Vietnam simply gets more attention due to the long-term effects of Agent Orange.
And in that respect it's not unlike a nuclear blast (or meltdown), right? The "long-term effects" makes those far more destructive to an ecology and economy than even the most severe conventional warfare. The Chernobyl disaster was more destructive than German bombs and artillery of World War II; at least a bombed-out building can be rebuilt, but Chernobyl was like a real estate version of "denial of service"... can't even rebuild when the entire environment is still lethal. And don't forget the long-term effects to however much of the human element of the ecology that was exposed to it. Agent orange was the chemical version of the nuclear option.
I mentioned him re: opensecrets.org. He's not a (presidential) candidate. He's BEEN a candidate. People had their chance to get an honest "transparent" man of the people. Once again they blew it. At least the people of Ohio got some good use of him for quite a while.
The foods of the future will have one defining characteristic in common with foods of the last century: they must be profitable to the mass-producers that sell them. Other characteristics are almost irrelevant, since unless people are willing and able to grow all their own food - which they aren't - then they will be forced to accept whatever is made available to them. Competition will of course ensure that there is some variety and a bit of quality to challenge quantity, as now, but that quality may increasingly only be available to a shrinking minority. The majority may wind up with soylent green, whether the raw material is insects or dead people hardly matters.
Of course that characterization could wind up completely wrong if we have an Apocalypse.
This recent and growing editor obsession with interrogatory posts is getting tiresome. I have a theory about why they're suddenly becoming so predominant: Slashdot is dying, losing popularity, and in an attempt to rekindle more participation the editors are recasting everything as interrogatory.
The bigger shame is that the parent comment to mine has been modded +5 Insightful... not even +5 Funny, but Insightful. WTF? What does that tell us about the current average Slashdot moderator mindset? Is it tribalism, crazyjj's buddies all mindlessly modding him up, or is it inbreeding?
I modded you flamebait, but decided I'd rather tell you to your face that this comment is every bit as ignorant and prejudiced as any I've heard uttered by the so-called trailer trash I've encountered. I don't know if this really reflects your beliefs or you're just trying to be controversial, but at face value that's stereotypical trailer-trash talk.
No. I'm talking about a progressive process that originated more than a century before the Second Millennium and the recent housing bust and affected every single house and structure built, regardless what state collected its property tax.
What there is, however, is a criminalization of it. No homeowner can simply mod his own house without having at least one non-trivial license and having some Powers That Be sign off on his work. Good old fashioned neighborhood barn raising has effectively been criminalized by endless building codes, licenses, and procedures that must be followed, and the appropriate bribes^H^H^H^H^H^Hfees paid to make everyone happy.
This mountain of bureaucracy is the consequence of several things, but primarily the Industrial Age population boom and the incredible mobility it brought to civilization. Since people can now move with such ease and there is so much more competition for places to live, moving frequently is exactly what we've been doing. The consequence was that with structures no longer remaining in families and instead changing hands between strangers so frequently, there was increased risk of fraud and misrepresentation of the condition of those structures; in response, new laws and building codes and and a legion of bureaucrats to enforce them came into being. Guess who ultimately pays for all this new bureaucracy?
Not only do we have to pay the people who staff this mountainous bureaucracy, we've also lost the ability to simply perform good-faith modifications to our own homes, much less build them. We might sell the home later to a stranger, we might do a poor unsafe job, or we might misrepresent what we did and what state it's in.
We're paying a lot as a society for those few possibilities, aren't we?
I'm rather more interested in WHY all this was hidden under floorboards in the first place. "2700 textile fragments"? Must've been a lot of space under there, enough for a nice big hoard of gold bullion. Instead we find... clothes?
When he's stuck here, not "earthbound" but bound to the Earth, training endlessly for missions that will never happen so long as people who AREN'T astronauts hold all the purse strings and make all the decisions.
I doubt if you even have a precise definition of what an "elitist" is, other than perhaps "somebody with whom I violently disagree", but since you've arbitrarily accused me of being one: PROVE IT.
Language is a means of communication. Computer languages communicate sequences of instructions to perform certain actions. Human languages are no different at their core. The grammar of computer languages must be followed with EXACTING precision. You should know the consequences if you fail to be precise. Imprecise writing has consequences, too. You're apparently not perceptive enough to recognize those consequences.
Why should communication with humans be any less precise than with computers? Just because human brains are - for the moment - better at fuzzy logic? Why is it you think you or anyone else should be given a pass for negligent careless "coding" to other people?
RMS needs a competent proofreader for the articles he posts to his site. Why do people persist in publishing text whose intended audience is the entire fucking world without bothering to make damned certain that at least grammar and spelling are correct?
I wondered this same thing when reading about one of the earlier smackdowns. And what of arbitration? Is a courtroom a place of justice for all, or merely the "Hell" used to terrify and coerce disadvantaged people into some desired behavior?
Slashdot Mirror
Vietnam simply gets more attention due to the long-term effects of Agent Orange.
And in that respect it's not unlike a nuclear blast (or meltdown), right? The "long-term effects" makes those far more destructive to an ecology and economy than even the most severe conventional warfare. The Chernobyl disaster was more destructive than German bombs and artillery of World War II; at least a bombed-out building can be rebuilt, but Chernobyl was like a real estate version of "denial of service"... can't even rebuild when the entire environment is still lethal. And don't forget the long-term effects to however much of the human element of the ecology that was exposed to it. Agent orange was the chemical version of the nuclear option.
I mentioned him re: opensecrets.org. He's not a (presidential) candidate. He's BEEN a candidate. People had their chance to get an honest "transparent" man of the people. Once again they blew it. At least the people of Ohio got some good use of him for quite a while.
I was referring specifically to wartime slash-and-burn tactics, like those employed by Sherman during the United States Civil War (I), for instance.
Added a whole new dimension to the old tactic of slash and burn, didn't it?
Dennis Kucinich.
If you knew the corporate history of Nuance, then I think you'd trust 'Nina' even less than 'Siri'.
The foods of the future will have one defining characteristic in common with foods of the last century: they must be profitable to the mass-producers that sell them. Other characteristics are almost irrelevant, since unless people are willing and able to grow all their own food - which they aren't - then they will be forced to accept whatever is made available to them. Competition will of course ensure that there is some variety and a bit of quality to challenge quantity, as now, but that quality may increasingly only be available to a shrinking minority. The majority may wind up with soylent green, whether the raw material is insects or dead people hardly matters.
Of course that characterization could wind up completely wrong if we have an Apocalypse.
This recent and growing editor obsession with interrogatory posts is getting tiresome. I have a theory about why they're suddenly becoming so predominant: Slashdot is dying, losing popularity, and in an attempt to rekindle more participation the editors are recasting everything as interrogatory.
What If There Was an End to All These Silly Interrogatory Posts at Slashdot?
That's an excellent suggestion. Where moderation is concerned, ALL posts should be anonymous to help preserve impartiality.
The bigger shame is that the parent comment to mine has been modded +5 Insightful... not even +5 Funny, but Insightful. WTF? What does that tell us about the current average Slashdot moderator mindset? Is it tribalism, crazyjj's buddies all mindlessly modding him up, or is it inbreeding?
I modded you flamebait, but decided I'd rather tell you to your face that this comment is every bit as ignorant and prejudiced as any I've heard uttered by the so-called trailer trash I've encountered. I don't know if this really reflects your beliefs or you're just trying to be controversial, but at face value that's stereotypical trailer-trash talk.
No. I'm talking about a progressive process that originated more than a century before the Second Millennium and the recent housing bust and affected every single house and structure built, regardless what state collected its property tax.
What there is, however, is a criminalization of it. No homeowner can simply mod his own house without having at least one non-trivial license and having some Powers That Be sign off on his work. Good old fashioned neighborhood barn raising has effectively been criminalized by endless building codes, licenses, and procedures that must be followed, and the appropriate bribes^H^H^H^H^H^Hfees paid to make everyone happy.
This mountain of bureaucracy is the consequence of several things, but primarily the Industrial Age population boom and the incredible mobility it brought to civilization. Since people can now move with such ease and there is so much more competition for places to live, moving frequently is exactly what we've been doing. The consequence was that with structures no longer remaining in families and instead changing hands between strangers so frequently, there was increased risk of fraud and misrepresentation of the condition of those structures; in response, new laws and building codes and and a legion of bureaucrats to enforce them came into being. Guess who ultimately pays for all this new bureaucracy?
Not only do we have to pay the people who staff this mountainous bureaucracy, we've also lost the ability to simply perform good-faith modifications to our own homes, much less build them. We might sell the home later to a stranger, we might do a poor unsafe job, or we might misrepresent what we did and what state it's in.
We're paying a lot as a society for those few possibilities, aren't we?
Dude, these were floorboards in a CASTLE. A One Percenter lived there.
I'm rather more interested in WHY all this was hidden under floorboards in the first place. "2700 textile fragments"? Must've been a lot of space under there, enough for a nice big hoard of gold bullion. Instead we find... clothes?
When he's stuck here, not "earthbound" but bound to the Earth, training endlessly for missions that will never happen so long as people who AREN'T astronauts hold all the purse strings and make all the decisions.
I doubt if you even have a precise definition of what an "elitist" is, other than perhaps "somebody with whom I violently disagree", but since you've arbitrarily accused me of being one: PROVE IT.
Language is a means of communication. Computer languages communicate sequences of instructions to perform certain actions. Human languages are no different at their core. The grammar of computer languages must be followed with EXACTING precision. You should know the consequences if you fail to be precise. Imprecise writing has consequences, too. You're apparently not perceptive enough to recognize those consequences.
Why should communication with humans be any less precise than with computers? Just because human brains are - for the moment - better at fuzzy logic? Why is it you think you or anyone else should be given a pass for negligent careless "coding" to other people?
RMS needs a competent proofreader for the articles he posts to his site. Why do people persist in publishing text whose intended audience is the entire fucking world without bothering to make damned certain that at least grammar and spelling are correct?
Oh, you really (toe|)nailed that one!
RMS has been doing fine without razors and toothbrushes and combs and toilet paper for decades. He's practicing open source hygiene.
I wondered this same thing when reading about one of the earlier smackdowns. And what of arbitration? Is a courtroom a place of justice for all, or merely the "Hell" used to terrify and coerce disadvantaged people into some desired behavior?
"Back to the drawing board."
Hmmm... wasn't Hans Asperger Austrian?