The author of that blog, BTW, is an ex-Apple engineer, and one of the smartest people I met when I worked there. He's one of the people I'd go to if I need help with Shark or other performance tools.
Can you cite an actual example of something wrong with it? Big footprint, slow runtime, anything along those lines? Merely dialing up the rhetoric doesn't tell us anything.
The guy's just counting vendors, not counting users and apps. This is the kind of idiot who believes a spreadsheet jockey who says "if we spend enough on advertising, we'll make a fortune!"
Pretending that the highway system is somehow not a tax-sucking boondoggle, are we?
We? I don't know what your position on the highway system is, but I wasn't discussing roads. Since you bring it up though, I am in favor of privatizing roads.
Yet, by your logic - if applied a long, long time ago, there would be no rail or roads whatsoever - unless they were profitable.
You say that like it's a bad thing. If a transportation system is profitable, then it's serving an actual need, not a political end.
Google for "Great Northern Railway". Turns out that even in the days when the US government was grabbing land and giving it to the railroads, there was another way to get a railroad built.
Got to make sure the taxpayers' get their money's worth, don't they? Putting one guy per shift at the checkpoint isn't nearly as dramatic as letting people drive a few miles in and then swarming them as if they were dangerous or something.
Everyone I know who visits the USA these days tells me what a pain in the ass it is to travel here now. I'm sure everyone on the IOC knows all about that.
Putting public money to work to build a railroad network is a good way to invest public money.
You know, Tricky Dick Nixon promised us that Amtrak would only be living on the public teat for a couple of years, and then private investors would buy it. Didn't work out that way.
it's a hell of a lot better than subsidizing bankrupt companies.
Yeah, poking your eye out is better than cutting your throat from ear to ear. What's your point?
building the whole system will provide a lot of meaning full jobs.
Nope. It shifts jobs from productive activities to wealth-destroying government waste.
BTW, it's rather telling how you emphasize competition and don't mention achievement. You claim that harvard is important because harvard graduates get to push a lot of other people around. Why is it that you didn't list the great inventions of harvard graduates that improved our lives?
A couple of decades ago, I knew a girl who was a pre-med at harvard, and all she could talk about was outperforming her parents (both harvard med psychiatrists). She never mentioned wanting to help her patients as a motivation.
Now, this is not to say that no worthwhile people have come out of harvard, but for my money, MIT, Caltech, Stanford, and dozens of smaller engineering schools' grads have done vastly more good in the world, while harvard keeps churning out politicians and other severely warped egomaniacs.
If you survive Harvard, then you know you're among the best of the best
No, if you graduate from harvard, then you believe you're the "best of the best", and that's the problem. It's an institution that teaches people that they're entitled to tell other people what to do.
I'll admit it creeps me out. Not that I have any problem with slicing and dicing bugs for science, but the whole area of brain control of any species, especially when that research is government funded really bothers me.
Slashdot Mirror
It's worth a look just to see what happens when a language grows rather than being designed.
I've seen that plenty of times. C++ is a train wreck.
-jcr
John, don't play stupid just for the sake of arguing here on Slashdot.
Asking someone to explain their position in other than emotional terms is playing stupid?
You know perfectly well what's wrong with PHP.
No actually, I don't. I've never had occasion to use it.
-jcr
The author of that blog, BTW, is an ex-Apple engineer, and one of the smartest people I met when I worked there. He's one of the people I'd go to if I need help with Shark or other performance tools.
-jcr
PHP is an awful, awful, mess of a language,
Can you cite an actual example of something wrong with it? Big footprint, slow runtime, anything along those lines? Merely dialing up the rhetoric doesn't tell us anything.
-jcr
Basically, PHP is the crayon of the web development world
That may be, but why do you take it so personally? Did your girlfriend leave you for a PHP coder or something?
-jcr
He has killed the F-22, the next-generation nuclear warhead program, and the Eastern European missile program.
Guess again. The congress funds those programs, not the president.
-jcr
The guy's just counting vendors, not counting users and apps. This is the kind of idiot who believes a spreadsheet jockey who says "if we spend enough on advertising, we'll make a fortune!"
-jcr
in the past year, I don't think anyone has done more to advance the cause of peace than Barack Obama
Excuse me? I've done more to advance the cause of peace than Barack Obama, and so has just about anyone else who hasn't bombed Pakistan.
The man is continuing Bush's policies. The only thing he changed was the rhetoric.
-jcr
Al Gore essentially won the Nobel Peace Prize for making a Powerpoint presentation.
Nope.
I agree with you that he didn't deserve it, though.
-jcr
The "peace" prize jumped the shark a long time ago. Wilson, Roosevelt, Kissinger, Arafat? Obama should decline the prize as an insult.
-jcr
Why didn't he just alter his own records and get himself released?
-jcr
Pretending that the highway system is somehow not a tax-sucking boondoggle, are we?
We? I don't know what your position on the highway system is, but I wasn't discussing roads. Since you bring it up though, I am in favor of privatizing roads.
-jcr
Yet, by your logic - if applied a long, long time ago, there would be no rail or roads whatsoever - unless they were profitable.
You say that like it's a bad thing. If a transportation system is profitable, then it's serving an actual need, not a political end.
Google for "Great Northern Railway". Turns out that even in the days when the US government was grabbing land and giving it to the railroads, there was another way to get a railroad built.
-jcr
Got to make sure the taxpayers' get their money's worth, don't they? Putting one guy per shift at the checkpoint isn't nearly as dramatic as letting people drive a few miles in and then swarming them as if they were dangerous or something.
-jcr
Ok, I need some new vocabulary again. "Asinine" is simply insufficient to describe that behavior.
-jcr
19 people managed to sneak box cutters onto airplanes
No, it was permitted at the time to carry a box cutter onto an airplane. Nobody had ever attempted a hijacking with a knife before that.
-jcr
Every entry point takes fingerprints of every visitor who is not a US Citizen or legal US Resident.
Any way they try to spin it, that's pretty damned hostile.
-jcr
Everyone I know who visits the USA these days tells me what a pain in the ass it is to travel here now. I'm sure everyone on the IOC knows all about that.
-jcr
Public infrastructure as always provided jobs, and promoted investment.
Wrong and wrong. Man, it's sad how these fallacies permeate the debate.
-jcr
Putting money to work for something useful is better than throwing it away on artificial jobs in government or subsidized industry.
Then why are you advocating taking money away from the uses that we put it to of our own free will, and spending it on a government boondoggle?
-jcr
Putting public money to work to build a railroad network is a good way to invest public money.
You know, Tricky Dick Nixon promised us that Amtrak would only be living on the public teat for a couple of years, and then private investors would buy it. Didn't work out that way.
it's a hell of a lot better than subsidizing bankrupt companies.
Yeah, poking your eye out is better than cutting your throat from ear to ear. What's your point?
building the whole system will provide a lot of meaning full jobs.
Nope. It shifts jobs from productive activities to wealth-destroying government waste.
-jcr
There comes a point when 'let's add another lane' is no longer a viable option!"
There also comes a point when "let's have another horrendously expensive tax-sucking boondoggle" is no longer a viable option.
-jcr
BTW, it's rather telling how you emphasize competition and don't mention achievement. You claim that harvard is important because harvard graduates get to push a lot of other people around. Why is it that you didn't list the great inventions of harvard graduates that improved our lives?
A couple of decades ago, I knew a girl who was a pre-med at harvard, and all she could talk about was outperforming her parents (both harvard med psychiatrists). She never mentioned wanting to help her patients as a motivation.
Now, this is not to say that no worthwhile people have come out of harvard, but for my money, MIT, Caltech, Stanford, and dozens of smaller engineering schools' grads have done vastly more good in the world, while harvard keeps churning out politicians and other severely warped egomaniacs.
-jcr
If you survive Harvard, then you know you're among the best of the best
No, if you graduate from harvard, then you believe you're the "best of the best", and that's the problem. It's an institution that teaches people that they're entitled to tell other people what to do.
-jcr
I'll admit it creeps me out. Not that I have any problem with slicing and dicing bugs for science, but the whole area of brain control of any species, especially when that research is government funded really bothers me.
-jcr