True, though I'm not sure 'avant cello' falls into that category, there's not really a club or bar scene but there are galleries and other cultural events that would probably hire someone. And the difference between streaming and downloads or CD sales is the dropoff shouldn't be as big as the tracks age so that $3500/year should be fairly reliable (though maybe hard to grow with additional releases).
From a societal perspective I don't think this is a problem, there are a lot of musicians and bands who don't really add much to the greater musical scene. They can make money playing live since there's only so many people who can put on a good live show, but if they don't have the talent to make a cultural contribution to humanity than they shouldn't really expect one by sitting around and letting the royalties roll in.
Of course I don't really know if 3 million plays a year counts as a cultural contribution or not, and maybe the rates should be higher, but I just wanted to point out that not every new song is a cultural contribution.
This mutation isn't about keeping them warmer overall, it's about them keeping warmer when they get cold.
If they grew body fur that would keep them a bit warmer all the time, so they'd compensate by wearing fewer clothes or building smaller fires, maybe an advantage from a resource perspective but not a big one (and the extra hair may make the heavy clothes uncomfortable).
But this mutation is more like having a better thermostat, most of the time it doesn't matter, but when you don't have enough clothes or fire your body is now better able to compensate.
Critical thinking is part of the problem. If you've trained your mind to see the world as it actually is, then you're less likely to have comfortable illusions to fall back on.
Seems a fancy way of "I'm depressed because I'm too smart!".
I don't know if there actually is a correlation between depression and intelligence. There's certainly a stereotype of the brilliant depressed artist, but I suspect that has more to do with the fact that the mentally unstable individuals have a more interesting perspective (and thus become better artists) than raw genius leading to their depression.
If there is a correlation between intelligence and depression I suspect it's due almost entirely due to social reasons.
And because other people don't like having their illusions questioned, you don't have much of a social network to fall back on either.
Is this because you're questioning them or because you're bullying them? It's not fun to wrestle with a guy who has 10kg of muscle on you, so why do you think they'd enjoy intellectually wrestling with someone who has 10 IQ points on them? And being smarter doesn't necessarily make you right, though it might mean you frustrate people by winning arguments even when you're wrong.
I'm not exceptionally smart, but I didn't relate to as many people as I should have growing up (partly through ego, partly chance) which impacted my social skills in a way that's retarded my social life.
And then when you look for help, you find that psychiatry is bullshit just like everything else. SSRI's don't actually work except for the most severely depressed. And therapy... well when your problem is that you see the world accurately, what exactly is therapy going to do?
Even if you could stop thinking critically, is that an ethical thing to do? Most of the world's problems are due to not enough critical thinking, so if you have that skill and don't use it, you're deliberately becoming part of the problem.
I don't think antidepressants or therapy did much for me, but I'm only a single datapoint. I think I have pretty decent critical thinking skills (who doesn't?) except perhaps with regards to personal relationships. I'm fortunate in that my depression is almost entirely attributable to loneliness and would be fixed if my social life improved, I suspect this is the case for a lot of hackers. It doesn't mean I'm too smart to relate to, I just never realized that like any other skill interpersonal relations are something you have to learn and practice.
If that sounds worrying you shouldn't worry, the worrying only just makes your heart beat faster and brings your inevitable demise that much closer.
That worry is very dangerous, even if you stop now you've already shortened your lifespan, and for every second you worry longer you're losing more and more of your life. This worry and stress is literally killing you and it won't stop unless you stop getting stressed out.
"but evolution ignored all my old configuration (and the configuration backup I made)"
evo moved a bunch of stuff from gconf to gsettings between 3.4 and 3.6. Nothing specific to f18, you'll see issues with this particular version upgrade in any distro when it happens. Seems like you hit a weirdly bad case, though, usually it just loses a few settings that they forgot to carry over.
In more detail what happened is after the upgrade evolution acted like it was a completely new installation, I went to an old laptop where I'd copied over my settings in the past and created a backup there, (also used the same commands to make a dump of a backup of my main config), the import from the laptop dump worked, from the main dump silent failure, I'll probably work up a bug report once I have some more time.
I have no doubt it was just some weird edge case, there just seems to be some weak evidence that more people are hitting weird edge cases for this release (if I wasn't lazy I'd try to justify that by taking stats on bugzilla queries).
Before is was a some guy on the Internet complaining about the installer, now it's a big name in the Linux community (and a former employee of Red Hat) saying the whole release has big problems.
It could be that he was unlucky enough to have a bad experience but he's enough of a name that his rant is minor news.
Personally on the two machines I've tried on one the upgrade went well but evolution ignored all my old configuration (and the configuration backup I made) and I only avoided reconfiguring it from scratch by upgrading from an older version of a config backup, on the other machine the upgrade kernel simply didn't boot so I'm still on F17 until the bug is sorted out (or I upgrade via yum).
A 3rd machine (old laptop) seems fine but I've barely used it.
Even when both user and dev are programmers of the same skill level there's a huge gulf in knowledge. A 5 hour patch for the user might be a 5 minute job for a dev since they've already learned the code. So I generally use my dev skills to give a really good description of the problem and test cases. Usually the only times I write a patch are when it's a feature specifically for me, or I've gone into so much detail finding the bug I already found the fix.
It may be a specific case but when I hear or read others asking how to get experience programming frequently some replies are to see what bugs have been submitted to FOSS projects, pick one, and submit a patch to the project leaders.
And that's a great idea to gain programming experience, just realize that it's more of a way to learn programming than a way to make a big contribution, you basically need to find a bug that's easy to fix (so you can handle it), and not a lot of people care about (or someone else would have made the easy patch first).
The best bet is to find some little one or two dev project on SF or something (try a niche end user project like a podcast manager), there the code should be easier to understand, the bugs should be easier to find and fix without side effects, and the work will be more important to the project since it's less likely to be an obscure function no-one uses.
I consider that to be a good contribution to the community and on projects I've managed in the past I really appreciated users who gave good bug reports.
I agree, however is there a documented methodology or procedure that is easy to find and use for those who want to submit bug reports? Of all the tymes I've read how users should submit bug reports I have not yet read how to submit these reports.
Falcon
Not entirely since every bug is different but the basic rule is make it as easy to reproduce as possible (I often try to start from the latest version of the app with a vanilla configuration then find the simplest way to recreate the issue). Including info like logs, versions, steps, configurations is always helpful, don't worry about including too much since the dev will generally know what's important and ignore the rest (or ask for the missing bits).
Even when both user and dev are programmers of the same skill level there's a huge gulf in knowledge. A 5 hour patch for the user might be a 5 minute job for a dev since they've already learned the code. So I generally use my dev skills to give a really good description of the problem and test cases. Usually the only times I write a patch are when it's a feature specifically for me, or I've gone into so much detail finding the bug I already found the fix. I consider that to be a good contribution to the community and on projects I've managed in the past I really appreciated users who gave good bug reports.
Tone is also a big factor of course, I find general nagging to be more acceptable for a large project where the individual devs have less personal stake in the project (and are more likely to be paid). Ragging on a one person hobby project is just kinda pointless.
You know what? If Igor thinks can do it better, then he should fork that thing and roll his own distro.
Lots of people have something to complain about, but very very few pitch in and try to help or change things.
'Shut up or fork it' is a criticism I regularly hear directed to people complaining about an Open Source project, and it's a really stupid criticism.
The fact you can fork or even patch doesn't mean you lose the right to complain if you don't.
Complaining offers feedback, it tells the devs what the issues are, both issues they didn't know existed and issues they didn't know were a big problem.
The ability to fork is more of a check on the devs then a regular threat. It stops devs from doing really stupid things that might create a fork or drive people to a new one, and it sometimes lets two projects go in different directions to better serve the userbase.
Remember, users are not the enemy, if you treat them like they are the enemy, well then you won't have enemies for long.
Yeah, the big red flag in the published story is 14/15 CS profs voting to expel. CS profs are generally pretty forgiving of curiosity, either they were fleeced by an administrator or the student's account is very misleading.
I don't think the commenter was saying that. Rather I read their post as an argument not to mythologize people who commit suicide. It's a tragedy he died, but if we turn him into a tragic hero that makes suicide a more appealing option for other people.
The prosecutors were not the cause of Aaron Swartz's death, true they were probably the straw that broke the camels back but there had to be other causes for his depression, relationship issues, mental health issues, brain chemistry, I don't know. Swartz was a highly capable individual with a big platform to fight back against the charges. He should have fought back, embarrassed the government, no matter what happened there's no way he would have ever faced anything close to 5 years in prison, much less 35. Instead he killed himself.
It's no secret that prosecutorial misconduct is a massive issue in the US, and this case isn't even close to the worst of it. Because of the publicity it may be a good case to attack prosecutorial overcharging as a stress tactic, but blaming the suicide on them just glorifies suicide and turns it the prosecutor into a bad apple rather than a symptom of a widespread problem.
Most of the resistance will consist of the current military who already has guns, plus a lot of guns will enter the country via smuggling or get lost from military bases during the chaos. An armed public helps a little, but probably not as much as you believe.
As for the effectiveness of a resistance, Isreal didn't back down because of Palestinian rockets, the US didn't leave Iraq because of the resistance (or even if they did it took a lot of other factors including a general rejection by the public). Armed resistances are common, armed resistances beating back an invasion not so much (now that I think of it the main contribution of the French Resistance was logistical, not shooting).
So I agree that in the case the US is invaded and the army is defeated, that an already armed populace makes the resistance a little more effective, but if you're talking about a US with a military so weak it gets overrun then we're talking about a completely different country. Maybe they're invading because you're ruled by your own Saddam, and the resistance is a Christian Al Queda. Maybe the American Saddam was using civilian militias to carry out the dirty work to keep his hands cleaner. I just don't think your scenario is likely enough to justify the bodycount of maintaining an armed public.
A well considered solution would take the opportunity to implement a greater onus on the 2nd Amendment militia and require citizens to be active members of gun clubs. This gives the peers of firearm owners the ability to effectively police other members (i.e. don't meet the clubs stringent requirements and you lose your firearms). Additionally mandatory firearms security, mandatory firearms registration, and a nationwide free mental health program would go a long way to reducing the problems America suffers.
It's not my ideal solution but it sounds like a big improvement. I still don't believe that the gun clubs will do anything to prevent government oppression or repel invaders, but it will reduce the number of weapons and help keep them away from gangs where they do the most damage. I agree that guns in the hands of well adjusted middle class folks isn't a big problem (I suspect it's fairly neutral), but I also think it's really hard to only arm that segment of your population.
I think gun advocates overestimate how effective they'd be against government forces, every year police kill around 300 armed people, while only about 50 police are killed by gunfine (numbers fairly approximate). If you start adding military personnel that are explicitly trained to kill armed opponents I don't think having a gun will do you nearly as much good as you think.
These are the qualities which defend freedom, concentrating on guns you're risking that freedom for a last line of defence that doesn't even work
I bet of the 300 armed people that police (in the USA) kill each year that most of them are not firing back and attempting to kill the police officers.
The USA's 2nd amendment specifically came from a situation where the people did rise up and defeat their parent government - so for the USA it does have a history of working.
And I bet a lot of the 50 officers killed were at a traffic stop or something and weren't firing back either, the numbers were tough to dig up and I couldn't find more details. Regardless I don't think it's hard to assume that in an armed confrontation the trained party has a big advantage.
As for the 2nd amendment your situation is over 200 year old, and the fighting was done by militias which were effectively small armies run by the colonies and don't really exist in the modern US. The French or Iraqi resistances would probably be better examples for gun advocates, but I don't think they apply either since there's a lot of ex-military and guns from that military in that situation and it's resisting a foreign power. The world has changed a lot, and for a modern population defending itself from its own government I don't see the precedence that shows it's useful.
Liberal idiots whip themselves into a frenzy because rifles look scary. They associate rifles with the military and wars. Rifles are an easy target for mass hysteria for the same reason that ignorant reporters fixate on them.
Meanwhile, pistols are clearly more popular and at the same time seen as a self-defense weapon. They seem less scary, more useful, and harder to demonize.
They are more useful for self defense because they are more portable and also easier to use for nefarious purposes for that same very reason.
Well I would support serious regulations around hand guns as well (moreso than hunting rifles in fact). But that's just me. But I'm happy with more gun regs because I believe the root problem is the gun culture. If the glorification of guns and shooting can be stopped than that will lead to a huge drop in violence and murders, and the fewer guns around the less glorified they'll become.
Either way your belief that no gun control stops the government is a bit of fantasy.
1) Hitler was very popular during his rule, and I'm guessing he's not an exception, strong rulers tend to be popular and to be a dictator you need to be very strong. When they lose power they lose popularity rapidly, but I'm guessing this has a lot to do with the loss of power (and strength) rather than the courage to air grievances. (note, this is partially conjecture, if anyone has any good resources on the popularity of dictators I'd gladly defer). Therefore guns won't lead to some mass uprising since the mass supports the dictator.
2) Most gun owners aren't trained ex-military, even the hunters and big gun enthusiasts are probably a lot less effective then they think when caught in a genuine shootout with another human. I think gun advocates overestimate how effective they'd be against government forces, every year police kill around 300 armed people, while only about 50 police are killed by gunfine (numbers fairly approximate). If you start adding military personnel that are explicitly trained to kill armed opponents I don't think having a gun will do you nearly as much good as you think.
3) Look at the Arab spring, non-violent resistance was very effective. The Libyan's won their civil war but needed significant foreign assistance, in Syrian Bashar's main goal at the start was to turn the non-violent resistance violent, the non-violent resistance risked uniting the country against him. But once he goaded the uprising into a civil war the 26% of non-Sunni's in Syria suddenly got terrified about what these rebel armies might do to them, so they solidified behind Bashar. Why do you think governments use agent provovateurs? If America ever does start to really use its freedom all it needs is for a few gun-toting Americans to fight back, the public will panic and the rest of your rights will be gone before you can blink.
If you want to keep your freedom defend the first amendment, foster an atmosphere of civil liberties, non-hyperbolic political debate, and diversity. These are the qualities which defend freedom, concentrating on guns you're risking that freedom for a last line of defence that doesn't even work.
A few might have a non-trivial PR factor (ie the Aaron Schwartz petition), and a few others have made good jokes, but does anyone know of a petition that has actually made a political difference?
We've had nice paper thin displays for years now. But a thin display doesn't mean a thin tablet. Until we have thin CPUs and thin RAM sticks, and thin flash memory and thin connectors, we aren't going to have a paper thin tablet.
When you get all the components you need for a tablet you end up with something just as thick as what we've got on shelves today. By no means thick, but not paper-thin.
Yes and no.
You're still going to need something big and bulky to house all the non-display bits, but they don't need to be with the screen.
Assuming the tech is up to it you could make something like a projector screen, walk around with your tablet contained in a tube, then when you want to use it unroll the screen and start away. Might actually work better as a phone, instead of choosing between a tiny innocuous talk-only phone, and a big ungainly smart phone, you could have the best of both worlds, a little tube to carry around that can unravel into a big smartphone screen.
Well for evidence an article from a reputable newspaper would do (my very brief search didn't find anything). Besides, you're now arguing that the marriage is failing, not as part of a deliberate scheme, but because the woman has no commitment, which is a much weaker claim.
As for "the woman doesn't re-marry (which would end the child support)", and 'cuddling under the table' comment from your first post, this appears to be false. The woman's relationship status does not affect child support. You could be talking about alimony, but that's something completely different (and probably harder to get after a short term marriage).
In short your comment is factually inaccurate and has a chauvinist tone, it should be pummelled.
Don't forget the "professional" Child Support moms. They seduce guys, get a baby, put in a token two years because they need Dad to cover the other half of the diaper stage, then divorce them and collect child support. Then they get new boyfriends for the cuddlin' and help under the table but get to collect the child support as free cash. Posting as AC because this comment will get pummeled in 12 minutes. But it's true.
Do you have any evidence that this problem actually exists?
It only has to happen once for the problem to "exist", but doesn't imply that it happens with any significant frequency. I happen to know someone who has 5 kids to 5 different guys and would be raking in the child support (different arrangement here in AU than in the US, but a similar net effect) if she hadn't picked 5 deadbeats to have kids with.
Well in that context the problem existing means that it's a relatively common problem. The example you give actually suggests that "professional" Child Support moms might simply be women who have significant relationship issues and have no intent of deceiving men into some kind of child support scheme.
Don't forget the "professional" Child Support moms. They seduce guys, get a baby, put in a token two years because they need Dad to cover the other half of the diaper stage, then divorce them and collect child support. Then they get new boyfriends for the cuddlin' and help under the table but get to collect the child support as free cash. Posting as AC because this comment will get pummeled in 12 minutes. But it's true.
Do you have any evidence that this problem actually exists?
1) I don't think child support is that generous, particularly when you consider the costs in time and money of raising a child.
2) Why get rid of the dad? Wouldn't they be able to extract more value by staying in the relationship?
3) I don't think it's nearly as easy for a women with children to attract a man who will support her as you suggest.
1976: Venezuela nationalizes its oil industry 2007: ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips refuse to allow Venezuela's state-run energy company to assume majority control of a few projects 2007: Venezuela 100% nationalizes ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips' holdings 2012: ExxonMobil gets a fraction of what they were asking in court and arbitration
What your Washington Post article (unsurprisingly) leaves out is that everyone else went along with Venezuela's long term plan. Exxon tried to play hardball and lost.
At the risk of sounding like a Libertarian what you're describing isn't cooperating with the government, it's a mob shakedown.
I actually found this series to be a fairly informative bit of background on Scientology. It seems the Xenu stuff is only presented to a very small portion of top level Scientologists (and lower level folks are generally shielded from the info). The bulk of the religion tends to be built around 'auditing', which is basically therapy sessions where people are hooked into an e-meter (essentially a lie detector) which helps them identify stressful topics so they can address them. If nothing else it helps explain Hubbard's hatred for psychologists (as his religion was based around his own brand of therapy).
Slashdot Mirror
True, though I'm not sure 'avant cello' falls into that category, there's not really a club or bar scene but there are galleries and other cultural events that would probably hire someone. And the difference between streaming and downloads or CD sales is the dropoff shouldn't be as big as the tracks age so that $3500/year should be fairly reliable (though maybe hard to grow with additional releases).
From a societal perspective I don't think this is a problem, there are a lot of musicians and bands who don't really add much to the greater musical scene. They can make money playing live since there's only so many people who can put on a good live show, but if they don't have the talent to make a cultural contribution to humanity than they shouldn't really expect one by sitting around and letting the royalties roll in.
Of course I don't really know if 3 million plays a year counts as a cultural contribution or not, and maybe the rates should be higher, but I just wanted to point out that not every new song is a cultural contribution.
The headlines are just flamebait to get page views and comments.
But there's nothing wrong with the science, sure it confirms something that seems pretty obvious, but it's important for science to do that sometimes.
This mutation isn't about keeping them warmer overall, it's about them keeping warmer when they get cold.
If they grew body fur that would keep them a bit warmer all the time, so they'd compensate by wearing fewer clothes or building smaller fires, maybe an advantage from a resource perspective but not a big one (and the extra hair may make the heavy clothes uncomfortable).
But this mutation is more like having a better thermostat, most of the time it doesn't matter, but when you don't have enough clothes or fire your body is now better able to compensate.
If we are fortunate two great forces will join into a single federation, bringing great joy to all.
If not we'll get a love story about red matter.
Critical thinking is part of the problem. If you've trained your mind to see the world as it actually is, then you're less likely to have comfortable illusions to fall back on.
Seems a fancy way of "I'm depressed because I'm too smart!".
I don't know if there actually is a correlation between depression and intelligence. There's certainly a stereotype of the brilliant depressed artist, but I suspect that has more to do with the fact that the mentally unstable individuals have a more interesting perspective (and thus become better artists) than raw genius leading to their depression.
If there is a correlation between intelligence and depression I suspect it's due almost entirely due to social reasons.
And because other people don't like having their illusions questioned, you don't have much of a social network to fall back on either.
Is this because you're questioning them or because you're bullying them? It's not fun to wrestle with a guy who has 10kg of muscle on you, so why do you think they'd enjoy intellectually wrestling with someone who has 10 IQ points on them? And being smarter doesn't necessarily make you right, though it might mean you frustrate people by winning arguments even when you're wrong.
I'm not exceptionally smart, but I didn't relate to as many people as I should have growing up (partly through ego, partly chance) which impacted my social skills in a way that's retarded my social life.
And then when you look for help, you find that psychiatry is bullshit just like everything else. SSRI's don't actually work except for the most severely depressed. And therapy... well when your problem is that you see the world accurately, what exactly is therapy going to do?
Even if you could stop thinking critically, is that an ethical thing to do? Most of the world's problems are due to not enough critical thinking, so if you have that skill and don't use it, you're deliberately becoming part of the problem.
I don't think antidepressants or therapy did much for me, but I'm only a single datapoint. I think I have pretty decent critical thinking skills (who doesn't?) except perhaps with regards to personal relationships. I'm fortunate in that my depression is almost entirely attributable to loneliness and would be fixed if my social life improved, I suspect this is the case for a lot of hackers. It doesn't mean I'm too smart to relate to, I just never realized that like any other skill interpersonal relations are something you have to learn and practice.
That thumping sound you hear in your chest?
That's your life beating away.
If that sounds worrying you shouldn't worry, the worrying only just makes your heart beat faster and brings your inevitable demise that much closer.
That worry is very dangerous, even if you stop now you've already shortened your lifespan, and for every second you worry longer you're losing more and more of your life. This worry and stress is literally killing you and it won't stop unless you stop getting stressed out.
Just some friendly advice.
"but evolution ignored all my old configuration (and the configuration backup I made)"
evo moved a bunch of stuff from gconf to gsettings between 3.4 and 3.6. Nothing specific to f18, you'll see issues with this particular version upgrade in any distro when it happens. Seems like you hit a weirdly bad case, though, usually it just loses a few settings that they forgot to carry over.
In more detail what happened is after the upgrade evolution acted like it was a completely new installation, I went to an old laptop where I'd copied over my settings in the past and created a backup there, (also used the same commands to make a dump of a backup of my main config), the import from the laptop dump worked, from the main dump silent failure, I'll probably work up a bug report once I have some more time.
I have no doubt it was just some weird edge case, there just seems to be some weak evidence that more people are hitting weird edge cases for this release (if I wasn't lazy I'd try to justify that by taking stats on bugzilla queries).
Before is was a some guy on the Internet complaining about the installer, now it's a big name in the Linux community (and a former employee of Red Hat) saying the whole release has big problems.
It could be that he was unlucky enough to have a bad experience but he's enough of a name that his rant is minor news.
Personally on the two machines I've tried on one the upgrade went well but evolution ignored all my old configuration (and the configuration backup I made) and I only avoided reconfiguring it from scratch by upgrading from an older version of a config backup, on the other machine the upgrade kernel simply didn't boot so I'm still on F17 until the bug is sorted out (or I upgrade via yum).
A 3rd machine (old laptop) seems fine but I've barely used it.
Even when both user and dev are programmers of the same skill level there's a huge gulf in knowledge. A 5 hour patch for the user might be a 5 minute job for a dev since they've already learned the code. So I generally use my dev skills to give a really good description of the problem and test cases. Usually the only times I write a patch are when it's a feature specifically for me, or I've gone into so much detail finding the bug I already found the fix.
It may be a specific case but when I hear or read others asking how to get experience programming frequently some replies are to see what bugs have been submitted to FOSS projects, pick one, and submit a patch to the project leaders.
And that's a great idea to gain programming experience, just realize that it's more of a way to learn programming than a way to make a big contribution, you basically need to find a bug that's easy to fix (so you can handle it), and not a lot of people care about (or someone else would have made the easy patch first).
The best bet is to find some little one or two dev project on SF or something (try a niche end user project like a podcast manager), there the code should be
easier to understand, the bugs should be easier to find and fix without side effects, and the work will be more important to the project since it's less likely to be an obscure function no-one uses.
I consider that to be a good contribution to the community and on projects I've managed in the past I really appreciated users who gave good bug reports.
I agree, however is there a documented methodology or procedure that is easy to find and use for those who want to submit bug reports? Of all the tymes I've read how users should submit bug reports I have not yet read how to submit these reports.
Falcon
Not entirely since every bug is different but the basic rule is make it as easy to reproduce as possible (I often try to start from the latest version of the app with a vanilla configuration then find the simplest way to recreate the issue). Including info like logs, versions, steps, configurations is always helpful, don't worry about including too much since the dev will generally know what's important and ignore the rest (or ask for the missing bits).
Even when both user and dev are programmers of the same skill level there's a huge gulf in knowledge. A 5 hour patch for the user might be a 5 minute job for a dev since they've already learned the code. So I generally use my dev skills to give a really good description of the problem and test cases. Usually the only times I write a patch are when it's a feature specifically for me, or I've gone into so much detail finding the bug I already found the fix. I consider that to be a good contribution to the community and on projects I've managed in the past I really appreciated users who gave good bug reports.
Tone is also a big factor of course, I find general nagging to be more acceptable for a large project where the individual devs have less personal stake in the project (and are more likely to be paid). Ragging on a one person hobby project is just kinda pointless.
You know what? If Igor thinks can do it better, then he should fork that thing and roll his own distro.
Lots of people have something to complain about, but very very few pitch in and try to help or change things.
'Shut up or fork it' is a criticism I regularly hear directed to people complaining about an Open Source project, and it's a really stupid criticism.
The fact you can fork or even patch doesn't mean you lose the right to complain if you don't.
Complaining offers feedback, it tells the devs what the issues are, both issues they didn't know existed and issues they didn't know were a big problem.
The ability to fork is more of a check on the devs then a regular threat. It stops devs from doing really stupid things that might create a fork or drive people to a new one, and it sometimes lets two projects go in different directions to better serve the userbase.
Remember, users are not the enemy, if you treat them like they are the enemy, well then you won't have enemies for long.
Yeah, the big red flag in the published story is 14/15 CS profs voting to expel. CS profs are generally pretty forgiving of curiosity, either they were fleeced by an administrator or the student's account is very misleading.
I don't think the commenter was saying that. Rather I read their post as an argument not to mythologize people who commit suicide. It's a tragedy he died, but if we turn him into a tragic hero that makes suicide a more appealing option for other people.
The prosecutors were not the cause of Aaron Swartz's death, true they were probably the straw that broke the camels back but there had to be other causes for his depression, relationship issues, mental health issues, brain chemistry, I don't know. Swartz was a highly capable individual with a big platform to fight back against the charges. He should have fought back, embarrassed the government, no matter what happened there's no way he would have ever faced anything close to 5 years in prison, much less 35. Instead he killed himself.
It's no secret that prosecutorial misconduct is a massive issue in the US, and this case isn't even close to the worst of it. Because of the publicity it may be a good case to attack prosecutorial overcharging as a stress tactic, but blaming the suicide on them just glorifies suicide and turns it the prosecutor into a bad apple rather than a symptom of a widespread problem.
Most of the resistance will consist of the current military who already has guns, plus a lot of guns will enter the country via smuggling or get lost from military bases during the chaos. An armed public helps a little, but probably not as much as you believe.
As for the effectiveness of a resistance, Isreal didn't back down because of Palestinian rockets, the US didn't leave Iraq because of the resistance (or even if they did it took a lot of other factors including a general rejection by the public). Armed resistances are common, armed resistances beating back an invasion not so much (now that I think of it the main contribution of the French Resistance was logistical, not shooting).
So I agree that in the case the US is invaded and the army is defeated, that an already armed populace makes the resistance a little more effective, but if you're talking about a US with a military so weak it gets overrun then we're talking about a completely different country. Maybe they're invading because you're ruled by your own Saddam, and the resistance is a Christian Al Queda. Maybe the American Saddam was using civilian militias to carry out the dirty work to keep his hands cleaner. I just don't think your scenario is likely enough to justify the bodycount of maintaining an armed public.
It's not my ideal solution but it sounds like a big improvement. I still don't believe that the gun clubs will do anything to prevent government oppression or repel invaders, but it will reduce the number of weapons and help keep them away from gangs where they do the most damage. I agree that guns in the hands of well adjusted middle class folks isn't a big problem (I suspect it's fairly neutral), but I also think it's really hard to only arm that segment of your population.
I think gun advocates overestimate how effective they'd be against government forces, every year police kill around 300 armed people, while only about 50 police are killed by gunfine (numbers fairly approximate). If you start adding military personnel that are explicitly trained to kill armed opponents I don't think having a gun will do you nearly as much good as you think.
These are the qualities which defend freedom, concentrating on guns you're risking that freedom for a last line of defence that doesn't even work
I bet of the 300 armed people that police (in the USA) kill each year that most of them are not firing back and attempting to kill the police officers.
The USA's 2nd amendment specifically came from a situation where the people did rise up and defeat their parent government - so for the USA it does have a history of working.
And I bet a lot of the 50 officers killed were at a traffic stop or something and weren't firing back either, the numbers were tough to dig up and I couldn't find more details. Regardless I don't think it's hard to assume that in an armed confrontation the trained party has a big advantage.
As for the 2nd amendment your situation is over 200 year old, and the fighting was done by militias which were effectively small armies run by the colonies and don't really exist in the modern US. The French or Iraqi resistances would probably be better examples for gun advocates, but I don't think they apply either since there's a lot of ex-military and guns from that military in that situation and it's resisting a foreign power. The world has changed a lot, and for a modern population defending itself from its own government I don't see the precedence that shows it's useful.
Liberal idiots whip themselves into a frenzy because rifles look scary. They associate rifles with the military and wars. Rifles are an easy target for mass hysteria for the same reason that ignorant reporters fixate on them.
Meanwhile, pistols are clearly more popular and at the same time seen as a self-defense weapon. They seem less scary, more useful, and harder to demonize.
They are more useful for self defense because they are more portable and also easier to use for nefarious purposes for that same very reason.
Well I would support serious regulations around hand guns as well (moreso than hunting rifles in fact). But that's just me. But I'm happy with more gun regs because I believe the root problem is the gun culture. If the glorification of guns and shooting can be stopped than that will lead to a huge drop in violence and murders, and the fewer guns around the less glorified they'll become.
So, half your family was murdered by Nazis? Jews, I presume?
You are now aware that in 1938, Germany prohibited the possession of firearms by Jews. Specifically Jews.
Makes it easier to make them do as told, you see, when they have no way to defend their lives.
I'm skeptical that this is true about the law, but after googleing around I really wish wikipedia had a '-nutjobs' feature.
Actually the Nazi's relaxed gun ownership laws, and Jew's were still allowed to purchase and own guns (though I don't know how common it was).
Either way your belief that no gun control stops the government is a bit of fantasy.
1) Hitler was very popular during his rule, and I'm guessing he's not an exception, strong rulers tend to be popular and to be a dictator you need to be very strong. When they lose power they lose popularity rapidly, but I'm guessing this has a lot to do with the loss of power (and strength) rather than the courage to air grievances. (note, this is partially conjecture, if anyone has any good resources on the popularity of dictators I'd gladly defer). Therefore guns won't lead to some mass uprising since the mass supports the dictator.
2) Most gun owners aren't trained ex-military, even the hunters and big gun enthusiasts are probably a lot less effective then they think when caught in a genuine shootout with another human. I think gun advocates overestimate how effective they'd be against government forces, every year police kill around 300 armed people, while only about 50 police are killed by gunfine (numbers fairly approximate). If you start adding military personnel that are explicitly trained to kill armed opponents I don't think having a gun will do you nearly as much good as you think.
3) Look at the Arab spring, non-violent resistance was very effective. The Libyan's won their civil war but needed significant foreign assistance, in Syrian Bashar's main goal at the start was to turn the non-violent resistance violent, the non-violent resistance risked uniting the country against him. But once he goaded the uprising into a civil war the 26% of non-Sunni's in Syria suddenly got terrified about what these rebel armies might do to them, so they solidified behind Bashar. Why do you think governments use agent provovateurs? If America ever does start to really use its freedom all it needs is for a few gun-toting Americans to fight back, the public will panic and the rest of your rights will be gone before you can blink.
If you want to keep your freedom defend the first amendment, foster an atmosphere of civil liberties, non-hyperbolic political debate, and diversity. These are the qualities which defend freedom, concentrating on guns you're risking that freedom for a last line of defence that doesn't even work.
A few might have a non-trivial PR factor (ie the Aaron Schwartz petition), and a few others have made good jokes, but does anyone know of a petition that has actually made a political difference?
We've had nice paper thin displays for years now. But a thin display doesn't mean a thin tablet. Until we have thin CPUs and thin RAM sticks, and thin flash memory and thin connectors, we aren't going to have a paper thin tablet.
When you get all the components you need for a tablet you end up with something just as thick as what we've got on shelves today. By no means thick, but not paper-thin.
Yes and no.
You're still going to need something big and bulky to house all the non-display bits, but they don't need to be with the screen.
Assuming the tech is up to it you could make something like a projector screen, walk around with your tablet contained in a tube, then when you want to use it unroll the screen and start away. Might actually work better as a phone, instead of choosing between a tiny innocuous talk-only phone, and a big ungainly smart phone, you could have the best of both worlds, a little tube to carry around that can unravel into a big smartphone screen.
Well for evidence an article from a reputable newspaper would do (my very brief search didn't find anything). Besides, you're now arguing that the marriage is failing, not as part of a deliberate scheme, but because the woman has no commitment, which is a much weaker claim.
As for "the woman doesn't re-marry (which would end the child support)", and 'cuddling under the table' comment from your first post, this appears to be false. The woman's relationship status does not affect child support. You could be talking about alimony, but that's something completely different (and probably harder to get after a short term marriage).
In short your comment is factually inaccurate and has a chauvinist tone, it should be pummelled.
Don't forget the "professional" Child Support moms.
They seduce guys, get a baby, put in a token two years because they need Dad to cover the other half of the diaper stage, then divorce them and collect child support. Then they get new boyfriends for the cuddlin' and help under the table but get to collect the child support as free cash.
Posting as AC because this comment will get pummeled in 12 minutes. But it's true.
Do you have any evidence that this problem actually exists?
It only has to happen once for the problem to "exist", but doesn't imply that it happens with any significant frequency. I happen to know someone who has 5 kids to 5 different guys and would be raking in the child support (different arrangement here in AU than in the US, but a similar net effect) if she hadn't picked 5 deadbeats to have kids with.
Well in that context the problem existing means that it's a relatively common problem. The example you give actually suggests that "professional" Child Support moms might simply be women who have significant relationship issues and have no intent of deceiving men into some kind of child support scheme.
Don't forget the "professional" Child Support moms.
They seduce guys, get a baby, put in a token two years because they need Dad to cover the other half of the diaper stage, then divorce them and collect child support. Then they get new boyfriends for the cuddlin' and help under the table but get to collect the child support as free cash.
Posting as AC because this comment will get pummeled in 12 minutes. But it's true.
Do you have any evidence that this problem actually exists?
1) I don't think child support is that generous, particularly when you consider the costs in time and money of raising a child.
2) Why get rid of the dad? Wouldn't they be able to extract more value by staying in the relationship?
3) I don't think it's nearly as easy for a women with children to attract a man who will support her as you suggest.
1976: Venezuela nationalizes its oil industry
2007: ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips refuse to allow Venezuela's state-run energy company to assume majority control of a few projects
2007: Venezuela 100% nationalizes ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips' holdings
2012: ExxonMobil gets a fraction of what they were asking in court and arbitration
What your Washington Post article (unsurprisingly) leaves out is that everyone else went along with Venezuela's long term plan.
Exxon tried to play hardball and lost.
At the risk of sounding like a Libertarian what you're describing isn't cooperating with the government, it's a mob shakedown.
I actually found this series to be a fairly informative bit of background on Scientology. It seems the Xenu stuff is only presented to a very small portion of top level Scientologists (and lower level folks are generally shielded from the info). The bulk of the religion tends to be built around 'auditing', which is basically therapy sessions where people are hooked into an e-meter (essentially a lie detector) which helps them identify stressful topics so they can address them. If nothing else it helps explain Hubbard's hatred for psychologists (as his religion was based around his own brand of therapy).