That is the $64,000 question. My personal opinion:
We are particular susceptible to manipulation of our base fears (post-9/11 BS).
In general, we are easily distracted by fluff. Think of how there have been no terrorist alerts since the election. Think of how much damage a partisan hack group (the Swift Boat Vets) had on Kerry.
Our media is controlled, more and more, by big corporations. The power of media is to shape our opinions. It is unescapable. Again, think of how long the Swift Boat Vets had the attention of the media. It should have been a small story on one day. Period. It went on for months.
In a nutshell: corporate media using influence to easily control the people, who do not see the dangers facing them.
Now, is this an American problem, or a human one? Well, all my European friends think we are absolutely nuts. The Canadians think we're nuts. I believe the religious nature of our culture makes us susceptible to being easily manipulated.
You, apparently, haven't been paying attention. The US is now a country run by special interests. I find it really hard to believe that anyone with 1/2 a brain trained on the news of the last 10 years couldn't tell that the people's interest is swamped by the other voices.
but last time I checked the Patiot Act didn't pass with a narrow margin... So for all you liberal's out there...
Well now. If you're gonna bash people for being liberal and stupid... perhaps you shouldn't be conservative and stupid.
Fact: it was impossible for anyone other than the authors of the Patriot Act to read it. There was no time. It was rammed through Congress at a time when questioning the content, even if there was time to read it, would have been considered unamerican. Perhaps you'd like to forget that little detail.
As for it passing again without much debate: we'll see. I can see it going both ways, and if it goes down without much debate, I will not be surprised. It's human nature for most people not to get too upset at slow erosion of rights--that's what this is, bit by bit dismantling of our rights. The people standing up (eg, Feingold) are cally "nuts". Go figure.
I think Cell phones are too small for many pda-ish things, currently.
What about the Treo650?
I used to have a Handspring. I carried it in my backpack and only ocassionally used it to retrieve an odd bit of information. I never used it for things like "todo" or calendar management, since I never carried it with me. However, with the Treo, I always have it. I can jot something down. I keep a full calendar. I immediately saw a spike in productivity and fewer missed appointments.
So true, so true. It happened in a big way in the last US Presidential election. No WMDs? Filter out. Economy in the dumper (though appear to come out)? Filter out. The Iraq war didn't make us safer? Filter out. We could go on and on...
BULLSH*T -- it's call "vacation" time
on
Star Wars Sickout
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· Score: 1
What claptrap. Many companies in the states have merged vacation/sick time, so it doesn't make one damn bit of difference why the person is not at work.
Second, even if they weren't merged, TFA assumes people will put it down as sick time?? WTF??
Third, and most importantly, it is actually a BENEFIT that people take time off. Vacation time is held on the books as a liability and when people use it you get to remove it. So, the balance of profit/loss tilts ever so slightly to the profit side.
Can you just reuse the same RCS (,v) files from your CVS repository with SVN?
Regarding BDB, yes, I'm scared shitless. My company tried to use it to back an object database system. We had locking problems that forced us to write our own disk-based btrees (specific to our needs).
The problem is the same as actors blabbing about stuff you think is stupid: it makes it harder for you to concentrate on their major work. Once I knew that Tom Cruise was a $ceintologist, it made it damn hard to sit through a his movies without thinking "gee, he thinks the souls of dead aliens makes us do bad things"... the same for Card. It's now hard to read a book, knowing he's so kookie, and not be distracted by it.
And, there's the whole I don't want to support his bullshit views (by helping to make him rich).
I'll admit, this might not be a problem for everyone, but it is for me.
Yeah, lots of languages have macros. C has them. That doesn't mean they are anything like Lisp macros. In languages other than Lisp they are text substitution. In Lisp, macros manipulate program data to construct new program data.
Without all those parens you would not have the power of macros. It is precisely because program and data are the same, you can even have such a powerful macro system.
Your comment is just the same uninformed crap people have been spouting about Lisp for decades.
Re:This is not a troll, but a query...
on
Practical Common Lisp
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· Score: 3, Insightful
If you think that macros in any language are better than the ones in Lisp you are very uninformed... and you clearly never used Lisp. Lisp macros manipulate and transform Lisp expressions. Once you have used them you will be completely amazed at how powerful this is.
As for starting with younger languages... cripes. Common Lisp became an ANSI standard in 1994. It continues to evolve and has two commercial companies behind it, and many open source projects.
Re:Good book, questionable language.
on
Practical Common Lisp
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· Score: 2, Interesting
As everyone else that's replied to you has pointed out you are talking out your ass. Lisp had exceptions and GC long before Java or C# were even an idea. GC in Common Lisp is far ahead of GC in Java and.Net, for just this reason. An industrial strength GC isn't made over night, it's made by having applications beat the hell out of the GC and the implementors spending huge amounts of time handling huge programs. This is exactly what's happened for Lisp over the last 20 years.
For example, Allegro CL hosts industrial applications the likes that have never even been dreamt of in Java or C#--programs that use GBs of memory and runs for months. Try that in Java or C#.
If you are still unconvinced, Orbitz wouldn't even be possible (according to the authors of the software that run the site) without Common Lisp.
Dan White got a 7-yr sentence (of which he only served 4 or 5 years) for killing the Mayor of SF, CA and another supervisor. He used the now famous "twinkie defense". (The only real justice in this case was that White comitted suicide when he got out of jail.)
Can someone tell me why a spammer should get more jail time than Dan White?
You can also compare the sentences for drug related crimes to both of these cases.
There is serious consistency problems in our system of justice.
You completely misunderstood my comment. I'm talking about your behavior as an adult: voting against Gore solely because of that one incident in your childhood.
To answer your question, I don't fault your 14-yr old behavior (being pissed at Lieberman). Not at all. Laws are not the solution, parenting is.
It's nice to know that you thoughtfully considered all the issues and decided that issue was the most important. Very mature! Congratulations on becoming an adult!
"Well, I at least appriciate that he is a Democrat that respects democracy." OK, let's see. True or false? In a democracy you're supposed to shut up and not voice an opinion because we are "in a time of war".
OSC thinks this is true. A true democrat or a true American would say false.
I used to love Card, but since I found out that he's nuts, I can't read (or buy) his stuff anymore. Google yourself. This and this are good examples (both are his own words, not someone ranting about him). I really can't believe that people are still making that "at a time when our country is at war, and we need to show our enemies a unified" argument at this point. He wrote those words in Jan 2005. He pretends to be a centrist dem but is a very far from it.
Don't believe parent for a second. The reason that Linux is where it is is due to the strong leadership that Linus offers. Period. There are countless other OSS projects that floundered because they did not have leadership (CVS, anyone?).
The fact that you can make this statement means he's doing his job so well it seems effortless.
I have experience managing large software projects, and while they were much smaller than the Linux kernel project (in terms of developers, not source code), I can very much appreciate what Linus does.
If Linus left the community, the cohesion that we see would evaporate. There would likely be forks of Linux and vendors would vie for control (IBM, RH, SuSE, others). The fact that Linus is a strong leader prevents this from occurring.
Your ego can stand down. I didn't "pick" on you. I said I used AMD. You said you haven't. Who is fronting?
The information about the Mac OS X automounter (and link) is appreciated. Perhaps my problems will go away if I use it. We suspected as much, and it's good to have confirmation that someone uses it in a mixed OS environment.
Yes, it's the finder that is at fault here. My point is that Apple distributes software that doesn't work with basic Mac OS X functionality. That's not smart.
As for ssh'ing into the box, no, unfortunately. That was the first thing we tried. It is a hard lockup.
Re: Solaris vs Mac OS X. Yes, that's unfair, thought it should not be. Remember, Apple sell a product called "Mac OS X Server".
Virtual consoles are great, and would be a great addition to Mac OS X.
Your comment only makes it *worse*. If it's been around longer than I gave it credit for, then it should be more stable.
32-bit Mac OS X is the least stable (*nix) OS I use. Try this: browse an AMD mount point with the finder. If you do, you'll need to power cycle the machine to regain control.
64-bit Mac OS X is a long way off from anything approaching stability. Solaris has been 64-bit stable for years and years.
I used NeXT OS in the 80's. It was OK, but it still lagged BSD of the time in terms of stability.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't say anything about the president or a presidential race... perhaps you were replying to some other post.
That is the $64,000 question. My personal opinion:
We are particular susceptible to manipulation of our base fears (post-9/11 BS).
In general, we are easily distracted by fluff. Think of how there have been no terrorist alerts since the election. Think of how much damage a partisan hack group (the Swift Boat Vets) had on Kerry.
Our media is controlled, more and more, by big corporations. The power of media is to shape our opinions. It is unescapable. Again, think of how long the Swift Boat Vets had the attention of the media. It should have been a small story on one day. Period. It went on for months.
In a nutshell: corporate media using influence to easily control the people, who do not see the dangers facing them.
Now, is this an American problem, or a human one? Well, all my European friends think we are absolutely nuts. The Canadians think we're nuts. I believe the religious nature of our culture makes us susceptible to being easily manipulated.
You, apparently, haven't been paying attention. The US is now a country run by special interests. I find it really hard to believe that anyone with 1/2 a brain trained on the news of the last 10 years couldn't tell that the people's interest is swamped by the other voices.
Well now. If you're gonna bash people for being liberal and stupid... perhaps you shouldn't be conservative and stupid.
Fact: it was impossible for anyone other than the authors of the Patriot Act to read it. There was no time. It was rammed through Congress at a time when questioning the content, even if there was time to read it, would have been considered unamerican. Perhaps you'd like to forget that little detail.
As for it passing again without much debate: we'll see. I can see it going both ways, and if it goes down without much debate, I will not be surprised. It's human nature for most people not to get too upset at slow erosion of rights--that's what this is, bit by bit dismantling of our rights. The people standing up (eg, Feingold) are cally "nuts". Go figure.
It means a higher chance of an autistic child. See this for more info. Keep in mind that it's complete speculation at this point, though.
So true, so true. It happened in a big way in the last US Presidential election. No WMDs? Filter out. Economy in the dumper (though appear to come out)? Filter out. The Iraq war didn't make us safer? Filter out. We could go on and on...
What claptrap. Many companies in the states have merged vacation/sick time, so it doesn't make one damn bit of difference why the person is not at work.
Second, even if they weren't merged, TFA assumes people will put it down as sick time?? WTF??
Third, and most importantly, it is actually a BENEFIT that people take time off. Vacation time is held on the books as a liability and when people use it you get to remove it. So, the balance of profit/loss tilts ever so slightly to the profit side.
Please mod story to -1 (Troll).
Can you just reuse the same RCS (,v) files from your CVS repository with SVN?
Regarding BDB, yes, I'm scared shitless. My company tried to use it to back an object database system. We had locking problems that forced us to write our own disk-based btrees (specific to our needs).
The problem is the same as actors blabbing about stuff you think is stupid: it makes it harder for you to concentrate on their major work. Once I knew that Tom Cruise was a $ceintologist, it made it damn hard to sit through a his movies without thinking "gee, he thinks the souls of dead aliens makes us do bad things"... the same for Card. It's now hard to read a book, knowing he's so kookie, and not be distracted by it.
And, there's the whole I don't want to support his bullshit views (by helping to make him rich).
I'll admit, this might not be a problem for everyone, but it is for me.
Yeah, lots of languages have macros. C has them. That doesn't mean they are anything like Lisp macros. In languages other than Lisp they are text substitution. In Lisp, macros manipulate program data to construct new program data.
OK, then do it. (defmacro left (x) `(car ,x)) and (defmacro right (x) `(cdr ,x)).
Without all those parens you would not have the power of macros. It is precisely because program and data are the same, you can even have such a powerful macro system.
Your comment is just the same uninformed crap people have been spouting about Lisp for decades.
If you think that macros in any language are better than the ones in Lisp you are very uninformed... and you clearly never used Lisp. Lisp macros manipulate and transform Lisp expressions. Once you have used them you will be completely amazed at how powerful this is.
As for starting with younger languages... cripes. Common Lisp became an ANSI standard in 1994. It continues to evolve and has two commercial companies behind it, and many open source projects.
As everyone else that's replied to you has pointed out you are talking out your ass. Lisp had exceptions and GC long before Java or C# were even an idea. GC in Common Lisp is far ahead of GC in Java and .Net, for just this reason. An industrial strength GC isn't made over night, it's made by having applications beat the hell out of the GC and the implementors spending huge amounts of time handling huge programs. This is exactly what's happened for Lisp over the last 20 years.
For example, Allegro CL hosts industrial applications the likes that have never even been dreamt of in Java or C#--programs that use GBs of memory and runs for months. Try that in Java or C#.
If you are still unconvinced, Orbitz wouldn't even be possible (according to the authors of the software that run the site) without Common Lisp.
Dan White got a 7-yr sentence (of which he only served 4 or 5 years) for killing the Mayor of SF, CA and another supervisor. He used the now famous "twinkie defense". (The only real justice in this case was that White comitted suicide when he got out of jail.)
Can someone tell me why a spammer should get more jail time than Dan White?
You can also compare the sentences for drug related crimes to both of these cases.
There is serious consistency problems in our system of justice.
You completely misunderstood my comment. I'm talking about your behavior as an adult: voting against Gore solely because of that one incident in your childhood.
To answer your question, I don't fault your 14-yr old behavior (being pissed at Lieberman). Not at all. Laws are not the solution, parenting is.
It's nice to know that you thoughtfully considered all the issues and decided that issue was the most important. Very mature! Congratulations on becoming an adult!
"Well, I at least appriciate that he is a Democrat that respects democracy." OK, let's see. True or false? In a democracy you're supposed to shut up and not voice an opinion because we are "in a time of war".
OSC thinks this is true. A true democrat or a true American would say false.
Nice try AC asshole.
I used to love Card, but since I found out that he's nuts, I can't read (or buy) his stuff anymore. Google yourself. This and this are good examples (both are his own words, not someone ranting about him). I really can't believe that people are still making that "at a time when our country is at war, and we need to show our enemies a unified" argument at this point. He wrote those words in Jan 2005. He pretends to be a centrist dem but is a very far from it.
Did it share source code? No. Did it borrow a few ideas, here and there? Yes. Does this make it a clone? No.
Don't believe parent for a second. The reason that Linux is where it is is due to the strong leadership that Linus offers. Period. There are countless other OSS projects that floundered because they did not have leadership (CVS, anyone?).
The fact that you can make this statement means he's doing his job so well it seems effortless.
I have experience managing large software projects, and while they were much smaller than the Linux kernel project (in terms of developers, not source code), I can very much appreciate what Linus does.
If Linus left the community, the cohesion that we see would evaporate. There would likely be forks of Linux and vendors would vie for control (IBM, RH, SuSE, others). The fact that Linus is a strong leader prevents this from occurring.
Your ego can stand down. I didn't "pick" on you. I said I used AMD. You said you haven't. Who is fronting?
The information about the Mac OS X automounter (and link) is appreciated. Perhaps my problems will go away if I use it. We suspected as much, and it's good to have confirmation that someone uses it in a mixed OS environment.
Yes, it's the finder that is at fault here. My point is that Apple distributes software that doesn't work with basic Mac OS X functionality. That's not smart.
As for ssh'ing into the box, no, unfortunately. That was the first thing we tried. It is a hard lockup.
Re: Solaris vs Mac OS X. Yes, that's unfair, thought it should not be. Remember, Apple sell a product called "Mac OS X Server".
Virtual consoles are great, and would be a great addition to Mac OS X.
Your comment only makes it *worse*. If it's been around longer than I gave it credit for, then it should be more stable.
32-bit Mac OS X is the least stable (*nix) OS I use. Try this: browse an AMD mount point with the finder. If you do, you'll need to power cycle the machine to regain control.
64-bit Mac OS X is a long way off from anything approaching stability. Solaris has been 64-bit stable for years and years.
I used NeXT OS in the 80's. It was OK, but it still lagged BSD of the time in terms of stability.
Don't forget that Mac OS X is where SunOS was in the 80's (in terms of stability and maturity). I used both operating systems from "day 1".