order to meet a marketing deadline. Volkerding has a competent enough appreciation of security issues that no software package is shipped with defaults that would lend itself to an exploit. Any software package put in will work as advertised; the only configuration a user do will be because its minimally required. And its so conformant to UNIX standards and philosophy, modifications are "intuitive" for me.
There may be many reasons not to adopt Slackware, but not because of this poser coward's marketing answers.
Also note that Torvald said at the onset of 2.6, that the kernel developer group would not be ultimately responsible for stability issues. (If you have a bug, and they don't see it on their hardware, its not their problem.) He expects the Linux distributors to follow up on undesirable bugs in varying configurations. That is also part of the reason for the four digit releases; they give distributors a way to track their changes to the kernel.
So, when Patrick puts out a 2.6 kernel, if he's only going by what kernel.org releases, there are bound to be bugs; which either he fixes, or you will have to go to Red Hat, SuSE, or someone else's kernel implementation for the fix.
What it means to Slackers: just because its an even number kernel, doesn't mean its a stable kernel, or even a kernel that will not undergo significant change in a few months. Not encouraging for someone who insists on kernel stability and an entity accountable to address bug problems (the OSDL is not). Me? I don't run 2.6 kernels, though I'm looking forward to do so soon (even before 2.7 is official).
swaret is deprecated by Volkerding.
Muahahah,muahahahahahahahahaaaaa...
Its a joke like the way Internet Explorer was to Netscape Navigator. It only took 2-3 years for IE to eat NN's marketshare.
Realize that its extremely difficult to get accurate numbers on China's nuclear arsenal, and the few players that make it their business to know have no advantage in revealing details. The Chinese are heavily modernizing their nuclear arsenal with technology they got from US vendors like Hughes. China has more than 100 ICBMs, and I'm guessing their nuke force will break 2,000 in less than two years.
They didn't start building nukes because the Chimp ended the ABM treaty with the Russians. (China was not a signatory, and it didn't do jack to alter current military scenarios.) China's building nukes because they need a credible nuclear deterrent against the US, particularly if they decide to move on Taiwan. They just couldn't afford to build a real force fifteen years ago. Also, because of Jong Il's desire to build nukes as a penis replacement, there is an outside chance Japan will start building nukes. China will be compelled to respond to a Japanese nuclearization.
They may have missed the boat in terms of their strategy to address Linux, but they would have killed themselves with an IBM-like adoption of Linux. As good as the linux kernel may appear to be, it does not have the stability or thoroughness in design or support as Sun has with its kernel. Linux is to Solaris as Microsoft is to Solaris. Linux is more related and less crappy, but neither has anything to offer Sun. Sun could have gone out, improved Linux, and proceeded to slit its own throat by now. Think of Sun as an Apple for financial systems.
The reason why Sun is dead is that they only have credibility with large financial companies. They once owned the webserver market, but they had no low-end strategy that could address Linux/Apache/Intel. I perceive they are going to lose their position as a database platform to Oracle/MySQL/Microsoft(or Linux)/Intel. Sun's system designs and support lend themselves to highly reliable, scalable platforms, but they will be dead meat if IBM can offer a less costly alternative.
I think moving to GNOME/GTK was an excellent decision for them. There was nothing special about their current desktops. Developers will be less intimidated to do cross development for Solaris, because there will be more familiar APIs. Whatever new functionality that gets developed on Linux platforms can be quickly ported over to Sparc. But that's a holding action. It only allows Sun to quickly devise a strategy if they see something pretty on the other side, or need to do a "me-too".
What's killing Sun is that they cannot create or penetrate new markets. Sun's officers apparently have no "vision". Whatever money Sun could have made off of Java, they lost by trying to be too proprietary with it, AND not delivering on Java development. (Frankly, I think Java has been unreliable crap until 1.4, and even then not all that acceptable until 1.5. I cannot believe financial companies chose to develop on it, given its bugs and shifting language definition.) Sun's Raq(?) acquisition (the cute, purple Intel boxes) is an apparent failure, and underscores their lack of vision. Worst of all, their platform is too expensive and obscure for developers to consider working on Solaris for future products. GRID is already a dead end for them, because Linux can do it cheaper. They are the ultimate expression of a product for a niche market, and will go the way of SGI if they cannot change the dynamic.
Yes. But only because it looks like NASA will fail to do anything significant to advance space exploration for the forseeable future. Their big failure was the Space Shuttle program. Not because they blow up. Because they deliberately embarked upon a program that did not really serve to advance space exploration.
They chose to put all their resources in a vehicle that could not go out of LEO. A vehicle that could not get to the Moon. A vehicle that costs 8x the amount to send out payload compared to simpler rocket technology. They are a white elephant gov't agency that does not have the vision to do anything significant, at the mercy of legislators who only see it as a pork barrel to be raided for poor investments.
Colonization of space will not happen until there is some form of drive to invest resources to get humans there. So here are the scenarios: You can count on the gov't spending billions of your tax dollars to do it. When it shot itself in the foot when it had a relatively open checkbook in the 70's & 80's, Who you think will now magically get its head screwed on and pick a useful project, like moon mining or a space elevator. Who will not be at the mercy of scumbag legislators.
Scenario 2: a military space race to occur with China. The military's forte is defense, not space exploration. (Star Trek is a TV show; not remotely any representation of reality.) It depends on secrecy and control. If military concerns drives space investment, it will not get Earth beyond GEO.
That leaves the only impetus to drive down launch operation costs and movement to space is commercial ventures. A gold rush to the Moon. Capitalists are scum, but history shows when the target is not benevolent pipedreams, they get the job done.
Leave NASA to run the scientific missions, and get it out of the space launch business as soon they can find a reliable outsource. The military will alway be able to launch its own payloads.
Or rebuild New Orleans. See why the future of mankind cannot be left to the gov't?
ONE "renown" German historian that does not exist on the Internet outside of German language webpage or a German textbook does not get to set the definition of Socialism, or determine that the Nazis were a Socialist gov't. Anymore than ONE "renown" historian (David Irving) denying there was a Holocaust is to be taken as historical fact.
Obviously, you ignore my obvious point that practices that can be construed as Socialist does not mean the political party that enacted them IS Socialist in philosophy. FDR and the American Democratic Party was not a Socialist party, regardless of what you, and some pissed off Hoover Republicans may have felt at the time.
1) I am not a Socialist in principle. 2) I do not beleive Socialism "in principle" is INcapable of being a murderous regime. Stalin ran quite a murderous regime, and Communism is not that much different than Socialism. Also, if one is to believe that the USA is a Socialist state (and you seem to think so, given its progressive tax policy, gov't works programs, and "heavy" regulation of private industry), it has conducted quite a few murderous acts in the name of the people. (Whether its conducting syphillis experiments on black people, slaughtering Vietnamese civilians in the name of Democracy, or slaughtering Salvadorian and Nicaraguan civilians.) Yet, an example of a welfare state that conducts mass murder eludes me. Perhaps there is something positive to say about Socialism...
The whole point of my original screed is to recognise there are distinct (if elusive), definitive differences between Fascism, Socialism, and Communism. Each philosophy will conduct similar and dissimilar policies. BUT the specifics of what they do or not do is dependent upon the tenets each philosophy is based. The reason why political scientists makes those distinctions is that it DOES result in differences in how each gov't conducts the specifics of its gov't policies, and its results.
They are ALL arguably UNDESIRABLE. BUT THEY ARE ALL DIFFERENT in the manner of how they are undesirable. I will not tolerate deliberate or ignorant application of terms to either generate a propagandistic knee jerk reaction, OR obfuscate an argument in order to avoid being caught in a logical or argument flaw.
Please produce a few of these. I agree that would be a tenet of Socialism. (But that's redistribution of wealth to dissolve class distinctions, not progressive tax policy.)
I am ashamed to admit, I never read direct tracts "from the master". And that's Karl, not Carl.
What's not to like about the equality of citizens? What's so terrible about making sure everyone can be fed? If one is incapable of sustaining their existence (because they are orphans or handicapped), are they human refuse that should starve to death? Is the extent of my human value the effort I expend at my employment? Does that mean a policeman has less value to society than a sports athlete because he's paid less?
Hmmm. That would explain George W Bush. And given your tenet that human nature makes party leaders maniacal dictators, we should abolish all political parties. Which by the way, is what early Communist thinkers advocated. (The devolution of centralized gov't into popular collectives that locally determined all aspects that affected themselves.) You Communist you...
Ah, if you're well intentioned, and the concept you present happens to be "wrong", then you are an idiot. Well gee, either I believe Einstein is an idiot, for pursuing a Unified Field Theory and disclaiming Quantum physics (where he was "wrong"), and the other geniuses thoroughout the human civilization that had incorrect theories, or I can believe you are an idiot.
No. Russia is not a "free" market economy. A kleptocracy would be a better description. Its arguable whether the United States is a real "free" market ecnoomy.
Congratulations. Out of all the turds here, at least YOU can correctly acknowlege when I've said something we agree on...
*Sigh*. No, the Fascist leanings is not a residue of Communism. Fascism is where I believe the Central Committee want China to go. You CAN have aspects of the "free market" in a Fascist gov't. Whether corruption will devolve China's economy enough to proclaim it is not a "free market" remains to be seen. European fascism and war did not allow the gov'ts to last long enough in "normal" conditions to see if devolution of the "free market" was inevitable.
Ah, classic Capitalist propaganda and wishful thinking. Economic power is the centralization of wealth. The Chinese central committee uses the gov't to make sure they are in the catbird seat of any major economic enterprise in China; either as shareholders or directors. If a couple of outside individuals gain influence in gov't, does that mean China becomes a classical democracy?
Presuming you're a USA citizen, you really pretending you have political power in this country. (Unless you are a major shareholder in a Fortune 100 company, own a major media outlet, or belong to a bloodline of prominent political families.)
you are wrong. Totally, too. Fascism is Socialism plus Nationalism.
Pathetic. Only you could present that utterly incorrect definition, and then claim I am totally wrong. Can you please cite a reference indicating otherwise?
You're telling me that the difference between Fascist Germany and the Soviet Union was that the Soviet Union was not nationalistic? You're telling me the difference between Fascist Italy and Sweden is that Sweden is not nationalistic?
Hitlers government rested fully on the total support of the population which they bought with enourmous government hand-outs
So now you're going to say that the United States was a Fascist or Socialist state during the 1930's?
As for the economoy, price caps, production quotas or out-right nationalization of select industries is certainly not a capitalists wet-dream.
It also does not mean it a Fascist state or a Communist state. That is why each political/economic philosophy connotes specific tenets. The Fascists' highest priority is the health of THE STATE. It is certainly capable of price caps, production quotas, and nationalization of industries. But PHILOSOPHICALLY, its only a MEANS, not an ENDS (Communism). As for calling Fascism a form of Socialism, Socialism does not require "purification" of the people, nor is Socialism's priority the maximization of national productivity.
You do not need price caps, production quotas, and outright federal confiscation of industry to be a Fascist state. Fascism IS a Capitalist wet dream if you're a Capitalist who can call the shots, like Bill Gates. Oh, now you're going to tell me Gates is not a Capitalist? Fascism is not the wet dream for the small business owner, but no country practices Adam Smith economics. Now you're going to tell me the US does not practice Capitalism? Fascism's tenet is "What's good for the country is good for everyone". Fascism favors national elites; that includes Big Business.
Go read some good dammend books on the third reich before you impose your ignorance on the unsupecting public.
Like "The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer"? Like "Inside the Third Reich, by Albert Speer"? Like the political science textbook (who's name excapes me) so I could pass the damn class? I must admit I never got around to reading Mein Kampf, but I would have, if I had an unlimited lifespan....
Btw, the "founders" of fascism agree with me, with is obvious seeing that they named their party National Socialist German Worker Party (Nationalsozialistische deutsche Arbeiter Partei -> NSDAP).
"National Socialism" is Fascism, not Socialism. It was a (poorly, IMO) name used to differentiate their political party from the Communists, and to attract voters AT THE HEIGHT OF AN ECONOMIC DEPRESSION. There is NOTHING I have come across in my limited reading of FASCISM and SOCIALISM that tells me how Nazi Germany practicing price caps, production quotas, and nationalization made it a Socialist state, or how the United States practicing price caps, production quotas, gov't owned industry, made it a Socialist state. It appears to be a contradiction because you are a retard who does not understand the established, academic differentiation between Fascism, Socialism, and Communism. Oh yeah, Moussolini beat "your founder" of Fascism by at least a decade.
Look, you conservative jackoff, everything that is bad is not the definition of Socialism. Socialism nor Fascism is what your Daddy said it was. Fascism is not a subcategory of Socialism. Nazis using the word Socialism in their political party's name does not make it Socialist party. Go take a freaking political science class in an accredited college so you can go flunk the class. Or at least cite references with relevant excerpts that would show you're not a retard.
Now go play with your pinko friends.
I have no pinko friends. Some of my friends are Canadian, does that count? All of my friends are educated, does that count?
Yes, it is jargon, and that jargon has SPECIFIC meaning. When you misuse those terms to argue a position, its nothing more than rhetoric grandstanding to get even more stupid people to agree with you. Frankly, all it probably does is make the poster feel good, thinking he said something intelligent. I just want to make it a painful enough experience that he discontinues his practice of making his stupid statements.
I am not trying to help. I'm trying to make him defend his usage, present a position, so I can rip it to pieces.
No, you fucking retard, Communism is the imposition of "equal" redistribution of wealth amongst its citizens. That is accomplished by having the gov't own everything, and since each citizen has an equal vote in the gov't, the citizens now owns an equal share of communal property.
Nowhere in Fascism does it require gov't OWNING commercial industry. It may HEAVILY REGULATE industry, it may pull all sorts of corrupt shit "for the good of the state", but redistribution of property and equality of the citizen is not REMOTELY any tenet of Fascism!
That is not ignoring anything. It reflects the fact that the terms have been intertwined from the inception of each philosophy. But Sweden did not take EVERYTHING from everyone, and enforce some form of equal redistribution of wealth, UNLIKE the Soviet Union. The Swedes who own shares of Nokia still own more assets than the Swedes who don't own shares of Nokia. One needs to differentiate a "welfare state" from a "communist state", hence the specialization of terms. Your confusion stems from the fact you didn't even know what Communism is. (Wouldn't it be pathetic if you walked away still not grasping the difference?)
Yes, lets.
WRONG. A communist gov't confiscates all industry and thus controls business and the economy.
WRONG. A socialist gov't controls industry, what industry can and can't do to citizens, and redistributes earnings and assets through progressive taxation to provide gov't services to citizens. That's it. It does not abolish the concept of individual ownership of assets, though it can nationalize (confiscate) specific industries. Sweden's teens can fuck like bunnies, kill themselves, and can worship Scientology. That doesn't sound like a gov't that is controlling citizens and their behavior.
You really think any political scientist uses that to define Fascism? You fucking retard.
Good for you Coward, now other readers don't have to realize the extent to wh
"He sounds like a libertarian"
I am not one of these bible thumpers who can stretch open my arms, reach out across the Internet, and determine the heart or political ideology of the poster on the other end. I can only develop an impression based upon WHAT HE SAYS, and that is the whole point of my screed.
If one cannot take the minimal effort read an encyclopedia blurb on political philosophy and the history of each movement, one should not go about defining what is a socialist gov't and what is a fascist form of gov't. They come off as uneducated, mildly retarded individuals. What ever intelligent idea they may have to offer is tarnished with their inability to use correct terms to describe their "worthy" idea. You do not call gov'ts that give benefits to corporations COMMUNIST. You do not call gov't that give benefits to poor people FASCISTS. Worse, they are weeds which choke off any chance at an intelligent discourse in this joke of a forum.
"In fact, he was complaining about republican style "socialism" "
How can I tell?!?! He's not using any of those terms in an applicable manner! If he does not possess a basic knowlege of the terms he is using, he should shut up, or at least realize he's going to be ridiculed for it.
No, in Civ 3, floodplains rock!
Floodplains are great for quick city growth. So what if every so often, you lose a few thousand people. You can grow beyond a size 6 city without an aqueduct. By the time aqueduct technology rolls around, you never suffer depopulation. Memphis was founded on a floodplain. Where would Egyptian civilization be without it?
"Its just Fascist leaning Socialism where its to the benefit of the wealthy and loyal party members. China is also more Fascist leaning Socialism than Communism these days."
There is no such thing as fascist-leaning Socialism. Fascism and Socialism are two dissimilar political/economic philosophies that differs on its core values. The only thing they arguably have similar is their penchant towards ruthless oppression. Fascism believes in centralized gov't, to benefit commercial enterprise, usually to the expense of the people's welfare and individual rights. Socialism believes in centralized gov't, to benefit each citizen, regardless of merit, usually to the expense of commercial enterprise, and individual rights.
China is a formerly socialist state in the process of evolving into a fascist state.
Cuba is a socialist gov't. Venezuela is a democracy teetering towards a more centralized gov't; whether is a socialist state or a fascist state is a matter of conjecture.
Don't spew your right wing crap here, attributing Fascism as a form of Socialism. "Evil" Socialism is not made more "Evil" by demonstrating fascist qualities. Fascism is the desired model of government for an unchecked capitalist class. Its pretty much what the USA is devolving towards.
If you really prefer small gov't that stays out of your life, stop supporting GWB, who supports moneyed interest, wants bible thumpers to tell you how to live your life, and wants to send your children to die overseas for some ragheads' "freedom". Stop supporting Democrats who support moneyed interests, wants atheists to tell you how to live your life, and wants to send your children to die overseas for some ragheads' "freedom". And stop being a parasite of other states.
"Why is it when you have an unpopular view point, you're considered a troll."
Its simple. Quality is in the eye of the beholder. More important, the readership doesn't take its metamoderation duties seriously. When a Linux zealot "unfairly" marks off an article as a troll, the metamoderator is supposed to marked him off as unfair. The zealot should start to lose the opportunity to moderate.
What I see as the problem is that people are so eager to express an utterly unremarkable or weakly humorous post, a good issue is flooded with over a 1000 responses, but only a few are worth reading. , and even worse, a few worth reading is lost in t he chaff. That is the tragedy of Slashdot; it has become so sucessful, it only attracts marginally intelligent geeks who then have to express every incorrect and vacuous opinion. And the current moderation system cannot address this problem.
Even if you have concientious moderators and metamoderators, there aren't enough to make a difference. Thereby rendering the website as useless. Heck, even when I see a hot button issue, I'm not going to wade through 1000 posts. I just scan until I see five posts that I have strong positive or negative opinions. I never get down to the bottom of the list.
What I would like to see is an alternate moderation system without a karma mechanism (perhaps running along with the current system.) Let it only consist of two moderation values "props" and "lame". Let that be open to every member, all the time, in unlimited supply, but can only pos/neg one user once per day. Sure, users will try to abuse it, but they will be compelled to read every article they "lame". People can then filter based on the voting of the entire readership. The win is that I don't have to go through 1000 posts to make the current moderation system work.
Even better, allow users to filter their rankings based on who's making the rating. The newbs and non-account holders need a generic rating to filter worthwhile messages. The "real" readers can take out the trolls with the "friends/foes" feature. The "moderation" data should be cacheable, and the reader can yank it down and process it on their PC if they want it. Hopefully, that wouldn't overly tax server resources.
The real problem is that mangement doesn't give a damn anymore. Its apparent from the quality of stories, the increase in duplicate stories, and this current, broken system.
Can anyone recommend a Slashdot alternative? I really only look at Slashdot now to get a glimpse of a newsworthy geek item. Publication mags just don't do it, and Kuroshin is a tad too dry for my tastes. If enough primary source websites start to RSS, I may just setup a screen to get information that way.
1) If the kid was meant to program, he's gonna program. He doesn't need an adult to muck up his development with his '70-'90's era thinking.
2) Getting a kid to use a computer at the age of three is the same kind of retarded thinking that computers are critical to primary school education. That's idiotic. Reading, writing, arithmetic, science; that's critical. But no, lets lose those textbooks and teachers so we can have an up to date computer lab, along with salaried sysadmin, and chuck that equipment two years later.
3) I never said AVOID computers! I said don't stuff it down the 5 year olds' throat! Its pointless! Technofetish is not education or knowlege. Its as useful as trying to make your kid the next Bobby Fischer.
Back in the '80s, my dad would disparage my interest in computers, which were basically bad video games back then. Anything that looked like a toy couldn't possibly be of use in the future. Yeah, he was wrong and clueless, but I'm not going to make the same mistake my dad did. And that mistake is thinking that the facts and situation of this culture today will be applicable twenty years from now.
You have to stop thinking, "if I can get my kid to be an engineer, or doctor, or computer/electronics whiz, he will have a financially prosperous future.". Its just not true.
It was a great time to be into computers pre-2K. It was an open field. You could start up your own company with a useful app, become filthy rich, and die an alcoholic. Those days are gone. Even if you have a groundbreaking idea, you'll need major financing to make it happen, and the richer guys will just steal it from you if you haven't covered all bases. That is not what ubergeek training prepares your kid to face.
Training your child to be the penultimate ubergeek only trains him to be a technical cog in the future. Salaried men are not wildly sucessful or significant people. In the future, they will be competing with some form of exploited foreigner for the same crappy job.
That's why CS enrollment is dropping like a rock. Everyone with eyes can see that there is no goldrush in the computer field. Why put yourself $20-40K in hock to be treated like a lowly dork who should volunteer to work 60hr weeks?
He's unlikely to get a job as an engineer, or computer programmer. Asia will own all the manufacturing, and Sony won't hire him. Unless you can invest advanced education into your child, he won't have the academic background of the lowliest asian drudge out of high school. And no, getting an A in "Intelligent Design" will not help change their minds.
If you really cared, you'd chuck that SUV, avoid buying at Walmart, start making politicians' life hell, repeal NAFTA/CAFTA, put tax dollars into education rather than tax cuts, and agitate like hell to get out of Iraq and shrink our military spending, so that money can be put into our infrastructure and science research. (Like it was in the early '90s.) That way, twenty years from now, there would be a healthy economic base to find a job which can pay off a house mortgage.
Why would you think your child is getting any useful training from using computers now??? Computers and computing will be almost unrecognizable in twenty years. But go ahead and teach him how to program in COBOL.
No, don't go looking for ways to teach your kid to program, or use the Internet, or play computer games (unless you want your kid to be a grunt in the Middle East twenty years from now). Get your kid interested in READING, and more important, THINKING. Teach him how to quickly get the answers to everything by himself. And if you can hook him into liking math, you're way ahead of the game.
Sure, let him knock himself out on the IBM PC. Childhood toys are irrelevant to grownups, and the PC will be a cherished toy 20 years from now. But get your head screwed on straight. Its not about making your kid the best ubergeek he can be.
My exact thoughts...
Get real, they were hardly groundbreaking languages. Java basically wanted to move into that OOPish, procedural language niche C++ occupied, without having to deal with C++'s steep learning investment, and to be a bit more RAD-like in usage, hence its interpreter based origins. The only thing that could be described as cutting edge would be its compiler, but that was hardly an original idea. Microsoft was even less original, they just wanted the same things Java aimed for, and usurp Java from the "backoffice".
Its like saying C was an incredibly original language. No, it was based heavily on the procedural language theory; PASCAL (ugh) could be considered genuinely original. C was implemented to be a practical language; addressing the computing limitations of machines in its day, and be "simple" enough to make it portable over different architectures.
Java & C# was not research; they were marketing driven language designs that catered to less talented programmers. Much like how programmers abandoned assembler programming for COBOL and FORTRAN. (though FORTRAN was a language breakthrough.) Its wasn't the HP research group's job to do technical marketing. Its not RESEARCH. Its the job of the CTO/CEO to decide what research projects to fund, and thus the research direction. But its not to have a distinct payoff in five years. That's not research.
Its like chess. You use the computers to number crunch the advantageous plies. But that's not advancing chess theory. (Good) Human players aren't supposed to be looking only 4 moves, and then go to the next 4 moves. Humans are supposed to evaluate sets of moves in an abstract manner, looking to make the kill 20 moves in advance. That's research.