BTW if software companies didn't abuse the hell out of moore's law and the gullibility of people to upgrade when they say to, many many programmers would be without jobs in the computer industry and that just sux.
You're suggesting that a known inefficiency is good for the economy? So, we spend x dollars for something that really is not needed. How is that good? These people could be better employed doing something useful, instead of "propping up a bogus sector of the economy."
The simple fact of the matter is many people don't WANT to learn the in-depth operation of a computer just like most don't want to learn the exact details of how a car, tv, vcr or whatever works.
I don't use anything I haven't reverse-engineered and re-prototyped in my garage, just to know its inner workings.
This confirms my theory that there are more sensible people in the world than I previously expected.
Too bad there aren't enough of them. It's obvious you're a disciple of Dr. E. L. Karsten, keeping your expectations at rock bottom only leads to such pleasant surprises.
Isn't there some "sensibility test" we could give, to weed out the morons from voting?
Right now, there is no business model that can make money and beat Microsoft at the OS market share or displace Office.
There is: make a better and cheaper product. No one has stepped up yet. We could argue all day about "better", but businesses seem to think Windows + Office is the best.
I strongly believe that the current tech downturn was caused by Microsoft's evil ways.
The economic downturn was caused by an excess of easy money (see Alan Greenspan, Fed, Printing Money) leading to malinvestment; the downturn is the liquidation of the malinvestment. That malinvestment can be euphemistically called The Dot-com Frenzy. Here's an article to that effect.
Why is it that people dislike change (read: progress) so much ?
General question: Why is change always assumed to be progress? Has no one and nothing ever regressed? Regress, too, is change. But I don't go around saying about regressive change, "Ahh, change is good." Example: anti-terrorist hysteria laws.
Re:How about going over the ups and downs of cooki
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EU May Outlaw Cookies
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How about revisiting the issue of cookies and listing the various ways they can be properly used as well as abused? I'm personally not really up on cookies; I know that's ignorant, but it's true. I can't be the only cookie dummy on slashdot.
The only thing I can recall from earlier threads is that they're evil. I can't for the life of me tell you why they are evil--maybe because Doubleclick placed a cookie, and Doubleclick is the Internet Hitler, at least, or maybe a terrorist group trying to track me. But I've been blocking them fanactically ever since! Except for Slashdot's cookie, of course.
Typical American Dualism
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Globalization
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Cosmopolitans welcome technology and cultural diversity, while fundamentalists find it disturbing and dangerous.
Yup, it's good old American progress against those evil regressives/reactionaries, yet again. We are Good, they are Evil. Nothing new here, folks, move along, take a number for your bombings, please.
The only reasons we seem to be surprised at how much we're hated out there is that we don't take the time to learn what our country has done over there, what past attitudes have been, past policies, past responses. Everyone knows America isn't well-liked in certain areas of the world... but precious few man-on-the-street Joe Average Citizens can tell you -why-. That, in a nutshell, is what the problem is. If people knew -why- we were hated, if they took the time to learn about the past instead of repeating it, maybe we could find a way out of this that doesn't involve a billion dollars worth of explosions.
What? You mean, we're not hated because of our absolute, pure, endless goodness? I mean, when we decide to rid the world of evil, why can't everybody just sit back and appreciate and love us? It's all in the service of God, anyway, we are His Redeemer Nation--we will save the world, save it for globalist consumerism. And the better we are, the more we're hated! How can that be? Why can't other nations just enjoy McDonald's and Disney and total bland homgenization and uniformity and conformity, the way we do? It's bliss, baby!
I would rather the gub'ment poke through them while looking for bad guys than receive yet another offer for a class ring or some such garbage.
I see they have worn you down. Don't you realize that _every single friggin piece_ of junk mail is a battle for your eternal soul? Don't let em beat you down! Just take it over to the recycle can and throw it away, and say something to the effect of "I fart in your general direction!"
They were designed to move as slow as molasses; that way redical policy shifts don't happen to quickly. If Congress could act quickly they could do a lot of good, but they also could do a lot of bad.
They sure did act quickly in handing Bush a blank check. "Here, W: go nuke em, cowboy!"
I know your just trying to stir up people. But disagrements are what democracy is all about. If everyone in leadership agrees we basically end up with a tynany. But I guess thats what you want:)
Is your comment a plea for a little less bi-partisanship? If so, hear hear! When I hear the word "bipartisanship", I reach for my wallet.
This bill passed by the American Government seems to extend even beyond the borders of the US and into other countries.
Well, you know how it goes: Might makes Right. And who can oppose the Mighty, Most Righteous USA? If you are not with us, you are against us, etc etc etc. I think the USA collectivly thinks it's Jesus Christ with a Flashing Sword. Sorry if you just ate and I made you ralph.
That _is_ one heck of a list. Can anyone, ANYONE (Bueller?) show me a bill in the last 25 years where they _reduced_ the size and scope of the Central State? It just keeps on growing and growing. In the end, it will be a tyranny. Plato said that democracy was just a stop on the road to tyranny. I know, I know, we don't have a democracy in the way Plato was thinking, but lot's a people seem to want that kind. Our politicians want power, and they just keep accumulating it.
Most of America right now, for good or ill, trusts government and believes that significant measures should be taken to combat terrorism. So long as you actually do trust the guy in charge many of the provisions do make sense. And they seem even better with that sunset clause over many of them.
Let's see: our government, which spends _way_ more than any other government on "defense", fails to defend us. So we create a new Department of Homeland Defense. And what is the Dep't of Defense for, exactly? You think that the DOHD can handle it? And we trust the government more now! That is truly mysterious. We are seriously screwed, folks.
I live in WI and my first chance to vote when I turned 18 I voted Feingold. But in all honesty, who's fault is it this got passed? Who allowed their civil liberties to be taken away. Those 425 and 100 people represent us, US citizens. Obviously we didn't do our part, informing them that they're not doing what we want. The Constitution was formed to preserve our rights and that our politicians should be subject to us. Yet we act like we're at their mercy. I guess no one remembers which way it's supposed to work.
For one thing, the Constitution doesn't have a gun, so it can't defend itself. Politicians defend it? Not likely--politicians are hardly the kind to defend something on principle. The final answer is that not too many people love liberty these days, and yield it too easily. We _are_ at their mercy. Who commands the armed organizations (FBI, Military, Police)? It sure ain't me. It's the politicians and State bureaucrats.
Samuel Adams stood virtually alone for years in his bid to defeat slavery (and this was after his stint as President). I'm not saying we have a modern day Adams in the Senate, but that standing alone doesn't make you wrong.
Sam Adams was never president, John Adams and John Quincy Adams were. Samuel did say this, which is apropos:
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
This is typical American dualism. Everything is either entirely good or entirely evil. The attitude permeates everything. You are either for us or against us. A leftist or a rightist. For or against terrorism Coke or Pepsi. There is no middle ground--you can't like RC cola. And it makes calm, reasoned debate darn near impossible. The demagogues rule.
Here's the logic: an employee will ignore the laws against assault and murder but the fact that he could get fired will prevent him from causing violence? Riiight.
The real reason is to create a gun-controller's Utopia: no guns, the State can easily maintain control. Has anyone else ever felt more naked and defenseless than on an airplane these days? I can't even take my Swiss army pocketknife on board.
Congress did however pass a measure authorizing President Bush to take military action against those who are responsible. Not your traditional war declaration, but it was Congresss giving him the okay and the money to use the military in whatever way he felt necessary.
So technically not your declaration of war, but the same damn effect at the end of the day.
A declaration of war: the Prez can bomb a country.
What Congress did: the Prez can do just about anything.
Big difference.
IAAA (I am an American), but I don't understand why we are at war--especially with Afghanistan.
We aren't, because Congress hasn't declared war on Afghanistan. We're just bombing them, which could mean many things. Say, a police action, or a peace-keeping mission, or maybe some humanitarian aid. But one thing it's not: a war.
Browsing through "IBM Times" and "Microsoft Journal," you grow sick of the corporate propaganda riddled throughout the "pages."
In reading Pravda you could figure out the truth by reading between the lines. But in the future? Even now the mainstream US media sound like the White House and Pentagon press offices.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you sure you don't have multiple personality disorder, with Pollyanna complexities?
You're suggesting that a known inefficiency is good for the economy? So, we spend x dollars for something that really is not needed. How is that good? These people could be better employed doing something useful, instead of "propping up a bogus sector of the economy."
If I could have understood it, I would have bought MS stock and gotten rich. But it's a mystery, and I'm not rich.
I don't use anything I haven't reverse-engineered and re-prototyped in my garage, just to know its inner workings.
Too bad there aren't enough of them. It's obvious you're a disciple of Dr. E. L. Karsten, keeping your expectations at rock bottom only leads to such pleasant surprises.
Isn't there some "sensibility test" we could give, to weed out the morons from voting?
There is: make a better and cheaper product. No one has stepped up yet. We could argue all day about "better", but businesses seem to think Windows + Office is the best.
The economic downturn was caused by an excess of easy money (see Alan Greenspan, Fed, Printing Money) leading to malinvestment; the downturn is the liquidation of the malinvestment. That malinvestment can be euphemistically called The Dot-com Frenzy. Here's an article to that effect.
General question: Why is change always assumed to be progress? Has no one and nothing ever regressed? Regress, too, is change. But I don't go around saying about regressive change, "Ahh, change is good." Example: anti-terrorist hysteria laws.
The only thing I can recall from earlier threads is that they're evil. I can't for the life of me tell you why they are evil--maybe because Doubleclick placed a cookie, and Doubleclick is the Internet Hitler, at least, or maybe a terrorist group trying to track me. But I've been blocking them fanactically ever since! Except for Slashdot's cookie, of course.
Yup, it's good old American progress against those evil regressives/reactionaries, yet again. We are Good, they are Evil. Nothing new here, folks, move along, take a number for your bombings, please.
What? You mean, we're not hated because of our absolute, pure, endless goodness? I mean, when we decide to rid the world of evil, why can't everybody just sit back and appreciate and love us? It's all in the service of God, anyway, we are His Redeemer Nation--we will save the world, save it for globalist consumerism. And the better we are, the more we're hated! How can that be? Why can't other nations just enjoy McDonald's and Disney and total bland homgenization and uniformity and conformity, the way we do? It's bliss, baby!
To complete the thought, here is Orwell's essay, Politics and the English Language.
I see they have worn you down. Don't you realize that _every single friggin piece_ of junk mail is a battle for your eternal soul? Don't let em beat you down! Just take it over to the recycle can and throw it away, and say something to the effect of "I fart in your general direction!"
They sure did act quickly in handing Bush a blank check. "Here, W: go nuke em, cowboy!"
Is your comment a plea for a little less bi-partisanship? If so, hear hear! When I hear the word "bipartisanship", I reach for my wallet.
Well, you know how it goes: Might makes Right. And who can oppose the Mighty, Most Righteous USA? If you are not with us, you are against us, etc etc etc. I think the USA collectivly thinks it's Jesus Christ with a Flashing Sword. Sorry if you just ate and I made you ralph.
That _is_ one heck of a list. Can anyone, ANYONE (Bueller?) show me a bill in the last 25 years where they _reduced_ the size and scope of the Central State? It just keeps on growing and growing. In the end, it will be a tyranny. Plato said that democracy was just a stop on the road to tyranny. I know, I know, we don't have a democracy in the way Plato was thinking, but lot's a people seem to want that kind. Our politicians want power, and they just keep accumulating it.
Let's see: our government, which spends _way_ more than any other government on "defense", fails to defend us. So we create a new Department of Homeland Defense. And what is the Dep't of Defense for, exactly? You think that the DOHD can handle it? And we trust the government more now! That is truly mysterious. We are seriously screwed, folks.
For one thing, the Constitution doesn't have a gun, so it can't defend itself. Politicians defend it? Not likely--politicians are hardly the kind to defend something on principle. The final answer is that not too many people love liberty these days, and yield it too easily. We _are_ at their mercy. Who commands the armed organizations (FBI, Military, Police)? It sure ain't me. It's the politicians and State bureaucrats.
Sam Adams was never president, John Adams and John Quincy Adams were. Samuel did say this, which is apropos:
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
This is typical American dualism. Everything is either entirely good or entirely evil. The attitude permeates everything. You are either for us or against us. A leftist or a rightist. For or against terrorism Coke or Pepsi. There is no middle ground--you can't like RC cola. And it makes calm, reasoned debate darn near impossible. The demagogues rule.
The real reason is to create a gun-controller's Utopia: no guns, the State can easily maintain control. Has anyone else ever felt more naked and defenseless than on an airplane these days? I can't even take my Swiss army pocketknife on board.
So technically not your declaration of war, but the same damn effect at the end of the day.
A declaration of war: the Prez can bomb a country.
What Congress did: the Prez can do just about anything.
Big difference.
We aren't, because Congress hasn't declared war on Afghanistan. We're just bombing them, which could mean many things. Say, a police action, or a peace-keeping mission, or maybe some humanitarian aid. But one thing it's not: a war.
In reading Pravda you could figure out the truth by reading between the lines. But in the future? Even now the mainstream US media sound like the White House and Pentagon press offices.