I'm a nerd and a libertarian, so I've thought about this one a lot:
1) Libertarianism appeals to people who feel confident to take on the world as an individual and have a creative urge. A more mundane persons would rather be part of the group and doesn't feel stifled by lots of rules and convention. Nerds are more competent that the average person, at least in their chosen profession, so they prefer a world with less rules even if it means foregoing government safety nets.
2) Computer nerds, at least, are used to looking for bugs in systems. They are adept at seeing the bugs in the huge system that is our government.
3) Again, computer nerds, at least, understand that because of computational and data-gathering limitations, centralized decision making has limitations. We understand the power of networks and distributed computation, and see how that paradigm applies to the worlds of economic and social interaction.
Having said all that, seems to me there are more liberal nerds than libertarian nerds (the two are really branches of the same philosophy. What's very rare are conservative nerds.
We American kids are taught to venerate our "Great Presidents" like FDR and Lincoln. Some of us, however, have grown up, read more history, and come to realize that we weren't being sold one view of the past. FDR was one of the most shameless power grabbers in the history of our country.
These robots look awfully vulnerable to all kinds of simple countermeasures. If they sent it into an actual hostile scenario, they'd need a small squad of soldiers to watch its back.
After working with software engineers of all different education levels, I don't see why anybody feels the need to get a first PhD. There's zero correlation between college education level and competency.
I'm just a GUI programmer, but every once in a while, the need for math crops up without warning: How do I quickly find the object closest to the place where the user clicked? How do I fill that polygon that the user just drew with color? What's the matrix math for converting between color spaces?
at all freaked out by all the incest in the guys writing?
No, and yes. I think he first wrote about incest in Time Enough for Love. Lazarus Long, having lived so long, had seen societies where just about any kind of human behavior you could list had been considered moral or immoral, so he had fine tuned his ability to reason out his own personal ethics while outwardly following the prevailing morals of wherever he happened to be. In that context, it was interesting for Heinlein to explore all the reasons that the incest taboo had evolved, then say what if you set up a situation where all those reasons didn't apply.
But, yeah, it got to be a bit much when he kept repeating the incest stuff in book after book.
"I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past 20 years, really," the 65-year-old rocker said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.
My solution is to drink water with a tiny amount of cola in it. It tastes much better than full-strength soda, sort of like weak ice tea with a teaspoon or two of sugar in it.
Then why not an "intelligent" hybrid? All the advantages of the intelligent car, plus regenerative braking when you're driving somewhere where there isn't much traffic?
We live in California, and had a photovoltaic system installed last year, with the time-of-use meter and the rebate and everything. None of that stuff is a deciding factor.
Solar electricity is simply too expensive for most homeowners. Having solar on your house is still a bit of a luxury item, and a status symbol (among the right crowd). Hopefully, the systems will become more affordable soon.
I remember reading about a study that said simply changing something about your employees' environment once in a while will make them happier and more productive.
One of the main points in this article is that the people who DID work hard and improve themselves were the ones who got laid off.
And Circuit City's choices about whom to lay off were very unusual (and bone-headed). Normally, companies lay off their poorest performers. Cleary, Circuit City sucks and I have confidence that a lot of their laid off employees will land jobs at their competitors. Hopefully, Circuit City will go into bankruptcy soon and be bought out by more competent management.
(The article doesn't say anything about whether the laid-off employees found new jobs or not. It would be a pretty major research project for the author of the article to track them down.)
Taxing oil does encourage less and more efficient use. BUT, the tax also becomes an income source for the government, so politicians also have a motive to not discourage use of oil too much. You'll end up with these two conflicting motiviations reaching a status quo of a half-hearted attempt to discourage people from using oil.
Well, it's a little more complicated than that. When choosing a video website, the savvy filmmaker should consider residuals, international marketing, tie-in merchandising, etc.
I can't get my mind to take that idea seriously: I grew up in L.A., where the weather is always the same and all the weathermen are out-of-work actors.
All there is is individuals. To really change society, you have to convince individuals to change their behavior. Change enough individuals and you will see aggregate results.
The government is just a bunch of individuals that we entrust with a lot of power. Government can do things to help, but, in its actual track record it has done a lot of things to create environmental problems. As a society, we have gotten lazy about trying to force other people to do what we see as right instead of convincing them to do what we see as right.
What they call "confusing the public", I call practicing free speech. How condescending of the UCS to assume we simpletons can't sort out misinformation for ourselves.
Robots Could Someday Tap Dance While Juggling Monkeys! Robots Could Someday Correct Grammar on Slashdot! Robots Could Someday Recreate Phil Collins Concerts! There... can I get a grant from the British government, too.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a nerd and a libertarian, so I've thought about this one a lot:
1) Libertarianism appeals to people who feel confident to take on the world as an individual and have a creative urge. A more mundane persons would rather be part of the group and doesn't feel stifled by lots of rules and convention. Nerds are more competent that the average person, at least in their chosen profession, so they prefer a world with less rules even if it means foregoing government safety nets.
2) Computer nerds, at least, are used to looking for bugs in systems. They are adept at seeing the bugs in the huge system that is our government.
3) Again, computer nerds, at least, understand that because of computational and data-gathering limitations, centralized decision making has limitations. We understand the power of networks and distributed computation, and see how that paradigm applies to the worlds of economic and social interaction.
Having said all that, seems to me there are more liberal nerds than libertarian nerds (the two are really branches of the same philosophy. What's very rare are conservative nerds.
We American kids are taught to venerate our "Great Presidents" like FDR and Lincoln. Some of us, however, have grown up, read more history, and come to realize that we weren't being sold one view of the past. FDR was one of the most shameless power grabbers in the history of our country.
These robots look awfully vulnerable to all kinds of simple countermeasures. If they sent it into an actual hostile scenario, they'd need a small squad of soldiers to watch its back.
After working with software engineers of all different education levels, I don't see why anybody feels the need to get a first PhD. There's zero correlation between college education level and competency.
I guess I'm OK with the ban. I couldn't read all those funny Japanese characters, anyway.
I'm just a GUI programmer, but every once in a while, the need for math crops up without warning: How do I quickly find the object closest to the place where the user clicked? How do I fill that polygon that the user just drew with color? What's the matrix math for converting between color spaces?
at all freaked out by all the incest in the guys writing?
No, and yes. I think he first wrote about incest in Time Enough for Love. Lazarus Long, having lived so long, had seen societies where just about any kind of human behavior you could list had been considered moral or immoral, so he had fine tuned his ability to reason out his own personal ethics while outwardly following the prevailing morals of wherever he happened to be. In that context, it was interesting for Heinlein to explore all the reasons that the incest taboo had evolved, then say what if you set up a situation where all those reasons didn't apply.
But, yeah, it got to be a bit much when he kept repeating the incest stuff in book after book.
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/200
They almost lost me with the overly-clothed Eve, but won me over again: screw science, I wanna ride a triceratops!
Drink Water or at worst carbonated water.
My solution is to drink water with a tiny amount of cola in it. It tastes much better than full-strength soda, sort of like weak ice tea with a teaspoon or two of sugar in it.
Then why not an "intelligent" hybrid? All the advantages of the intelligent car, plus regenerative braking when you're driving somewhere where there isn't much traffic?
We live in California, and had a photovoltaic system installed last year, with the time-of-use meter and the rebate and everything. None of that stuff is a deciding factor.
Solar electricity is simply too expensive for most homeowners. Having solar on your house is still a bit of a luxury item, and a status symbol (among the right crowd). Hopefully, the systems will become more affordable soon.
I remember reading about a study that said simply changing something about your employees' environment once in a while will make them happier and more productive.
... all I wanted to do was post some pictures of my kitty.
Just to clarify, it's not all networks. Just all major networks. And it's a voluntary decision on the part of each network's programmers.
One of the main points in this article is that the people who DID work hard and improve themselves were the ones who got laid off.
And Circuit City's choices about whom to lay off were very unusual (and bone-headed). Normally, companies lay off their poorest performers. Cleary, Circuit City sucks and I have confidence that a lot of their laid off employees will land jobs at their competitors. Hopefully, Circuit City will go into bankruptcy soon and be bought out by more competent management.
(The article doesn't say anything about whether the laid-off employees found new jobs or not. It would be a pretty major research project for the author of the article to track them down.)
Taxing oil does encourage less and more efficient use. BUT, the tax also becomes an income source for the government, so politicians also have a motive to not discourage use of oil too much. You'll end up with these two conflicting motiviations reaching a status quo of a half-hearted attempt to discourage people from using oil.
Your idea, huh? You must be too young to remember "Gilligan's Island".
Announce that Jobs is on the Apple Corp. board? That's all?! What about a Beatles reunion with Jobs taking John Lennon's slot?
Well, it's a little more complicated than that. When choosing a video website, the savvy filmmaker should consider residuals, international marketing, tie-in merchandising, etc.
I can't get my mind to take that idea seriously: I grew up in L.A., where the weather is always the same and all the weathermen are out-of-work actors.
You've got it all wrong. On Slashdot, pointing out that somebody had "too much time on his hands" and did something nerdy with it is a compliment!
All there is is individuals. To really change society, you have to convince individuals to change their behavior. Change enough individuals and you will see aggregate results.
The government is just a bunch of individuals that we entrust with a lot of power. Government can do things to help, but, in its actual track record it has done a lot of things to create environmental problems. As a society, we have gotten lazy about trying to force other people to do what we see as right instead of convincing them to do what we see as right.
What they call "confusing the public", I call practicing free speech. How condescending of the UCS to assume we simpletons can't sort out misinformation for ourselves.
Robots Could Someday Tap Dance While Juggling Monkeys! ... can I get a grant from the British government, too.
Robots Could Someday Correct Grammar on Slashdot!
Robots Could Someday Recreate Phil Collins Concerts!
There