I got the impression from this article that the author (and, I am sad to say, along with most non-Linux users I know), see the open source movement as something that is some kind of splinter group, socialist--or at the very least anti-capitalist--experiment. If the author doesn't honestly think this way, then I can only rationalize such a slanted article by concluding he is pushing some kind of anti-Linux agenda.
As is the case with any group that has no appointed leadership handling PR, Linux users as a group have an image problem. I think we've been doing pretty well combatting this recently by engaging capitalism (and anyone that understands open source knows that it promotes competition without abolishing the idea of profiting on one's work) in a way that Joe Public can understand. IBM's alliance with Linux, for instance, is a great boon because it adds a bit of polished corporate panache. Whenever I speak to anyone about open source, I'm always careful to explain how the current system revolving around a single company (MS) that is constantly engaging in borderline anti-competitive practices is harmful. I'm always careful to make sure I clarify that this is not Microsoft's fault, though, and I think this is important because it's where the fiery Linux promoter often loses the public's ear.
Most times, ardent Linux users do little but spew venom MS's way. Besides causing the listening party to shut off, this is not quite fair because MS engages software simply as a business, and as such their first responsibility is to its employees, investors, and the largest base of customers they can satisfy--where these goals conflict with elegant software, the software suffers. This is the way the system is set up, and they're playing the game according to those rules.
I always find that once I explain that I don't hate MS, and that I'm a reasonable person, people are much more willing to listen to how open source is the next step in terms of evolving the software industry in a very capitalistic way that ultimately will benefit the end user.
People don't think about the overall business model that MS would have us follow: I write a piece of code that gets high market penetration, and because there are standards and interoperability issues, I never have to work again. I essentially have a monopoly over that platform, and I can effectively set prices within reason and live off the revenue stream continuously generated by that one single effort. This is great for the company who doesn't have to do anything beyond that initial product, but it sucks for customers, paying more and more money into a system for no new product (every time they buy a new machine, they need to buy the OS with it). Once I explain to people that open source is about paying people for the value they can provide on a continuing basis, as opposed to paying forever for a one-shot deal, people are much more amenable to the idea of open source and they begin to understand the ideas behind it.
I understand you don't want to drink instant. But that's probably because you're drinking it wrong!
Try the method I learned from watching my freshman year roommate in college every morning:
Wake up. (Don't skip this step.)
Take one heaping teaspoon of the instant coffee of your choice by mouth. Chew if necessary.
Make face.
Take one level teaspoon of granulated sugar by mouth. Chew if necessary.
Make face.
Scramble over to mini-fridge, usually stubbing toe on alarm clock furiously hurled against wall just prior to step one.
Make face.
Curse loudly.
Remove a one cup carton of heavy whipping cream from mini-fridge, open, and gulp.
Make face.
That's all there is to it. You can refine this further by considering the finer points of: (a) instant coffees that include "flavor crystals" and (b) substituting light whipping cream or whole milk in place of the heavy whipping cream.
You may also wish to employ other time- and energy-saving techniques I learned from my first year college roommate, such as:
Don't bother washing clothes. Instead, just run them through a dryer cycle. Remember: warm equals clean.
I haven't studied this issue in depth, but I have heard the semi-reasonable explanation that your bodily organs filter through the water component of coffee much more quickly than they can filter the caffeine. Result: You are indeed hydrated initially from a cup of coffee, but you quickly purge the excess water and then the caffeine goes to work on you over the next several hours, pulling yet more hydration from your system.
This seems to explain why I have one or two cups of coffee in the morning, and then I'm running to the john every 20 minutes until early afternoon.
...Darl is claiming someone took SCO IP, stuck it in Linux code, and distributed it as GPL...
Sounds like that someone should be held legally responsible for their actions, then. That person is the one that violated the copyright, and that person should be the one to compensate SCO. The idea that everyone who benefits from that code should pay, though, is a bit like trying to hold/. responsible for the stupid stuff I say on here. For instance, I post a link to a child porn website up here, I would get run up the river, not/.... which is exactly as it should be.
I remember when they were considering adding V-chips to TVs a while back. Everyone was either complaining that they hadn't already done it, or that they didn't need a V-chip in their household so why should they have to pay for it? But this sort of thing happens all the time. The first Nintendo gaming systems had an internal hookup that could send data back and forth to Nintendo USA Corp (if you don't believe me, read Game Over by David Sheff).
I'm for choice. I think they ought to make the phone/PDAs, camera-phones, PDA/camera-phones, as well as plain jane phones that only have a phone book. Well, as many variants as the market will support, of course.
One thing I found a bit ironic is that, in the blurb, the author complains that all he wants is a plain phone with an address book. Well, my phone doesn't have an address book--only a phone book. The point: even this guy wants some PDA functionality added to his cell. Kinda weakened his point if you ask me.
One of the things that I never understood about email clients was why they insisted on trying to store all of the contact information about a person.
I think an address book in a cell phone makes a lot of sense. If you're heading over to a friend's place, you don't have to call him on the way to find out where he lives if you've got it on your cell. Or, maybe you know how to get there, but you can't be bothered to remember the full address. What if someone else wants to get there? You can whip out your trusty cell and relay the correct address. More useful yet would be if you could send this data to another person's cell while talking to them...if not addresses, at least phone numbers. I can't tell you the number of times I'm talking to someone and they ask for another person's phone number, I have to browse my phone book and say the numbers (usually several times because of a spotty connection). It'd be nice to pull up that entry, hit a button or two and simply send it off.
Yes, if you own TiVo and you don't like the idea of them collecting information about you, even anonymously, give them a call and let them know and they'll stop. No big deal. Of course,/. being a geek haven, I'm sure more than one person has hooked TiVo up to their home LAN and they monitor the network traffic to TiVo, so you can both see what they're already sending and what they send after you make the call.
I personally don't have a problem with this because of the manner in which they collect the information and what they're likely to do with that information. I guess if you're super-paranoid, you could reason that Scott Richter might buy out TiVo and start using all of the non-anon'd data (if they even keep it, which is probably spelled out in their privacy policy, which I'm too lazy to read). But, just for comparison...
Did you know that every time you use your credit card, the credit card company tracks your shopping habits? This wouldn't be so bad, but then they boast about the degree to which they're collecting information about you by sending out an itemized list of the things you bought every month, right to your door! The nerve!
If only these companies would take the hint from TiVo and let us simply place a call, and they'd stop registering that sort of data. That would be great, wouldn't it?
Sounds like an interesting experiment. If I'd known you were actually going to take me up on this, I'd have put a little more thought into making a really fair comparison. In any case, not to drag things out, Win 2k and mandrake seem close enough.
Who is your wife, anyway? My gf would never go through this.:-)
The car is different, that's me spending my own money. With space, that's government, i.e. someone else, spending my money. Personally, I think Bush is right with the focus on R&D and expanding the space program, but sending humans is a biiiiig mistake. Too costly, too little return. We should continue expanding our machines into space programs. That would actually amount to something.
Are you sure? Because throughout history some fairly famous people with pretty large followings went just this route--Stalin, Hitler, Hussein...of course, things didn't work out for them because the issues were a bit different. But still, you have to admit, things might have gone the other way.
Why is "making it" important anyway? It's useable on the desktop for geeks already.
I suspect that not everyone will yield to the idea of a more usable linux. And I sympathize. The careful concentration of effort to the right details, the delicate crafting of one's history with this OS, the unhurried placement of script after script, cronjob after cronjob to make one's own linux box a stable, self-sustaining environment--these elaborate attentions elevate computer usage to a kind of ceremony, a tribute to order and distinction. You can claim a rarefied expertise and it's not easy to see all that hard work go on the dust heap. And a certain satisfaction is lost when a ritual is replaced with indiscriminate button-clicking, when a perilous enterprise gives way to a sure thing. Still, even amongst geeks, how often do we find ourselves with the leisure to savor the ceremonious or disaster narrowly averted?
Beyond convenience, though, there's a deeper appeal to the simpler methods. The complications of traditional linux often have to do with establishing our mastery over the details. The simpler vision I have for the future of linux still aims to please the geeks, but it's more attentive to the inherent strengths of the operating system. Give it a little push in the right direction and linux would assemble itself into a self-sustaining, self-maintaining environment. To me, this is more remarkable than the fact that a hacker can make it work with much labor. Neither the geeks nor the average users are deprived when we work with the platform as much as we do on it. Our potential to labor is still there, but on new, creative work building an architecture over this accessible power. This is similar to the early Java vs. C++ debates. Yes, I can build an enterprise-wide, distributed application in C++. And I can also do it in assembly, typing only with pencils taped to my elbows. It's far more interesting, though, to create the functional pieces quickly and work on solutions that make the software more effective.
I think it's important for linux to "make it" to the average desktop because until it does, the real dollars and development effort will not go into it to see it reach its full potential. If you think linux has already reached its full potential, you are sadly (and grossly) underestimating this OS.
You ask why we should want to make linux like Windows? Well, we shouldn't, not completely anyway. But what's wrong with picking out the few aspects of Windows that people (even geeks) like about Windows and building those in, like usability? I'm always hearing from people like you about how great, how flexible, how powerful linux is. Well, if it's so flexible, so powerful, why can it not seem to accomodate the average user? Is this such a dramatic requirement that even the great linux is not up to the task? What is it about Joe Average's demands that Windows has little trouble trouncing linux, a far superior bit of software in most other respects?
I can hear you saying it now: but Windows doesn't accomodate those users either! Yea, and so what? According to you, linux provides a better, more flexible foundation as an operating system in every respect than Windows, right? So, how come it's falling flat on its face compared to Windows when it's already more-than-evenly-matched against its competitor? (And don't say, it IS more usable in this way and that, blah blah blah. Usability is measured in hard numbers by how many home users are actually running it as far as I'm concerned.) One thing I find with Windows is that operating system clumsiness often requires that applications be confusing or simply cause them to fail in significant ways. I agree that linux is indeed more elegant in this respect, and it does indeed provide a better platform for usability and extension. However, this platform has been nowhere near exploited. I'm simply calling for this aspect of linux's potential to be realized alongside th
The problem with using scenarios like this is that you can craft anything you want to make your point.
The problem? That's precisely the point of using scenarios like this. I, the author, can craft anything I want to make a point. You, the reader, however, are (or should be) restrained to the rules I set up in the world of analogy. Allow me to present the definition of the word: Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar. See, I know that linux and peppers are dissimilar in many ways. However, pointing out those dissimilarities as you have done does nothing to (1) contradict my point or (2) advance the discussion.
I gave you the scenario. You were supposed to impute from that scenario that the "really good" produce mart is like linux. The normal grocery store, with only one representative pepper from each main category existing on the continuum from fruitiness to hotness, is like Windows. Enough choice for most purposes, not much confusion. The point is, with more choice comes responsibility...the one providing the choices has to do something to make this vast array of possibilities navigable. Indeed, the wonderful produce mart my analogy is based upon actually exists in my neighborhood, and they have a little description of each pepper and appropriate uses hanging underneath each pepper bin.
I'm not trying to start a flame war here, so let me explain why I'm taking great pains to reply to this part of your post. This example I'm pointing out, like much of the rest of your post, is not arguing the issue but rather arguing the semantics I chose to employ in my post. This is a common derailment tactic, which I really only find acceptable if it's done to howlingly funny ends.
If you want to deal with real, hard facts, then let's not go off an a tangent. In your example with your wife, for instance, you've again shown that you missed my point. Give your wife two computers with freshly formatted hard drives, a linux CD and a Windows CD, and see how many questions she has to ask and how much doc she has to read before she gets each one running with comparable functionality. My projection: she will indeed have a half dozen or so questions with Windows before it goes on. Linux, on the other hand, will remain in CD form if you don't coach her with questions she ought to be asking. I've not heard of Knoppix, but maybe that one is particularly easy to install. Give her any one of the "main" distros though: mandrake, debian, RedHat, or SuSe (I left one or two out probably, but you get the point).
So, since there isn't a manual to crack open, it is a requirement to be able to figure out how to use the software productively quickly without cracking open the non-existant manual.:)
You're being cute here, but this requirement of which you speak is precisely one of the reasons that many people abandon linux early on. They do not possess this ethereal quality of being able to puzzle out this sort of thing given no crossover knowledge from other, more well-documented applications they've installed in the past.
Your experience with the gentleman in the GNUcash chat room is far from the norm. (We've gone from discussing semantics to employing one-off anecdotes...is this a step forward?) I think you'll find that lack of documentation and navigation of the vast choices are indeed pretty common user complaints and that the linux community willing to provide help is overloaded for the most part. I think that you'll find your isolated experience of one person helping you for hours on end a pretty rare occurrence for most.
All of the friends I spoke with on this matter have tried and abandoned linux within the last year, most of them within the last six months even. So these problems do indeed still exist. And keep in mind when I say linux, I'm not just talking about the OS kernel and shell, I mean the whole kit'n'kaboodle that normall
I'm having a bit of a tough time with whatever it is you mean by "forging it into something it is not is ultimately self-defeating". I'm not talking about making it into something it's not. I'm talking about letting people take advantage of what it already is.
I'm of the opinion that a good product, no matter what it is, suggests its own proper use. This doesn't mean that things can't occasionally be good multitaskers with a bit of creative thinking and application, but it does mean the following: all products are designed to serve some purpose. If that is truly so, and the design of such a thing revolved around facilitating some end, then inherent in the design should be accessibility towards that end. It's like the titanium can opener, it opens cans and it's indestructible. It's a can opener welded into a titanium case. The case guarantees its indestructibility, but it also makes it impossible to open cans with it. It's poor accessibility to the main feature. This is linux, as opposed to Windows' tin foil can opener that can only open cans when reinforced and used delicately. If the linux can opener was made out of titanium directly, it would reach its full potential of being indestructible and still be able to open cans.
I've talked to several non-linux users about why they don't use it, and I'm not talking about the die-hard MS supporters. I'm talking about people that have tried it at one time or another, ran it for a while, and just gave up on it.
Why did they give up instead of switching over to it as their primary desktop? Answers ranged over several salient (if not because they're real, at least because they're perceived) problems.
Die-hard linux people see variety as a good thing. That's true, and it's not true. Variety always has to be put in context, especially if there's a lot of it. Here's an example that even die-hard linux people can understand (assuming you're not chefs too). Let's say I'm making salsa and I send you to the store to pick up some heat. You don't know the first thing about peppers, and it just so happens I live next to a produce mart the likes of which you've never seen before. To choose from are: jalapenos, habaneros, anaheim, chipotle, ancho, pablano, thai, serrano, scotch bonnet, etc. What are you likely to do? That's right--grab the jalapenos, cuz that's what you've heard of before, even though they're probably not the best solution. Some die-hard linux people would argue, hey, if your goal is to help your buddy out, you'll head over to your favorite bookstore and read up, and then head back to the produce mart armed with this newfound knowledge. To these people I say, you are truly a die-hard fan of linux if you didn't get this point.
This is the pressure novices feel at every turn with linux, not just from what OS to install, but what is the install process? (Depends on the distro you've chosen.) How do I install an application? (Ibid.) Which application do I install if I want, say, an email client? (Good luck wading through all of the available options.) Why is it that everytime I head over to my buddy's house, he always knows about all this crap that I've never heard of, and he's got this smokin' setup that I wouldn't have the first clue how to begin assembling? How does one even keep up with all the choice that's available?
All frustrations that don't happen with Windows. You only rarely head over to a buddy's and see him running Mozilla instead of IE and think, hmm, I'd like that and didn't know about it. 99% of the time, you're both running the same media player, picture editor, etc, and if you're not, there's only a small handful of well-known choices to choose from.
The next barrier to installing/using linux on a long-term basis with these folks is what I call the annoyance/showstopper problem. Eventually, usually sooner than later, these people run into something that's either really annoying (they can't get X to run at a desired resolution, for example), or a really serious problem that impedes their ability to move forward (they can't connect to the web). They also don't really know where to look for help, or even how to find out where they should start. I myself ran into a problem years ago with RedHat, I simply wanted to upgrade the asteroids game, but the web of library dependencies that had to also be updated made it hardly worthwhile. Eventually, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work--I finally got to the end of a long dependency chain and discovered that, no matter what I did to upgrade this particular library, it wouldn't go in because it was replacing a basic graphics library that is used by virtual terminals. Because it was always in use, it couldn't be replaced, even in single-user mode. So I know this frustration well...even I was asking, how great can this OS be if a simple game can't easily be upgraded, and then it turns out when you finally commit yourself to an afternoon of hunting, it simply can't be upgraded at all? The bigger issue here for most users is, why should I have to know about library dependencies to upgrade a game, why are virtual terminals relevant to the problem I'm having, and what is a virtual terminal anyway? (The point is, whatever it is, it's totally unrelated to what I was trying to do, and most people find t
My buddy tells me he thinks the best user interface company is...Fischer-Price. Think about it--they literally make UIs that even a two-year old can figure out.
I did a bit of HCI (Human-Computer Interface) studying in college, and one approach always appealed to me. It's the tiered approach. Here's how it works.
You're designing the UI for a widget. Find out how the simplest users are going to use the thing. Those functions get special buttons, the easiest navigation, big and prominent. Then you figure out how intermediate users are going to use the product. Those functions are given one-touch buttons and placed off to the side in the hunt'n'peck section (include your own "huntin' pecker" joke here).
Then there's the geeks. These features you can bury deep in menus that require special codes to get to them ("press slash, dot, enter the feature code, and you'll be transported to a menu..."). This always seems to make people happy. Look at the TiVo remote. Like the guy in the article said, he uses pause the most. The biggest button on TiVo? Pause. Big, yellow, right in the center.
Then there's products where you don't have any single group of "simplest" users. Some of these people are buying it to do X, and some Y. In that case, you ask them up front what type of user they are and...whatever functions they're going to use the most get the most prominent places. This strategy is not always possible, but I've yet to see it fail where it has been applicable.
No, sir! Not even if there's a remote possibility that someone might interpret some aspect of that joke as an oblique, sideways reference that denigrates, or even has a little fun at the expense of, someone else's race, creed, ethnicity, religious beliefs, gender, hair color, or toenail length. Funny doesn't matter. What matters is that we deal with these social problems by stamping out any joke or sarcasm that might throw some light onto that corner of society.
Sort of the political equivalent of: if a tree falls in the forest and no one's there, nothing happened. Likewise, I feel that pulling Ghettopoly off the shelves was a huge stride forward in eradicating poorness. Can't you see that?
Oops, I have to go now, my heart just bled out and I'm starting to feel a little light-headed.
sev
Your honor, it was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek--sure, it was my tongue in someone else's cheek...
I'm a die-hard Java guy, but I couldn't help but cede the point Hejlsberg made about reflection. Does it bother anyone else that Java is incapable of giving you the type parameter via reflection? It bothers me...
I admit, it's a small thing, but reflection amounts to meta-programming, and that can get really messy if you start allowing inelegancies to creep in. Is this an unsupported statement that I'm making off-the-cuff, with little or no experience to back it? Well sure, but it does seem right, doesn't it?:-)
sev
My ex-gf was flakier than a French pastry crust perched on De Gaulle's shoulder.
I'm afraid you don't understand generics. They're don't enable you to expand the types of data stored in a collection--collections already take Objects, so you can already store whatever mixture of types you want in them. That, in fact, is the problem--what if you want to ensure that your ArrayList *only* has Foos in it?
Enter generics. With generics, you can write a class that deals only with a specific type. You can create a collection, for example, that only stores Numbers. But if you try to put other non-Number types into that collection, it will generate compile-time errors. Integer, Float, etc, will be fine though. Or, you could create a collection that stores Objects, and your genericized collection behaves just like the pre-generics collection did.
Get it?
Generics are yet more powerful than that, though. Not only does it give the collections API this power, but it gives you the developer the power to write your own genericized classes as well. If you want to write a PriceList object and use that code for two different price lists, say one that is restricted to itemizing car parts and another that is restricted to itemizing computer parts, you'd have to extend that object for each case (or do something similar). With generics, however, you just write PriceList<T>, and when you're writing the auto inventory system you instantiate it:
PriceList<CarPart> pl = new PriceList<CarPart>();
and when you write the computer inventory system you write:
PriceList<ComputerPart> pl = new PriceList<ComputerPart>();
Doesn't saying "unlimited" when it's actually not smack of false advertising?
I could see the company's argument if, like, General Electric signed up and decided to use a single account for all their global operations (shut up, geeks--of which I am one--I know this doesn't make any sense), but it seems that there's a significant proportion (I consider it significant if the business had to develop a process for discouraging the accounts that exceed the "unlimit") of people hitting this arbitrary and secretly-determined-and-monitored cap.
I see advertisements all the time that say You too can be a millionaire using this program* (footnote: provided you started with $1M plus $1 more than the fees associated with this purchasing this program), Lose 10 pounds per day!* (footnote: with diet, exercise, liposuction, surgical removal of excess skin, and successful completion of Boston Marathon), and Learn to read 100 pages per minute!* (footnote: really big print, really tiny pages).
So I don't buy this marketing argument that they'd take a huge hit in subscriptions. I propose they say the following:
...with
virtually unlimited downloads!
or how about:
...unlimited* downloads!
*30GB per month/3GB per day limit
Saying it's unlimited when it simply isn't, and they have a business process they apply to customers on a regular basis proving this is so, is simply unnecessary and at the very least arguably wrong (and I think illegal, no?), so why do it?
sev
As usual, I had to step in and give the right answer on this topic, for once and for all.
--me
Riiiiiiight. I wondered what SPEWS meant. Oh, google, how I do love thee!
You know, my virgin post was just one before the one you replied to, so you can see how I'm still a bit sensitive (super-newbie around these parts). I decided to/. my/. cherry and start posting because people are durn smart around here. I'm really impressed with the calibur of the discussion that goes on.
We should, instead of asking people to decode a captcha, ask them instead to find the next prime or something. The Riemann Hypothesis would be solved in no time!:-)
My Russell quote is not elitist and arrogant. Keep it in context...I was employing it to make the point that the research-in-question was in fact tied to a practical application--room temperature superconducting, as the article says in several places. Despite this, AC's post said: "These guys keep talking about superconductors but the fact remains that this is fundamental research with no real applications now or even in the near future."
This is an unfair statement to make, I feel, if he's just going to throw it out there with no support (as he did). I'm a reasonable man, you can say what you want, but if I catch you glibly contributing to some vague, general notion with which I disagree (in this case: "research science bad"), I'm going to challenge it. I was employing that quote in particular as more of an attack on the attitude that the post generally conveys...I wasn't trying to say that we should fund whatever research, no matter how impractical and abstract.
I do, however, agree with you and Feynman both that tax monies should be spent responsibly. If you reconsider my point and the context of that quote I listed, I think you'll see that I'm right--this research is a massive breakthrough and is likely to amount to something in the future. (Did I miss something, or is that why they were reporting on it in the first place?)
By the way, do people really add other people to foe-lists over something like this?:-)
Ooh...this sort of comment makes me mad. There's no possible way anyone can know what will come out of any fundamental research tomorrow, a year from now, or ten years from now. Many, many conveniences of modern day life sprang forth from researches into the most arcane of topics.
It especially gets me in this particular case, because we're talking about research that will likely bear as much fruit as the early 1900's physics research that later served as the foundation for the modern transistor.
I shall not be as vainglorious as to assume I can say it better than it's already been said, so let's see what a few of the titans had to say on this...
[T]he answer appears to us before the question.... Practical application is found by not looking for it, and one can say that the whole progress of civilization rests on that principle.... [P]ractical questions are most often solved by means of existing theories.... It seldom happens that important mathematical researches are
directly undertaken in view of a given practical use: they are inspired by the desire which is the common motive of every scientific work, the desire to know and understand.
--Jacques Hadamard, The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field
I have never done anything "useful." No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least idfference to the amenity of the world.... Judged by all practical standards, the value of my mathematical life is nil.
--G. H. Hardy, Apology
Hardy is speaking of his contributions in general, of which the search for prime numbers was significant, one of the most abstruse and abstract areas of pure mathematics one could name at the time of the research. Even this, however, in a mere 70 years yielded important practical applications in public key encryption.
Bertrand Russell spent much of his time trying to find a definition of "number" in terms of pure logic, having found a flaw in Gottleb Frege's attempt to do the same. This was the purest of pure intellection and Russell himself would have hooted with laughter if you'd asked him about practical applications at the time. He even found himself wondering: "It seemed unworthy of a grown man to spend his time on such trivialities..."
In fact, Russell's work eventually brought forth Principia Mathematica, a key development in the modern study of the foundations of mathematics. Among the fruits of that study have been, so far, nothing less than victory in World War II (at least, victory at lower cost than would otherwise have been possible) and machines like the one on which I type this.
I just previewed this post and read it, and I realized I've used words like "vainglorious" and "intellection". I've clearly been watching too much Dennis Miller.
Now we're really going off-topic from the main thread.:-)
...but if you could only hire Americans for these jobs, you would have to pay them a LOT more than the current wages.
Only those businesses that are doubly violating the law would have to raise wages to the legal minimum (1: hiring illegals, 2: paying less than min wage). Those that are already paying minimum wage would simply find themselves having to draw from the American labor pool instead of the illegal labor pool, reducing American unemployment. Furthermore, these jobs would be no different from any other job held by those on H1B visas--the employer would have to show that, after a reasonable search, no citizen or PR could be found, and at that point it would go to those immigrants coming in on a guest worker program or immigrant visas.
That's right--I said it. I'm not against immigration. I'm for it, 100%. I think we should make the process for legal immigration into the US easier--far easier--than it currently is, and a guest worker program is the right start. We must stamp out illegal immigration though, for several reasons. It encourages US businesses to break the law, and it's a lot easier continue cheating in other areas (sometimes even necessary to cover tracks) once they've started down that path. It allows security holes for terrorists, and probably as much if not more relevant, criminals to sneak in. It depresses wages for these jobs to levels so low, no American *could* take the job even if they wanted to (who's going to spend more money maintaining a job than that job pays, or work for less than they get on welfare?). The current policy allows businesses to essentially utilize a workforce that can honestly only be categorized somewhere between chattle slavery and indentured servitude. It's just plain inhumane.
Besides locking down the border, starting a guest worker program, and making other legal means of immigration easier, I'd also support a program that encourages American welfare recipients to take these jobs (taking into consideration things like kids at home, medical conditions, etc).
I simply can't understand and I don't accept the argument that these illegal immigrants are somehow more humble than arrogant Americans, and that's why they're willing to work for exploitative wages. They're not doing it because they're humble or have somehow seized the moral high ground from their American counterparts--they're doing it because we're allowing an unofficial system of legalized slavery to exploit them.
As far as where the money comes from...the most recent impartial study I know about on this topic says that illegals pull $20B (yes, "B") more out of our economy than they contribute when the total cost is added up (emergency room visits, increased crime, lack of coverage, keeping drug shipping routes open, etc). The fact is, those services might cost the American consumer slightly more up front once we fix things, but far less in terms of taxes to clean up all the fallout. And, even if it did cost the consumer more, so what? What's the alternative? Turn a blind eye to this form of slavery? In my mind this is sort of like saying Lincoln was wrong to outlaw slavery because it raised the price of cotton. (A bit sensationalistic, but it makes the point.)
Slashdot Mirror
I got the impression from this article that the author (and, I am sad to say, along with most non-Linux users I know), see the open source movement as something that is some kind of splinter group, socialist--or at the very least anti-capitalist--experiment. If the author doesn't honestly think this way, then I can only rationalize such a slanted article by concluding he is pushing some kind of anti-Linux agenda.
As is the case with any group that has no appointed leadership handling PR, Linux users as a group have an image problem. I think we've been doing pretty well combatting this recently by engaging capitalism (and anyone that understands open source knows that it promotes competition without abolishing the idea of profiting on one's work) in a way that Joe Public can understand. IBM's alliance with Linux, for instance, is a great boon because it adds a bit of polished corporate panache. Whenever I speak to anyone about open source, I'm always careful to explain how the current system revolving around a single company (MS) that is constantly engaging in borderline anti-competitive practices is harmful. I'm always careful to make sure I clarify that this is not Microsoft's fault, though, and I think this is important because it's where the fiery Linux promoter often loses the public's ear.
Most times, ardent Linux users do little but spew venom MS's way. Besides causing the listening party to shut off, this is not quite fair because MS engages software simply as a business, and as such their first responsibility is to its employees, investors, and the largest base of customers they can satisfy--where these goals conflict with elegant software, the software suffers. This is the way the system is set up, and they're playing the game according to those rules.
I always find that once I explain that I don't hate MS, and that I'm a reasonable person, people are much more willing to listen to how open source is the next step in terms of evolving the software industry in a very capitalistic way that ultimately will benefit the end user.
People don't think about the overall business model that MS would have us follow: I write a piece of code that gets high market penetration, and because there are standards and interoperability issues, I never have to work again. I essentially have a monopoly over that platform, and I can effectively set prices within reason and live off the revenue stream continuously generated by that one single effort. This is great for the company who doesn't have to do anything beyond that initial product, but it sucks for customers, paying more and more money into a system for no new product (every time they buy a new machine, they need to buy the OS with it). Once I explain to people that open source is about paying people for the value they can provide on a continuing basis, as opposed to paying forever for a one-shot deal, people are much more amenable to the idea of open source and they begin to understand the ideas behind it.
sev
I understand you don't want to drink instant. But that's probably because you're drinking it wrong!
Try the method I learned from watching my freshman year roommate in college every morning:
- Wake up. (Don't skip this step.)
- Take one heaping teaspoon of the instant coffee of your choice by mouth. Chew if necessary.
- Make face.
- Take one level teaspoon of granulated sugar by mouth. Chew if necessary.
- Make face.
- Scramble over to mini-fridge, usually stubbing toe on alarm clock furiously hurled against wall just prior to step one.
- Make face.
- Curse loudly.
- Remove a one cup carton of heavy whipping cream from mini-fridge, open, and gulp.
- Make face.
That's all there is to it. You can refine this further by considering the finer points of: (a) instant coffees that include "flavor crystals" and (b) substituting light whipping cream or whole milk in place of the heavy whipping cream.You may also wish to employ other time- and energy-saving techniques I learned from my first year college roommate, such as:
Bottoms up!
sev
I haven't studied this issue in depth, but I have heard the semi-reasonable explanation that your bodily organs filter through the water component of coffee much more quickly than they can filter the caffeine. Result: You are indeed hydrated initially from a cup of coffee, but you quickly purge the excess water and then the caffeine goes to work on you over the next several hours, pulling yet more hydration from your system.
This seems to explain why I have one or two cups of coffee in the morning, and then I'm running to the john every 20 minutes until early afternoon.
sev
sev
I remember when they were considering adding V-chips to TVs a while back. Everyone was either complaining that they hadn't already done it, or that they didn't need a V-chip in their household so why should they have to pay for it? But this sort of thing happens all the time. The first Nintendo gaming systems had an internal hookup that could send data back and forth to Nintendo USA Corp (if you don't believe me, read Game Over by David Sheff).
I'm for choice. I think they ought to make the phone/PDAs, camera-phones, PDA/camera-phones, as well as plain jane phones that only have a phone book. Well, as many variants as the market will support, of course.
One thing I found a bit ironic is that, in the blurb, the author complains that all he wants is a plain phone with an address book. Well, my phone doesn't have an address book--only a phone book. The point: even this guy wants some PDA functionality added to his cell. Kinda weakened his point if you ask me.
sev
sev
TiVo's online FAQ explaining how to get them to stop collecting anonymous information from your TiVo.
TiVo's complete privacy policy
Yes, if you own TiVo and you don't like the idea of them collecting information about you, even anonymously, give them a call and let them know and they'll stop. No big deal. Of course, /. being a geek haven, I'm sure more than one person has hooked TiVo up to their home LAN and they monitor the network traffic to TiVo, so you can both see what they're already sending and what they send after you make the call.
I personally don't have a problem with this because of the manner in which they collect the information and what they're likely to do with that information. I guess if you're super-paranoid, you could reason that Scott Richter might buy out TiVo and start using all of the non-anon'd data (if they even keep it, which is probably spelled out in their privacy policy, which I'm too lazy to read). But, just for comparison...
Did you know that every time you use your credit card, the credit card company tracks your shopping habits? This wouldn't be so bad, but then they boast about the degree to which they're collecting information about you by sending out an itemized list of the things you bought every month, right to your door! The nerve!
If only these companies would take the hint from TiVo and let us simply place a call, and they'd stop registering that sort of data. That would be great, wouldn't it?
sev
Sounds like an interesting experiment. If I'd known you were actually going to take me up on this, I'd have put a little more thought into making a really fair comparison. In any case, not to drag things out, Win 2k and mandrake seem close enough.
Who is your wife, anyway? My gf would never go through this. :-)
sev
How the HELL are we all supposed to know that IANAHM stands for "I am not a hiring manager"????
Oh.
Never mind...
sev
The car is different, that's me spending my own money. With space, that's government, i.e. someone else, spending my money. Personally, I think Bush is right with the focus on R&D and expanding the space program, but sending humans is a biiiiig mistake. Too costly, too little return. We should continue expanding our machines into space programs. That would actually amount to something.
sev
Are you sure? Because throughout history some fairly famous people with pretty large followings went just this route--Stalin, Hitler, Hussein...of course, things didn't work out for them because the issues were a bit different. But still, you have to admit, things might have gone the other way.
:o}
sev
I suspect that not everyone will yield to the idea of a more usable linux. And I sympathize. The careful concentration of effort to the right details, the delicate crafting of one's history with this OS, the unhurried placement of script after script, cronjob after cronjob to make one's own linux box a stable, self-sustaining environment--these elaborate attentions elevate computer usage to a kind of ceremony, a tribute to order and distinction. You can claim a rarefied expertise and it's not easy to see all that hard work go on the dust heap. And a certain satisfaction is lost when a ritual is replaced with indiscriminate button-clicking, when a perilous enterprise gives way to a sure thing. Still, even amongst geeks, how often do we find ourselves with the leisure to savor the ceremonious or disaster narrowly averted?
Beyond convenience, though, there's a deeper appeal to the simpler methods. The complications of traditional linux often have to do with establishing our mastery over the details. The simpler vision I have for the future of linux still aims to please the geeks, but it's more attentive to the inherent strengths of the operating system. Give it a little push in the right direction and linux would assemble itself into a self-sustaining, self-maintaining environment. To me, this is more remarkable than the fact that a hacker can make it work with much labor. Neither the geeks nor the average users are deprived when we work with the platform as much as we do on it. Our potential to labor is still there, but on new, creative work building an architecture over this accessible power. This is similar to the early Java vs. C++ debates. Yes, I can build an enterprise-wide, distributed application in C++. And I can also do it in assembly, typing only with pencils taped to my elbows. It's far more interesting, though, to create the functional pieces quickly and work on solutions that make the software more effective.
I think it's important for linux to "make it" to the average desktop because until it does, the real dollars and development effort will not go into it to see it reach its full potential. If you think linux has already reached its full potential, you are sadly (and grossly) underestimating this OS.
You ask why we should want to make linux like Windows? Well, we shouldn't, not completely anyway. But what's wrong with picking out the few aspects of Windows that people (even geeks) like about Windows and building those in, like usability? I'm always hearing from people like you about how great, how flexible, how powerful linux is. Well, if it's so flexible, so powerful, why can it not seem to accomodate the average user? Is this such a dramatic requirement that even the great linux is not up to the task? What is it about Joe Average's demands that Windows has little trouble trouncing linux, a far superior bit of software in most other respects?
I can hear you saying it now: but Windows doesn't accomodate those users either! Yea, and so what? According to you, linux provides a better, more flexible foundation as an operating system in every respect than Windows, right? So, how come it's falling flat on its face compared to Windows when it's already more-than-evenly-matched against its competitor? (And don't say, it IS more usable in this way and that, blah blah blah. Usability is measured in hard numbers by how many home users are actually running it as far as I'm concerned.) One thing I find with Windows is that operating system clumsiness often requires that applications be confusing or simply cause them to fail in significant ways. I agree that linux is indeed more elegant in this respect, and it does indeed provide a better platform for usability and extension. However, this platform has been nowhere near exploited. I'm simply calling for this aspect of linux's potential to be realized alongside th
The problem? That's precisely the point of using scenarios like this. I, the author, can craft anything I want to make a point. You, the reader, however, are (or should be) restrained to the rules I set up in the world of analogy. Allow me to present the definition of the word: Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar. See, I know that linux and peppers are dissimilar in many ways. However, pointing out those dissimilarities as you have done does nothing to (1) contradict my point or (2) advance the discussion.
I gave you the scenario. You were supposed to impute from that scenario that the "really good" produce mart is like linux. The normal grocery store, with only one representative pepper from each main category existing on the continuum from fruitiness to hotness, is like Windows. Enough choice for most purposes, not much confusion. The point is, with more choice comes responsibility...the one providing the choices has to do something to make this vast array of possibilities navigable. Indeed, the wonderful produce mart my analogy is based upon actually exists in my neighborhood, and they have a little description of each pepper and appropriate uses hanging underneath each pepper bin.
I'm not trying to start a flame war here, so let me explain why I'm taking great pains to reply to this part of your post. This example I'm pointing out, like much of the rest of your post, is not arguing the issue but rather arguing the semantics I chose to employ in my post. This is a common derailment tactic, which I really only find acceptable if it's done to howlingly funny ends.
If you want to deal with real, hard facts, then let's not go off an a tangent. In your example with your wife, for instance, you've again shown that you missed my point. Give your wife two computers with freshly formatted hard drives, a linux CD and a Windows CD, and see how many questions she has to ask and how much doc she has to read before she gets each one running with comparable functionality. My projection: she will indeed have a half dozen or so questions with Windows before it goes on. Linux, on the other hand, will remain in CD form if you don't coach her with questions she ought to be asking. I've not heard of Knoppix, but maybe that one is particularly easy to install. Give her any one of the "main" distros though: mandrake, debian, RedHat, or SuSe (I left one or two out probably, but you get the point).
You're being cute here, but this requirement of which you speak is precisely one of the reasons that many people abandon linux early on. They do not possess this ethereal quality of being able to puzzle out this sort of thing given no crossover knowledge from other, more well-documented applications they've installed in the past.
Your experience with the gentleman in the GNUcash chat room is far from the norm. (We've gone from discussing semantics to employing one-off anecdotes...is this a step forward?) I think you'll find that lack of documentation and navigation of the vast choices are indeed pretty common user complaints and that the linux community willing to provide help is overloaded for the most part. I think that you'll find your isolated experience of one person helping you for hours on end a pretty rare occurrence for most.
All of the friends I spoke with on this matter have tried and abandoned linux within the last year, most of them within the last six months even. So these problems do indeed still exist. And keep in mind when I say linux, I'm not just talking about the OS kernel and shell, I mean the whole kit'n'kaboodle that normall
I'm having a bit of a tough time with whatever it is you mean by "forging it into something it is not is ultimately self-defeating". I'm not talking about making it into something it's not. I'm talking about letting people take advantage of what it already is.
I'm of the opinion that a good product, no matter what it is, suggests its own proper use. This doesn't mean that things can't occasionally be good multitaskers with a bit of creative thinking and application, but it does mean the following: all products are designed to serve some purpose. If that is truly so, and the design of such a thing revolved around facilitating some end, then inherent in the design should be accessibility towards that end. It's like the titanium can opener, it opens cans and it's indestructible. It's a can opener welded into a titanium case. The case guarantees its indestructibility, but it also makes it impossible to open cans with it. It's poor accessibility to the main feature. This is linux, as opposed to Windows' tin foil can opener that can only open cans when reinforced and used delicately. If the linux can opener was made out of titanium directly, it would reach its full potential of being indestructible and still be able to open cans.
sev
I've talked to several non-linux users about why they don't use it, and I'm not talking about the die-hard MS supporters. I'm talking about people that have tried it at one time or another, ran it for a while, and just gave up on it.
Why did they give up instead of switching over to it as their primary desktop? Answers ranged over several salient (if not because they're real, at least because they're perceived) problems.
Die-hard linux people see variety as a good thing. That's true, and it's not true. Variety always has to be put in context, especially if there's a lot of it. Here's an example that even die-hard linux people can understand (assuming you're not chefs too). Let's say I'm making salsa and I send you to the store to pick up some heat. You don't know the first thing about peppers, and it just so happens I live next to a produce mart the likes of which you've never seen before. To choose from are: jalapenos, habaneros, anaheim, chipotle, ancho, pablano, thai, serrano, scotch bonnet, etc. What are you likely to do? That's right--grab the jalapenos, cuz that's what you've heard of before, even though they're probably not the best solution. Some die-hard linux people would argue, hey, if your goal is to help your buddy out, you'll head over to your favorite bookstore and read up, and then head back to the produce mart armed with this newfound knowledge. To these people I say, you are truly a die-hard fan of linux if you didn't get this point.
This is the pressure novices feel at every turn with linux, not just from what OS to install, but what is the install process? (Depends on the distro you've chosen.) How do I install an application? (Ibid.) Which application do I install if I want, say, an email client? (Good luck wading through all of the available options.) Why is it that everytime I head over to my buddy's house, he always knows about all this crap that I've never heard of, and he's got this smokin' setup that I wouldn't have the first clue how to begin assembling? How does one even keep up with all the choice that's available?
All frustrations that don't happen with Windows. You only rarely head over to a buddy's and see him running Mozilla instead of IE and think, hmm, I'd like that and didn't know about it. 99% of the time, you're both running the same media player, picture editor, etc, and if you're not, there's only a small handful of well-known choices to choose from.
The next barrier to installing/using linux on a long-term basis with these folks is what I call the annoyance/showstopper problem. Eventually, usually sooner than later, these people run into something that's either really annoying (they can't get X to run at a desired resolution, for example), or a really serious problem that impedes their ability to move forward (they can't connect to the web). They also don't really know where to look for help, or even how to find out where they should start. I myself ran into a problem years ago with RedHat, I simply wanted to upgrade the asteroids game, but the web of library dependencies that had to also be updated made it hardly worthwhile. Eventually, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work--I finally got to the end of a long dependency chain and discovered that, no matter what I did to upgrade this particular library, it wouldn't go in because it was replacing a basic graphics library that is used by virtual terminals. Because it was always in use, it couldn't be replaced, even in single-user mode. So I know this frustration well...even I was asking, how great can this OS be if a simple game can't easily be upgraded, and then it turns out when you finally commit yourself to an afternoon of hunting, it simply can't be upgraded at all? The bigger issue here for most users is, why should I have to know about library dependencies to upgrade a game, why are virtual terminals relevant to the problem I'm having, and what is a virtual terminal anyway? (The point is, whatever it is, it's totally unrelated to what I was trying to do, and most people find t
My buddy tells me he thinks the best user interface company is...Fischer-Price. Think about it--they literally make UIs that even a two-year old can figure out.
I did a bit of HCI (Human-Computer Interface) studying in college, and one approach always appealed to me. It's the tiered approach. Here's how it works.
You're designing the UI for a widget. Find out how the simplest users are going to use the thing. Those functions get special buttons, the easiest navigation, big and prominent. Then you figure out how intermediate users are going to use the product. Those functions are given one-touch buttons and placed off to the side in the hunt'n'peck section (include your own "huntin' pecker" joke here).
Then there's the geeks. These features you can bury deep in menus that require special codes to get to them ("press slash, dot, enter the feature code, and you'll be transported to a menu..."). This always seems to make people happy. Look at the TiVo remote. Like the guy in the article said, he uses pause the most. The biggest button on TiVo? Pause. Big, yellow, right in the center.
Then there's products where you don't have any single group of "simplest" users. Some of these people are buying it to do X, and some Y. In that case, you ask them up front what type of user they are and...whatever functions they're going to use the most get the most prominent places. This strategy is not always possible, but I've yet to see it fail where it has been applicable.
sevNo, sir! Not even if there's a remote possibility that someone might interpret some aspect of that joke as an oblique, sideways reference that denigrates, or even has a little fun at the expense of, someone else's race, creed, ethnicity, religious beliefs, gender, hair color, or toenail length. Funny doesn't matter. What matters is that we deal with these social problems by stamping out any joke or sarcasm that might throw some light onto that corner of society.
Sort of the political equivalent of: if a tree falls in the forest and no one's there, nothing happened. Likewise, I feel that pulling Ghettopoly off the shelves was a huge stride forward in eradicating poorness. Can't you see that?
Oops, I have to go now, my heart just bled out and I'm starting to feel a little light-headed.
sevYour honor, it was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek--sure, it was my tongue in someone else's cheek...
I'm a die-hard Java guy, but I couldn't help but cede the point Hejlsberg made about reflection. Does it bother anyone else that Java is incapable of giving you the type parameter via reflection? It bothers me...
I admit, it's a small thing, but reflection amounts to meta-programming, and that can get really messy if you start allowing inelegancies to creep in. Is this an unsupported statement that I'm making off-the-cuff, with little or no experience to back it? Well sure, but it does seem right, doesn't it? :-)
sevMy ex-gf was flakier than a French pastry crust perched on De Gaulle's shoulder.
I'm afraid you don't understand generics. They're don't enable you to expand the types of data stored in a collection--collections already take Objects, so you can already store whatever mixture of types you want in them. That, in fact, is the problem--what if you want to ensure that your ArrayList *only* has Foos in it?
Enter generics. With generics, you can write a class that deals only with a specific type. You can create a collection, for example, that only stores Numbers. But if you try to put other non-Number types into that collection, it will generate compile-time errors. Integer, Float, etc, will be fine though. Or, you could create a collection that stores Objects, and your genericized collection behaves just like the pre-generics collection did.
Get it?
Generics are yet more powerful than that, though. Not only does it give the collections API this power, but it gives you the developer the power to write your own genericized classes as well. If you want to write a PriceList object and use that code for two different price lists, say one that is restricted to itemizing car parts and another that is restricted to itemizing computer parts, you'd have to extend that object for each case (or do something similar). With generics, however, you just write PriceList<T>, and when you're writing the auto inventory system you instantiate it:
and when you write the computer inventory system you write: sevDoesn't saying "unlimited" when it's actually not smack of false advertising?
I could see the company's argument if, like, General Electric signed up and decided to use a single account for all their global operations (shut up, geeks--of which I am one--I know this doesn't make any sense), but it seems that there's a significant proportion (I consider it significant if the business had to develop a process for discouraging the accounts that exceed the "unlimit") of people hitting this arbitrary and secretly-determined-and-monitored cap.
I see advertisements all the time that say You too can be a millionaire using this program* (footnote: provided you started with $1M plus $1 more than the fees associated with this purchasing this program), Lose 10 pounds per day!* (footnote: with diet, exercise, liposuction, surgical removal of excess skin, and successful completion of Boston Marathon), and Learn to read 100 pages per minute!* (footnote: really big print, really tiny pages).
So I don't buy this marketing argument that they'd take a huge hit in subscriptions. I propose they say the following:
or how about:Saying it's unlimited when it simply isn't, and they have a business process they apply to customers on a regular basis proving this is so, is simply unnecessary and at the very least arguably wrong (and I think illegal, no?), so why do it?
sevAs usual, I had to step in and give the right answer on this topic, for once and for all.
--me
Riiiiiiight. I wondered what SPEWS meant. Oh, google, how I do love thee!
You know, my virgin post was just one before the one you replied to, so you can see how I'm still a bit sensitive (super-newbie around these parts). I decided to /. my /. cherry and start posting because people are durn smart around here. I'm really impressed with the calibur of the discussion that goes on.
sevWe should, instead of asking people to decode a captcha, ask them instead to find the next prime or something. The Riemann Hypothesis would be solved in no time! :-)
sevWoah, hold up, hair trigger finger.
My Russell quote is not elitist and arrogant. Keep it in context...I was employing it to make the point that the research-in-question was in fact tied to a practical application--room temperature superconducting, as the article says in several places. Despite this, AC's post said: "These guys keep talking about superconductors but the fact remains that this is fundamental research with no real applications now or even in the near future."
This is an unfair statement to make, I feel, if he's just going to throw it out there with no support (as he did). I'm a reasonable man, you can say what you want, but if I catch you glibly contributing to some vague, general notion with which I disagree (in this case: "research science bad"), I'm going to challenge it. I was employing that quote in particular as more of an attack on the attitude that the post generally conveys...I wasn't trying to say that we should fund whatever research, no matter how impractical and abstract.
I do, however, agree with you and Feynman both that tax monies should be spent responsibly. If you reconsider my point and the context of that quote I listed, I think you'll see that I'm right--this research is a massive breakthrough and is likely to amount to something in the future. (Did I miss something, or is that why they were reporting on it in the first place?)
By the way, do people really add other people to foe-lists over something like this? :-)
sevOoh...this sort of comment makes me mad. There's no possible way anyone can know what will come out of any fundamental research tomorrow, a year from now, or ten years from now. Many, many conveniences of modern day life sprang forth from researches into the most arcane of topics.
It especially gets me in this particular case, because we're talking about research that will likely bear as much fruit as the early 1900's physics research that later served as the foundation for the modern transistor.
I shall not be as vainglorious as to assume I can say it better than it's already been said, so let's see what a few of the titans had to say on this...
Hardy is speaking of his contributions in general, of which the search for prime numbers was significant, one of the most abstruse and abstract areas of pure mathematics one could name at the time of the research. Even this, however, in a mere 70 years yielded important practical applications in public key encryption.Bertrand Russell spent much of his time trying to find a definition of "number" in terms of pure logic, having found a flaw in Gottleb Frege's attempt to do the same. This was the purest of pure intellection and Russell himself would have hooted with laughter if you'd asked him about practical applications at the time. He even found himself wondering: "It seemed unworthy of a grown man to spend his time on such trivialities..."
In fact, Russell's work eventually brought forth Principia Mathematica, a key development in the modern study of the foundations of mathematics. Among the fruits of that study have been, so far, nothing less than victory in World War II (at least, victory at lower cost than would otherwise have been possible) and machines like the one on which I type this.
I just previewed this post and read it, and I realized I've used words like "vainglorious" and "intellection". I've clearly been watching too much Dennis Miller.
sevNow we're really going off-topic from the main thread. :-)
Only those businesses that are doubly violating the law would have to raise wages to the legal minimum (1: hiring illegals, 2: paying less than min wage). Those that are already paying minimum wage would simply find themselves having to draw from the American labor pool instead of the illegal labor pool, reducing American unemployment. Furthermore, these jobs would be no different from any other job held by those on H1B visas--the employer would have to show that, after a reasonable search, no citizen or PR could be found, and at that point it would go to those immigrants coming in on a guest worker program or immigrant visas.That's right--I said it. I'm not against immigration. I'm for it, 100%. I think we should make the process for legal immigration into the US easier--far easier--than it currently is, and a guest worker program is the right start. We must stamp out illegal immigration though, for several reasons. It encourages US businesses to break the law, and it's a lot easier continue cheating in other areas (sometimes even necessary to cover tracks) once they've started down that path. It allows security holes for terrorists, and probably as much if not more relevant, criminals to sneak in. It depresses wages for these jobs to levels so low, no American *could* take the job even if they wanted to (who's going to spend more money maintaining a job than that job pays, or work for less than they get on welfare?). The current policy allows businesses to essentially utilize a workforce that can honestly only be categorized somewhere between chattle slavery and indentured servitude. It's just plain inhumane.
Besides locking down the border, starting a guest worker program, and making other legal means of immigration easier, I'd also support a program that encourages American welfare recipients to take these jobs (taking into consideration things like kids at home, medical conditions, etc).
I simply can't understand and I don't accept the argument that these illegal immigrants are somehow more humble than arrogant Americans, and that's why they're willing to work for exploitative wages. They're not doing it because they're humble or have somehow seized the moral high ground from their American counterparts--they're doing it because we're allowing an unofficial system of legalized slavery to exploit them.
As far as where the money comes from...the most recent impartial study I know about on this topic says that illegals pull $20B (yes, "B") more out of our economy than they contribute when the total cost is added up (emergency room visits, increased crime, lack of coverage, keeping drug shipping routes open, etc). The fact is, those services might cost the American consumer slightly more up front once we fix things, but far less in terms of taxes to clean up all the fallout. And, even if it did cost the consumer more, so what? What's the alternative? Turn a blind eye to this form of slavery? In my mind this is sort of like saying Lincoln was wrong to outlaw slavery because it raised the price of cotton. (A bit sensationalistic, but it makes the point.)
sev