Such a program could not be "the world's most functional" in any meaningful sense.
Ok, so you want to define "functional" to include issues of licencing freedom? That's a unusual semantic choice, but if we accept it for the sake of argument, then non-free software lacks important functionality.
What do you propose is more important than functionality?
Freedom.
Pretend that I have developed the world's most functional word processing program. However, you may only use it under a licence that grants me censorship rights to anything you write. Would you want to buy a copy?
I am a simple COMPUTER USER. I care not about politics, especially when it comes to bits and bytes.
But politics cares about you. (And not just in Soviet Russia.)
Proprietary software means software that someone can make copyright or patent claims on in such a way as to get the state to use force to prevent you from using or sharing the software in certain ways. That's politics.
Would you buy a power saw if there were some way that the manufactuer could control how you could use it, lend it, resell it, or fix it if it broke?
When you use proprietary software, you have to be concerned with politics; only Free Software takes away political concerns.
The difference between auto mechanics and computer repairmen is that the mechanics have a union which forces licensing on its members to boost the price of labor.
No, the difference is that if your auto mechanic screws up you can be dead. Tire blowouts, brake or other control failure, car fires, an airbag that deploys at the wrong time...events that put not just the driver but other people on the road (heck, people who live near the road) at risk.
An automobile crash can be a much more serious event than a personal computer crash. It is entirely appropriate for the state to license and regulate automobile mechanics.
there are no programs that an inexperienced user *needs* that do not come in their software repositories.
Wow, you know the software needs of all users? How's the omniscience working out for you?
Yes, peole need to think before installing software. That doesn't mean thr process should be hard - in fact, making it artifically difficult encourages people to find unsafe and stupid ways to do things that get around the restrictions.
I occasionally take it (very rarely), and the melatonin tablets I have are 0.5 mg = 500ug strong. I find them effective (though of course that's anecdotal evidence).
Now when the alarm rings, I turn it off, take a caffeine pill, and go back to sleep...I take a 3mg melatonin tablet at about 11 PM...And you avoid a lot of health problems by sleeping normal hours.
What, like drug dependancy isn't a health problem?
I like the occasional jolt of caffeine to the neurons too, and occasionally use melatonin, but if every day you need to take a drug to go to sleep and a drug to wake up, by definition you have a significant drug dependancy. (And yes, that applies to all you people who can't function in the morning without coffee - it's an addictive drug.)
Sleep problems are often a symptom of unhealthy lifestyles - unreconciled stress, lack of exercise, etcetera. Don't mute those symptoms, deal with the causes.
What would it take to prove the existence of God from nature?
An artist's signature. Surely if the universe were created by some being, it would be very simple to such a being to provide obvious evidence of this.
Maybe something in nature that doesn't appear possible or make sense in nature, yet exists anyway?
If it doesn't make sense under our theories, then we change our theories. When the orbit of Mercury didn't obey Newton's predictions, we didn't say, "ooops, must be divine intervention!"; we posited new theories, until Einstein came up with general relativity to explain it.
It just doesn't make sense, there has to be something creating that sort of order and miracles from chaos.
Then there would have to be something creating that creator, since that creator has even more order. And something creating that creator-creator. And something creating that creator-creator-creator. And so on. Sorry, but positing a creator-being doesn't explain anything.
there is nothing unnatural about anything created by human beings.
Fine. Then under that defintion don't you have to retract you assertation that "the community is trying hard to work against natural selection"? If the community's actions are natural, they're part of natural selection.
and the problem isn't that the 'feebleminded' are outbreeding the able ones, but the fact that the community is trying hard to work against natural selection (reads: social security)...
Under pure "natural" selection, those who thrived would not be the most intelligent. Social darwinists forget that we've created an "unnatural" environment.
It can be argued that having taken action to create such an environment, it is ethically incumbent on us to give some protection to those screwed over by it. ("You would have made a hell of a hunter-gatherer, kid, but you're a lousy city dweller"). And that it's wise to preserve those attributes within the species, because that environment will change and we need to stay diverse. ("Now that industrial civilization has collapsed, we need those excellent hunter-gatherer types!" Or, if you want to be optimistic, "Turns out those excellent hunter-gatherer types are just who we need to crew our starships!")
We have the most intelligent people NOT breeding, and the idiots breeding like rabbits.
You're assuming that intelligence is highly inheritable, a very debatable premise. Indeed if the most intelligent people were to start having more children, they'd be less able to care for them all, degrading the development environment and probably leading to less intellectual development in the kids.
The concern that the "feebleminded" are outbreeding the able dates back at least to the dawn of the 20th century; despite the rising tide of idiocy that century saw the development of powered flight, space travel, and solid state electronics. (And eugenics programs in the U.S. and Europe that attempted to weed out the "feebleminded".)
They then go on to say they suspect RNA of holding the backup copy somehow. But (as the article mentions) RNA is unstable and unsuitable for holding data for any decent amount of time.
It's been over 20 years since my last biology class (well, not counting some recent anatomy & physiology in massage school) so this might be a dumb idea; but I wonder if there could be some sort of "parity bits" in the "junk" DNA? Not a full backup copy, but enough extra information to be able to correct some mistakes.
So it seems to me that you'd need to go to Sun and ask, "Hey, will you port all your feature-rich Java libraries to my Java-esque language that compiles to machine language executables?"
On the contrary, once a good visual representation is found, it is far more productive. "One picture is worth 1000 words" is absolutely true
Then draw me a picture of the Gettsyburg Address. Or, heck, Basho's famous frog haiku, that should only take about 1/100th of a picture, right?
There's a reason why people gave up on flow charts long ago (and why I look forward to UML ending up in the same bin soon). While program structure can be sometimes be usefully shown in diagrams ("this module interacts with this module which contains submodules foo and bar"), behavior and action is best prescribed and described verbally.
Maybe you can't go to public school without giving a sample, or you won't get a driver's license if you're not on record, or no federal loans for college, etc. Or maybe it'll simply come down to free deliveries paid for by the government if the parents voluntarily give a sample of their baby's DNA.
There would be heavy religious liberties and equal protection issues with any such attempt. There are those who believe that the body is a sacred thing, that removing parts of it (however small) to hand over to the state would be sacrilege.
(I'm no Christian, but I like Jeshua ben-Joseph's advice advice about "render onto Caesar what is Caesar's" - my body ain't Caesar's.)
Until the law changes, and you're guilty of something. Japanese-Americans who cooperated with the government in the late 1930s and gave up information (like, to the Census Bureau) probably regretted it a few years later.
You leave your fingerprints everywhere. You don't cry like a baby about people having access to your fingerprints.
When you take my photo or my fingerprints, you are not taking part of my flesh.
The sovereignty of the state ends at my skin. It's that simple. You can pick up my dead skin flake or hair or whatever when it falls off me, but I will resist if you try to stick a swab or needle in me to take your milligram of flesh.
Did you really think that prior to George W. Bush that the US government was some brain trust under Bill Clinton?
The fact that George W. Bush is a contemptable scumbag who, in any sane society, would be institutionalized for his own protection and that of others, in no way implies that Bill Clinton is not a contemptable scumbag who, in any sane society, would be institutionalized for his own protection and that of others.
Still, just like I'd rather have gonorrhea than lung cancer, I'd take Clinton over George W. for president any day.
It only "sounds familiar" until you know the facts of the entirely justifable and legal retaliation against the government of Iraq two years ago."
Oh? Who did that one? Because the only action against Iraq I recall from two years ago was the immoral, illegal, and tactically stupid U.S. invasion. Maybe Liechtenstein or somebody conducted a legal and justifable attack around that same time?
Although you could argue that "SEE ID" is your signature, and sign your reciepts the same way, too. A signature is just an identifying (usually individual) mark; nothing says it must be your full name.
Except that mechants are supposed to ask for ID with unsigned (including "See ID") cards, request the customer to sign the card, and check the signature against the ID. So unless your driver's licence is also signed "See ID", this falls flat. This has nothing to do with the post office, this is what Visa and Mastercard require merchants to do.
(And yes, the procedure is rarely followed, the rules are not enforced, people accept unsigned cards, fraudulent cards are accepted - and the costs get passed on to the consumer.)
She politely asks him to sign his card so she can compare signatures. It took him a beat to process the fact that "Yes she's that dumb.", he signed the card, she checked the sigs. and let him be on his merry way.
When I used to cashier part time in college I always wished I could reject those cards. "Sorry, SEE ID isn't the cardholder's name. I can't accept this."
I don't think you can make a case against students learning to use computers now, as opposed to waiting until they are over 40 and trying to find the Any Key.
Sure, students should learn how to use computers. That doesn't mean they should be in every classroom, or should be used in a pathetic attempt to replace teachers. Learning how to use a word processor and a web browser is maybe two weeks of instruction in middle school, not a major educational investment.
Computers will no more be the magic bullet that makes education fun and easy than radio, tape recordings, filmstrips, movies, TV, videotapes, or all the other educational media that have come and gone. Clifford Stoll is right on target about computers in the classroom.
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Ok, so you want to define "functional" to include issues of licencing freedom? That's a unusual semantic choice, but if we accept it for the sake of argument, then non-free software lacks important functionality.
Freedom.
Pretend that I have developed the world's most functional word processing program. However, you may only use it under a licence that grants me censorship rights to anything you write. Would you want to buy a copy?
But politics cares about you. (And not just in Soviet Russia.)
Proprietary software means software that someone can make copyright or patent claims on in such a way as to get the state to use force to prevent you from using or sharing the software in certain ways. That's politics.
Would you buy a power saw if there were some way that the manufactuer could control how you could use it, lend it, resell it, or fix it if it broke?
When you use proprietary software, you have to be concerned with politics; only Free Software takes away political concerns.
There are more useful and graceful ways to do this than via assert(), however.
If you detect an error condition, you should allow the user to exit as gracefully as possible (what that entails depends on the application).
No, the difference is that if your auto mechanic screws up you can be dead. Tire blowouts, brake or other control failure, car fires, an airbag that deploys at the wrong time...events that put not just the driver but other people on the road (heck, people who live near the road) at risk.
An automobile crash can be a much more serious event than a personal computer crash. It is entirely appropriate for the state to license and regulate automobile mechanics.
Wow, you know the software needs of all users? How's the omniscience working out for you?
Yes, peole need to think before installing software. That doesn't mean thr process should be hard - in fact, making it artifically difficult encourages people to find unsafe and stupid ways to do things that get around the restrictions.
There are well-known drugs that are effective in the microgram range, you know.
The MIT neuroscientist who's credited with discovering the sleep-inducing properties of supplemental melatonin says the most effective dose is around 300ug, and that higher doses can be less effective (besides having stronger side effects).
I occasionally take it (very rarely), and the melatonin tablets I have are 0.5 mg = 500ug strong. I find them effective (though of course that's anecdotal evidence).
What, like drug dependancy isn't a health problem?
I like the occasional jolt of caffeine to the neurons too, and occasionally use melatonin, but if every day you need to take a drug to go to sleep and a drug to wake up, by definition you have a significant drug dependancy. (And yes, that applies to all you people who can't function in the morning without coffee - it's an addictive drug.)
Sleep problems are often a symptom of unhealthy lifestyles - unreconciled stress, lack of exercise, etcetera. Don't mute those symptoms, deal with the causes.
An artist's signature. Surely if the universe were created by some being, it would be very simple to such a being to provide obvious evidence of this.
If it doesn't make sense under our theories, then we change our theories. When the orbit of Mercury didn't obey Newton's predictions, we didn't say, "ooops, must be divine intervention!"; we posited new theories, until Einstein came up with general relativity to explain it.
Then there would have to be something creating that creator, since that creator has even more order. And something creating that creator-creator. And something creating that creator-creator-creator. And so on. Sorry, but positing a creator-being doesn't explain anything.
Fine. Then under that defintion don't you have to retract you assertation that "the community is trying hard to work against natural selection"? If the community's actions are natural, they're part of natural selection.
Under pure "natural" selection, those who thrived would not be the most intelligent. Social darwinists forget that we've created an "unnatural" environment.
It can be argued that having taken action to create such an environment, it is ethically incumbent on us to give some protection to those screwed over by it. ("You would have made a hell of a hunter-gatherer, kid, but you're a lousy city dweller"). And that it's wise to preserve those attributes within the species, because that environment will change and we need to stay diverse. ("Now that industrial civilization has collapsed, we need those excellent hunter-gatherer types!" Or, if you want to be optimistic, "Turns out those excellent hunter-gatherer types are just who we need to crew our starships!")
You're assuming that intelligence is highly inheritable, a very debatable premise. Indeed if the most intelligent people were to start having more children, they'd be less able to care for them all, degrading the development environment and probably leading to less intellectual development in the kids.
The concern that the "feebleminded" are outbreeding the able dates back at least to the dawn of the 20th century; despite the rising tide of idiocy that century saw the development of powered flight, space travel, and solid state electronics. (And eugenics programs in the U.S. and Europe that attempted to weed out the "feebleminded".)
It's been over 20 years since my last biology class (well, not counting some recent anatomy & physiology in massage school) so this might be a dumb idea; but I wonder if there could be some sort of "parity bits" in the "junk" DNA? Not a full backup copy, but enough extra information to be able to correct some mistakes.
Don't ask them. Ask the GCC team.
Then draw me a picture of the Gettsyburg Address. Or, heck, Basho's famous frog haiku, that should only take about 1/100th of a picture, right?
There's a reason why people gave up on flow charts long ago (and why I look forward to UML ending up in the same bin soon). While program structure can be sometimes be usefully shown in diagrams ("this module interacts with this module which contains submodules foo and bar"), behavior and action is best prescribed and described verbally.
There would be heavy religious liberties and equal protection issues with any such attempt. There are those who believe that the body is a sacred thing, that removing parts of it (however small) to hand over to the state would be sacrilege.
(I'm no Christian, but I like Jeshua ben-Joseph's advice advice about "render onto Caesar what is Caesar's" - my body ain't Caesar's.)
Until the law changes, and you're guilty of something. Japanese-Americans who cooperated with the government in the late 1930s and gave up information (like, to the Census Bureau) probably regretted it a few years later.
We leave few clean usable prints behind, mostly smeared partials. (And it's interesting that fingerprint identification has never really been proven valid and reliable.)
When you take my photo or my fingerprints, you are not taking part of my flesh.
The sovereignty of the state ends at my skin. It's that simple. You can pick up my dead skin flake or hair or whatever when it falls off me, but I will resist if you try to stick a swab or needle in me to take your milligram of flesh.
The fact that George W. Bush is a contemptable scumbag who, in any sane society, would be institutionalized for his own protection and that of others, in no way implies that Bill Clinton is not a contemptable scumbag who, in any sane society, would be institutionalized for his own protection and that of others.
Still, just like I'd rather have gonorrhea than lung cancer, I'd take Clinton over George W. for president any day.
Oh? Who did that one? Because the only action against Iraq I recall from two years ago was the immoral, illegal, and tactically stupid U.S. invasion. Maybe Liechtenstein or somebody conducted a legal and justifable attack around that same time?
Except that mechants are supposed to ask for ID with unsigned (including "See ID") cards, request the customer to sign the card, and check the signature against the ID. So unless your driver's licence is also signed "See ID", this falls flat. This has nothing to do with the post office, this is what Visa and Mastercard require merchants to do.
(And yes, the procedure is rarely followed, the rules are not enforced, people accept unsigned cards, fraudulent cards are accepted - and the costs get passed on to the consumer.)
Because card issuers tell merchants not to do so. Credit cards (at least Visa and Mastercard) are not valid unless signed.
Nothing to do with being dumb. A credit card is not valid until signed (it says this by the signature panel on all my Visa and MasterCard cards, though interestingly not on my Discover), and she did exactly what card issuers require merchants to do when presented with an unsigned card.
Maybe policy has changed, but currently that is exactly what you are supposed to do. An unsigned credit card should not be accepted.
Sure, students should learn how to use computers. That doesn't mean they should be in every classroom, or should be used in a pathetic attempt to replace teachers. Learning how to use a word processor and a web browser is maybe two weeks of instruction in middle school, not a major educational investment.
Computers will no more be the magic bullet that makes education fun and easy than radio, tape recordings, filmstrips, movies, TV, videotapes, or all the other educational media that have come and gone. Clifford Stoll is right on target about computers in the classroom.