You didn't need to be a drooling FoxNews zombie to see that Healthcare.gov was a bad idea.
But the reason it is a bad idea is not that all government does is bad - rather this illustrates why things like this should be managed by a body that is guaranteed to not be in bed with business and is stricly regulated. Whether or not this can be called corruption in the legal sense, it certainly is morally corrupt.
I think what matters, when you learn to program, is that you enjoy programming; the language doesn't really matter. Some people seem to just get the idea, while others never quite get the hang of it - I suspect it has a lot to do with personality. In my experience, a good developer is somebody with an 'engineer's personality': who approaches everything in terms of how to construct things, who enjoys working out which procedure is best, what resources are needed etc. A good programmer is probably not bad at DIY, for that reason, this is something I have seen many times.
I have been around a lot of programming languages and enjoyed most of them - except Perl and Visual Basic (sorry); Perls seems to me to be like a pink hammer with LEDs blinking (ie. too much attempted coolness) and VB is just a bit sad. BASIC wasn't bad, such as it was, but it was never really meant for much more than an introduction to FORTRAN. For learners, I'd say, start them off on C, so they can learn what really goes on inside a program, including all the obscure errors you can run into; then on to python, which is an amazingly pleasant language, where they can learn some pretty advanced concepts without worrying too much about strange errors. If they've got what it takes, they'll enjoy both languages; I don't really believe in always catering for the weakest. Being able to program is not like literacy or numeracy; it's more like poetry: unless you really think in terms of poetry all the time, you will never become anything more than a so-so poet.
It is interesting to hear an executive of a pharmaceutical company admit that the industry is rotten, but not all that surprising. But of course, he's not really saying that; he is trying to blame the developing world, again not all that surprising.
Adding antibiotics to live-stock feeds has been a well known practise in the West for decades - I first heard about it in the 70es, and it must have been going on for a while before it got into the news. There was a public outcry back then, so the industry started calling it 'growth enhancers' instead; or they invented 'medical reasons' for it, such as taking suckling pigs away from their mothers too early - they would then get diarrhea, which the vet would prescribe antibiotics for etc.
And it is also a well documented that pharmaceutical companies shift drugs that are banned in the West to developing countries, where the rules are that much easier to live with, and where you can get away with marketing practices that would land you in very hot water in the West. All in all, I think it is a bit rich to blame developing nations for something the companies clearly are complicit in, if not the prime architects.
Just one further point in this debate: look up MRSA, where it originated (hint: the West) and why.
It's nice to see that we haven't lost our ability to be condescending without wasting effort on getting informed. Let me suggest some other headers along the same, stupid lines:
"What America really needs to curb gun-related crime" "What Europe really needs to save the economy"...
Well, you get the gist, I'm sure. We all have hard-to-solve problems, and none of us welcomes this sort of non-advice that sounds like 'why don't they just get their act together'. Why don't the Americans and Europeans 'just get their act together'? Probably because the problems are more complex than 'just something...', and part of that complexity is that we in the West are tying well-meaning aid to greedy businesses who have no intention of giving these countries a fair deal. Why would a Western company actually help set up competition against themselves in an African country? Companies are businesses, not idealists.
Exactly. By this logic, ANYTHING could be a "potential terrorist indicator", including terrorizing people who just happen to be using encrypted email by wrongfully arresting them.
You didn't actually read what I wrote carefully enough to understand the meaning, did you? What I'm saying, I hope, is simple, common sense: that we have to be intelligent about what we do and how we address this problem. We don't want to harrass people who have a legitimate wish to encrypt their communications - people who work from home over a VPN, people accessing their bank, and any number of other things. On the other hand, we do have to be alert to anything potential danger, because if we don't, bad things will happen.
If you have a better way of addressing the threat of terror, do let us all know, because we are struggling with this at the moment.
Is it possible that using secure email services can be construed as an indicator of being a terrorist?
When the question is posed like that, no. But it has been taken out of a context, and it is similar to saying 'is carrying a crowbar really a sign that you are going to burgle a house?' - you may be on the way home from the shop, intending to break some timber apart. On the other hand, if it is about 2AM and you are in a residential area far from your home, friends or family, and you can't offer a plausible explanation - perhaps it is reasonable to suspect that you are a burglar.
Terrorists look just like everybody else, at least until they blow themselves up or start shooting at the defenceless, so we have to use a complex set of indicators to try to guess who is likely to be plotting attacks; unfortunately they don't all use emails on 'terror.org' or whatever. If a number of factors come together, then perhaps using strongly encrypted email is worrying - you may have something legitimate to hide, but most people don't bother with encryption if they are just writing to their mum.
I agree - as an atheist I can't for a moment imagine why any all-powerful being would pay the slightest notice to what any individual in a potentially infinite universe might think, do or say. Even to a believer, one's actions can only be judged on their effect on oneself and others, and blasphemy is only ever as bad as the harm it causes, which in most cases is none.
Still, whether you are religious or not, you are required to use your brain for thinking, and there is rarely any excuse for not having spared a thought for the consequences of your actions, especially if you have been given ample warning.
You do realize that you're essentially asking whether or not it is okay to not allow the majority to oppress the minority's fundamental rights because they might get their feelings hurt, right? Good thing we don't live in direct democracies, because I don't want anything to do with them.
I do indeed; it is a question that needs to be asked - and answered. Isn't it better that people with a minimum of integrity and good intentions take the lead, than leaving it to the rabid fringe, such as the National Front or the like? Unlike those, I don't presuppose what the answer should be, and I am willing to be persuaded that it is worth the cost to society, but not without having thought it over and heard the arguments first.
And it is not about people's feeling getting hurt - if that was all, then I'd say, go for it. The people you are talking about here, are going to inflict a potentially heavy cost on all of us; it seems likely that they are going to do so no matter what we do, but in that case thinking about things will help us overcome the problems better, I would have thought.
- and you have no rights over the majority, come to that. Just to cast it in a harsh light: If you use your freedom of speech in such a way that you or your family are targeted by terrorists, should society be obliged to spend millions on policing to protect your lives? That is what happens at the moment: a small minority, who don't give a toss about other people get abusive and hide behind the skirts of 'freedom of speech', and expect the rest of us to pay up. Give us all a good reason why we should care that much about you?
What price? There is no price. If you get offended (which is subjective), that is your problem.
Looking back to the infamous Danish cartoon of Mohammed, there were costs to Danish businesses, costs incurred for police protection for the cartoonist etc etc. We don't communicate into a vacuum, and everything we do has consequences. So what are you, personally, willing to pay for your freedom? Everything you own? Your life? How about the lives of your family and friends? And do you have a right to expect others to cover your expenses in these cases, as it were, even if you have no qualms about it?
Look, the guy's hardly going to say it's OK to blaspheme, is he? It's just not in his job description. Whatever his personal opinion may be, he's is not at liberty to promote the same viewpoints as Charlie Hebdo. I think one should try to read no just between the lines of what he says, but also what he does and says in other contexts - he has demonstrated a much more modern outlook that previous popes.
And the issue isn't as black/white as that either. Freedom comes with a price-tag; are we all willing to pay the price? And if not, is it right to force the majority to pay the price so that a minority can say what they like without having to fear any consquences? If you actually believe in freedom, then you have to accept that others have the freedom to not want the same as you.
My solution would be to let go of the dogma's, they could explain why it's better to be moral. And give local government more political power so they need less oppression.
I think what you mean is, educate the people to understand and accept democracy; this is obviously a good idea, but not easily achieved. It isn't as simple as just understanding that you can vote for things; people have to learn to trust each other and the system, otherwise the losing side is not going to accept the result and it will end in chaos. On top of that, there will be powerful interests against its success - rich business owners and corrupt, local officials.
Which is why it is not a good idea to give local government more power, before corruption at that level has been rooted out.
The licensing model on an IBM mainframe is different depending on what OS you run (and which CPU you use). In my experience, the really prohibitively expensive model is when you run z/OS + certain 3rd party packages, because they tend to charge you for number of seats, CPU cycles, etc etc etc. I think one of the reasons why IBM went down the linux and Java routes was exactly that - it appears they can't easily move away from the old licensing model on z/OS, but you can run both Linux and Java really cheaply, relatively speaking.
And what you say about mainframe stability vs other HW - I don't think this is entirely true. Most of the very impressive features on other server HW originated in the mainframe - like hot-swappable disks, CPUs, Infiniband etc. And in my experience you don't really need a huge number of operators either; that was more in the old days, when you needed people to change tapes, load card decks and physically move printer output outside the server room. Even back then, you wouldn't see many system programmers - one largish place I worked, there were two: 1 CICS specialist and one for the rest.
The thing is, at the end of the day, the z/OS, for all it's idiosyncrasies, is not really very complicated - it's just that they so often name things differently.
This is problem I have given a good deal thought to as well.
First a bit of background: I have lived on UNIX and Linux for most of my far too long career. I programmed Windows and OS/2 back when it was fun (ie. Win3 and earlier; the fun went away after that); I have programmed C and C++ most of the time, and I have worked with both GNOME and KDE.
The problem, I find, is that you get tied into whichever environment you choose, so I took a step back and tried to figure out which environment give me most mobility across platforms and desktop environments. My answer, much to my dismay, was Java, which is available on nearly all HW and OS, and which has extensive and concise standards for almost everything relevant to a developer.
I am still new to it, but the technology I really like is Java Enterprise (previously J2EE) - what I've done is download a package with Netbeans (an IDE), Glassfish (application server) and J2SE (the Java SDK), and it becomes relatively easy to develop database applications, with a frontend in JSF, which works in all browsers across OSes and gives you full GUI functionality, and a backend that can run on a remote application server (not only Glassfish) and against any batabase with a JDBC driver.
Perhaps this is overkill for you purpose, but to me it seems ideal.
Somehow it still annoys me that people think of evolution in terms of some sort of deliberate purpose or 'providence'. It gives a completely skewed idea of what evolution is and it feeds religious superstition.
Evolution has no 'direction' - life doesn't evolve from 'worse' to 'better'; those terms have no meaning in this context. If one must assign some sort of direction to evolution, it would be something like 'life often tends to become more complex over time' - the word 'often' being central here, as there are many examples of organisms becoming simpler with time.
Evolution most certainly has no purpose - a trait evolves because it happens to be advantageous at that given moment. The ability to speak - ie. communicate vocally, following a sort of grammar - seems to have very deep roots, and it is easy to understand why: a sound signal is fast and carries far in both water and air, and it allows you to communicate with little expenditure of energy. You can use it for mating calls or warnings, it can be used to maintain group integrity etc. It is, incidentally, also useful for communicating knowledge: 'I know where there is water, follow me' or 'avoid humans, they are dangerous'.
Clearly the ability to communicate clearly is an advantage when you teach others how to make tools, but it is false to look for purpose in this - the only purpose of communication is the purpose the communicator puts into it.
...the biggest problems in American democracy: low voter turnout...
Yes, I know, the subject is rather trite, but I think it sums up what the real problem in democracy is. For democracy to work, it isn't enough to get voters to vote; they have to understand what it is all about. You really need to educate yourself about what the different options are in an election, you need to understand - and agree with - the rules. How often do people actually know or care about what they are voting for or against? The way it works in America, most people prefer to vote with their 'gut-instinct', which is no more than the sum of vague prejudices, misunderstandings combined with passing whims and fads; those in power like it that way, because it means they have an easier time of it than the likes of mr Putin or the Chinese government. Power brokers fear nothing more than intelligent, well-educated people.
You say that extreme speech needs to be controlled
Not really - I say, we need to have that discussion. All the time, really; unrestricted freedom is an illusion, all you can do is try to influence which restrictions you have to live with. If we don't, then it will always be the bullies that win - as you say:
In the 40s and 50s it was far-left political ideology. Today, might it be the far right? Tea partiers?
The great tolerance that is required of members of society, in order for freedom of speech to work, has to be very near universal - the venomous idiocy of Westboro Baptist Church is only harmless because the vast majority agree that they are idiots and that you just have to tolerate them. But this level of tolerance and insight is not a given, it requires a lot of education - everybody has to grow up to learn to accept that these ideals are right. Ironically, the people who are up in arms about freedom of speech are showing exactly the traits that will choke society's ability to allow freedom of speech - they are confrontational, unwilling to seek compromise, deeply intolerant, unwilling to educate themselves about their perceived enemy - "the Muslims". So, it has descended into chest-beating, dick-waving and "Islam is so and so". You can't beat the enemy by becoming part of him and repeating his wrongdoing.
That was what happened during the great Communist scare - freedom was used as an excuse to attack certain groups, and once it was started, it became horribly easy to 'prove' that this or that person was 'a communist'. Do we want to get to the point where we persecute 'Muslims'? Where it becomes a crime to use a head scarf? Where you are under suspicion if you are unwilling to burn a copy of the Qur'an? That is where we appear to be going.
Of course, we have to take away freedom of speech in order to protect freedom of speech, don't you get it? Duh....
I know this is not a popular thing to say, and judging on my previous success in this area, I will get modded down to around absolute zero, no matter whether what I have to say actually makes sense, but...
As I have said many times in the past - there is no such thing as perfect freedom. If one party - say, the state or society - doesn't put some limitations in place, then other parties - like the loudest bullies, for example - will do it by intimidation. This is true for freedom of speech as well, as we can see now in several forms: on one hand, the extremists try to oppress the freedom to criticise their view of the world, and on the other hand, the uproar against them tries in their own way to oppress dissent. In my view, there has to be some form of compromise that strikes a balance between the legitimate needs for all, not just a few, groups in sociaty to be able to express their views, and the need to protect other, just as legitimate interests that contribute to the stability and growht of society.
I don't have the solution to this problem, and I don't think you have it either. But I don't think it is beyond the capabilities of rational, thinking humans to find the solution.
I'm glad to see that Mr. Mann did not use the pejorative term "denier" even though the/. summary does.
You don't like the term 'denier'? What would you prefer - 'skeptic'? But as far I can see, that is just a euphemism, and an undeserved one, because skepticism implies that you are willing to let yourself be convinced if the arguments are good enough. As a denier, you are not even listening to the arguments except to look for way to make them look wrong - a denier has already decided that nothing can convince him/her, so nothing ever will.
Jesus was not a murderer, a pedophile, a liar or a rapist(*). What's your point?
No? If you say so. My point is not to claim that he was, but to illustrate how easy - and false - it is to judge adherents of a religion on your own, biased interpretation of holy scriptures you disagree with. Just as the Qur'an is now being used to justify wholesale atrocities of the worst kind, the Bible has been used to exactly the same end. Judge people on their merits instead; but that's not your purpose, is it? You want to be able to somehow discredit a whole, ethnic group or more, based on what they call their religion.
And if you provoke a terrorist attack that gets a lot of innocents killed - are you not partially to blame, for all your freedom of speech?
No. Absolutely No
So, all things being equal, would you say that the leaders of Islamic State are not to blame for the terrorist attacks they incite (as opposed to those they carry out themselves)?
Mohammed was a murderer, a pedophile, a liar and a rapist. All of these straight from the Koran.
Read the Bible, friend, where you will find similar niceties about prominent fellows in the Jewish/Christian tradition. Genocide on Jahve's orders: look for 'shibbolet'; incest: Lot and his daughters, etc etc. Whether the Prophet was one or the other, who knows? it isn't really relevant. What IS relevant is - do we want to solve the problems, or do we want to see who can produce most insults in the shortest time?
Don't get me wrong - it is right that Charlie Hebdo have the freedom to produce their satire, even if it seems immature and crass. It can never be right to murder defenceless people whatever your excuse. Islamic terrorists are not Muslems, whatever they declare; they bring shame on Islam and on their parents. If there is a God worth a prayer, then he will surely be filled with loathing at what terrorists do in his name.
But, when all that is said, is it in any way sensible that you go out of your way to stir up the shit? If you go and kick a hornet's nest, is it a surprise that you get stung? It may sound like blaming the victim, but I don't think it is - are you a victim, if you go and look for trouble and find more than you had bargained for? And if you provoke a terrorist attack that gets a lot of innocents killed - are you not partially to blame, for all your freedom of speech?
To be fair, there have been many of these "we think we may have found life / ancient life / we have a big announcement" type things out of NASA in the last few years, none of which had "conclusive" (or at least, relatively so) evidence of life.
I read, long ago, that scientifcally speaking, there is no conclusive proof of life on Earth either; probably tongue-in-cheek, but with a core of truth. There is that well-rehearsed and widely misunderstood phrase, that 'correlation is not causation'; what that actually means is that scientifc data will only ever indicate a correlation - the causation part belongs entirely in theory, in the interpretation of that correlation. Same here - the pictures show something that would most likely be created by life, had it been on Earth; if we are right in assuming that life on Mars would have been of a similar nature as on Earth, then this is quite good evidence.
However, on Earth life is everywhere, making that interpretation very likely; since we haven't yet convinced ourselves that life ever existed on Mars, we have to be much more wary of leaping to the same conclusion. Perhaps in the future, if we find ourselves convinced that life has been abundant once on Mars, we will look back at much of our evidence and say 'of course this is created by living organisms'.
It's getting to the point where there's nothing really to discuss until they stop releasing these meta-statements, and actually give a real "we fucking found life FOR SURE" statement.
Well, this is what it is like to follow the science taking place; lots of frustratingly vague results until finally the weight of evidence is great enough. Just look at water on Mars: a decade ago it was like that - every bit of evidence that water has been there once was quickly refuted, but now the consensus is that there was water once. Just give it some time and enjoy the popcorn.
The title says it all, really. I mean, even if you are against guns, you can still follow the idea that it is exciting to own a gun and be able to shoot well, because it is something that requires skill, but this sort of thing? Wouldn't a gun enthusiast be ashamed of him/herself rather than broadcasting to the world at large?
Slashdot Mirror
You didn't need to be a drooling FoxNews zombie to see that Healthcare.gov was a bad idea.
But the reason it is a bad idea is not that all government does is bad - rather this illustrates why things like this should be managed by a body that is guaranteed to not be in bed with business and is stricly regulated. Whether or not this can be called corruption in the legal sense, it certainly is morally corrupt.
I think what matters, when you learn to program, is that you enjoy programming; the language doesn't really matter. Some people seem to just get the idea, while others never quite get the hang of it - I suspect it has a lot to do with personality. In my experience, a good developer is somebody with an 'engineer's personality': who approaches everything in terms of how to construct things, who enjoys working out which procedure is best, what resources are needed etc. A good programmer is probably not bad at DIY, for that reason, this is something I have seen many times.
I have been around a lot of programming languages and enjoyed most of them - except Perl and Visual Basic (sorry); Perls seems to me to be like a pink hammer with LEDs blinking (ie. too much attempted coolness) and VB is just a bit sad. BASIC wasn't bad, such as it was, but it was never really meant for much more than an introduction to FORTRAN. For learners, I'd say, start them off on C, so they can learn what really goes on inside a program, including all the obscure errors you can run into; then on to python, which is an amazingly pleasant language, where they can learn some pretty advanced concepts without worrying too much about strange errors. If they've got what it takes, they'll enjoy both languages; I don't really believe in always catering for the weakest. Being able to program is not like literacy or numeracy; it's more like poetry: unless you really think in terms of poetry all the time, you will never become anything more than a so-so poet.
It is interesting to hear an executive of a pharmaceutical company admit that the industry is rotten, but not all that surprising. But of course, he's not really saying that; he is trying to blame the developing world, again not all that surprising.
Adding antibiotics to live-stock feeds has been a well known practise in the West for decades - I first heard about it in the 70es, and it must have been going on for a while before it got into the news. There was a public outcry back then, so the industry started calling it 'growth enhancers' instead; or they invented 'medical reasons' for it, such as taking suckling pigs away from their mothers too early - they would then get diarrhea, which the vet would prescribe antibiotics for etc.
And it is also a well documented that pharmaceutical companies shift drugs that are banned in the West to developing countries, where the rules are that much easier to live with, and where you can get away with marketing practices that would land you in very hot water in the West. All in all, I think it is a bit rich to blame developing nations for something the companies clearly are complicit in, if not the prime architects.
Just one further point in this debate: look up MRSA, where it originated (hint: the West) and why.
It's nice to see that we haven't lost our ability to be condescending without wasting effort on getting informed. Let me suggest some other headers along the same, stupid lines:
"What America really needs to curb gun-related crime" ...
"What Europe really needs to save the economy"
Well, you get the gist, I'm sure. We all have hard-to-solve problems, and none of us welcomes this sort of non-advice that sounds like 'why don't they just get their act together'. Why don't the Americans and Europeans 'just get their act together'? Probably because the problems are more complex than 'just something ...', and part of that complexity is that we in the West are tying well-meaning aid to greedy businesses who have no intention of giving these countries a fair deal. Why would a Western company actually help set up competition against themselves in an African country? Companies are businesses, not idealists.
Exactly. By this logic, ANYTHING could be a "potential terrorist indicator", including terrorizing people who just happen to be using encrypted email by wrongfully arresting them.
You didn't actually read what I wrote carefully enough to understand the meaning, did you? What I'm saying, I hope, is simple, common sense: that we have to be intelligent about what we do and how we address this problem. We don't want to harrass people who have a legitimate wish to encrypt their communications - people who work from home over a VPN, people accessing their bank, and any number of other things. On the other hand, we do have to be alert to anything potential danger, because if we don't, bad things will happen.
If you have a better way of addressing the threat of terror, do let us all know, because we are struggling with this at the moment.
Is it possible that using secure email services can be construed as an indicator of being a terrorist?
When the question is posed like that, no. But it has been taken out of a context, and it is similar to saying 'is carrying a crowbar really a sign that you are going to burgle a house?' - you may be on the way home from the shop, intending to break some timber apart. On the other hand, if it is about 2AM and you are in a residential area far from your home, friends or family, and you can't offer a plausible explanation - perhaps it is reasonable to suspect that you are a burglar.
Terrorists look just like everybody else, at least until they blow themselves up or start shooting at the defenceless, so we have to use a complex set of indicators to try to guess who is likely to be plotting attacks; unfortunately they don't all use emails on 'terror.org' or whatever. If a number of factors come together, then perhaps using strongly encrypted email is worrying - you may have something legitimate to hide, but most people don't bother with encryption if they are just writing to their mum.
I agree - as an atheist I can't for a moment imagine why any all-powerful being would pay the slightest notice to what any individual in a potentially infinite universe might think, do or say. Even to a believer, one's actions can only be judged on their effect on oneself and others, and blasphemy is only ever as bad as the harm it causes, which in most cases is none.
Still, whether you are religious or not, you are required to use your brain for thinking, and there is rarely any excuse for not having spared a thought for the consequences of your actions, especially if you have been given ample warning.
You do realize that you're essentially asking whether or not it is okay to not allow the majority to oppress the minority's fundamental rights because they might get their feelings hurt, right? Good thing we don't live in direct democracies, because I don't want anything to do with them.
I do indeed; it is a question that needs to be asked - and answered. Isn't it better that people with a minimum of integrity and good intentions take the lead, than leaving it to the rabid fringe, such as the National Front or the like? Unlike those, I don't presuppose what the answer should be, and I am willing to be persuaded that it is worth the cost to society, but not without having thought it over and heard the arguments first.
And it is not about people's feeling getting hurt - if that was all, then I'd say, go for it. The people you are talking about here, are going to inflict a potentially heavy cost on all of us; it seems likely that they are going to do so no matter what we do, but in that case thinking about things will help us overcome the problems better, I would have thought.
Yes, the majority have no rights over me
- and you have no rights over the majority, come to that. Just to cast it in a harsh light: If you use your freedom of speech in such a way that you or your family are targeted by terrorists, should society be obliged to spend millions on policing to protect your lives? That is what happens at the moment: a small minority, who don't give a toss about other people get abusive and hide behind the skirts of 'freedom of speech', and expect the rest of us to pay up. Give us all a good reason why we should care that much about you?
What price? There is no price. If you get offended (which is subjective), that is your problem.
Looking back to the infamous Danish cartoon of Mohammed, there were costs to Danish businesses, costs incurred for police protection for the cartoonist etc etc. We don't communicate into a vacuum, and everything we do has consequences. So what are you, personally, willing to pay for your freedom? Everything you own? Your life? How about the lives of your family and friends? And do you have a right to expect others to cover your expenses in these cases, as it were, even if you have no qualms about it?
And fuck you too.
You're welcome.
Look, the guy's hardly going to say it's OK to blaspheme, is he? It's just not in his job description. Whatever his personal opinion may be, he's is not at liberty to promote the same viewpoints as Charlie Hebdo. I think one should try to read no just between the lines of what he says, but also what he does and says in other contexts - he has demonstrated a much more modern outlook that previous popes.
And the issue isn't as black/white as that either. Freedom comes with a price-tag; are we all willing to pay the price? And if not, is it right to force the majority to pay the price so that a minority can say what they like without having to fear any consquences? If you actually believe in freedom, then you have to accept that others have the freedom to not want the same as you.
My solution would be to let go of the dogma's, they could explain why it's better to be moral. And give local government more political power so they need less oppression.
I think what you mean is, educate the people to understand and accept democracy; this is obviously a good idea, but not easily achieved. It isn't as simple as just understanding that you can vote for things; people have to learn to trust each other and the system, otherwise the losing side is not going to accept the result and it will end in chaos. On top of that, there will be powerful interests against its success - rich business owners and corrupt, local officials.
Which is why it is not a good idea to give local government more power, before corruption at that level has been rooted out.
The licensing model on an IBM mainframe is different depending on what OS you run (and which CPU you use). In my experience, the really prohibitively expensive model is when you run z/OS + certain 3rd party packages, because they tend to charge you for number of seats, CPU cycles, etc etc etc. I think one of the reasons why IBM went down the linux and Java routes was exactly that - it appears they can't easily move away from the old licensing model on z/OS, but you can run both Linux and Java really cheaply, relatively speaking.
And what you say about mainframe stability vs other HW - I don't think this is entirely true. Most of the very impressive features on other server HW originated in the mainframe - like hot-swappable disks, CPUs, Infiniband etc. And in my experience you don't really need a huge number of operators either; that was more in the old days, when you needed people to change tapes, load card decks and physically move printer output outside the server room. Even back then, you wouldn't see many system programmers - one largish place I worked, there were two: 1 CICS specialist and one for the rest.
The thing is, at the end of the day, the z/OS, for all it's idiosyncrasies, is not really very complicated - it's just that they so often name things differently.
- and another one, somewhat abridged:
A Windows admin, a UNIX admin and a Mainfram admin went to the toilet at the same time;
- the Windows guy finished first, washed his hands and wiped the fingers on a huge wad of paper towels and threw them on the floor, mostly unused
- The Linux guy washed his hands and carefully dried his hands with 1 paper towel, which he then deposited in the bin
- The mainframe guy just headed for the door, remarking "I learned long ago not to piss on my fingers".
This is problem I have given a good deal thought to as well.
First a bit of background: I have lived on UNIX and Linux for most of my far too long career. I programmed Windows and OS/2 back when it was fun (ie. Win3 and earlier; the fun went away after that); I have programmed C and C++ most of the time, and I have worked with both GNOME and KDE.
The problem, I find, is that you get tied into whichever environment you choose, so I took a step back and tried to figure out which environment give me most mobility across platforms and desktop environments. My answer, much to my dismay, was Java, which is available on nearly all HW and OS, and which has extensive and concise standards for almost everything relevant to a developer.
I am still new to it, but the technology I really like is Java Enterprise (previously J2EE) - what I've done is download a package with Netbeans (an IDE), Glassfish (application server) and J2SE (the Java SDK), and it becomes relatively easy to develop database applications, with a frontend in JSF, which works in all browsers across OSes and gives you full GUI functionality, and a backend that can run on a remote application server (not only Glassfish) and against any batabase with a JDBC driver.
Perhaps this is overkill for you purpose, but to me it seems ideal.
Somehow it still annoys me that people think of evolution in terms of some sort of deliberate purpose or 'providence'. It gives a completely skewed idea of what evolution is and it feeds religious superstition.
Evolution has no 'direction' - life doesn't evolve from 'worse' to 'better'; those terms have no meaning in this context. If one must assign some sort of direction to evolution, it would be something like 'life often tends to become more complex over time' - the word 'often' being central here, as there are many examples of organisms becoming simpler with time.
Evolution most certainly has no purpose - a trait evolves because it happens to be advantageous at that given moment. The ability to speak - ie. communicate vocally, following a sort of grammar - seems to have very deep roots, and it is easy to understand why: a sound signal is fast and carries far in both water and air, and it allows you to communicate with little expenditure of energy. You can use it for mating calls or warnings, it can be used to maintain group integrity etc. It is, incidentally, also useful for communicating knowledge: 'I know where there is water, follow me' or 'avoid humans, they are dangerous'.
Clearly the ability to communicate clearly is an advantage when you teach others how to make tools, but it is false to look for purpose in this - the only purpose of communication is the purpose the communicator puts into it.
...the biggest problems in American democracy: low voter turnout...
Yes, I know, the subject is rather trite, but I think it sums up what the real problem in democracy is. For democracy to work, it isn't enough to get voters to vote; they have to understand what it is all about. You really need to educate yourself about what the different options are in an election, you need to understand - and agree with - the rules. How often do people actually know or care about what they are voting for or against? The way it works in America, most people prefer to vote with their 'gut-instinct', which is no more than the sum of vague prejudices, misunderstandings combined with passing whims and fads; those in power like it that way, because it means they have an easier time of it than the likes of mr Putin or the Chinese government. Power brokers fear nothing more than intelligent, well-educated people.
You say that extreme speech needs to be controlled
Not really - I say, we need to have that discussion. All the time, really; unrestricted freedom is an illusion, all you can do is try to influence which restrictions you have to live with. If we don't, then it will always be the bullies that win - as you say:
In the 40s and 50s it was far-left political ideology. Today, might it be the far right? Tea partiers?
The great tolerance that is required of members of society, in order for freedom of speech to work, has to be very near universal - the venomous idiocy of Westboro Baptist Church is only harmless because the vast majority agree that they are idiots and that you just have to tolerate them. But this level of tolerance and insight is not a given, it requires a lot of education - everybody has to grow up to learn to accept that these ideals are right. Ironically, the people who are up in arms about freedom of speech are showing exactly the traits that will choke society's ability to allow freedom of speech - they are confrontational, unwilling to seek compromise, deeply intolerant, unwilling to educate themselves about their perceived enemy - "the Muslims". So, it has descended into chest-beating, dick-waving and "Islam is so and so". You can't beat the enemy by becoming part of him and repeating his wrongdoing.
That was what happened during the great Communist scare - freedom was used as an excuse to attack certain groups, and once it was started, it became horribly easy to 'prove' that this or that person was 'a communist'. Do we want to get to the point where we persecute 'Muslims'? Where it becomes a crime to use a head scarf? Where you are under suspicion if you are unwilling to burn a copy of the Qur'an? That is where we appear to be going.
Of course, we have to take away freedom of speech in order to protect freedom of speech, don't you get it? Duh....
I know this is not a popular thing to say, and judging on my previous success in this area, I will get modded down to around absolute zero, no matter whether what I have to say actually makes sense, but ...
As I have said many times in the past - there is no such thing as perfect freedom. If one party - say, the state or society - doesn't put some limitations in place, then other parties - like the loudest bullies, for example - will do it by intimidation. This is true for freedom of speech as well, as we can see now in several forms: on one hand, the extremists try to oppress the freedom to criticise their view of the world, and on the other hand, the uproar against them tries in their own way to oppress dissent. In my view, there has to be some form of compromise that strikes a balance between the legitimate needs for all, not just a few, groups in sociaty to be able to express their views, and the need to protect other, just as legitimate interests that contribute to the stability and growht of society.
I don't have the solution to this problem, and I don't think you have it either. But I don't think it is beyond the capabilities of rational, thinking humans to find the solution.
I'm glad to see that Mr. Mann did not use the pejorative term "denier" even though the /. summary does.
You don't like the term 'denier'? What would you prefer - 'skeptic'? But as far I can see, that is just a euphemism, and an undeserved one, because skepticism implies that you are willing to let yourself be convinced if the arguments are good enough. As a denier, you are not even listening to the arguments except to look for way to make them look wrong - a denier has already decided that nothing can convince him/her, so nothing ever will.
Jesus was not a murderer, a pedophile, a liar or a rapist(*). What's your point?
No? If you say so. My point is not to claim that he was, but to illustrate how easy - and false - it is to judge adherents of a religion on your own, biased interpretation of holy scriptures you disagree with. Just as the Qur'an is now being used to justify wholesale atrocities of the worst kind, the Bible has been used to exactly the same end. Judge people on their merits instead; but that's not your purpose, is it? You want to be able to somehow discredit a whole, ethnic group or more, based on what they call their religion.
And if you provoke a terrorist attack that gets a lot of innocents killed - are you not partially to blame, for all your freedom of speech?
No. Absolutely No
So, all things being equal, would you say that the leaders of Islamic State are not to blame for the terrorist attacks they incite (as opposed to those they carry out themselves)?
Mohammed was a murderer, a pedophile, a liar and a rapist. All of these straight from the Koran.
Read the Bible, friend, where you will find similar niceties about prominent fellows in the Jewish/Christian tradition. Genocide on Jahve's orders: look for 'shibbolet'; incest: Lot and his daughters, etc etc. Whether the Prophet was one or the other, who knows? it isn't really relevant. What IS relevant is - do we want to solve the problems, or do we want to see who can produce most insults in the shortest time?
Don't get me wrong - it is right that Charlie Hebdo have the freedom to produce their satire, even if it seems immature and crass. It can never be right to murder defenceless people whatever your excuse. Islamic terrorists are not Muslems, whatever they declare; they bring shame on Islam and on their parents. If there is a God worth a prayer, then he will surely be filled with loathing at what terrorists do in his name.
But, when all that is said, is it in any way sensible that you go out of your way to stir up the shit? If you go and kick a hornet's nest, is it a surprise that you get stung? It may sound like blaming the victim, but I don't think it is - are you a victim, if you go and look for trouble and find more than you had bargained for? And if you provoke a terrorist attack that gets a lot of innocents killed - are you not partially to blame, for all your freedom of speech?
To be fair, there have been many of these "we think we may have found life / ancient life / we have a big announcement" type things out of NASA in the last few years, none of which had "conclusive" (or at least, relatively so) evidence of life.
I read, long ago, that scientifcally speaking, there is no conclusive proof of life on Earth either; probably tongue-in-cheek, but with a core of truth. There is that well-rehearsed and widely misunderstood phrase, that 'correlation is not causation'; what that actually means is that scientifc data will only ever indicate a correlation - the causation part belongs entirely in theory, in the interpretation of that correlation. Same here - the pictures show something that would most likely be created by life, had it been on Earth; if we are right in assuming that life on Mars would have been of a similar nature as on Earth, then this is quite good evidence.
However, on Earth life is everywhere, making that interpretation very likely; since we haven't yet convinced ourselves that life ever existed on Mars, we have to be much more wary of leaping to the same conclusion. Perhaps in the future, if we find ourselves convinced that life has been abundant once on Mars, we will look back at much of our evidence and say 'of course this is created by living organisms'.
It's getting to the point where there's nothing really to discuss until they stop releasing these meta-statements, and actually give a real "we fucking found life FOR SURE" statement.
Well, this is what it is like to follow the science taking place; lots of frustratingly vague results until finally the weight of evidence is great enough. Just look at water on Mars: a decade ago it was like that - every bit of evidence that water has been there once was quickly refuted, but now the consensus is that there was water once. Just give it some time and enjoy the popcorn.
The title says it all, really. I mean, even if you are against guns, you can still follow the idea that it is exciting to own a gun and be able to shoot well, because it is something that requires skill, but this sort of thing? Wouldn't a gun enthusiast be ashamed of him/herself rather than broadcasting to the world at large?