Libertarianism is just anothe over-simplistic political category which appeals to the young, individualistic and idealistic of which there are many in the Nerd world.
It appeals because it promotes simple moral black-and-whites, encourages self-centred success and the expense of society and persecutes those less apparently intelligent (those who bullied us at school).
As long as all new PeeCees come with Windows installed, the Average Person will continue to believe that Microsoft Windows (and associated applications) is "the best."
They've got 11 year old kids coming home from school extolling the virtues of Power Point and Dream Weaver.
Yeah, productivity thrives in tightly controlled workplaces where the management doesn't trust the employees.
I worked at a place like that for two years. My office was the worst. The boss claimed that they were "human beings" but in an office of 20-25 people (depending on the month), in those two years, 19 people left (apart from the boss and my line manager).
When I joined they warned me that they were a "focused team" but that hard work was rewarded with £££. I worked hard and enthusiastically, but I slipped up one afternoon when I got a cup of coffee after a very long and strenuous coding session and spent 5 minutes glancing at the news headlines on news.bbc.co.uk. The boss told me months later in my appraisal that that sort of thing makes him very angry.
Gradually things tightened, work loads became impossible, there was no planning, we got the stick when things went wrong as a result, people were threatened with Disciplinary Action when something trivial wasn't as the boss wanted (because he had messed up somewhere himself)...
The icing on the cake was the look of disbelief on my line manager's face and his physical shaking the morning I walked calmly into his office and handed in my notice. He started to humbly apologise for his behaviour but it was too late.
In the following fortnight, two more people resigned.
Ask him to explain the difference between a copyright held by a corporation and by an individual, rights and protections for the individual copyright holder v.s the corporation and Fair Use.
Ask him to explain why some "copyright" (sic) works may be freely redistributed (GNU, BSD, Creative Commons, Public Domain etc.) and why others can't.
Ask him how technological measures to enforce copyright can respect these different regimes, and who polices them.
Ask him to explain the difference between copyrights, patents, intellectual property.
Easy - public humiliation. You are an anit-American, dirty, smelly hippy communist. You can't even stand up for your subversive beliefs by sticking with your unwashed comrades.
Now, eat the biscuit, install Windows and forget about it. You will be forgiven.
"I am a (strictly technical) member of a large *nix systems admin team at a Fortune 150. Our new IT Management Overlord is a hardcore bean-counter from hell.
You're technical, you work for a large company and you have a new boss that sucks.
The first two points should make it relatively easy for you to find a new job. Have you considered a slight change of career? Why not engineering (development) rather than sys admin? In the Unix world, the line between the two is very blurry.
In particular, there are some insightful and scathing examinations of the methods of "bean counters." You're an admin, not a developer, but it should provide a spark, a starting-off point for you.
True, Windows used to blue screen all the time back when it was a shell running on top of MS-DOS (especially in the 9x era), but BSODs haven't been a significant problem since Windows 2000
That's right, even NT4 was running on DOS (just double click on the icon to see what I mean). Only people stuck in the 1970s would try that anyway.
I recently saw the error of my Linux ways. I just got a new job with a big company and it's Windows all the way, even for Linux and Solaris development. The admins tell me that you can get infinite uptime on Windows servers now, as long as you reboot them once a week on a Sunday night.
C# is really good too - it ports really easily to all the recent versions of Windows. No more incompatibility problems and all those Mac and Linux weenies can use it when they reboot into the pirated copies of XP and Vista they have installed for when they want to get REAL work done.
Who needs VNC any more when you can have Terminal Server into a W2k3 box with Exceed X server for running legacy Linux and RISC apps.
I really wish I hadn't been taken in by those dirty GNU/Hippies and the Java/Solaris monkeys at Sun.
We're installing an itanium(TM) cluster in the new year. I can hardly wait!
Isn't it about time you find a more efficient way to generate power, turbines and generators that don't waste so much heat that we just went to all that trouble to make in the first place?
There is a British design called the AGR which operates at thermal efficiencies of up to 40% compared with 30-33% in a PWR (what they used in the USA). The thing is, it's terribly expensive and no more will ever be built.
As another poster has already stated, look up the Carnot Cycle to learn about thermal efficiency of heat engines.
from your previous comments i'll assume that you're serious about Java. would it be true to say that you are, ahem, on the wrong side of 50?
I know a bit about Java, and yes, I'm on the wrong side of 50: the "youthful" side rather than the "wise" side. If I were starting a cross-platform project to run over the network, I'd use Java. As a platform, it's second to none, the Java language is pretty good, it's stable and mature and there is a big choice of vendors (Free, free and commercial). There are some other serious language implementations being developed for the platform, such as Python, Ruby, Eiffel, lisps of various kinds, you name it. Some one even has a C compiler that spits out Java bytecode.
hey its cool man, it was already obvious that you don't know what you're talking about, and now you've come clean.
Arguing with trolls is great fun when you're in the right mood.
anyhow, blinkers back on and back to the sidelines of the web where you can mumble and cuss. best of luck guy.
Thanks, I'll crawl back to my embedded Linux, 3D graphics, Java and SIMD programming, bash scripting and Ruby.
You can keep your "cross-platform" Flash on your Internet Explorer on all three versions of Windows (XP, 2003 and Vista) where it belongs. Say "Hi" to.NET and C# for me while you're there too.
yay, we have an ignorant flash hater in the house (check out flex builder 2 little man) but only one...
I don't hate Flash, just as long as it's not on my web browser.
I thought it was for making simple "flashy" animations and menus on web pages? Also, isn't there only one vendor of the compiler/interpreter? Isn't that a bit dangerous and generally a Bad Idea when developing serious software?
It's not just Shakespeare they're talking about here, it's fictional literature in general. And I agree wholeheartedly with them. Good fictional works are about the fundamental ideas and feelings that make us human.
I wish my teachers has told me that before they started on Shakespeare, with its archaic turn of phrase and out-dated spelling, the modern poetry, the ungrammatical and poorly spelled trendy modern prose, etc.
"Why are they teaching us this when the spelling isn't even right and the sentences don't even make sense," Is what I thought at age 12, and I resented English as a result.
My understanding was that it was all about spelling, grammar, writing reports and answering comprehension questions.
"They" didn't let the cat out of the bag for another four years. By that time, I'd exhausted the supply of Isaac Asimov and Douglas Adams and had given up reading other than computer programming and science magazines and computer science text books.
Somewhere along the lines I went on a fruit break.
By the way, Shakespeare has "too many words" for me, but the English teachers (mrs Turgid included) seem to love it. As far as I can tell, his plays present a canned and comprehensive study of the major facets of the human condition, and that is their value. Some people derive pleasure from the way it's written. It just sounds like a lot of verbal diarrhea to me. I sat through Sean Bean's Macbeth once and came out feeling like my ears had been boxed and my brain was numb from all the words.
For the record, as a well brought up UK resident I read and write "The Queens" English and naturally don't particularly like Americanisms - especially their dropping of an entire syllable from the word "Aluminium", but that doesn't mean that particular adaptation of the language is invalid.
Most people in the UK are right-wing, that's why The Sun has the highest readership of any 'newspaper'.
Er, no.
The Sun has a bare pair of young (18-24 year-old) female breasts on page 3 every day (except Saturday AFAIK), a "problem page" that is as close to porn as they can get away with, a photo story with young females in lingerie, often very close together in pairs, and "news" about all the latest celebrity faux-lesbian cliche incidents.
Apart from the odd hate story regarding foreigners of strange people of varying non-conformist lifestyles (often followed by huge public apologies the next day when they realise that they've misjudged the current state of political correctness), there isn't much news or other content in the Sun.
And don't forget the adverts for Adult *cough* DVDs and phone services in the back.
He was a famous scientist, and when a famous scientist speaks, even when he's right out of his league, people tend to listen.
Indeed. My Religious Education teacher loved to wheel out Hoyle's statements and "hypotheses." I've received several pamphlets from the Jehovah's Witnesses doing exactly the same.
He wasn't too great in his league either. He had some quite odd notions regarding Quasars.
I was lucky enough to attend a colloqium (sp?) given by him at Cardiff back in the early '90s. He was very sure of himself and great entertainment.
After all, if you're any good, she is having a ball too, right?
Have you ever been to Burger King or McDonalds? They smile and say, "Have a nice day!" and "Enjoy your meal!" You can be sure that they are not enjoying a thing, but it's good for business.
Your professional lady is using this simple tactic to improve her chances of receiving repeat business from you. After all, heroin is expensive, and she is addicted.
I very much doubt that there's any "fun" in it for her, until she gets her next fix.
Slashdot Mirror
How can you have an honest and stimulating discussion about politics without offending someone?
Libertarianism is just anothe over-simplistic political category which appeals to the young, individualistic and idealistic of which there are many in the Nerd world.
It appeals because it promotes simple moral black-and-whites, encourages self-centred success and the expense of society and persecutes those less apparently intelligent (those who bullied us at school).
If you have to store all the shit at the airport anyway, you might as well just get a plane.
A toilet, surely?
As long as all new PeeCees come with Windows installed, the Average Person will continue to believe that Microsoft Windows (and associated applications) is "the best."
They've got 11 year old kids coming home from school extolling the virtues of Power Point and Dream Weaver.
Microsoft has won. Game over.
Baaah, Yorkshire, Scotland, Cornwall, Wales... honestly! London will be a lot better off without the lot of you!
You don't want to go sarf of the rivva, guv.
Yeah, productivity thrives in tightly controlled workplaces where the management doesn't trust the employees.
I worked at a place like that for two years. My office was the worst. The boss claimed that they were "human beings" but in an office of 20-25 people (depending on the month), in those two years, 19 people left (apart from the boss and my line manager).
When I joined they warned me that they were a "focused team" but that hard work was rewarded with £££. I worked hard and enthusiastically, but I slipped up one afternoon when I got a cup of coffee after a very long and strenuous coding session and spent 5 minutes glancing at the news headlines on news.bbc.co.uk. The boss told me months later in my appraisal that that sort of thing makes him very angry.
Gradually things tightened, work loads became impossible, there was no planning, we got the stick when things went wrong as a result, people were threatened with Disciplinary Action when something trivial wasn't as the boss wanted (because he had messed up somewhere himself)...
The icing on the cake was the look of disbelief on my line manager's face and his physical shaking the morning I walked calmly into his office and handed in my notice. He started to humbly apologise for his behaviour but it was too late.
In the following fortnight, two more people resigned.
Ask him to explain the difference between a copyright held by a corporation and by an individual, rights and protections for the individual copyright holder v.s the corporation and Fair Use.
Ask him to explain why some "copyright" (sic) works may be freely redistributed (GNU, BSD, Creative Commons, Public Domain etc.) and why others can't.
Ask him how technological measures to enforce copyright can respect these different regimes, and who polices them.
Ask him to explain the difference between copyrights, patents, intellectual property.
How do you plan on stopping me?
Easy - public humiliation. You are an anit-American, dirty, smelly hippy communist. You can't even stand up for your subversive beliefs by sticking with your unwashed comrades.
Now, eat the biscuit, install Windows and forget about it. You will be forgiven.
You know what I'd love more than further improvement in any of those areas? Comprehensive, well-written documentation.
It's called source code.
"I am a (strictly technical) member of a large *nix systems admin team at a Fortune 150. Our new IT Management Overlord is a hardcore bean-counter from hell.
You're technical, you work for a large company and you have a new boss that sucks.
The first two points should make it relatively easy for you to find a new job. Have you considered a slight change of career? Why not engineering (development) rather than sys admin? In the Unix world, the line between the two is very blurry.
Bosses like this kill businesses.
I can't give you specific metrics for your situation, but you might like to read Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit for Software Development Managers for some ideas of business processes in general, why they work and don't.
In particular, there are some insightful and scathing examinations of the methods of "bean counters." You're an admin, not a developer, but it should provide a spark, a starting-off point for you.
True, Windows used to blue screen all the time back when it was a shell running on top of MS-DOS (especially in the 9x era), but BSODs haven't been a significant problem since Windows 2000
That's right, even NT4 was running on DOS (just double click on the icon to see what I mean). Only people stuck in the 1970s would try that anyway.
I recently saw the error of my Linux ways. I just got a new job with a big company and it's Windows all the way, even for Linux and Solaris development. The admins tell me that you can get infinite uptime on Windows servers now, as long as you reboot them once a week on a Sunday night.
C# is really good too - it ports really easily to all the recent versions of Windows. No more incompatibility problems and all those Mac and Linux weenies can use it when they reboot into the pirated copies of XP and Vista they have installed for when they want to get REAL work done.
Who needs VNC any more when you can have Terminal Server into a W2k3 box with Exceed X server for running legacy Linux and RISC apps.
I really wish I hadn't been taken in by those dirty GNU/Hippies and the Java/Solaris monkeys at Sun.
We're installing an itanium(TM) cluster in the new year. I can hardly wait!
One notion is that of God as the Prime Mover,
Yes, but is He a Groover?
Thanks, you made my day.
I don't understand why it would be 'unthinkable' for him to switch to an OS that *HE* controls,
Because he's a "sensible" conformist - a fully paid-up member of the Establishment.
Isn't it about time you find a more efficient way to generate power, turbines and generators that don't waste so much heat that we just went to all that trouble to make in the first place?
There is a British design called the AGR which operates at thermal efficiencies of up to 40% compared with 30-33% in a PWR (what they used in the USA). The thing is, it's terribly expensive and no more will ever be built.
As another poster has already stated, look up the Carnot Cycle to learn about thermal efficiency of heat engines.
from your previous comments i'll assume that you're serious about Java. would it be true to say that you are, ahem, on the wrong side of 50?
I know a bit about Java, and yes, I'm on the wrong side of 50: the "youthful" side rather than the "wise" side. If I were starting a cross-platform project to run over the network, I'd use Java. As a platform, it's second to none, the Java language is pretty good, it's stable and mature and there is a big choice of vendors (Free, free and commercial). There are some other serious language implementations being developed for the platform, such as Python, Ruby, Eiffel, lisps of various kinds, you name it. Some one even has a C compiler that spits out Java bytecode.
hey its cool man, it was already obvious that you don't know what you're talking about, and now you've come clean.
Arguing with trolls is great fun when you're in the right mood.
anyhow, blinkers back on and back to the sidelines of the web where you can mumble and cuss. best of luck guy.
Thanks, I'll crawl back to my embedded Linux, 3D graphics, Java and SIMD programming, bash scripting and Ruby.
You can keep your "cross-platform" Flash on your Internet Explorer on all three versions of Windows (XP, 2003 and Vista) where it belongs. Say "Hi" to .NET and C# for me while you're there too.
yay, we have an ignorant flash hater in the house (check out flex builder 2 little man) but only one...
I don't hate Flash, just as long as it's not on my web browser.
I thought it was for making simple "flashy" animations and menus on web pages? Also, isn't there only one vendor of the compiler/interpreter? Isn't that a bit dangerous and generally a Bad Idea when developing serious software?
Why didn't they use Java? *sigh*
It's written in Flash
*cough*?!
It's not just Shakespeare they're talking about here, it's fictional literature in general. And I agree wholeheartedly with them. Good fictional works are about the fundamental ideas and feelings that make us human.
I wish my teachers has told me that before they started on Shakespeare, with its archaic turn of phrase and out-dated spelling, the modern poetry, the ungrammatical and poorly spelled trendy modern prose, etc.
"Why are they teaching us this when the spelling isn't even right and the sentences don't even make sense," Is what I thought at age 12, and I resented English as a result.
My understanding was that it was all about spelling, grammar, writing reports and answering comprehension questions.
"They" didn't let the cat out of the bag for another four years. By that time, I'd exhausted the supply of Isaac Asimov and Douglas Adams and had given up reading other than computer programming and science magazines and computer science text books.
Somewhere along the lines I went on a fruit break.
By the way, Shakespeare has "too many words" for me, but the English teachers (mrs Turgid included) seem to love it. As far as I can tell, his plays present a canned and comprehensive study of the major facets of the human condition, and that is their value. Some people derive pleasure from the way it's written. It just sounds like a lot of verbal diarrhea to me. I sat through Sean Bean's Macbeth once and came out feeling like my ears had been boxed and my brain was numb from all the words.
For the record, as a well brought up UK resident I read and write "The Queens" English and naturally don't particularly like Americanisms - especially their dropping of an entire syllable from the word "Aluminium", but that doesn't mean that particular adaptation of the language is invalid.
Donald Trefusis just turned in his grave.
Most people in the UK are right-wing, that's why The Sun has the highest readership of any 'newspaper'.
Er, no.
The Sun has a bare pair of young (18-24 year-old) female breasts on page 3 every day (except Saturday AFAIK), a "problem page" that is as close to porn as they can get away with, a photo story with young females in lingerie, often very close together in pairs, and "news" about all the latest celebrity faux-lesbian cliche incidents.
Apart from the odd hate story regarding foreigners of strange people of varying non-conformist lifestyles (often followed by huge public apologies the next day when they realise that they've misjudged the current state of political correctness), there isn't much news or other content in the Sun.
And don't forget the adverts for Adult *cough* DVDs and phone services in the back.
The real right-wingers read the Daily Mail.
And the Argonauts. Don't forget the Argonauts.
He was a famous scientist, and when a famous scientist speaks, even when he's right out of his league, people tend to listen.
Indeed. My Religious Education teacher loved to wheel out Hoyle's statements and "hypotheses." I've received several pamphlets from the Jehovah's Witnesses doing exactly the same.
He wasn't too great in his league either. He had some quite odd notions regarding Quasars.
I was lucky enough to attend a colloqium (sp?) given by him at Cardiff back in the early '90s. He was very sure of himself and great entertainment.
Linux and Solaris come from different code bases. Linux is Linux and Solaris is UNIX System V R4.
Secondly, Sun didn't "license unix" from SCO. Sun bought some device drivers.
There, settled.
After all, if you're any good, she is having a ball too, right?
Have you ever been to Burger King or McDonalds? They smile and say, "Have a nice day!" and "Enjoy your meal!" You can be sure that they are not enjoying a thing, but it's good for business.
Your professional lady is using this simple tactic to improve her chances of receiving repeat business from you. After all, heroin is expensive, and she is addicted.
I very much doubt that there's any "fun" in it for her, until she gets her next fix.