i did not suggest that people opposed to the war were opposed to iraqi betterment. it's just that it wasn't gonna happen unless someone, er um, we, did something about it. international community? the very same that let a 100, 200, + hundred thousand kosavars be murdered, that watches as a million congonese are slaughtered, that does nothing while the growing trade in children and women continue. please. finger at the UN? well, when would it enforce its resolutions? i could go on. but, try this:
The truth is life here is quite normal. The streets are crowded (way too crowded, traffic is a nightmare), shops are filled with new consumer goods. Restaurants are thriving. Schools are open. People go to work, school, hang out with friends. You see the occasional American humvee or tank roll down the street, but other than that, it's hard to tell you're in a country under occupation and a guerilla war. Much of Baghdad seems like a normal, if poor, third world capital. Not too different from what I've seen in Latin America, say. There are wealthy areas, poor areas, kids playing, all that. A few months ago, I would hear a few explosions every night and a lot of gunfire. It became so common that we'd just ignore it. But these days, those things are so rare that we actually pay attention when they happen.
and maybe now, the millions that lived under the boot of repression will live free, and the hundreds of thousands killed by a genoidal man, their families can see a bright future. maybe in afew years, iraq can become the mesopotamia of old, a thriving, propsperous center of trade, culture, and science. a model to the arab world. so for those of you opposed to the war, it's time to MOVE ON.
does it seem that the opteron smokes the itanium2 and xeon? this can't bode well for intel. and it certainly doesn't help microsoft if their big partner's chip's can't hang with the competition.
i have flirted with the libertarian party before. however, like larry elder, if i leave, i am not going get them back to their roots. and, the libertarians have little chance at success. besides, although i am not a fundamentalist of any religion, i find some of the moral positions taken by the democrats unconscionable. i.e. abortion, gay rights, etc. forgive me for being stodgy, but fiscal policy minutiae isn't going to sink our nation, but the moral decay and complete lack of deceny and civility will. (just like rome)
yes this is true, and i know there are a few places that still have OS9 labs, mostly schools. i guess most people by now have os x, and i'd use nfs or smb even with an all mac environ. apple talk is too damn chatty on the network, besides being slow. but you are right.
unless you absolutely hate medicine, make computers your avocation. i am a teacher. i have years of experience with LAMP, linux, java, python, perl, etc. friends and colleagues ask all the time when i'm leaving. i'm not. besides the wife and three kids, i have too much wrapped up in teaching. nobody prevents me from doing things on the side, as well as lots of side projects.
we live in this fantasy world today, where we're supposed to have instant gratifiaction, immediate success, and total happiness. it just ain't the real world. we have lost all perspective as a society. we forgot that once, people actually had to work, and somtimes, had to learn to deal with things. i see it all the time with students and parents. their kid isn't gedtting an A, so it must be me, or they're special ed, or this or that. hell, maybe they're not an A student. if there is some compelling reason to leave the medical profession, then fine. but first ask (or arsk if your emeril) yourself why you want to change. cause you want to? better come up with a better reason.
For instance, how do you configure networking on a Mac with no GUI?
ipconfig and ifconfig. underneath everything is darwin. all the gui apps are is front ends for command line utils. even all the netinfo functions, (ni*) are all command line functions. i won't get into the whole "is os x unix " flame war, however, it seems to me that the *nix way for most gui config tools is to be simply a front end for command line apps. in fact, when you buy os x server, you are really buying the config and monitoring tools. even apple pimps the fact that if you are a unix savy cli guru, you won't need all the gui tools. and if you are, than you can run all the servers off of plain ole' panther.
i'm not a c guru, nor even an obj-c guru. i have developed in java/perl/php for several years, and got into obj-c with jaguar/panther. but, memory management is a half-way proposition between c and java. to allocate in obj-c, all you do is this:
NSObject obj=[[NSObject alloc] init];
that's it. the compiler/runtime handles the necessary size, etc. and although you need to dealloc the object later, the runtime will kill the objects when terminated. though the program can still gobble up memory. and truthfully, the dot operator thing is not really improtant. it takes about a day to break the habit. the positives of obj-c far outweigh the negatives. seriously. apple's dev tools are nice, and i haven't played with VS.NET, but i'd bet compared to VS6, you can knock out apps a whole helluva lot faster in cocoa/obj-c than mfc/c++. i didn't say vb because that's what realbasic is for.
not true. this is an acknowledged problem of apple's. my g3 ibook (700mhz) had the problem where the screen won't work. i think it's the same. and now my g4 ibook (okay, i'm a glutton for extortion!!) the trackpad stopped working. i don't kow if apple is screwing QC to lower prices, or they had a bad batch. in all fairness, i do carry my ibook from class to class where i teach, and it does get some abuse. and the g3 now has yellowdog which is WAY faster than OS X. but ibook problems are not the stuff of urban myth. they are real.
if you read shirer's rise and fall of the third reich, at the time, britain and france combined had significantly more military than the germans. in 1935, hitler specifically told his commanders that at the first sign of resistance, back down. that was the impetus the german high staff was waiting for. in 1938, a combined brit/french/czech force could have defeated the nazis. rememebr, the czechs had 20-30 divisions, well trained, and motivataed. the germans couldn't match that. by the time of dunkirk, the germans had had 2 more years rearmament. as for clinton going after osama, mansoor ijaz brokered the deal, and his admin said no, we don't have enough to prosecute him. and gerald posner has written a scathing book about the clinton admin's failures that led to 9/11. (p.s. posner is liberal, and so his book is not some right wing diatribe. he's intellectually honest, unlike the latest screeds from the left. franken, moore, et al.) by the way, there's a million africans in the congo who're glad there's a UN. oh wait, they're slaughtered. good job kofi.
poland 1939, eh? let's see, britain and france could have stopped hitler after he: began rearmament programs, rearmed the rhineland, annexed austria, invaded czechoslovakia. and many times in between. had a pre-emptive strategy been taken , ww2 would have been avoided. lost friends? the french and germans? they have been our allies when? when they needed us. see the SOTU. we have lots of friends. new enemies? like al qaida loved us before? gulf war 1? we screwed that one up specifically because bush sr. would not go after saddam when many said we should. history has proven that one true. the real question is should we sit around and wiat for 9/11 to happen again, with possibly wmd's, or do we take proactive measures. not dealing with the problem, i.e. the 1990's, led to the problems we face today.
the problem with capitalism is that it is so synonymous with freedom. you can't have either or. there can't be personal freedom without economic freedom, and likewise, you can't be free economically, and repressive socially. for the first example, see europe. as for the second, see china. what is required to grow is capital. and capital takes investment. the problem with underdeveloped countries is that the government there is usually corrupt. no reasonable person/corporation/country is going to invest in a country like that. also, growth comes from capital investment, which leads to capital growth. this means capitalism. for an example of where capitalism does work, look at Ireland. and look at Russia. ireland reduced taxes, cut spending, and made investment pay. she has been experiencing double digit growth while the rest of europe stagnates. in russia, putin cut cap gains taxes and instituted a flat tax, and russia has been growing. if he can retain his army (which i wonder) he might get russia going. as for capitalist decline, it is precisely because people will vote to legally take from one group and give to another, usually themselves.
you said that the president shold not have a learning disability. well, unless he's undergone extensive testing, nobody can make that determination. and if he has a processing deficit, say for written information, that does not impair his intelligence, understanding, or cognitive skills. it means that when he reads something, he perhaps doesn't process it as you or i would. which means maybe he knows this, and has things read to him. which means perhaps he recognizes his own weaknesses, just an idea.(which might explain his oft cited mis-speaks. as someone who sees things like this in the classroom, it is often a sign of processing deficit. of course, he's fair game.) being identified "LD", doesn't mean lack of intelligence. as for michael moore, i would assume that as the "pope of the left", anything he say will be accepted as the word of, er um, i don't know, what would a secularist deity be? he's hardly a source of truth.
as for bush, i'm very pissed at the expansive spending and growth of gov't. the medicare bill, the immigration thing, and a program for everything. what is he trying to be? pres. gore? i thought he'd cut, not expand gov't. i don't understand the liberal hatred for him. he has offered hundreds of olive branches. name one thing horrible he's done, and you get all kinds of diatribe, and no specifics. about the only thing the current crop of candidates from the democrats can say is that they'd spend even more. the issue has been the war really. and let's face it, if you were opposed to the war, we could find a ton of WMD's, and it still wouldn't matter. bush did not sell the war well, or even right. he simply should have said, "we don't know what he's got, he's not abiding by the UN, and we can't take a chance. he's had them in the past, he's used them, and we know he's tried to get them again. he's had terrorist ties in the past, currently funds hamas, al aqsa, and others, some who have ties to al qaida, he clearly has demonstrataed that while not an immediate threat, left unchecked we can only assume he will be. when that day comes, it will be too late." that's all he needed to say. but there'd be those that even if saddam had wmd's, and al qaida ties, would still say no war.
i just gotta respond here. apparently you have little experieicne in education. i have been a teacher for 8 years, both in junior and senior high school. there are a great many learning "disabilities". in fact, you'd be able to make a case that the majority of students have one or more. the qualifications are so general. now, i happen to think that
a) alot of them are "normal", i.e. i'm a slower runner, but a fairly good athlete (i played college football, division 2). so, i could be said to have an "athletic disability". stupid? yes. but about the same in application.
b) it's mostly about the money. sped gets damn near unlimited funds. talk about ed funding, and sped consumes so much. you tax payers should get inside the temple and see where your dollars go.
back to bush. it is possible that he learns better from hearing. i am the opposite. my wife can tell me anything, and 10 minutes later, i'm like, huh? but i can read tons of history books and remember everything in there. (okay maybe the wife thing is a bad example). i doubt that bush got through yale and harvard if he was dumb. people who hate him have a problem with his single-mindedness. his absolute views. (but re-read aristotle. bush is very much in line with western thought. he believes in truth. anyways...)
a learning "disability" can take on many things. in fact some of the most intelligent people had learning disabilities. keep in mind the voluminous information he needs to be aware of. could he possibly read it all? i doubt it. now, as for reading papers, i'd put more faith in his agencies then say, the NY Times.
capitalism is long since dead in the US. we have more a mixed economy. de tocqueville said that the republic will be destroyed when they find they can vote themselves money. well look at us today. we have to parties, each vying to spend more, each candidate saying essentially, "my program will give..." holy crap. that ain't capitalism. the problem why capitalism will decline is that democracy allows one to group to legally take/steal from another. i.e. the welfare state. i would argue that capitalism died in 1935 with the change in the supreme court, approving the new deal. the depression was a monetary phenomenom, not fiscal. and the new deal did not do a thing to end it. since then, anyhting the government does is okay. most of the govenrment spending is unconstitutional. social security, welfare, this fscking medicare drug bill, etc. now, every lefty/.'er will argue up and down that we need to spend this and that, government shold do this, and that. fine. but does it square with the constitution. no. so why do our courts overlook it. one, things are so ingrained in our society, removal would be worse. (not that i think so). two, it is nt that they think it is ok, but that they don't care. like with the second ammendment. it means what is say, and says what it means. but they okay gun control because they don't care about the constitution.
we had a fuxed system of exchange, established in '44 at Bretton-Woods. it was scrapped in ~74. one of the complaints was that the fixed rates made it too hard to buy foreign goods, which meant economic problems in undeveloped world. with floating rates, you have greater opportunity for trade, especially with the thrid world. allows us to buy their stuff much cheaper. good for them, except they're run by mostly tin pot, corrupt dictators. i don't agree with the money marklets either, but for different reasons. they hurt our economy, by reducing true capital available for investment, and divert it to speculative ventures. ideas proposed by gephardt (i think) about a world minimum wage are asinine. money is just that. it does nothing about the standard of living. if a gallon of gas costs 1.75 here, and 5.00 in europe, it's still a gallon of gas.
yes. like quarterbacks, they get too much credit when they win, too much blame when they lose. reagan never took credit for the jobs created. he always credited the american people. it is the nature of politicians to take credit for the sun rising in the morning, and blaming their opponents for the night. business cycles happen, snowstorms happen, nothing government does or doesn't do is going to change any of that.
very well said. however, as someone who did vote for bush (and will do so again only because he and lieberman are the only ones serious about national defense), he does need to take some of the deficit blame. no, there was not an X trillion dollar surplus. it was based on projections, etc. there was physical surplus. but...spending has gone up considerably during the bush years. and he signed the budgets. now the republicans are spending like drunken sailors, to quote john mccain, although i doubt the democrats would be spending less. under clinton, with divided government, we spent less. gee, i wonder why. you are accurate that we were in a slowdown through 2000, and the recession started in march 2001. hardly much bush coul ddo abot that. and, it has been overall a very shallow and mild recession. just that it kinda dragged. had 9/11 not happened, we'd be a year ahead on the recovery at least. as a point of correction, we actually did have balanced a few years under clinton. he fought them kicking and screaming, but the republican congress pulled him. damn, wish we'd still have a "republican" congress. as for jobs, i don't think presidents create or kill jobs. the economy is changing. transitional and structural unemployment is an economic fact. we need to address capital flight. but, both parties are will-less to do anything about it.
actually, i think this is a plus. i have been programming in perl and java for several years. while i love alot of things in java, java is a "one way only" language. try opening a file. try opening a socket. try writing graphics to a control. i understand what java was intended for, but c'mon. i have just picked up python last few weeks. really easy to learn, especially with java/OOP background. probably the coolest thing about python is the toolkit integration. i have got pyGtk, pyQt, as well tkinter up on panther/X11. python cuts dev time down significantly. and it gives yo the freedom and power like perl. it doesn't constrain you. java pisses me off so much sometimes. what i love about coding (since it really isn't vocation) is the challenges to do it differently and better. java has little room for creativity. that's why. at least for me.
Slashdot Mirror
i did not suggest that people opposed to the war were opposed to iraqi betterment. it's just that it wasn't gonna happen unless someone, er um, we, did something about it. international community? the very same that let a 100, 200, + hundred thousand kosavars be murdered, that watches as a million congonese are slaughtered, that does nothing while the growing trade in children and women continue. please. finger at the UN? well, when would it enforce its resolutions? i could go on. but, try this:
foreach(@_){$_~=s/hatred/{reason,logic}/g;}
The truth is life here is quite normal. The streets are crowded (way too crowded, traffic is a nightmare), shops are filled with new consumer goods. Restaurants are thriving. Schools are open. People go to work, school, hang out with friends. You see the occasional American humvee or tank roll down the street, but other than that, it's hard to tell you're in a country under occupation and a guerilla war. Much of Baghdad seems like a normal, if poor, third world capital. Not too different from what I've seen in Latin America, say. There are wealthy areas, poor areas, kids playing, all that. A few months ago, I would hear a few explosions every night and a lot of gunfire. It became so common that we'd just ignore it. But these days, those things are so rare that we actually pay attention when they happen.
and maybe now, the millions that lived under the boot of repression will live free, and the hundreds of thousands killed by a genoidal man, their families can see a bright future. maybe in afew years, iraq can become the mesopotamia of old, a thriving, propsperous center of trade, culture, and science. a model to the arab world. so for those of you opposed to the war, it's time to MOVE ON.
does it seem that the opteron smokes the itanium2 and xeon? this can't bode well for intel. and it certainly doesn't help microsoft if their big partner's chip's can't hang with the competition.
1) be tqarget of DDoS
2) spoof story on netcraft
3) ???
4) profit.
i have flirted with the libertarian party before. however, like larry elder, if i leave, i am not going get them back to their roots. and, the libertarians have little chance at success. besides, although i am not a fundamentalist of any religion, i find some of the moral positions taken by the democrats unconscionable. i.e. abortion, gay rights, etc. forgive me for being stodgy, but fiscal policy minutiae isn't going to sink our nation, but the moral decay and complete lack of deceny and civility will. (just like rome)
yes this is true, and i know there are a few places that still have OS9 labs, mostly schools. i guess most people by now have os x, and i'd use nfs or smb even with an all mac environ. apple talk is too damn chatty on the network, besides being slow. but you are right.
unless you absolutely hate medicine, make computers your avocation. i am a teacher. i have years of experience with LAMP, linux, java, python, perl, etc. friends and colleagues ask all the time when i'm leaving. i'm not. besides the wife and three kids, i have too much wrapped up in teaching. nobody prevents me from doing things on the side, as well as lots of side projects.
we live in this fantasy world today, where we're supposed to have instant gratifiaction, immediate success, and total happiness. it just ain't the real world. we have lost all perspective as a society. we forgot that once, people actually had to work, and somtimes, had to learn to deal with things. i see it all the time with students and parents. their kid isn't gedtting an A, so it must be me, or they're special ed, or this or that. hell, maybe they're not an A student. if there is some compelling reason to leave the medical profession, then fine. but first ask (or arsk if your emeril) yourself why you want to change. cause you want to? better come up with a better reason.
just my dos centavos.
For instance, how do you configure networking on a Mac with no GUI?
ipconfig and ifconfig. underneath everything is darwin. all the gui apps are is front ends for command line utils. even all the netinfo functions, (ni*) are all command line functions. i won't get into the whole "is os x unix " flame war, however, it seems to me that the *nix way for most gui config tools is to be simply a front end for command line apps. in fact, when you buy os x server, you are really buying the config and monitoring tools. even apple pimps the fact that if you are a unix savy cli guru, you won't need all the gui tools. and if you are, than you can run all the servers off of plain ole' panther.
i'm not a c guru, nor even an obj-c guru. i have developed in java/perl/php for several years, and got into obj-c with jaguar/panther. but, memory management is a half-way proposition between c and java. to allocate in obj-c, all you do is this:
NSObject obj=[[NSObject alloc] init];
that's it. the compiler/runtime handles the necessary size, etc. and although you need to dealloc the object later, the runtime will kill the objects when terminated. though the program can still gobble up memory. and truthfully, the dot operator thing is not really improtant. it takes about a day to break the habit. the positives of obj-c far outweigh the negatives. seriously. apple's dev tools are nice, and i haven't played with VS.NET, but i'd bet compared to VS6, you can knock out apps a whole helluva lot faster in cocoa/obj-c than mfc/c++. i didn't say vb because that's what realbasic is for.
not true. this is an acknowledged problem of apple's. my g3 ibook (700mhz) had the problem where the screen won't work. i think it's the same. and now my g4 ibook (okay, i'm a glutton for extortion!!) the trackpad stopped working. i don't kow if apple is screwing QC to lower prices, or they had a bad batch. in all fairness, i do carry my ibook from class to class where i teach, and it does get some abuse. and the g3 now has yellowdog which is WAY faster than OS X. but ibook problems are not the stuff of urban myth. they are real.
a visit to bill gates' neverland ranch.
if you read shirer's rise and fall of the third reich, at the time, britain and france combined had significantly more military than the germans. in 1935, hitler specifically told his commanders that at the first sign of resistance, back down. that was the impetus the german high staff was waiting for. in 1938, a combined brit/french/czech force could have defeated the nazis. rememebr, the czechs had 20-30 divisions, well trained, and motivataed. the germans couldn't match that. by the time of dunkirk, the germans had had 2 more years rearmament. as for clinton going after osama, mansoor ijaz brokered the deal, and his admin said no, we don't have enough to prosecute him. and gerald posner has written a scathing book about the clinton admin's failures that led to 9/11. (p.s. posner is liberal, and so his book is not some right wing diatribe. he's intellectually honest, unlike the latest screeds from the left. franken, moore, et al.) by the way, there's a million africans in the congo who're glad there's a UN. oh wait, they're slaughtered. good job kofi.
poland 1939, eh? let's see, britain and france could have stopped hitler after he: began rearmament programs, rearmed the rhineland, annexed austria, invaded czechoslovakia. and many times in between. had a pre-emptive strategy been taken , ww2 would have been avoided. lost friends? the french and germans? they have been our allies when? when they needed us. see the SOTU. we have lots of friends. new enemies? like al qaida loved us before? gulf war 1? we screwed that one up specifically because bush sr. would not go after saddam when many said we should. history has proven that one true. the real question is should we sit around and wiat for 9/11 to happen again, with possibly wmd's, or do we take proactive measures. not dealing with the problem, i.e. the 1990's, led to the problems we face today.
the problem with capitalism is that it is so synonymous with freedom. you can't have either or. there can't be personal freedom without economic freedom, and likewise, you can't be free economically, and repressive socially. for the first example, see europe. as for the second, see china. what is required to grow is capital. and capital takes investment. the problem with underdeveloped countries is that the government there is usually corrupt. no reasonable person/corporation/country is going to invest in a country like that. also, growth comes from capital investment, which leads to capital growth. this means capitalism. for an example of where capitalism does work, look at Ireland. and look at Russia. ireland reduced taxes, cut spending, and made investment pay. she has been experiencing double digit growth while the rest of europe stagnates. in russia, putin cut cap gains taxes and instituted a flat tax, and russia has been growing. if he can retain his army (which i wonder) he might get russia going. as for capitalist decline, it is precisely because people will vote to legally take from one group and give to another, usually themselves.
you said that the president shold not have a learning disability. well, unless he's undergone extensive testing, nobody can make that determination. and if he has a processing deficit, say for written information, that does not impair his intelligence, understanding, or cognitive skills. it means that when he reads something, he perhaps doesn't process it as you or i would. which means maybe he knows this, and has things read to him. which means perhaps he recognizes his own weaknesses, just an idea.(which might explain his oft cited mis-speaks. as someone who sees things like this in the classroom, it is often a sign of processing deficit. of course, he's fair game.) being identified "LD", doesn't mean lack of intelligence. as for michael moore, i would assume that as the "pope of the left", anything he say will be accepted as the word of, er um, i don't know, what would a secularist deity be? he's hardly a source of truth.
as for bush, i'm very pissed at the expansive spending and growth of gov't. the medicare bill, the immigration thing, and a program for everything. what is he trying to be? pres. gore? i thought he'd cut, not expand gov't. i don't understand the liberal hatred for him. he has offered hundreds of olive branches. name one thing horrible he's done, and you get all kinds of diatribe, and no specifics. about the only thing the current crop of candidates from the democrats can say is that they'd spend even more. the issue has been the war really. and let's face it, if you were opposed to the war, we could find a ton of WMD's, and it still wouldn't matter. bush did not sell the war well, or even right. he simply should have said, "we don't know what he's got, he's not abiding by the UN, and we can't take a chance. he's had them in the past, he's used them, and we know he's tried to get them again. he's had terrorist ties in the past, currently funds hamas, al aqsa, and others, some who have ties to al qaida, he clearly has demonstrataed that while not an immediate threat, left unchecked we can only assume he will be. when that day comes, it will be too late." that's all he needed to say. but there'd be those that even if saddam had wmd's, and al qaida ties, would still say no war.
i just gotta respond here. apparently you have little experieicne in education. i have been a teacher for 8 years, both in junior and senior high school. there are a great many learning "disabilities". in fact, you'd be able to make a case that the majority of students have one or more. the qualifications are so general. now, i happen to think that
a) alot of them are "normal", i.e. i'm a slower runner, but a fairly good athlete (i played college football, division 2). so, i could be said to have an "athletic disability". stupid? yes. but about the same in application.
b) it's mostly about the money. sped gets damn near unlimited funds. talk about ed funding, and sped consumes so much. you tax payers should get inside the temple and see where your dollars go.
back to bush. it is possible that he learns better from hearing. i am the opposite. my wife can tell me anything, and 10 minutes later, i'm like, huh? but i can read tons of history books and remember everything in there. (okay maybe the wife thing is a bad example). i doubt that bush got through yale and harvard if he was dumb. people who hate him have a problem with his single-mindedness. his absolute views. (but re-read aristotle. bush is very much in line with western thought. he believes in truth. anyways...)
a learning "disability" can take on many things. in fact some of the most intelligent people had learning disabilities. keep in mind the voluminous information he needs to be aware of. could he possibly read it all? i doubt it. now, as for reading papers, i'd put more faith in his agencies then say, the NY Times.
After a clean install of Windows, things were running along smoothly.
running smoothly, yeah right.
capitalism is long since dead in the US. we have more a mixed economy. de tocqueville said that the republic will be destroyed when they find they can vote themselves money. well look at us today. we have to parties, each vying to spend more, each candidate saying essentially, "my program will give..." holy crap. that ain't capitalism. the problem why capitalism will decline is that democracy allows one to group to legally take/steal from another. i.e. the welfare state. i would argue that capitalism died in 1935 with the change in the supreme court, approving the new deal. the depression was a monetary phenomenom, not fiscal. and the new deal did not do a thing to end it. since then, anyhting the government does is okay. most of the govenrment spending is unconstitutional. social security, welfare, this fscking medicare drug bill, etc. now, every lefty /.'er will argue up and down that we need to spend this and that, government shold do this, and that. fine. but does it square with the constitution. no. so why do our courts overlook it. one, things are so ingrained in our society, removal would be worse. (not that i think so). two, it is nt that they think it is ok, but that they don't care. like with the second ammendment. it means what is say, and says what it means. but they okay gun control because they don't care about the constitution.
we had a fuxed system of exchange, established in '44 at Bretton-Woods. it was scrapped in ~74. one of the complaints was that the fixed rates made it too hard to buy foreign goods, which meant economic problems in undeveloped world. with floating rates, you have greater opportunity for trade, especially with the thrid world. allows us to buy their stuff much cheaper. good for them, except they're run by mostly tin pot, corrupt dictators. i don't agree with the money marklets either, but for different reasons. they hurt our economy, by reducing true capital available for investment, and divert it to speculative ventures. ideas proposed by gephardt (i think) about a world minimum wage are asinine. money is just that. it does nothing about the standard of living. if a gallon of gas costs 1.75 here, and 5.00 in europe, it's still a gallon of gas.
yes. like quarterbacks, they get too much credit when they win, too much blame when they lose. reagan never took credit for the jobs created. he always credited the american people. it is the nature of politicians to take credit for the sun rising in the morning, and blaming their opponents for the night. business cycles happen, snowstorms happen, nothing government does or doesn't do is going to change any of that.
meant to say there was NO physical surplus.
very well said. however, as someone who did vote for bush (and will do so again only because he and lieberman are the only ones serious about national defense), he does need to take some of the deficit blame. no, there was not an X trillion dollar surplus. it was based on projections, etc. there was physical surplus. but...spending has gone up considerably during the bush years. and he signed the budgets. now the republicans are spending like drunken sailors, to quote john mccain, although i doubt the democrats would be spending less. under clinton, with divided government, we spent less. gee, i wonder why. you are accurate that we were in a slowdown through 2000, and the recession started in march 2001. hardly much bush coul ddo abot that. and, it has been overall a very shallow and mild recession. just that it kinda dragged. had 9/11 not happened, we'd be a year ahead on the recovery at least. as a point of correction, we actually did have balanced a few years under clinton. he fought them kicking and screaming, but the republican congress pulled him. damn, wish we'd still have a "republican" congress. as for jobs, i don't think presidents create or kill jobs. the economy is changing. transitional and structural unemployment is an economic fact. we need to address capital flight. but, both parties are will-less to do anything about it.
where's the source tarball?
if you were a real perl hacker, your script would be one line and generate its own haikus.
actually, i think this is a plus. i have been programming in perl and java for several years. while i love alot of things in java, java is a "one way only" language. try opening a file. try opening a socket. try writing graphics to a control. i understand what java was intended for, but c'mon. i have just picked up python last few weeks. really easy to learn, especially with java/OOP background. probably the coolest thing about python is the toolkit integration. i have got pyGtk, pyQt, as well tkinter up on panther/X11. python cuts dev time down significantly. and it gives yo the freedom and power like perl. it doesn't constrain you. java pisses me off so much sometimes. what i love about coding (since it really isn't vocation) is the challenges to do it differently and better. java has little room for creativity. that's why. at least for me.