I kept many of my college texts. In fact, right now, I'm looking at an almost 20 year old copy of my Gwartney and Stroup Econ book as I prepare to teach econ this semester in high school. It's not that I forgot (my BA is econ), just looking for the much better explanations and examples than the text we use.
this is also horrible for another reason. how can students refer back to previous classes? all these people that think technology can cure all. sad really. nothing beats books. and by the way, my masters is in Ed. Tech.
can we defeat the DRM-infested, money-grabbing proprietary OSs like M$ Vista and Apple OS X.
dude, take it easy. turn off the che rhetoric for a bit, tell your poly sci prof to lighten up on the indoctrination, and be thankful that we have money-grabbing corporations or else we'd all be living in mud huts. from each according to their ability doesn't work in the real world. now, i'm no fan of microsoft, but tell me this: how many people do you employ? how much do you pay in taxes? how many people use your software to run their businesses, etc. i own two ibooks, and have run linux on my pc's since '98. however, profit is not a dirty word. people pursue profit and it stimulates innovtion. why is it that people bitch up and down about "evil M$", yet barely say a word about all the hardware companies? eh? aren't they money grabbing? you like your dual core pentium 4's, well, they ain't making them because they're nice people.
sadly, the IT staff is far removed from the kids. they have far more contact with the teachers, most of whom wouldn't know unix from eunochs!! nor would they care. the decision for linux dektops came from the district level, where there are no students and few teachers. but alas, teachers will use whatever is given them, and maybe, just maybe, they can say to the teachers "here's a cd, go home and install it at home..."
i tried a few years ago to convert an old, and totally useless, lab into a linux thin client network. we had 20-30 P166's w/32MB ram. it was a disaster. but, we had all the switches, wiring, etc. demo'd it for principal, parents, etc., at a funding meeting at the school. i brought one into the library, configured it, ran linux off my personal computer in my room (mandrake 9.2 at the time), and had gimp, OO.org, moz, and quanta (i taught web design at the time) all running simultaneously. everyone was "go for it" and so i showed it off to the district tech head. a big fat NO. all we needed was $2500-$3000 for an app server. principal said she'd score $ from her principal's account. hell, a full lab for three grand. shot down like a duck on opening day.
yeah, it's be great to get unix admins running around schools, but it's a long way off. and they'd never see kids either. it's funny, they say we need to teach them "what they're going to use in the real world..." yet we're running Office2000. And half the serves out there will be *nix anyways, but that doesn't matter.
last point. we are a novell network. you'd think we'd get a CNA or even a CNE, right? No. see, a CNA/CNE would be "classified" not "certificated", and thus be on the classified pay schedule. and if you think a classified employee is going to earn what a principal earns...
in my district, they're linuxphobic. mostly from ignorance, but also because M$ throws freebies to all the techs. it's disgusting really.
I wonder how much input the IT people had because most of them are probably MCSE's or whatever, and linux poses a real threat to them. and to be honest, schools don't care much, at least fro mwhat I've seen, about costs. Saving money sounds great, but see the problem is that if you don't spend it all, then you get less next year. and if you get alot of value, i.e. lots of computers for the same money, you have less "need" next year, and thus less "need" for money.
is it sick? absolutely. i have been trying to get linux into my district for ages. in fact, my school's tech coordinator is very pro-linux, but he keeps it quiet. we're setting up a small internal message forum I wrote with php/mysql, and it's running on fedora. he literally has to tell the district people it's running on win2k. they think linux=hacker, yet win2k is a hacker's wet dream.
on my router at home, i have MAC address filtering, 256bit WEP, and password protection. I imagine someone with enough determination to get in will, but 99% of people won't. And if you're sitting in an airport for long enough to break into a wifi network, aren't airport security gonnahave a few questions for you?
if they're offereing it to their frequernt flier club, then it's already being paid for. like when a rental car comes with "unlimited" milage. you already paid for the mileage up front. hell, my degree is econ, and finally i'm teaching it this year. it's a cost, that's all. if i'm not a freq. flier, then i don't get it. what's the confusion? it's a perk, like "free coffee". it's just part of operating costs. if "free wifi" entices me to fly continental, i've already paid for it. duh.
Then 73% = 100IQ. If there's a SD of 6%, then 79%-85% will be above average, ranging from 100 - 110 IQ, scores 86-92 will be gifted, ranging from 111-120IQ. And so on. It is called norm referenced, as are all standardized tests.
crap. anything 90-110 will be considered average. above average will be 110-120. gifted 120-130. 130+ i think is highly gifted, above 140 or 150 (i think 3 SD or 4SD) is genius. I'm not an expert on IQ test result nomenclature, just know how they score them. I deal with it alot where I teach. Every parent tells me there kid is a freakin genus. Oy vey.
when the majority of the population has IQs under 110?
the majority of the population will always have an IQ under 110. Why? 100 is considered the mean. Regardless of what it "actually is", the mean will always be 100. Let's say that on IQ test A, 100,000 people take it. Assume a mean score of 73%. Then 73% = 100IQ. If there's a SD of 6%, then 79%-85% will be above average, ranging from 100 - 110 IQ, scores 86-92 will be gifted, ranging from 111-120IQ. And so on. It is called norm referenced, as are all standardized tests.
And if I remember my stats class, 1 SD from the mean (+/-) will be 64% (?) of said population, 2 SD from from the mean is 14% (?), and Iso on. So 110 would be the borderline above average. Thus, 30 something % would be above average or greater. IQ is a big statistical game.
Now, what made people opposed to such tests was for instance, that some groups did worse than others, and some tried to find mitigating factors. While I find "cultural bias" a bunch of BS, clearly socio-economic factors have a huge impact. Also, the tests could be gamed if one knew what sorts of questions were on it. Like the SAT. All tests can be gamed. But there is a bit of validity to the tests.
1: absolutely horshit. stuff i wouldn't use if paid a million dolars.
10: barely usable, requires constant tweaking, stuck at version 0.9.3, crashes occasionally, and requires three new libraries each upgrade which break other applications.
i'm not an OSS purist. i do use lots of oss technology, especially LAMP and jedit. however, the real problem is not over open source, but open formats. for instance, dreamweaver is the de facto web authoring tool, yet it generates html which is an open format. photoshop files are documented as are.pdf files. so you can read/write both, it's just a matter of the application. how much success would MSOffice really have if.doc was documented?
that's just it, they were following all the rules. how are they supposed to account for an employee getting pregnant? at the time, they were legit. the problem is that a) a pregnant woman can't be anywhere near the chemicals (funny though, you can abort the baby if she "chooses" yet if she doesn't, it's harmful. like injecting saline solution, slicing, dicing and vacuuming are less dangerous.) b) her job is protected under law. so here you have an interesting legal problem. if she was pregnant, she'd have never been hired. but the company was working under the assumption of situaiton X, and suddenly, through no fault of their own, found themselves in situation Y. see, that's the problem.
for example then: people seem to think that health care is a right. people think that happiness is a right. pursuit yes, end result, no. and no, you don't have a right to do anything as you please providing it doesn't hurt anyone. society has a right, and a duty, to regulate itself. we must have laws that control drugs for instance, or say medical licensing for another.
now, whether you think pot should be legal or not (and I've not indicated a position), is a matter for the public at large to decide. same for gay marriage. if massachusettes wants to pass it, fine. if california votes overwhelmingly against. fine. but a judge in mass. doesn't have the power to order californians to recognize it. that's judicial tyranny. same by the way is true of abortion. roe was the worst legal decision in history. no wait #2. dred scott was #1.
as for the problem of "everything is a right", too often it involves the taking of something from someone else. last example, i'm a teacher. people think education is a right. it's not. couldn't be. it requires they take taxes and build schools, pay people to work, force people to attend, and mandate all kinds of codes and violations and punishments. now, if the state wants to educate its citizens, then it can't discriminate. but if it says "we're not interested, go find a library like lincoln did", than it can do that too. education is not a right. is it important. yes. a right. no.
we've got parents of kids who get c's and d's demanding they get tested for special ed, whatever. then they demand their "rights have been violated" if they get the kids in sped but he doesn't learn anything or still fails. (and no, they are not the same. plenty of kids pass what dint learns nuthin') so somehow we've violated his rights because he's not going to read, study, do his work, or in general give a flying fsck about anything other than getting into little miss suzies panties or probably more accurately, worry about clearing level 37 on Doom 3.
that's what i mean by rights. we have a "i'll do it if i please" attitude, which is not a free society, but anarchy. and we have a "i need it, i want it, hell, it's a right" society, which somehow figures it's not only okay but necessary to take from one person and redistribute it to another. either way it's a tyrannical society. a free society means we give up what rousseau called the state of nature, i.e. complete freedom, and what we recieve in return is far greater.
see, you're using windows vista. you figure there's a better os. you switch to linux or osx. so it's windows hasta la vista. you're saying see you later to windows. yo've switched to linux or osx. "to" in this case means in the direction of and stopping when I arrive, as in "I'm going TO the store" means I'm going in the direction of the store then stopping, and presumably entering, when I reach it.
it you were going to leave osx or linux, i would have said switch FROM osx or linux. as in "i came FROM the store" meaning I was at the store, then left it and arrived at my present location. in that case, windows hasta la vista, i would be coming FROM linux or osx, and going to windows.
The Constitution says that anything not explicitly mentioned in it can be regulated by the states (if it's not regulated by your state, then yes, it's your right even if it's not explicitly granted to you anywhere). The states regulate driving.
don't get me wrong, i'm not defending the cops at all. hell, where i live, it's one the 5 safest cities in the US. what do the cops do but sit around all day and give tickets. we're so safe, cops from all over live in our city, not just the locals. in fact, every morining, they hide in my school's faculty parking lot and nail people coming down a hill that goes from 45 to 35 to school zone in like no time at all. too many times to count, i'll see the cop (on a motorcycle no less) pull into the lot, hide around the corner, and never is he there more than 5 minutes. he's even nailed teachers. they pull in, he actually turns on the lights, in the parking lot, pulls right behind them, and then gives them a ticket. guys a rat bastard if you ask me. but, i'm just saying that no matter where you live, and whatever you need, driving is a privilege. but i do think the cops use it as a fundraiser. like when the schools do candy sales, where the kids carry candy boxes around with them from class to class. i could scream.
that still doesn't make it a right. all the necessity in the world and it is still a privilege. what are you going to say to a judge when you've gotten your fourth speedin gticket in 6 months. "your honor, I need a car". he's going to laugh. sorry to be an ass, but you don't have to live in the sticks. it's not a requirement. and go back to my last point. for too many people, everything is a right. thinnk about it, if your lifestyle choices can negate law, or can determine the legal status of things, then we're on a pretty slippery slope.
My point about "law enforcement" was that speeding is not considered a crime per se. going 75 in a 40 is reckless endangerment I'd assume. I know it's a sticky line between law and code, and IANAL, but there is a difference. A crime by default must cause the loss of rights or freedom, etc., to someone. murder, assault, vandalism, etc.
a code violation doesn't necesarily have to. if i'm driving 85 an a deserted freeway a 2AM, some cop theoretically could still cite me though nobody is within 1 mile either way.
yes cops enforce traffic codes/laws whatever. part of the job. what I was trying to point out is that a ticket is not the same legal status as being arrested. and driving is not the same thing as freedom of speech. again, it's legal hair splitting, but i think it's important. we agree to accept the road rules, and live with those who enforce them. that's part of the social contract. we can live all day in fairytale-land where everyone does as they damn well please and nobody gets hurt, but in the real world we gotta make accomodations. that is unless we want to live on a deserted island in which case filling up is a bitch.
driving is a privilege not a right. there are certain things we trade to live in a free society, such as unlimited freedoms "I'll wherever, whenever, however" with basic safety. a traffic ticket is not a crime, it is a code violation, that's all. if you get X number of them, you can have your privilege revoked. rights are entirely different. let's take an altogether separate yet related example. (and one I know quite well, as it happened to a friend many years ago.) You own a dry cleaning business, you follow all the rules, laws, etc. A female employee gets pregnant. She can't work around the toxic cleaning solutions. Fine. OSHA comes in and orders the business closed until changes are made, fines them, and orders them to pay temporary lost wages. No crime was committed, they weren't hauled off to jail, nothing. Most environmental regs are such. So too workers' regs. Are we willing to eschew all those? Perhaps. perhaps not.
We(society) accept traffic cops and their patrolling of the streets to keep us safe. (This is not the same as "law enforcement though.) We must follow traffic laws or else we'll be unable to drive anywhere.
As for rights, I feel the major problem we have is that everyone feels everythign is a right. And no, aboriton, marriage, and welfare are not rights. That just highlights the problem. We have grown accustomed to thinking everything is a right. Rights are an entirely different idea. Being able to "just do something" is hardly a right. I just can't drive, I don't own the road, I don't own the traffic lights, and I don't follow the rules, I can endanger others.
wouldn't that mean that the artists would publish the tablature along with the music? music I think would fall under something different that "open source". Hell, I can buy tons of guitar books that have all kinds of music for songs, and that is perfeectly legal. now, wasn't it trent resnor who put out a song in garage band format and encoraged people to play with it? that would be "open source" music. on ce you lay down a guitar track, unless it's pure digital and the notes can be altered, it's kinda hard to change it. sure, you can copy it, play it differently, etc. but altering is a little different. or so i'd think.
The reason I mentioned the german word, weltpolitik, was that it had a special resonance with the kaiser much like lebensraum had for hitler. the word meant far more than the translation. what the kaiser wanted was to be a naval and imperial power with colonies to match the british. why I'll never know, fo rhe never truly conveyed his thoughts to his closest friends or to paper.
encirclement, and i've forgotten the german word, was the fear of the franco-russian alliance. i.e. surrounded on two sides. thus the schlieffen plan, knock out france early, then go east.
there were many reasons for WW1, and the balkans were truly a small part, much smaller than history books claim. much like anything else, it's the easiest and simplest solution. which is why i don't use the textbook in my class!!
there were two balkan wars in 1912 and 1913 which did not lead to world war. why did the third balkan war? well, you'll have to read tuchman, keegan, gilbert, and my favorite kagan for starters. suffice to say it was a series of errors coupled with hubris. i cringe when i read what is being taught as "history" today. some around here don't like my particular point of view on things, as is their right. fine. but point of view is one thing, history is entirely another. if you get a chance, seriously, pick up a high school text book and read about the great depression. chances are they'll mention a few reasons, none that actual economists conclude. for instance, if you find one HS textbook that mentions farming failures, rural bank failures, price deflation, and fed monetary policy i'll give you $1 million.
p.s. I'm a high school history teacher. and yes, the Balkan powder keg was part, but did you read about Germany's Weltpolitik and fear of encirclement? Anyways, I teach history not social studies. Nice point!!
sadly, many students in college get little or no history, and that which they do get is watered down, politicized and turned into -studies courses, completely unrelated to actual history. You are right, what a sad state of affairs public education is in today.
From what I've read, Japan was training women and children with wooden spears, farm implements, anything they could get their hands on. They were preparing to wage a guerilla war that would make the insurgency in Iraq look like child's play. Imagine the propects of 19 y/o Marines having to machine gun women and children. Remember the Japanese island straegy after the fall of the marianas and the beginning of bombardment from the 20th AF. It was a fatalistsic, "we can't win, but we can make them bleed dearly for every inch" strategy. The cost in lives was mounting island by island. They were willing to trade life for life. They were planning on making us bleed to death. I'm sorry, I know Ike and many others were squishy over othe bomb, but I still think it was justified.
consider this as well: we killed far more in March over Tokyo with the firebombings than we did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In fact, it was LeMay who said that give him another month or two of bombing and there'd be nothing left in Japan to bomb. Now, we could have conceivably killed another 200,000 or more with more firebombing, and we'd not have the stigma of the atomic bomb. Fine. But I do think it's a little presumptuous for us to think that there lots of alternatives. I just don't there were many. Japan's moved on, perhaps we should too.
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I kept many of my college texts. In fact, right now, I'm looking at an almost 20 year old copy of my Gwartney and Stroup Econ book as I prepare to teach econ this semester in high school. It's not that I forgot (my BA is econ), just looking for the much better explanations and examples than the text we use.
this is also horrible for another reason. how can students refer back to previous classes? all these people that think technology can cure all. sad really. nothing beats books. and by the way, my masters is in Ed. Tech.
can we defeat the DRM-infested, money-grabbing proprietary OSs like M$ Vista and Apple OS X.
dude, take it easy. turn off the che rhetoric for a bit, tell your poly sci prof to lighten up on the indoctrination, and be thankful that we have money-grabbing corporations or else we'd all be living in mud huts. from each according to their ability doesn't work in the real world. now, i'm no fan of microsoft, but tell me this: how many people do you employ? how much do you pay in taxes? how many people use your software to run their businesses, etc. i own two ibooks, and have run linux on my pc's since '98. however, profit is not a dirty word. people pursue profit and it stimulates innovtion. why is it that people bitch up and down about "evil M$", yet barely say a word about all the hardware companies? eh? aren't they money grabbing? you like your dual core pentium 4's, well, they ain't making them because they're nice people.
sadly, the IT staff is far removed from the kids. they have far more contact with the teachers, most of whom wouldn't know unix from eunochs!! nor would they care. the decision for linux dektops came from the district level, where there are no students and few teachers. but alas, teachers will use whatever is given them, and maybe, just maybe, they can say to the teachers "here's a cd, go home and install it at home..."
i tried a few years ago to convert an old, and totally useless, lab into a linux thin client network. we had 20-30 P166's w/32MB ram. it was a disaster. but, we had all the switches, wiring, etc. demo'd it for principal, parents, etc., at a funding meeting at the school. i brought one into the library, configured it, ran linux off my personal computer in my room (mandrake 9.2 at the time), and had gimp, OO.org, moz, and quanta (i taught web design at the time) all running simultaneously. everyone was "go for it" and so i showed it off to the district tech head. a big fat NO. all we needed was $2500-$3000 for an app server. principal said she'd score $ from her principal's account. hell, a full lab for three grand. shot down like a duck on opening day.
yeah, it's be great to get unix admins running around schools, but it's a long way off. and they'd never see kids either. it's funny, they say we need to teach them "what they're going to use in the real world..." yet we're running Office2000. And half the serves out there will be *nix anyways, but that doesn't matter.
last point. we are a novell network. you'd think we'd get a CNA or even a CNE, right? No. see, a CNA/CNE would be "classified" not "certificated", and thus be on the classified pay schedule. and if you think a classified employee is going to earn what a principal earns...
not gonna happen.
in my district, they're linuxphobic. mostly from ignorance, but also because M$ throws freebies to all the techs. it's disgusting really.
I wonder how much input the IT people had because most of them are probably MCSE's or whatever, and linux poses a real threat to them. and to be honest, schools don't care much, at least fro mwhat I've seen, about costs. Saving money sounds great, but see the problem is that if you don't spend it all, then you get less next year. and if you get alot of value, i.e. lots of computers for the same money, you have less "need" next year, and thus less "need" for money.
is it sick? absolutely. i have been trying to get linux into my district for ages. in fact, my school's tech coordinator is very pro-linux, but he keeps it quiet. we're setting up a small internal message forum I wrote with php/mysql, and it's running on fedora. he literally has to tell the district people it's running on win2k. they think linux=hacker, yet win2k is a hacker's wet dream.
on my router at home, i have MAC address filtering, 256bit WEP, and password protection. I imagine someone with enough determination to get in will, but 99% of people won't. And if you're sitting in an airport for long enough to break into a wifi network, aren't airport security gonnahave a few questions for you?
if they're offereing it to their frequernt flier club, then it's already being paid for. like when a rental car comes with "unlimited" milage. you already paid for the mileage up front. hell, my degree is econ, and finally i'm teaching it this year. it's a cost, that's all. if i'm not a freq. flier, then i don't get it. what's the confusion? it's a perk, like "free coffee". it's just part of operating costs. if "free wifi" entices me to fly continental, i've already paid for it. duh.
Then 73% = 100IQ. If there's a SD of 6%, then 79%-85% will be above average, ranging from 100 - 110 IQ, scores 86-92 will be gifted, ranging from 111-120IQ. And so on. It is called norm referenced, as are all standardized tests.
crap. anything 90-110 will be considered average. above average will be 110-120. gifted 120-130. 130+ i think is highly gifted, above 140 or 150 (i think 3 SD or 4SD) is genius. I'm not an expert on IQ test result nomenclature, just know how they score them. I deal with it alot where I teach. Every parent tells me there kid is a freakin genus. Oy vey.
when the majority of the population has IQs under 110?
the majority of the population will always have an IQ under 110. Why? 100 is considered the mean. Regardless of what it "actually is", the mean will always be 100. Let's say that on IQ test A, 100,000 people take it. Assume a mean score of 73%. Then 73% = 100IQ. If there's a SD of 6%, then 79%-85% will be above average, ranging from 100 - 110 IQ, scores 86-92 will be gifted, ranging from 111-120IQ. And so on. It is called norm referenced, as are all standardized tests.
And if I remember my stats class, 1 SD from the mean (+/-) will be 64% (?) of said population, 2 SD from from the mean is 14% (?), and Iso on. So 110 would be the borderline above average. Thus, 30 something % would be above average or greater. IQ is a big statistical game.
Now, what made people opposed to such tests was for instance, that some groups did worse than others, and some tried to find mitigating factors. While I find "cultural bias" a bunch of BS, clearly socio-economic factors have a huge impact. Also, the tests could be gamed if one knew what sorts of questions were on it. Like the SAT. All tests can be gamed. But there is a bit of validity to the tests.
you know, just to see if he knows.
1: absolutely horshit. stuff i wouldn't use if paid a million dolars.
10: barely usable, requires constant tweaking, stuck at version 0.9.3, crashes occasionally, and requires three new libraries each upgrade which break other applications.
i'm not an OSS purist. i do use lots of oss technology, especially LAMP and jedit. however, the real problem is not over open source, but open formats. for instance, dreamweaver is the de facto web authoring tool, yet it generates html which is an open format. photoshop files are documented as are .pdf files. so you can read/write both, it's just a matter of the application. how much success would MSOffice really have if .doc was documented?
that's just it, they were following all the rules. how are they supposed to account for an employee getting pregnant? at the time, they were legit. the problem is that a) a pregnant woman can't be anywhere near the chemicals (funny though, you can abort the baby if she "chooses" yet if she doesn't, it's harmful. like injecting saline solution, slicing, dicing and vacuuming are less dangerous.) b) her job is protected under law. so here you have an interesting legal problem. if she was pregnant, she'd have never been hired. but the company was working under the assumption of situaiton X, and suddenly, through no fault of their own, found themselves in situation Y. see, that's the problem.
for example then: people seem to think that health care is a right. people think that happiness is a right. pursuit yes, end result, no. and no, you don't have a right to do anything as you please providing it doesn't hurt anyone. society has a right, and a duty, to regulate itself. we must have laws that control drugs for instance, or say medical licensing for another.
now, whether you think pot should be legal or not (and I've not indicated a position), is a matter for the public at large to decide. same for gay marriage. if massachusettes wants to pass it, fine. if california votes overwhelmingly against. fine. but a judge in mass. doesn't have the power to order californians to recognize it. that's judicial tyranny. same by the way is true of abortion. roe was the worst legal decision in history. no wait #2. dred scott was #1.
as for the problem of "everything is a right", too often it involves the taking of something from someone else. last example, i'm a teacher. people think education is a right. it's not. couldn't be. it requires they take taxes and build schools, pay people to work, force people to attend, and mandate all kinds of codes and violations and punishments. now, if the state wants to educate its citizens, then it can't discriminate. but if it says "we're not interested, go find a library like lincoln did", than it can do that too. education is not a right. is it important. yes. a right. no.
we've got parents of kids who get c's and d's demanding they get tested for special ed, whatever. then they demand their "rights have been violated" if they get the kids in sped but he doesn't learn anything or still fails. (and no, they are not the same. plenty of kids pass what dint learns nuthin') so somehow we've violated his rights because he's not going to read, study, do his work, or in general give a flying fsck about anything other than getting into little miss suzies panties or probably more accurately, worry about clearing level 37 on Doom 3.
that's what i mean by rights. we have a "i'll do it if i please" attitude, which is not a free society, but anarchy. and we have a "i need it, i want it, hell, it's a right" society, which somehow figures it's not only okay but necessary to take from one person and redistribute it to another. either way it's a tyrannical society. a free society means we give up what rousseau called the state of nature, i.e. complete freedom, and what we recieve in return is far greater.
read slowly now. "it's...the...windows...version...which...makes... one...switch...to...osx...or...linux."
see, you're using windows vista. you figure there's a better os. you switch to linux or osx. so it's windows hasta la vista. you're saying see you later to windows. yo've switched to linux or osx. "to" in this case means in the direction of and stopping when I arrive, as in "I'm going TO the store" means I'm going in the direction of the store then stopping, and presumably entering, when I reach it.
it you were going to leave osx or linux, i would have said switch FROM osx or linux. as in "i came FROM the store" meaning I was at the store, then left it and arrived at my present location. in that case, windows hasta la vista, i would be coming FROM linux or osx, and going to windows.
windows version which makes one switch to OSX or linux.
The Constitution says that anything not explicitly mentioned in it can be regulated by the states (if it's not regulated by your state, then yes, it's your right even if it's not explicitly granted to you anywhere). The states regulate driving.
I wish the courts figured that one out too.
don't get me wrong, i'm not defending the cops at all. hell, where i live, it's one the 5 safest cities in the US. what do the cops do but sit around all day and give tickets. we're so safe, cops from all over live in our city, not just the locals. in fact, every morining, they hide in my school's faculty parking lot and nail people coming down a hill that goes from 45 to 35 to school zone in like no time at all. too many times to count, i'll see the cop (on a motorcycle no less) pull into the lot, hide around the corner, and never is he there more than 5 minutes. he's even nailed teachers. they pull in, he actually turns on the lights, in the parking lot, pulls right behind them, and then gives them a ticket. guys a rat bastard if you ask me. but, i'm just saying that no matter where you live, and whatever you need, driving is a privilege. but i do think the cops use it as a fundraiser. like when the schools do candy sales, where the kids carry candy boxes around with them from class to class. i could scream.
that still doesn't make it a right. all the necessity in the world and it is still a privilege. what are you going to say to a judge when you've gotten your fourth speedin gticket in 6 months. "your honor, I need a car". he's going to laugh. sorry to be an ass, but you don't have to live in the sticks. it's not a requirement. and go back to my last point. for too many people, everything is a right. thinnk about it, if your lifestyle choices can negate law, or can determine the legal status of things, then we're on a pretty slippery slope.
My point about "law enforcement" was that speeding is not considered a crime per se. going 75 in a 40 is reckless endangerment I'd assume. I know it's a sticky line between law and code, and IANAL, but there is a difference. A crime by default must cause the loss of rights or freedom, etc., to someone. murder, assault, vandalism, etc.
a code violation doesn't necesarily have to. if i'm driving 85 an a deserted freeway a 2AM, some cop theoretically could still cite me though nobody is within 1 mile either way.
yes cops enforce traffic codes/laws whatever. part of the job. what I was trying to point out is that a ticket is not the same legal status as being arrested. and driving is not the same thing as freedom of speech. again, it's legal hair splitting, but i think it's important. we agree to accept the road rules, and live with those who enforce them. that's part of the social contract. we can live all day in fairytale-land where everyone does as they damn well please and nobody gets hurt, but in the real world we gotta make accomodations. that is unless we want to live on a deserted island in which case filling up is a bitch.
driving is a privilege not a right. there are certain things we trade to live in a free society, such as unlimited freedoms "I'll wherever, whenever, however" with basic safety. a traffic ticket is not a crime, it is a code violation, that's all. if you get X number of them, you can have your privilege revoked. rights are entirely different. let's take an altogether separate yet related example. (and one I know quite well, as it happened to a friend many years ago.) You own a dry cleaning business, you follow all the rules, laws, etc. A female employee gets pregnant. She can't work around the toxic cleaning solutions. Fine. OSHA comes in and orders the business closed until changes are made, fines them, and orders them to pay temporary lost wages. No crime was committed, they weren't hauled off to jail, nothing. Most environmental regs are such. So too workers' regs. Are we willing to eschew all those? Perhaps. perhaps not.
We(society) accept traffic cops and their patrolling of the streets to keep us safe. (This is not the same as "law enforcement though.) We must follow traffic laws or else we'll be unable to drive anywhere.
As for rights, I feel the major problem we have is that everyone feels everythign is a right. And no, aboriton, marriage, and welfare are not rights. That just highlights the problem. We have grown accustomed to thinking everything is a right. Rights are an entirely different idea. Being able to "just do something" is hardly a right. I just can't drive, I don't own the road, I don't own the traffic lights, and I don't follow the rules, I can endanger others.
windows programmers have to learn completely new shit every two years. unix programmers keep programming the same shit year after year.
laugh. it's a joke.
wouldn't that mean that the artists would publish the tablature along with the music? music I think would fall under something different that "open source". Hell, I can buy tons of guitar books that have all kinds of music for songs, and that is perfeectly legal. now, wasn't it trent resnor who put out a song in garage band format and encoraged people to play with it? that would be "open source" music. on ce you lay down a guitar track, unless it's pure digital and the notes can be altered, it's kinda hard to change it. sure, you can copy it, play it differently, etc. but altering is a little different. or so i'd think.
The reason I mentioned the german word, weltpolitik, was that it had a special resonance with the kaiser much like lebensraum had for hitler. the word meant far more than the translation. what the kaiser wanted was to be a naval and imperial power with colonies to match the british. why I'll never know, fo rhe never truly conveyed his thoughts to his closest friends or to paper.
encirclement, and i've forgotten the german word, was the fear of the franco-russian alliance. i.e. surrounded on two sides. thus the schlieffen plan, knock out france early, then go east.
there were many reasons for WW1, and the balkans were truly a small part, much smaller than history books claim. much like anything else, it's the easiest and simplest solution. which is why i don't use the textbook in my class!!
there were two balkan wars in 1912 and 1913 which did not lead to world war. why did the third balkan war? well, you'll have to read tuchman, keegan, gilbert, and my favorite kagan for starters. suffice to say it was a series of errors coupled with hubris. i cringe when i read what is being taught as "history" today. some around here don't like my particular point of view on things, as is their right. fine. but point of view is one thing, history is entirely another. if you get a chance, seriously, pick up a high school text book and read about the great depression. chances are they'll mention a few reasons, none that actual economists conclude. for instance, if you find one HS textbook that mentions farming failures, rural bank failures, price deflation, and fed monetary policy i'll give you $1 million.
p.s. I'm a high school history teacher. and yes, the Balkan powder keg was part, but did you read about Germany's Weltpolitik and fear of encirclement? Anyways, I teach history not social studies. Nice point!!
sadly, many students in college get little or no history, and that which they do get is watered down, politicized and turned into -studies courses, completely unrelated to actual history. You are right, what a sad state of affairs public education is in today.
From what I've read, Japan was training women and children with wooden spears, farm implements, anything they could get their hands on. They were preparing to wage a guerilla war that would make the insurgency in Iraq look like child's play. Imagine the propects of 19 y/o Marines having to machine gun women and children. Remember the Japanese island straegy after the fall of the marianas and the beginning of bombardment from the 20th AF. It was a fatalistsic, "we can't win, but we can make them bleed dearly for every inch" strategy. The cost in lives was mounting island by island. They were willing to trade life for life. They were planning on making us bleed to death. I'm sorry, I know Ike and many others were squishy over othe bomb, but I still think it was justified.
consider this as well: we killed far more in March over Tokyo with the firebombings than we did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In fact, it was LeMay who said that give him another month or two of bombing and there'd be nothing left in Japan to bomb. Now, we could have conceivably killed another 200,000 or more with more firebombing, and we'd not have the stigma of the atomic bomb. Fine. But I do think it's a little presumptuous for us to think that there lots of alternatives. I just don't there were many. Japan's moved on, perhaps we should too.