What you have written sounds unreasonable. I believe that you are describing an absurd situation.
In your ideal scenario, would specialists in any field would be barred from influencing the field they specialize in?
How would you feel driving on a large suspension bridge designed by a committee of your "peers" (think of jury duty) vs. a bridge designed by humans who have spent most of their lives studying bridge design?
Many people who are interested in becoming legislators go to school to study law. They know that they will have use for an understanding of laws and lawmaking. Others are lawyers already, and become interested in making laws because they deal with them all day.
There is another group that I have noticed dominates local politics: real estate brokers, agents, and land owners. Like any group of specialists, these folks have an interest in laws and policies that they can exploit, since so many of our local laws have to do with the disposition and acquisition of land. Shall we bar these people too?
Who gets to be on that committee? This is a complicated problem. Barring lawyers from legislating is an unreasonable idea.
Being "more evolved" or "less evolved" sounds ridiculous! Every extant species has undergone evolution. There is no "sacala naturae". This perspective of being more evolved or less evolved has little predictive are descriptive value.
This "more evolved vs. less evolved" perspective carries with it the implication that to be "more evolved" is better than being "less evolved". Here are two examples where that is not the case: an ancient species, that has changed little, and almost perfectly exploits the environment to reproduce, and will be able to do so far into the future, has "evolved" very little; a species that is poorly adapted to its environment, has undergone a large amount of recent changes, and faces a likely extinction, is "more evolved".
This "more evolved vs. less evolved" perspective is irrelevant. Well, with one exception: being able to determine how much some species has evolved is significant, and can inform the production of a history for that species. However, to compare two species using this sort of "more vs. less" language confuses the significance of measuring evolutionary change.
"More evolved" when compared to "less evolved" means nothing, unless there is some other sort of contextual information to use in the comparison.
No offense, but what else do you expect? I assume that you know people who have served in the military. What should a gunship operator be saying as he is gunning someone down? If it were me, I too would have to use a very black sense of humor in order to forget about the reality of having a job as a professional person killer.
The stupidity, foibles, and miscommunication that exist in our everyday lives also exist in soldiers' everyday lives. When you reflect on it, I believe that you will see that these videos are not so outrageous after all.
Whether or not they belong on the internet however - that is another question entirely.
This observation has to do with the Arab names, but which is legitmately off-topic:
On WoW servers that have been around for a while, a surefire way to find a name that hasn't been taken yet is to try an arab name, especially names like Zarqawi, Saeed, Syed, etc.
Dude, give it up. It is not a "first amendment issue". This is a public forum, and that comment was not an act of censorship - it carried no authority or power over the person it was directed towards. The realtionship woman:whore::black:nigger does make sense, and is not unreasonable.
I just want to say that peddling your agenda to politicians is not "under the table". It's got floodlights pointed on the practice - it's just that no one really pays attention.
I went to see "Memoirs of a Geisha" last night at Sony Pictures Entertainment Group's headquarters in Culver City, CA. It is a reportable gift, but it is definitely not "under the table". It's freakin' out in the open, right in your face.
I've seen Sony and Universal reps hand out free CD's and DVD to politicians and their staff at their events like it was going out of style. You'd be surprised how much that kind of cheap crap can get you. Every time I put that Flaming Lips CD on, I think of the lobbyist who gave it to me.
What this sort of political gift giving really is, is off the radar. No one reports on these very publicly reported gifts as much as they could. Maybe it's the money involved in hiring an investigative journalist, or paying a stringer versus chasing ambulances. Maybe it is a big conspiracy. The news industry just doesn't care. They have other low hanging fruit they can use to attract eyeballs, I guess.
I just bought a mini, and it kicks ass. It is a real Product. You buy it, and that's it, you're pretty much done.
I will never buy a PC again, unless I want to go back to playing badass video games (or use AutoCAD, or something).
In my opinion, Microsoft's (and many other software/tech companies) success was based not on providing a vaulable product to their consumers. Their success was based on a business strategy (i.e. vendor lock-in, the "upgrade" treadmill, etc.). Apple has plucked a lot of low hanging fruit in plain old customer service, and in providing a product that does a lot of critical stuff really well (like networking), in an attractive and user-friedly package.
My one complaint, having recently switched (iBook laptop, and mini desktop computer), is that sharing music and photos in iTunes and iPhoto across user accounts is a little messy.
I don't know what you're talking about man. This site is ugly. It has always been ugly. Of course, that ugliness has been in service of serving up content, but it is still ugly.
One part of fostering a community on Slashdot has been the moderating experience. I may be speaking for myself, but that experience is very frustrating and boring due to poor site design. Sorting 200+ posts by reading all of them, and not being able to selectively screen posts based on lots of different criteria, leads to crappy moderation.
Reading the site is no joy, either.
For all the crap people talk about the Onion's new lay-out: it is like a broadsheet newspaper. The screen is broeken up into sections, those sections area always in a certain area. If you want to quickly see what in that weeks Onion interests you the most, it is all there to peruse quickly - without hitting page-down, or scrolling.
You pretty much named all that I can remember. It has been a while.
In my freshman year of high school I think that fax machines were getting more and more common - and they had really convoluted AT commands. I think that I was so isolated I just thought the only way to do things was by typing them in manually. I remember trying really hard to memorize all the new commands that came with our brand new 14.4k fax/modem. I even started bringing the manual to school and reading it in class when I had time. Luckily, the book was small and black with no cover art. Otherwise I might not have turned out as cool and well adjusted as I am now (yeah, right).
This is cool though: I never thought the day would come when I could honestly reminisce about old tech on/.
There was a good interview of Kevin Mitnick in the third release by "The Broken".
He is a reasonable sounding guy, and I think in the interview with "The Broken" sort of dispells some of the myths that were started about him in the book "Cyberpunk" by Katie Hafner and John Markoff.
I read that book when I was in 6th grade and I was totally blow away. I got a modem and started war dialing and memorizing "at" commands just so I could try and be a badass like Kevin Mitnick.
How does eliminating laws, as rule, make the world a better place?
All the crimes you describe involve someone who is taking actions with the intent of harming someone/people.
What is "harm"? How have you decided that a crime involves harm? If you were on trial for causing someone harm, wouldn't you like some clarification? There is legal precedent, of course. Yet there are these strange devices that humans have found useful to aid in these decisions: LAWS.
The rule "less laws=good" does not address many of the issues you raise in your post above.
Again, the world is a complicated place. Our system of writing laws is kludge to a complicated situation. You could "simplify" the situation by reducing the number of laws - but which ones to reduce? If you can just go around changing the definition of what it means to own property, commit larceny, etc. isn't that arbitrary and less than optimal? The process that forms those laws is the best one we've got (or rather the worst way, except every other way humans have ever tried).
Here is why I disagree with "less laws=good": the way that laws are formed, enforced, and upheld in our courts is more important than the number of laws we have.
When I read what you wrote, it's like someone arguing for taking down the bay brdige because they think bridges shouldn't be red.
"Too many laws"?! You obviously have absolutely NO IDEA what your government is doing. This reminds me of the criticism given ot Mozart in the film "Amadeus". Upon hearing a piece of Mozart's music, his patron tells him there are, "Too manny notes."
Okay, too many laws, dummy. But tell me, when you want to smuggle goods, launder money, exploit worker's rights, cheat your boss - exactly HOW will "don't intentionally hurt anyone" allow someone to reach a prosecute you for your complicated and subtle crimes?
Life is complicated. Commerce is complicated. At best, laws are a kludge to the problems that arise because of conflicts between people acting in their own interests. If there were, maybe, 10 people on the planet, then your b.s. idea would work. Starting about a few thousand years ago, there were just too many people for ideas like yours to function.
The people who modded this guy up should be ashamed.
What is it with all these lists of "Things You Should Do To Fix Schools"?
Take a wide enough look at schools in the United States, and you will realize that the word "school" is very loose term. Judging the effectiveness of schools is still just as vague.
Though it has no money behind it, No Child Left Behind was an attempt to quantifiably measure a school's performance, and dole out economic rewards or punishments based on that performance.
Instead of flying off on rants about terrible parenting, take a look at your local land-use patterns. Before declaring that teachers are lazy, examine how your local school board, and the teacher's union, structure pay and pensions. Instead of screaming that schools are all falling apart, take a look at the management of schools that are, actually, falling apart - What sorts of contracts are janitorial staff under? What sort of state is a school that is "falling apart" supposed to be in when it is fixed?
I could go on, and on. The reality is that the schools near you can sometimes have that unique blend of unknowns that lead to successful education of their students, while others (despite tons of $, parental involvement, etc.) can totally fail.
The notion of measuring a schools success or failure through testing, etc., the way No Child Left Behind does, is a (unfunded) start to fixing "the problem". Yet, with schools, the problems are almost always extremely local, sometimes being contained to one school in a large district.
There are many policies (as an example, take a look at the Federal program that provides low-cost lunches to kids by subsidizing American farms - sounds great until you see what kids actually get to eat for lunch) that affect the way our local schools are run - and they never get touched on in the rant-offs about The Parents vs. The Bullies vs. MONEY!!! vs. Poor People Are Just Stupider, etc.
Perhaps a Linux Desktop Trust Fund or Non-Profit is what is required to spur a commercial grade GUI for Linux.
In the open source world, applications get created when someone with the skills to create applications needs to do something. Once a person is able to create applications in Linux, they have typically surpassed the point at which a GUI would make their work more efficient. There is no incentive for Linux developers to create a commercial grade GUI for Linux.
Applications also get created to meet consumer demands. In exchange for having their demands fulfilled, consumers pay the creators of the applications they use. This is achieved via donations in the open-source world. The scale and complexity of applications like GUIs do not allow for this kind of consumer-producer relationship.
GUIs require a great deal of upfront investments in time and effort to bring them to a standard of usability. No consumer wants to donate money to the producers of a half-broken GUI.
To overcome the challenges of this initial investment, a trust-fund can be set up by consumers to pay for the development of a free, open-source, Linux GUI. Additionally, a public fund or the sale of bonds can be set up at the city, county, state, or federal levels in U.S. that can fund the development of this public good.
This sort of activity is not new. If you are interested in examples of this sort of public investment, check out the Alameda Corridor in Los Angeles as an example. I am sure that wherever you live, public projects have been an integral part of our personal and economic life.
If a standards complaint, stable, secure, GUI will help our eceonomy grow and thrive - then lets create it!
I worked for a Los Angeles area politician who drove the biggest SUV that Ford made - and he tried to make this argument in Sacramento on the floor of the legislture.
He got laughed at. But at least you know that there are people in government that are on your side.
I drive a 2002 Honda Civic, and when I hit 55 mph, I get awesome fuel efficiency (for my car) of around 40 mpg. Additionally, I leave a large gap between myself and other drivers. This allows me to continuously maintain an optimum speed (it is also a safer way to drive).
I would argue that reducing L.A.'s immigrant population will not significantly reduce traffic. In order to survive, in L.A., you must drive a car. A better designed city, and better public transportation infrastructure, will take drivers off the roads. Owning a car is an expensive, and physically dangerous, neccessity of life in this city.
Instead of asking Congress to "stop immigration" for our local traffic problem, we can take steps to solve it locally through better advocacy for higher density housing and commercial sites near large public transit corridors, through re-zoning of parcels of land in high traffic areas, and other measures at the City, County, and State level.
The coming out moment for the Macintosh can be seen in a really great documetary by Robert Cringley called "Triumph of the Nerds" (1995).
I just Netflixed it, ten years after seeing it for the first time, and the movie has only gained in its relevance.
In many ways Jobs' work with the Macintosh led to his being fired from Apple. This really was a landmark product, but it just wasn't priced well to compete with cheap IBM clones.
Having been a user of Microsoft operating systems since elementary school, and having never actually purchased a copy myself - I think that this sort of balls-out funny advertisement...
Well I actually think that I like Windows now. Even though I hate it (I really hate it). This ad makes me love it.
If the last shot was the mailing address in the form of a "Fatal Error" I think the ad would be complete.
I hate to have to qualify my remarks by mentioning this, but I graduated with an anthropology degree. I have read through numerous anthropology text books. I am very familiar with the topic of "the rise of modern society".
"Inquisitiveness" must have existed in human beings and our non-human ancestors. However, racoons are also inquisitive, as are octopii, cats, and numerous other animals. For some reason, they did not end up producing a sophisticated tool culture, produce representative artifacts, and eventually control vast swaths of land in order to grow copious amounts of food.
Inquisitiveness in humans is a product of our species evolution - and the value of living in a modern society was not a pressure that acted on our ancestors.
Looking at teeth and bones of members of our species who lived in the first large, stationery, groups shows that they suffered terribly compared to their hunter-gatherer counterparts in other parts of the world. Whatever drove people to create modern civilization - it could not have been inquisitivenss. Cruelty or masochism come to mind.
Inquisitiveness is fine and dandy, but a survey of skeletal remains from those living in the earliest civilizations will show that life sucked - and it sucked a lot worse than being a hunter-gather. Inquisitiveness in our ancestors would have led them to inquire elsewhere when it came to living in the same place, growing crops that rotted their teeth, exposed them to a larger galaxy of communicable diseases, and put them in contact with more non-kin members that they would have liked to have hung around with.
By the way, the crack about your user # is pretty funny.
The only motivation that got us off our asses and away from our idylic hunter-gatherer lifestyle on the plains of Africa was our desire to see what was over the next hill, what happens if we bash flints together, what happens if we lash a bunch of logs together and float it on the river...
I would be interested in seeing any sort of evidence you can provide to prove this point. You could save a lot of students of human history a great deal of time.
Otherwise I call bullshit on this ridiculous theory that it was wanderlust that got humans to live in static encampments and farm!
Regarding this whole space thing: I would prefer an option on my 1040 to fund or not to fund your space-pioneer fantasy.
For my money, I would rather see an intense exploration of our planet's oceans.
Hey dude, the plot of Clark's book was only a framework for Kubrick to tell the *real* story of his film.
Kubrick spent a ton of time and energy finding, and then filming and editing, 2001 becasue he was trying to work in a central metaphor for the whole movie.
If you're familiar with Nietzsche, there's this whole "Worm turns to Ape turns to lower Man, who then turns to Uber-Man" (or something like this) thing he wrote about. That transformation, and the details of it, are what Kubrick tried to present through Clrak's plot.
Instead of using the plot to tell us the story, Kubrick used the process of editing and filming the story to get this message across.
I think this is one reason why he is so highly regarded. He used the form of "filmaking" to tell a story that was (as I am sure he saw it) much larger than the hackneyed "aliens help man evolve" b.s. in Clark's story.
After the film was done, Kubrick intentionally had all the props and film footage destroyed. Telling the story arc of Clark's book was not what was *really* going on in the film, for Kubrick.
There're a couple of books you might want to check out that really give an in depth view of the whole deal: Geduld, Carolyn. Filmguide to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1973.
Rasmussen, Randy. Stanley Kubrick (Seven Films Anlayzed). Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc., 1998
When I read "under a democracy, a majority wins" I think that perhaps a little study of American history is in order for the poster. I guess I am just touchy about this subject.
Yes, a majority vote wins an election in a democracy, but there are a great many procedural and institutional safeguards our system of government employs to make sure that the majority does not win absolutely.
Joseph Ellison (the author of a great book "The Founding Brothers") made the point that American government is in many ways an institutionalized argument - with many steps taken to ensure that the minority vote/opinion always has room to legitimately operate. Our democracy is not intended to be, nor is it now, a "majority wins" system. The tyranny of the majority is what drove the Puritans and others to the New World!
Additionally, in the realm of politics each politician (at least the ones that are going to be successful) must act in their own best interests at all times. Often their most pressing interests are better served by a win in an election rather than a loss. The same can be said for any group that has a vested interest in a given candidate winning an election.
Human nature must be taken into account with any voting system, especially one with such high stakes. The concerns of ballot stuffing and ballot box rigging raised are entriely valid. Even if these concerns are entirely theoretical because of the unimpeachable moral fortitude of the politicians, vested interests, and operators of the ballot box!
Questioning the integrity of a system can make that system stronger upon revision of any flaws it might have. I think you are mistaking analysis for cynicism - and voter despair with voter apathy.
If it breaks, the fragments have escape velocity from thier solar system.
It doesn't matter at what phase of the construction you spin it up, you still need to put in heaps of energy.
uh, if the bits are supposed to be "orbiting" at escape velocity, then it *does* matter what phase of construction you speed it up. meaning, speeding them up before it is assembled would cause them to go far, far away very quickly.
Slashdot Mirror
What you have written sounds unreasonable. I believe that you are describing an absurd situation.
In your ideal scenario, would specialists in any field would be barred from influencing the field they specialize in?
How would you feel driving on a large suspension bridge designed by a committee of your "peers" (think of jury duty) vs. a bridge designed by humans who have spent most of their lives studying bridge design?
Many people who are interested in becoming legislators go to school to study law. They know that they will have use for an understanding of laws and lawmaking. Others are lawyers already, and become interested in making laws because they deal with them all day.
There is another group that I have noticed dominates local politics: real estate brokers, agents, and land owners. Like any group of specialists, these folks have an interest in laws and policies that they can exploit, since so many of our local laws have to do with the disposition and acquisition of land. Shall we bar these people too?
Who gets to be on that committee? This is a complicated problem. Barring lawyers from legislating is an unreasonable idea.
Howsabout the BICYCLE!
It is amazing, I tell you.
Zero gasoline used in its operation. Nearly silent on the roads. Easy to store and maintain.
It reduces sprawl, encourages shopping in locally owned stores nad commercial districts. It keeps people healthy by preventing all sorts diseases.
Plus, it is real, really, really fun to use.
Being "more evolved" or "less evolved" sounds ridiculous! Every extant species has undergone evolution. There is no "sacala naturae". This perspective of being more evolved or less evolved has little predictive are descriptive value.
This "more evolved vs. less evolved" perspective carries with it the implication that to be "more evolved" is better than being "less evolved". Here are two examples where that is not the case: an ancient species, that has changed little, and almost perfectly exploits the environment to reproduce, and will be able to do so far into the future, has "evolved" very little; a species that is poorly adapted to its environment, has undergone a large amount of recent changes, and faces a likely extinction, is "more evolved".
This "more evolved vs. less evolved" perspective is irrelevant. Well, with one exception: being able to determine how much some species has evolved is significant, and can inform the production of a history for that species. However, to compare two species using this sort of "more vs. less" language confuses the significance of measuring evolutionary change.
"More evolved" when compared to "less evolved" means nothing, unless there is some other sort of contextual information to use in the comparison.
No offense, but what else do you expect? I assume that you know people who have served in the military. What should a gunship operator be saying as he is gunning someone down? If it were me, I too would have to use a very black sense of humor in order to forget about the reality of having a job as a professional person killer.
The stupidity, foibles, and miscommunication that exist in our everyday lives also exist in soldiers' everyday lives. When you reflect on it, I believe that you will see that these videos are not so outrageous after all.
Whether or not they belong on the internet however - that is another question entirely.
This observation has to do with the Arab names, but which is legitmately off-topic:
On WoW servers that have been around for a while, a surefire way to find a name that hasn't been taken yet is to try an arab name, especially names like Zarqawi, Saeed, Syed, etc.
Dude, give it up. It is not a "first amendment issue". This is a public forum, and that comment was not an act of censorship - it carried no authority or power over the person it was directed towards. The realtionship woman:whore::black:nigger does make sense, and is not unreasonable.
I just want to say that peddling your agenda to politicians is not "under the table". It's got floodlights pointed on the practice - it's just that no one really pays attention.
I went to see "Memoirs of a Geisha" last night at Sony Pictures Entertainment Group's headquarters in Culver City, CA. It is a reportable gift, but it is definitely not "under the table". It's freakin' out in the open, right in your face.
I've seen Sony and Universal reps hand out free CD's and DVD to politicians and their staff at their events like it was going out of style. You'd be surprised how much that kind of cheap crap can get you. Every time I put that Flaming Lips CD on, I think of the lobbyist who gave it to me.
What this sort of political gift giving really is, is off the radar. No one reports on these very publicly reported gifts as much as they could. Maybe it's the money involved in hiring an investigative journalist, or paying a stringer versus chasing ambulances. Maybe it is a big conspiracy. The news industry just doesn't care. They have other low hanging fruit they can use to attract eyeballs, I guess.
I just bought a mini, and it kicks ass. It is a real Product. You buy it, and that's it, you're pretty much done.
I will never buy a PC again, unless I want to go back to playing badass video games (or use AutoCAD, or something).
In my opinion, Microsoft's (and many other software/tech companies) success was based not on providing a vaulable product to their consumers. Their success was based on a business strategy (i.e. vendor lock-in, the "upgrade" treadmill, etc.). Apple has plucked a lot of low hanging fruit in plain old customer service, and in providing a product that does a lot of critical stuff really well (like networking), in an attractive and user-friedly package.
My one complaint, having recently switched (iBook laptop, and mini desktop computer), is that sharing music and photos in iTunes and iPhoto across user accounts is a little messy.
Waaaaaah. Me so sad.:(
That hurt my feelings. To think that someone thinks what I did is not so good. Oh! Persish the thought.
(Faints in shame and disbelief)
I don't know what you're talking about man. This site is ugly. It has always been ugly. Of course, that ugliness has been in service of serving up content, but it is still ugly.
One part of fostering a community on Slashdot has been the moderating experience. I may be speaking for myself, but that experience is very frustrating and boring due to poor site design. Sorting 200+ posts by reading all of them, and not being able to selectively screen posts based on lots of different criteria, leads to crappy moderation.
Reading the site is no joy, either.
For all the crap people talk about the Onion's new lay-out: it is like a broadsheet newspaper. The screen is broeken up into sections, those sections area always in a certain area. If you want to quickly see what in that weeks Onion interests you the most, it is all there to peruse quickly - without hitting page-down, or scrolling.
You pretty much named all that I can remember. It has been a while.
/.
In my freshman year of high school I think that fax machines were getting more and more common - and they had really convoluted AT commands. I think that I was so isolated I just thought the only way to do things was by typing them in manually. I remember trying really hard to memorize all the new commands that came with our brand new 14.4k fax/modem. I even started bringing the manual to school and reading it in class when I had time. Luckily, the book was small and black with no cover art. Otherwise I might not have turned out as cool and well adjusted as I am now (yeah, right).
This is cool though: I never thought the day would come when I could honestly reminisce about old tech on
There was a good interview of Kevin Mitnick in the third release by "The Broken".
He is a reasonable sounding guy, and I think in the interview with "The Broken" sort of dispells some of the myths that were started about him in the book "Cyberpunk" by Katie Hafner and John Markoff.
I read that book when I was in 6th grade and I was totally blow away. I got a modem and started war dialing and memorizing "at" commands just so I could try and be a badass like Kevin Mitnick.
Stinko,
How does eliminating laws, as rule, make the world a better place?
All the crimes you describe involve someone who is taking actions with the intent of harming someone/people.
What is "harm"? How have you decided that a crime involves harm? If you were on trial for causing someone harm, wouldn't you like some clarification? There is legal precedent, of course. Yet there are these strange devices that humans have found useful to aid in these decisions: LAWS.
The rule "less laws=good" does not address many of the issues you raise in your post above.
Again, the world is a complicated place. Our system of writing laws is kludge to a complicated situation. You could "simplify" the situation by reducing the number of laws - but which ones to reduce? If you can just go around changing the definition of what it means to own property, commit larceny, etc. isn't that arbitrary and less than optimal? The process that forms those laws is the best one we've got (or rather the worst way, except every other way humans have ever tried).
Here is why I disagree with "less laws=good": the way that laws are formed, enforced, and upheld in our courts is more important than the number of laws we have.
When I read what you wrote, it's like someone arguing for taking down the bay brdige because they think bridges shouldn't be red.
How the hell did this pap get modded so high?
"Too many laws"?! You obviously have absolutely NO IDEA what your government is doing. This reminds me of the criticism given ot Mozart in the film "Amadeus". Upon hearing a piece of Mozart's music, his patron tells him there are, "Too manny notes."
Okay, too many laws, dummy. But tell me, when you want to smuggle goods, launder money, exploit worker's rights, cheat your boss - exactly HOW will "don't intentionally hurt anyone" allow someone to reach a prosecute you for your complicated and subtle crimes?
Life is complicated. Commerce is complicated. At best, laws are a kludge to the problems that arise because of conflicts between people acting in their own interests. If there were, maybe, 10 people on the planet, then your b.s. idea would work. Starting about a few thousand years ago, there were just too many people for ideas like yours to function.
The people who modded this guy up should be ashamed.
What is it with all these lists of "Things You Should Do To Fix Schools"?
Take a wide enough look at schools in the United States, and you will realize that the word "school" is very loose term. Judging the effectiveness of schools is still just as vague.
Though it has no money behind it, No Child Left Behind was an attempt to quantifiably measure a school's performance, and dole out economic rewards or punishments based on that performance.
Instead of flying off on rants about terrible parenting, take a look at your local land-use patterns. Before declaring that teachers are lazy, examine how your local school board, and the teacher's union, structure pay and pensions. Instead of screaming that schools are all falling apart, take a look at the management of schools that are, actually, falling apart - What sorts of contracts are janitorial staff under? What sort of state is a school that is "falling apart" supposed to be in when it is fixed?
I could go on, and on. The reality is that the schools near you can sometimes have that unique blend of unknowns that lead to successful education of their students, while others (despite tons of $, parental involvement, etc.) can totally fail.
The notion of measuring a schools success or failure through testing, etc., the way No Child Left Behind does, is a (unfunded) start to fixing "the problem". Yet, with schools, the problems are almost always extremely local, sometimes being contained to one school in a large district.
There are many policies (as an example, take a look at the Federal program that provides low-cost lunches to kids by subsidizing American farms - sounds great until you see what kids actually get to eat for lunch) that affect the way our local schools are run - and they never get touched on in the rant-offs about The Parents vs. The Bullies vs. MONEY!!! vs. Poor People Are Just Stupider, etc.
Please, just chill out, thin of the children.
Perhaps a Linux Desktop Trust Fund or Non-Profit is what is required to spur a commercial grade GUI for Linux.
In the open source world, applications get created when someone with the skills to create applications needs to do something. Once a person is able to create applications in Linux, they have typically surpassed the point at which a GUI would make their work more efficient. There is no incentive for Linux developers to create a commercial grade GUI for Linux.
Applications also get created to meet consumer demands. In exchange for having their demands fulfilled, consumers pay the creators of the applications they use. This is achieved via donations in the open-source world. The scale and complexity of applications like GUIs do not allow for this kind of consumer-producer relationship.
GUIs require a great deal of upfront investments in time and effort to bring them to a standard of usability. No consumer wants to donate money to the producers of a half-broken GUI.
To overcome the challenges of this initial investment, a trust-fund can be set up by consumers to pay for the development of a free, open-source, Linux GUI. Additionally, a public fund or the sale of bonds can be set up at the city, county, state, or federal levels in U.S. that can fund the development of this public good.
This sort of activity is not new. If you are interested in examples of this sort of public investment, check out the Alameda Corridor in Los Angeles as an example. I am sure that wherever you live, public projects have been an integral part of our personal and economic life.
If a standards complaint, stable, secure, GUI will help our eceonomy grow and thrive - then lets create it!
I worked for a Los Angeles area politician who drove the biggest SUV that Ford made - and he tried to make this argument in Sacramento on the floor of the legislture.
He got laughed at. But at least you know that there are people in government that are on your side.
I drive a 2002 Honda Civic, and when I hit 55 mph, I get awesome fuel efficiency (for my car) of around 40 mpg. Additionally, I leave a large gap between myself and other drivers. This allows me to continuously maintain an optimum speed (it is also a safer way to drive).
I would argue that reducing L.A.'s immigrant population will not significantly reduce traffic. In order to survive, in L.A., you must drive a car. A better designed city, and better public transportation infrastructure, will take drivers off the roads. Owning a car is an expensive, and physically dangerous, neccessity of life in this city.
Instead of asking Congress to "stop immigration" for our local traffic problem, we can take steps to solve it locally through better advocacy for higher density housing and commercial sites near large public transit corridors, through re-zoning of parcels of land in high traffic areas, and other measures at the City, County, and State level.
The coming out moment for the Macintosh can be seen in a really great documetary by Robert Cringley called "Triumph of the Nerds" (1995).
I just Netflixed it, ten years after seeing it for the first time, and the movie has only gained in its relevance.
In many ways Jobs' work with the Macintosh led to his being fired from Apple. This really was a landmark product, but it just wasn't priced well to compete with cheap IBM clones.
Having been a user of Microsoft operating systems since elementary school, and having never actually purchased a copy myself - I think that this sort of balls-out funny advertisement...
Well I actually think that I like Windows now. Even though I hate it (I really hate it). This ad makes me love it.
If the last shot was the mailing address in the form of a "Fatal Error" I think the ad would be complete.
I will now go out and buy Windows.
I hate to have to qualify my remarks by mentioning this, but I graduated with an anthropology degree. I have read through numerous anthropology text books. I am very familiar with the topic of "the rise of modern society".
"Inquisitiveness" must have existed in human beings and our non-human ancestors. However, racoons are also inquisitive, as are octopii, cats, and numerous other animals. For some reason, they did not end up producing a sophisticated tool culture, produce representative artifacts, and eventually control vast swaths of land in order to grow copious amounts of food.
Inquisitiveness in humans is a product of our species evolution - and the value of living in a modern society was not a pressure that acted on our ancestors.
Looking at teeth and bones of members of our species who lived in the first large, stationery, groups shows that they suffered terribly compared to their hunter-gatherer counterparts in other parts of the world. Whatever drove people to create modern civilization - it could not have been inquisitivenss. Cruelty or masochism come to mind.
Inquisitiveness is fine and dandy, but a survey of skeletal remains from those living in the earliest civilizations will show that life sucked - and it sucked a lot worse than being a hunter-gather. Inquisitiveness in our ancestors would have led them to inquire elsewhere when it came to living in the same place, growing crops that rotted their teeth, exposed them to a larger galaxy of communicable diseases, and put them in contact with more non-kin members that they would have liked to have hung around with.
By the way, the crack about your user # is pretty funny.
The only motivation that got us off our asses and away from our idylic hunter-gatherer lifestyle on the plains of Africa was our desire to see what was over the next hill, what happens if we bash flints together, what happens if we lash a bunch of logs together and float it on the river...
I would be interested in seeing any sort of evidence you can provide to prove this point. You could save a lot of students of human history a great deal of time.
Otherwise I call bullshit on this ridiculous theory that it was wanderlust that got humans to live in static encampments and farm!
Regarding this whole space thing: I would prefer an option on my 1040 to fund or not to fund your space-pioneer fantasy.
For my money, I would rather see an intense exploration of our planet's oceans.
Hey dude, the plot of Clark's book was only a framework for Kubrick to tell the *real* story of his film.
Kubrick spent a ton of time and energy finding, and then filming and editing, 2001 becasue he was trying to work in a central metaphor for the whole movie.
If you're familiar with Nietzsche, there's this whole "Worm turns to Ape turns to lower Man, who then turns to Uber-Man" (or something like this) thing he wrote about. That transformation, and the details of it, are what Kubrick tried to present through Clrak's plot.
Instead of using the plot to tell us the story, Kubrick used the process of editing and filming the story to get this message across.
I think this is one reason why he is so highly regarded. He used the form of "filmaking" to tell a story that was (as I am sure he saw it) much larger than the hackneyed "aliens help man evolve" b.s. in Clark's story.
After the film was done, Kubrick intentionally had all the props and film footage destroyed. Telling the story arc of Clark's book was not what was *really* going on in the film, for Kubrick.
There're a couple of books you might want to check out that really give an in depth view of the whole deal:
Geduld, Carolyn. Filmguide to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1973.
Rasmussen, Randy. Stanley Kubrick (Seven Films Anlayzed). Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc., 1998
When I read "under a democracy, a majority wins" I think that perhaps a little study of American history is in order for the poster. I guess I am just touchy about this subject.
Yes, a majority vote wins an election in a democracy, but there are a great many procedural and institutional safeguards our system of government employs to make sure that the majority does not win absolutely.
Joseph Ellison (the author of a great book "The Founding Brothers") made the point that American government is in many ways an institutionalized argument - with many steps taken to ensure that the minority vote/opinion always has room to legitimately operate. Our democracy is not intended to be, nor is it now, a "majority wins" system. The tyranny of the majority is what drove the Puritans and others to the New World!
Additionally, in the realm of politics each politician (at least the ones that are going to be successful) must act in their own best interests at all times. Often their most pressing interests are better served by a win in an election rather than a loss. The same can be said for any group that has a vested interest in a given candidate winning an election.
Human nature must be taken into account with any voting system, especially one with such high stakes. The concerns of ballot stuffing and ballot box rigging raised are entriely valid. Even if these concerns are entirely theoretical because of the unimpeachable moral fortitude of the politicians, vested interests, and operators of the ballot box!
Questioning the integrity of a system can make that system stronger upon revision of any flaws it might have. I think you are mistaking analysis for cynicism - and voter despair with voter apathy.
If it breaks, the fragments have escape velocity from thier solar system.
It doesn't matter at what phase of the construction you spin it up, you still need to put in heaps of energy.
uh, if the bits are supposed to be "orbiting" at escape velocity, then it *does* matter what phase of construction you speed it up. meaning, speeding them up before it is assembled would cause them to go far, far away very quickly.
in order to play an m4p song on an ipod, you must have physical access to it.