I've read "The Emperor's New Mind" by Penrose, and he talks about some of that, but never really answers in a way I can understand.
You say Hawking argues that the beginning and end are very different. My question is, but how, exactly? What is the difference between the singularity at the beginning of time and the singularity at the end of time?
And, not being a physicist, I need an answer that describes the difference - not just a pointer (ie saying the difference between the two states is in the amount of entropy does me no good since the word entropy is obviously a "pointer" to a very complicated concept, and I can't de-reference it correctly:-)
I've always had this question, but never gotten a satisfactory answer:
If the universe is closed, how does that fit in with the 2nd law of thermodynamics? If the start and end of the universe are the same (ie all matter and energy located in an infinitely small space), how can there be a consistent, one-directional rule that says entropy will always increase from beginning to end? How is the end of a closed universe different from the beginning?
As a follow-up, I want to ask what would happen as a result of a GUT being found/proven?
To be more specific, say a GUT is found and verified (as much as possible). What technological breakthroughs would come in the 20 years following such a discovery, that were directly attributable to it? In other words, for everyday people, what are we likely to see as a benefit down the road from a successful GUT?
This reminds me of Nancy Kress's "cell cleaner" in her Beggars in Spain series. The cell cleaner also allowed people to "eat" just by going naked - their skin was changed to allow photosynthesis and the absorbtion of nutrients from mud.
Absolutely. If you want more parity, bless the speed at which scientists come up with better, and necessarily cheaper, ways of doing things. If you try to slow them down, then that's all you'll succeed in doing. You will never change the fact that the rich will be able to buy more for themselves than the poor.
Hmmmm.... embedded OS's all throughout your computer system (hard drives, floppies, printers, monitors) all individually upgradeable. Sounds very cool.
But AMD doesn't already have market share and mind share the way Intel does. Wouldn't it help their cause more to release a slamdunk over Intel that Intel couldn't match, just to steal some market share? By inching, it gives the impression that AMD and Intel are about equal, and, all things being equal, won't most buy Intel?
Actually, it seems to me it's mostly a way of branding your code/program. Put K in front of everything, and everyone knows it's a KDE program or interface. Sort of like saying "Intel Inside", or "Windows 95 Compatible", or "100% Java". It serves advertising purposes, mostly, especially since none of your reasons explains why programs are named with these prefixes. Your reasons have to do with code components.
But, even then, there are better ways to do it. in Java, you use a packaging system. Your package should be unique if you use your domain (org.slashdot.Button for example).
I took a wild guess as to how the Mozilla.LDAP.Conn package works, and how someone might set up a similar system in Java. Maybe they wouldn't use Properties classes as I have above. Who knows. I certainly prefer them to arrays, though.
My version has about twice (25 vs. 12) as many lines of code, though 7 of those are due to declaring variables and using 1 line of code for each additional attribute returned in the search. I could have used
String[] attrs = {"cn","mail","telephonenumber"};
2 more lines of code are due to the need to setup a class in which this work is done.
It's interesting. If I'm doing work for myself at home, I would prefer Perl, on small scales. But I don't ever want to buy or use someone else's Perl. I would prefer the Java version, because it is more verbose and more readable.
No. A good (lazy) perl programmer installs the XML Parser and lets it do all of the hard work!
Bingo! But you missed my point, I think. Sure, now that someone invented XML, it's best to use it. I'm suggesting that it wasn't a Perl programmer who invented it, for the reasons I hopefully made clear.
a bad programmer can create bad code in any language
Can't be denied. However, this does not mean that the language you choose has no effect on the way you see and approach problem solving. Someone who's been primarily using Perl (and likes it) vs. someone who primarily uses Java (and likes it) will approach the same problem differently. I'd guess that it depends on the problem as to which approach is better.
Also, even more subtle, the choice of which problems are interesting will be influenced by your choice of programming language. Frankly, I'm bemused by all the glorying of Perl regarding the ability to manipulate text. So? To you Perl programmers, do you recognize the point in your life when text manipulation became all-important to you? Do you recognize the influence Perl has had on your thinking?
I've been trying to think of an example (and it's hard). Here's my attempt:
XML. Why was XML developed? To create a universal way of formatting data? To create a standard for data transfer so that two disparate systems can easily exchange information? Ok. Why was Perl developed? Initially, wasn't Perl developed to parse bizarre logging formats for report generation? This is where it got it's great text manipulation abilities, wasn't it? The use of speedy regular expressions really helps to parse logs of all different formats.
A Java developer looks at all those formats and thinks, yuck! Shouldn't we have a standard so I can read them all without so much work?
A Perl developer looks at all those formats and thinks, with just 10 or so lines of code for each format, I can decipher them all. Look how superior Perl is!
So the Perl programmer starts coding all those regular expressions to decipher an infinite number of different text formats.
The Java programmer writes a standard, writes the code that will read any data formatted to that standard and says to the world, "if you guys do it like this, we'll all be set cause I've written this tool that creates a tree from you data, and anyone can use this other tool to walk that tree and get what you want from the data".
Now, we can all argue which is the better approach, butI feel better knowing both are around, to be honest.
Yes, Virginia, your choice of programming language will have an effect on your thinking, and your coding. Not good or bad, but true.
Hire x programmer to do x programming, and hire y programmer to do y programming. That's your mantra? But it doesn't really make sense. Hire a good programmer is really what you want, don't you think? A good x programmer, will learn and create better y code than a bad y programmer.
The question really becomes, what languages are good programmers most likely to _want_ to program in?
I agree entirely. I wish I could mesh languages together so that I could use the best of them all at different points in my programmin tasks.
However, a lot of Perl advocates seem to want to do a lot more with Perl than is good for it. Why did Perl get OO stuff added on, for example? Is that really the direction Perl should be going?
Your example brings to mind an image of two ugly demons at the bottom of a pit competing to see which is less ugly.
Try comparing Perl to a syntactically friendly and well-designed language, and
use an example other than one dealing with string manipulation, where Perl is great, no one denies.
If all you had to do was string manipulation (like outputting HTML), then you're golden with perl. But would you choose to use Perl as a language for developing business logic?
Or to write a database? (insert your own examples here)
This made me laugh. You're absolutely right. Who started this stupidity of putting a capital letter in front of everything?
In Java, it's Jthis, Jthat. For KDE, it's Kthis, Kthat. I asked someone why this was done, they said it's nice cause it tells you the program was written for KDE. Sorry, but that's what a readme is for. I don't want the program name to blare it out constantly. Very annoying.
What you are saying is that the free flow of information that the internet creates allows more varied philosophies to co-exist, and the playing field includes so many people now, it's much more difficult for any single philosophy to win out and dominate. It's like saying the internet creates such competition that a philosophical monopoly is unlikely to form.
I think you are absolutely correct, if that's what you're saying, but it remains true that those philosophies that are more powerful will win out over those that are less powerful (powerful being some combination of correctness, elegance, whatever). It's more like speeding up the process of cultural evolution. White people didn't succeed in taking over North America from indians because they were smarter, or physically superior. It was because their worldview had led them down certain pathways and to certain technologies that 1. led to the desire to take over the land and 2. gave them the means (through war) that the indians couldn't compete against.
Likewise, in this new environment, philosophies will compete, and the more powerful ones will lead their followers to employ and discover more powerful technology, or will hold their members together more tightly, and thus those philosophies will win out and continue. Sounds a lot like evolution, and that's pretty much how it is. See, even the functioning of the internet succombs to the paradigm of evolution - for that's how we view it's workings.
HOWEVER, I think that this solution will just result in people rushing over to the headline queue and disregarding the front page because it will inevitably always have older news.
I can see why you might think that, but I really don't agree. If the headline queue page is limited to a moderation score only (ie don't allow a discussion to develop there), I don't think it would happen like you say.
The drawback to this scheme is that the viewers who see the articles raw an uncut have the burden of rating up low articles
It seems to me there are more than enough viewer at Slashdot that the high-quality stuff would come to the top very quickly. But, I like your idea of articles degrading over time. It's always seemed a shame to me that articles go through slashdot like on a conveyor belt - the good and the bad all go at the same rate. It might be nice if all articles degraded, but that some particular viewer action delayed or counterracted the degredation. Like posting, for instance. Everytime someone posts to a story, is slows its degredation. Or, maybe better, every moderation point spent on a post for an article, that slows its degredation.
Would it be possible for there to me multiple copies of slashdot, each mirroring the _exact_ same content, but using different moderation strategies, so that we could determine by experiment what we liked best?
"The twentieth century featured any number of -isms. They were fatally based on the delusion that philosophy trumps engineering. It doesn't."
And yet, isn't he trying to formulate a philosophy to frame the new technologies?
Philosophy and technology play into each other - always have, and always will, but philosophy is the senior partner. The scientific method is a product of philosophy, not science. Bruce's suggestion that we need many many social and technological and temporary paradigms rather than a centralized paradigm, is a philosophical idea - and not a new one.
Your right that the net is only a quantitative improvement, or change, but, large quantitative changes have a way of making new, qualitatively different realities apparent.
Nano-tech is just an extreme quantitative change in the size of our machines. But it will create enormous qualitative changes.
Exceeding 10% the speed of light makes apparent the incompleteness of Newtonian formulations.
Allowing information to flow more freely than ever - orders of magnitude more freely - will bring to light some new and startling realities. I guarantee.
Actually, I used an old telegraph machine and I punched out the morse code directly to Slashdot's servers. Betcha didn't know Slashdot supported direct telegraph connection.
Well, it just turned midnight 10 minutes ago, and the power went out. I'm using NT, and the BSOD took over just as my clock was ringing! I tried to reboot, but that failed too. I have no idea why. I'm writing this by candlelight.
My phone isn't working either - no dial tone. Just dead. I guess all the Y2K stuff wasn't just hype. Oh well, guess I'll hop over to my brokerage account and sell some stock.
This is the best thread To come around recently; Stars fade in bright light.
Re:WebMacro, Java servlets, and other comments
on
Java Success Stories
·
· Score: 1
That does seem very cool. I looked at Web Macro very briefly today and the only concern I had was that it depended on introspection for everything, and I wondered how fast it would be. I guess the only way I'll know is to try it out....
Re:WebMacro, Java servlets, and other comments
on
Java Success Stories
·
· Score: 1
I'd agree JSP isn't good, but it's better than writing Java classes with a million lines like:
String author = programProperties.get("author"); StringBuffer output = new StringBuffer(); output.append("<HTML>"); output.append("<HEAD><TITLE>"+author+"'s Web Page</TITLE>"); .....
Ideally, I'd love to be able to do the output with Perl, and Java for all the backend database and business logic, but how would you communicate effectively between the Perl and Java? I don't want to use only primitive data types with Java....
Maybe you know a way to do this, and I'd love for you to tell me.....
Abortion issues: Personally against, but it's not the government's job to legislate it. Pro-choice.
Affirmative Action: Support minimalist programs out of necessity. I believe they are necessary, though, in general, a poor solution. I wish I could think of a better one....
Campaign finance: Strongly support reform. Make getting on ballots easier, publicly funded campaigns. No private contributions.
Crime: Legalize drugs, more emphasis on education, prevention, community involvement, less emphasis on putting everyone away.
Defense Spending: I would be more inclined to increase spending than decrease, but most likely it would not change much. I oppose most interventionist policies. I would put Israel on warning that they have 50 years to solve their problems, and after that the US would no longer give any support, and that would be the end of US military involvement in the Middle East. I favor treating other nations with respect and as equal partners rather than squeezing as much out of them as we can just because we can. Note: I'm fully aware that if elected I'm only president for at most 8 years, so I can't really put Israel on a realistic 50 year plan, but that seems to me to be the most fair an equable way of disentangling ourselves from that mess.
Drug Policy: Legalize it. Less money spent, less victim-less criminals taking up jail space, fewer police officers killed, fewer crimes against our rights (right now police can invade your home and keep it, and you'd never get it back, even if you were wholly innocent). Take a more realistic attitude about the whole thing. Probably start just by legalizing marijuana.
Homosexual Issues: Support Homosexual marriages, but I'm not sure what the government has to do with it. Why do we have to pass laws supporting people rights? It's supposed to be the other way around. Start cracking down on those who are taking away rights.
Education: Support vouchers. For any and all educational activities a parent wants to send their child to - public school, private school, religious school, trade school, apprenticeship.
Environment: Support protecting the environment in general.
Evolution: This is an issue??? Please. See my education stance above.
Foreign Policy: non-interventionist - at least militarily. Less monetary aid, but more trading freedom, no protectionist tariffs.
Gun Control: Support right to bear arms, just don't bring them to my house.
Health Care: Vouchers for health care just like education. Everyone gets some minimum amount to spend as they like on the insurance policy of their choice, sort of like how most employers work. But the government provides it to everyone, for life.
Moral Issues: Not the government's concern.
Social Security: Good idea, extremely dumb implementation. Support individual forced retirement savings. Not guaranteed pension. Not a "pay-as-you-go" plan. Your money is your money. The tricky thing is bridging from the present system to this new system. Probably requires using the "surpluss" (that really isn't) and some extra monies, but in the long run, it's worth it. Personally, I'm dreading paying for the baby boomers starting 15 years from now....
Tax Policy: Flat tax with a very large standard deduction (like $30,000 or something). The government needs to collect money to do it's work. It's work is stuff we've already talked about, not encouraging people to buy houses, or have children, or get education... So, remove all deductions, and just tax personal income, nothing else. Remove all corporate taxes (since my government isn't providing corporations with any special services, they shouldn't have to pay), capitol gains, inheritance, tolls, etc. The most efficient means of collecting taxes is determining how much you need and have the people send it in as they earn it.
Trade: Absolutely 100% free trade. Starting with us.
Slashdot Mirror
I've read "The Emperor's New Mind" by Penrose, and he talks about some of that, but never really answers in a way I can understand.
:-)
You say Hawking argues that the beginning and end are very different. My question is, but how, exactly? What is the difference between the singularity at the beginning of time and the singularity at the end of time?
And, not being a physicist, I need an answer that describes the difference - not just a pointer (ie saying the difference between the two states is in the amount of entropy does me no good since the word entropy is obviously a "pointer" to a very complicated concept, and I can't de-reference it correctly
I've always had this question, but never gotten a satisfactory answer:
If the universe is closed, how does that fit in with the 2nd law of thermodynamics? If the start and end of the universe are the same (ie all matter and energy located in an infinitely small space), how can there be a consistent, one-directional rule that says entropy will always increase from beginning to end? How is the end of a closed universe different from the beginning?
As a follow-up, I want to ask what would happen as a result of a GUT being found/proven?
To be more specific, say a GUT is found and verified (as much as possible). What technological breakthroughs would come in the 20 years following such a discovery, that were directly attributable to it? In other words, for everyday people, what are we likely to see as a benefit down the road from a successful GUT?
This reminds me of Nancy Kress's "cell cleaner" in her Beggars in Spain series. The cell cleaner also allowed people to "eat" just by going naked - their skin was changed to allow photosynthesis and the absorbtion of nutrients from mud.
Absolutely. If you want more parity, bless the speed at which scientists come up with better, and necessarily cheaper, ways of doing things. If you try to slow them down, then that's all you'll succeed in doing. You will never change the fact that the rich will be able to buy more for themselves than the poor.
Hmmmm.... embedded OS's all throughout your computer system (hard drives, floppies, printers, monitors) all individually upgradeable. Sounds very cool.
But AMD doesn't already have market share and mind share the way Intel does. Wouldn't it help their cause more to release a slamdunk over Intel that Intel couldn't match, just to steal some market share? By inching, it gives the impression that AMD and Intel are about equal, and, all things being equal, won't most buy Intel?
Actually, it seems to me it's mostly a way of branding your code/program. Put K in front of everything, and everyone knows it's a KDE program or interface. Sort of like saying "Intel Inside", or "Windows 95 Compatible", or "100% Java". It serves advertising purposes, mostly, especially since none of your reasons explains why programs are named with these prefixes. Your reasons have to do with code components.
But, even then, there are better ways to do it. in Java, you use a packaging system. Your package should be unique if you use your domain (org.slashdot.Button for example).
import java.util.*;
public class LDAPSearch {
}
}
I took a wild guess as to how the Mozilla.LDAP.Conn package works, and how someone might set up a similar system in Java. Maybe they wouldn't use Properties classes as I have above. Who knows. I certainly prefer them to arrays, though.
My version has about twice (25 vs. 12) as many lines of code, though 7 of those are due to declaring variables and using 1 line of code for each additional attribute returned in the search.
I could have used
String[] attrs = {"cn","mail","telephonenumber"};
2 more lines of code are due to the need to setup a class in which this work is done.
It's interesting. If I'm doing work for myself at home, I would prefer Perl, on small scales. But I don't ever want to buy or use someone else's Perl. I would prefer the Java version, because it is more verbose and more readable.
Thank you for your example!
No. A good (lazy) perl programmer installs the XML Parser and lets it do all of the hard work!
Bingo! But you missed my point, I think. Sure, now that someone invented XML, it's best to use it. I'm suggesting that it wasn't a Perl programmer who invented it, for the reasons I hopefully made clear.
A lot of people argue thusly:
a bad programmer can create bad code in any language
Can't be denied. However, this does not mean that the language you choose has no effect on the way you see and approach problem solving. Someone who's been primarily using Perl (and likes it) vs. someone who primarily uses Java (and likes it) will approach the same problem differently. I'd guess that it depends on the problem as to which approach is better.
Also, even more subtle, the choice of which problems are interesting will be influenced by your choice of programming language. Frankly, I'm bemused by all the glorying of Perl regarding the ability to manipulate text. So? To you Perl programmers, do you recognize the point in your life when text manipulation became all-important to you? Do you recognize the influence Perl has had on your thinking?
I've been trying to think of an example (and it's hard). Here's my attempt:
XML. Why was XML developed? To create a universal way of formatting data? To create a standard for data transfer so that two disparate systems can easily exchange information? Ok. Why was Perl developed? Initially, wasn't Perl developed to parse bizarre logging formats for report generation? This is where it got it's great text manipulation abilities, wasn't it? The use of speedy regular expressions really helps to parse logs of all different formats.
A Java developer looks at all those formats and thinks, yuck! Shouldn't we have a standard so I can read them all without so much work?
A Perl developer looks at all those formats and thinks, with just 10 or so lines of code for each format, I can decipher them all. Look how superior Perl is!
So the Perl programmer starts coding all those regular expressions to decipher an infinite number of different text formats.
The Java programmer writes a standard, writes the code that will read any data formatted to that standard and says to the world, "if you guys do it like this, we'll all be set cause I've written this tool that creates a tree from you data, and anyone can use this other tool to walk that tree and get what you want from the data".
Now, we can all argue which is the better approach, butI feel better knowing both are around, to be honest.
Yes, Virginia, your choice of programming language will have an effect on your thinking, and your coding. Not good or bad, but true.
Hire x programmer to do x programming, and hire
y programmer to do y programming. That's your mantra? But it doesn't really make sense. Hire a good programmer is really what you want, don't you think? A good x programmer, will learn and create better y code than a bad y programmer.
The question really becomes, what languages are good programmers most likely to _want_ to program in?
I agree entirely. I wish I could mesh languages together so that I could use the best of them all at different points in my programmin tasks.
However, a lot of Perl advocates seem to want to do a lot more with Perl than is good for it. Why did Perl get OO stuff added on, for example? Is that really the direction Perl should be going?
Your example brings to mind an image of two ugly demons at the bottom of a pit competing to see which is less ugly.
Try comparing Perl to a syntactically friendly and well-designed language, and
use an example other than one dealing with string manipulation, where Perl is great, no one denies.
If all you had to do was string manipulation (like outputting HTML), then you're golden with perl. But would you choose to use Perl as a language for developing business logic?
Or to write a database?
(insert your own examples here)
This made me laugh. You're absolutely right. Who started this stupidity of putting a capital letter in front of everything?
In Java, it's Jthis, Jthat. For KDE, it's Kthis, Kthat. I asked someone why this was done, they said it's nice cause it tells you the program was written for KDE. Sorry, but that's what a readme is for. I don't want the program name to blare it out constantly. Very annoying.
What you are saying is that the free flow of information that the internet creates allows more varied philosophies to co-exist, and the playing field includes so many people now, it's much more difficult for any single philosophy to win out and dominate. It's like saying the internet creates such competition that a philosophical monopoly is unlikely to form.
I think you are absolutely correct, if that's what you're saying, but it remains true that those philosophies that are more powerful will win out over those that are less powerful (powerful being some combination of correctness, elegance, whatever). It's more like speeding up the process of cultural evolution. White people didn't succeed in taking over North America from indians because they were smarter, or physically superior. It was because their worldview had led them down certain pathways and to certain technologies that 1. led to the desire to take over the land and 2. gave them the means (through war) that the indians couldn't compete against.
Likewise, in this new environment, philosophies will compete, and the more powerful ones will lead their followers to employ and discover more powerful technology, or will hold their members together more tightly, and thus those philosophies will win out and continue. Sounds a lot like evolution, and that's pretty much how it is. See, even the functioning of the internet succombs to the paradigm of evolution - for that's how we view it's workings.
HOWEVER, I think that this solution will just result in people rushing over to the headline queue and disregarding the front page because it will inevitably always have older news.
I can see why you might think that, but I really don't agree. If the headline queue page is limited to a moderation score only (ie don't allow a discussion to develop there), I don't think it would happen like you say.
The drawback to this scheme is that the viewers who see the articles raw an uncut have the burden of rating up low articles
It seems to me there are more than enough viewer at Slashdot that the high-quality stuff would come to the top very quickly. But, I like your idea of articles degrading over time. It's always seemed a shame to me that articles go through slashdot like on a conveyor belt - the good and the bad all go at the same rate. It might be nice if all articles degraded, but that some particular viewer action delayed or counterracted the degredation. Like posting, for instance. Everytime someone posts to a story, is slows its degredation. Or, maybe better, every moderation point spent on a post for an article, that slows its degredation.
Would it be possible for there to me multiple copies of slashdot, each mirroring the _exact_ same content, but using different moderation strategies, so that we could determine by experiment what we liked best?
"The twentieth century featured any number of -isms. They were fatally based on the delusion that philosophy trumps engineering. It doesn't."
And yet, isn't he trying to formulate a philosophy to frame the new technologies?
Philosophy and technology play into each other - always have, and always will, but philosophy is the senior partner. The scientific method is a product of philosophy, not science. Bruce's suggestion that we need many many social and technological and temporary paradigms rather than a centralized paradigm, is a philosophical idea - and not a new one.
Your right that the net is only a quantitative improvement, or change, but, large quantitative changes have a way of making new, qualitatively different realities apparent.
Nano-tech is just an extreme quantitative change in the size of our machines. But it will create enormous qualitative changes.
Exceeding 10% the speed of light makes apparent the incompleteness of Newtonian formulations.
Allowing information to flow more freely than ever - orders of magnitude more freely - will bring to light some new and startling realities. I guarantee.
Actually, I used an old telegraph machine and I punched out the morse code directly to Slashdot's servers. Betcha didn't know Slashdot supported direct telegraph connection.
Well, it just turned midnight 10 minutes ago, and the power went out. I'm using NT, and the BSOD took over just as my clock was ringing! I tried to reboot, but that failed too. I have no idea why. I'm writing this by candlelight.
My phone isn't working either - no dial tone. Just dead. I guess all the Y2K stuff wasn't just hype. Oh well, guess I'll hop over to my brokerage account and sell some stock.
This is the best thread
To come around recently;
Stars fade in bright light.
That does seem very cool. I looked at Web Macro very briefly today and the only concern I had was that it depended on introspection for everything, and I wondered how fast it would be. I guess the only way I'll know is to try it out....
I'd agree JSP isn't good, but it's better than writing Java classes with a million lines like:
String author = programProperties.get("author");
StringBuffer output = new StringBuffer();
output.append("<HTML>");
output.append("<HEAD><TITLE>"+author+"'s Web Page</TITLE>");
.....
Ideally, I'd love to be able to do the output with Perl, and Java for all the backend database and business logic, but how would you communicate effectively between the Perl and Java? I don't want to use only primitive data types with Java....
Maybe you know a way to do this, and I'd love for you to tell me.....
Abortion issues: Personally against, but it's not the government's job to legislate it. Pro-choice.
Affirmative Action: Support minimalist programs out of necessity. I believe they are necessary, though, in general, a poor solution. I wish I could think of a better one....
Campaign finance: Strongly support reform. Make getting on ballots easier, publicly funded campaigns. No private contributions.
Crime: Legalize drugs, more emphasis on education, prevention, community involvement, less emphasis on putting everyone away.
Defense Spending: I would be more inclined to increase spending than decrease, but most likely it would not change much. I oppose most interventionist policies. I would put Israel on warning that they have 50 years to solve their problems, and after that the US would no longer give any support, and that would be the end of US military involvement in the Middle East. I favor treating other nations with respect and as equal partners rather than squeezing as much out of them as we can just because we can. Note: I'm fully aware that if elected I'm only president for at most 8 years, so I can't really put Israel on a realistic 50 year plan, but that seems to me to be the most fair an equable way of disentangling ourselves from that mess.
Drug Policy: Legalize it. Less money spent, less victim-less criminals taking up jail space, fewer police officers killed, fewer crimes against our rights (right now police can invade your home and keep it, and you'd never get it back, even if you were wholly innocent). Take a more realistic attitude about the whole thing. Probably start just by legalizing marijuana.
Homosexual Issues: Support Homosexual marriages, but I'm not sure what the government has to do with it. Why do we have to pass laws supporting people rights? It's supposed to be the other way around. Start cracking down on those who are taking away rights.
Education: Support vouchers. For any and all educational activities a parent wants to send their child to - public school, private school, religious school, trade school, apprenticeship.
Environment: Support protecting the environment in general.
Evolution: This is an issue??? Please. See my education stance above.
Foreign Policy: non-interventionist - at least militarily. Less monetary aid, but more trading freedom, no protectionist tariffs.
Gun Control: Support right to bear arms, just don't bring them to my house.
Health Care: Vouchers for health care just like education. Everyone gets some minimum amount to spend as they like on the insurance policy of their choice, sort of like how most employers work. But the government provides it to everyone, for life.
Moral Issues: Not the government's concern.
Social Security: Good idea, extremely dumb implementation. Support individual forced retirement savings. Not guaranteed pension. Not a "pay-as-you-go" plan. Your money is your money. The tricky thing is bridging from the present system to this new system. Probably requires using the "surpluss" (that really isn't) and some extra monies, but in the long run, it's worth it. Personally, I'm dreading paying for the baby boomers starting 15 years from now....
Tax Policy: Flat tax with a very large standard deduction (like $30,000 or something). The government needs to collect money to do it's work. It's work is stuff we've already talked about, not encouraging people to buy houses, or have children, or get education... So, remove all deductions, and just tax personal income, nothing else. Remove all corporate taxes (since my government isn't providing corporations with any special services, they shouldn't have to pay), capitol gains, inheritance, tolls, etc. The most efficient means of collecting taxes is determining how much you need and have the people send it in as they earn it.
Trade: Absolutely 100% free trade. Starting with us.