"I would be a member of our uniformed military fighting an invading army."
You seem to have missed the part where the uniformed military already lost. Our nation has already been conquered.
"If some actual extremists were to intervene in the conflict, by say bombing catholic churches or setting up IEDs at police academies to kill kids about to become cops, I'd use all my time off duty to hunt them down and beat the living hell out of them."
They are becoming the police force of the new regime (the kids part is just an appeal to emotion and neither true nor relevant). Personally I would see nothing wrong with killing the traitors who support the invaders along with the invaders themselves. Any extremists of the variety you refer to would have to wait for my attention if 80% of the civilians dying were dying at the hands of the invaders and most of the rest were dying at the hands of death squads formed from the traitor police for the invaders assembled.
Another note to add. Let us not forget that the US is primarily responsible for keeping iraq impoverished for 10 years prior to invasion. We basically prevented them from selling their only major economic resource, oil. I am sure it didn't help that we bombed them now and then because we didn't think they were fully cooperating when it came to weapons inspections (nevermind that we now know that Iraq didn't have anything to hide all along).
"1 - No govt healthcare, but regulation of insurance companies. This is better. Competition, with limits. Executive pay limits, mandatory coverage for those who are working, etc."
This does not guarantee that every US citizen can have comprehensive healthcare regardless of their means or employment.
"2 - Tax everyone the same. Flat tax. Those who are at a reasonable poverty line will recieve their taxes back in the form of food coupons. Everyone is equal, everyone pays the same rate. This creates incentives for those with little money to work harder and gain more money. Its ludicrous to punish those who work harder by more taxes."
This does not resolve the problem of almost all the economic resources in the nation pooling at the top. That needs to be prevented. The rest of your post rests on the work ethic fallacy. Hard work is not a formula for success and it never has been. In reality it is the poorest who must work the hardest to survive. Not everyone can be successful. For every business there must be employees and an owner. Therefore there will always be a gap and a lower finacial class. The ideal is to make the gap as small as possible.
"Those who are at a reasonable poverty line will recieve their taxes back in the form of food coupons."
This of course is obviously ridiculous. First someone need not be impoverished to get a tax break. Middle class families are the goal and therefore they should recieve the tax break. The top 5% have FAR more wealth than the other 95% combined. But the completely ridiculous part is the implication that these people should be policed on how they can spend their money by only giving them food coupons. Perhaps they want to put that money toward repairing their vehicle, or buying medicine for themselves or their child (since you have put us back into a situation where nobody has healthcare).
"3 - Cut out subsidies, corporate tax breaks, state-driven corporate tax relief. Make corporations all pay the same tax rate. Allow reasonable deductions just as you would a citizen. Punish heavily those who commit tax or financial fraud."
There is nothing concrete in this point. It does not address the problem that my suggestion solves. Corporations will always play tricks with taxes. The only way to assure that corporations pay taxes is to have a minimum rate.
"4 - Promote small business loans, small business community incentives, and small business government assistance (not money, but help DEALING with the government regulations -- ie employment tax issues, healthcare issues, employer requirements, etc)"
Yes we got it. You fall in the top 20% who pay the lion share of the taxes. Unfortunately the lion share you pay is not in proportion to the income you have.
"5 - Cut the defense budget, and put the rest into completely reforming schools through optional (but significant) federal incentives. So school townships that dont want to change, or that are working and have money, dont have to change, but those who are poor, change to work better. Hire teachers with real degress from real universities, and pay them free-market wages (you know, like, $60k for teaching, instead of 32k)."
Not the worst idea I have heard nor the best. I can not speak for other areas of school spending but I have seen numerous schools that have entire labs filled with overpowered pc that have LCD displays (in every case on a desk or table that would have accomadated a CRT equally well).
"1 - Campaign Finance Reform -- No Donations From Anyone. Equal government money to all candidates with a set number of signatures. This is all they get. Deal with it."
Agreed, and lets abolish the parties while we are at it. It certainly would not hurt to go back to voting for people instead of corrupt political organizations.
Hell as long as we are going on to reforms. We should not forget to abolish the current social security scheme. Of course it would need to be replaced with a new entity for disability (retirement should be privatized. The
You are ignoring the fact that US Troops have been responsible for 80% of the Iraqi deaths (or had been at the last count, about 18 months in). In other words, of the 100,000 Iraqi Civs who are dead, we killed 80,000 of them.
There may be foreign insurgents killing their own people, but US Troops claim responsibility for most of the dead Iraqis.
I prefer to let you do your own research. I only do that for pay. I will give you a hint though, I've given links to some of this information in other posts within this thread. Are you so lazy that you really can't google for yourself? Or you do genuinely feel it is a sane practice to assume that all statements that run contrary to what you wish to believe are lies without even the slightest effort to ascertain their merit?
As for the censorship of web browsing and news, anyone who reads slashdot was privledged to see these stories within the past couple weeks. Hell, the news piped into soldiers in military controlled facilities is monitored and filtered during peacetime. In fact, sometimes potential recruits have to put up in a hotel to make scheduled times for physicals and ASVAB exams. Because you are a citizen and not military personel they advise you that the phones are monitored and the television is censored.
Apparently, somebody with authority reached the conclusion that the troops perform better if they aren't aware of negative sentiments. In the view of the military it is really irrelevant whether what they are telling the troops is true or not so long as it makes the troops believe they are doing something positive.
Assuming you mean military personal, you are aware that their communications with you are monitored? You are also aware that their news is censored and even altered to include political propoganda that "boosts moral"?
According to actual studies done by neutral organizations 100,000 Iraqi civilians died in the first 18 months of occupation. 80,000 of them were killed by US Troops; the largest foreign insurgent element in Iraq.
Is that why iraqi citizens are dying? I thought the US supported iraqi police death squads were part of it? Not to mention the US troops putting caps in the back of 7 month year old babies heads.
Lets see if we can find some imagery. Here is a video
Actually cutting the US defense budget and routing the billions pumped into military research into legitimate non-military motivated research grants should do the trick. Or if you want to get really crazy you could just cut that money from the budget altogether, add government provided healthcare (since that doesn't mean privatized healthcare can't exist for those that can afford it), and stop taxing citizens that make less than 6 figures.
Fsck, if we are doing crazy financials that would make sense you could set a reasonable minimum tax rate for corporations. That way no matter how many deduction loopholes they jump through they still have to pay say 20% like citizens. Then we can use the proceeds to supplement the income of the average american to something closer to six figures.;)
That depends. Are the 'rebels' a foreign superpowers military that is overthrowing the dictator under the guise of motives that turn out to be completely fraudulent and more likely than not just going to exploit your national resources and establish a puppet government?
"failed to take into account the insurgency made up of extremists"
ROFL. Is that what you call the citizens of Iraq who fight the oppresion of a foreign invader? If Iraq had invaded the U.S. would you be an "extremist"?
Is the system intelligent enough to figure out that the rpg was fired over the heads of friendly troops and not to detonate where it will do more damage than it would hitting a fully armored tank?
That depends, I see when exploit code was released into the wild and Microsoft acknowledged it. But how long before that was microsoft made aware of the problem and refused to acknowledge before the developer got frustrated enough to release the code?
That might be good news, or might not. We have no way of knowing if there are less security issues in IIS than previous versions because we do not have the source to review. Instead we only know how many officially recognized security holes there are. There are no shortage of known exploitable bugs that Microsoft has not acknowledged and not patched. I am forced to leave this as a blanket statement for all microsoft products since there are obviously no official stats on unoffical bugs.
"right. To point out that it is not always the fault of microsoft, but of the dumbass admins and users that don't update their systems."
That is kind of passing the buck don't you think? Yes an admin who has not applied a security patch has a share of the blame. But that hardly changes the fact that Microsoft shipping a product with a security hole is the root of the problem. The lion share of blame for all the security issues with Microsoft products rests with Microsoft.
This is like firestone shipping defective and dangerous tires. If firestone issues a recall to exchange the tires for new ones, no blame falls with the individual who never hears about the issue at all. Some does fall on the trucking company that does not immediately call in all the trucks and reoutfit the fleet. But the root of the problem and the ultimate liability would belong to firestone for shipping faulty tires to begin with. Doubly so if firestone avoided the recall until they had no choice instead of immediately issuing it upon discovering there was a problem. Microsoft certainly avoids admitting to exploitable holes when they think they can get away with it.
"I'm not really sure about the developer increase. I think there are a lot less developers working on linux than you think. At the core level, there aren't a lot of people even experienced enough to add fixes or updates (maybe even less than the amount of engineers working at Microsoft)."
Yes but kernel development is a tree with many branches. Each of those core are who Linus trusts to pass off good code. They in turn will be recieving patches from a far larger number of developers. Again, these developers may be passing along patches from still more developers. Only at the furthest reaches of the development model do untested and unreviewed patches come into play.
When the EU did a study on open source source software and distributed information for government bodies considering adopting it; they estimated the number of open source developers to be at least 3 million.
"open source sounds great on paper, but in the end, 1% of the people getting the source are doing the work. The rest are just interested in it because of the price."
Now that is just plain trolling. The open source development model is more than a party favor and is highly effective in practice. In fact, it is so much more effective than closed models that corporations (including microsoft) are trying to take as much from the model as they can without actually opening up.
In any case, this is not a debate that will be settled by us today. It is obvious that you either work for a MS shop or for MS though. Some of your points are almost word for word the arguments that Microsoft makes to defend itself.
This is a rather ridiculous argument. They split up the issue in a rather odd way. On one hand you have one editor taking the anti-female position. The strange thing is that this editor has a problem with the women being sex symbols (despite millions of years of built in instinct that assures that this is a natural aspect of gender relations in our species).
Then you have the other editor pretending to support women being taken seriously in gaming, and that editor sees no problem with them showing their assets.
Where are the more realistic positions that desire women to be sex objects first and being able to compete is just a bonus. And the counter example of the guy that wants women to be taken seriously and not treated as sex objects.
As far as I know there there are no hetro male dominated parties that actually do not want women around at gatherings. Whether they want them there for talent, fairness, sexuality, or all of the above Yes it is possible to not deny your male instincts that see women as sex objects and still respect their non-cosmetic features and intellect at the same time.
You are breaking one of the basic laws of economics. A house is a liability, not an asset. The same is true of cars and electronics. You could get lucky and purchase a house in a neighborhood where property values skyrocket but most people lose money on their home, not make it.
Investing in a house is like saving in a checking account. The bank gets the interest, not you. In addition to the interest you are losing, you have to pay for the upkeep on the house and live with the depreciation (which is merely slower on a house than most things, wiring gets outdated and so forth) or pay substantially to fix it back up again. Don't forget taxes on that sucker. Last but not least, you have made an excellent point regarding the way a house ties you down.
"it's sad to see people like you trapped in your mental shortcomings, to go through life and think about the world around you the way you do, a helpless "us" versus an all-controlling "them""
This cracks me up. That people can be so secure in their trust of the government and powers at be that they feel it is laughable to think said powers have an agenda. And this, despite the fact that the powers at be are exposed in conspiracy after conspiracy. Despite the fact that anyone reading smaller news sites will see stories about US troops murdering 5 children execution style to the back of the head in iraq, including a 7 month year old. Oddly that never makes CNN and FOX.
Why? The offically CHANGED story says that the building was bombed (nevermind the bullet holes and previous press releases) and that 5 people were there. Wait... that can't be a coverup, we wouldn't cover anything up.
The government AND powerful corporations are caught again and again in conspiracy. Every round of declassification yields dozens of government conspiracies that are real and DID happen. How many more remain classified? When the government is caught in a conspiracy nobody is surprised, everyone knows they are crooked. Yet, when someone suggests the government could be involved in something crooked they are laughed at and ridiculed.
There are conspiracy nuts who read tabloids and have pyramid hats. But not everyone who suspects the government and/or corporate interests of conspiracy is a wacko or out of line.
"o please: i applaud those who decry slave labor in the third world. but please recognize reality: to properly destroy the slave labor conditions YOU HAVE TO PROPOSE A SUPERIOR SOLUTION"
The point is not "down with slave labor" the point is "down with allowing US corporations outsource to nations that do not play on a level playing field. If an indian firm will meet up to US labor requirements and still be cost effective to outsource to then great. If not imports from that plant should be banned.
True enough, but a reduction in the rate that the IT market flushes down the toilet is hardly saying that IT is hot. IT does have to reach bottom at some point.
Both innocent, and no need to be removed from your statement. You have already prequalified it and that takes away the moderates grounds for "depends".
"Is bombing people evil?"
Extremist A: Yes Extremist B: No Moderate: Depends (on whether the people are innocent and there is a good reason)
However, the moderate view is still not always the correct one. Simply because one's view is decidedly on one side of the issue or the other does not mean one is incorrect.
hmm... a software developer posting his opinions on software patents. Doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to me. Or do you really suggest that matters of innovation be left in the hands of lawyers rather than developers and engineers?
Personally I am against both software and physical patents at this point. Patents were never about inventors rights. Patents were supposed to be a way to get inventors to reveal how their machines functioned so that society could benefit from them after the patent expired. It's not like someone is entitled to exclusive rights simply because they develop the next step in technological progression first.
To that end, there is no evidence of patents increasing innovation at all. In fact, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that they have reduced the speed of innovation. Software is easily reverse engineered and so are physical inventions. Although it may be easier to devise the function from a patent than reverse engineering it will not take decades. At this point it really is much more beneficial to toss out patents. One good example of delayed innovation is the steam engine; the inventor literally held up the entire industrial revolution by the length of his patent.
"The $100 laptop doesn't have a hard disk. It'll initially have 512 MB flash storage."
This leads to the question of why? 512mb flash is going to cost nearly as much as a small hard drive and will build in obsolescence due to very limited write cycles.
"Why the hell should I waste time writing dozens of poorly-optimised routines for myself, when I could just plug in someone else's finely tuned, heavily optimised library?"
I certainly would never do this. I would write a highly optimized and finely tuned routine myself. Generalized libraries, are by definition, generalized rather than optimized.
Yes there are a handful of shared libraries that are beneficial. There are thousands that are not. It is a reasonable guess that 99% of the shared libraries on the average linux system are never utilized by more than one program at the same time (if programs do not use them at the same time then dynamic linking requires MORE memory AND a performance hit). Probably 80-90% aren't used by more than one app on the system at all.
"I hate VB because it's a nasty language."
I hate vb because it is bloated, inefficient, and slow. The reason is that vb programs consist almost entirely of generalized functions, libraries, and an entire vb specific widget set that vb 'programmers' tie together with a little spit and glue.
"Once again, a complete dogmatic assertion of "truth". Since you know for a fact that there is no evidence for a God, I guess that clears up the whole argument."
Now you must simply be trolling. Either there is evidence of God or not. A typical part of most religions is that God will not prove himself to you. There literally is NO evidence that could hold up scientific scrutiny that points to a diety. There are no holes in the theories of life are most reasonably filled with one. This is not dogma, it is an evaluation of EVIDENCE.
"How is this different than the person that claims that all evidence for Evolution has been doctored up by the Evolutionists?"
You thousands of scientists of completely independant scientists to have doctored information in a such a way that it has held up to the scrutiny of some of the most powerful minds mankind has to offer. It has also held up to scrutiny by those other scientists that do believe in a diety.
"Its simply a blanket assertion that upholds the person's pre-existing blind-faith belief."
No, it is a factual argument. One can not prove a negative, so the burden is on you to supply FACTUAL evidence of creation. It is extremely simple for me to do the same for evolution, refer to the article we are posting under. It is arguably not merely evidence but as solid a proof as will ever be had.
"I'm perfectly willing to listen to the arguments for evolution as are many who are willing to listen to arguments for God. As someone else posted earlier, the two need not be mutually exclusive."
That is not at all what you are expressing. Your message is quite clear. You are not interested in hearing arguments for evolution without a diety. It is true that the two are not exclusive, it is quite possible for there to be a diety (God, with a capital 'G' implies the christian god and there are factual errors in that doctrine that rule out that possibility).
You will never have evolution + diety mixed from a respectable scientist. This is not because it is not possible, it is because it is not a valid part of science. First, the existance of a diety can not be disproven and therefore is disqualified from the scientific method. No matter what evidence you find, the diety could have made it that way. Second, a diety is not needed to complete the theory, thus occams razor eliminates it. Third, magic all powerful entities in the sky who do not show themselves in modern days but did so back when men were very superstitious, gullible, and believed in magic do not top the list of most likely explanations for any reasonable person.
"it is also not unreasonable to believe in God"
Reasonable people can believe in a god and still be reasonable. That is not the same thing as saying a belief in a god is reasonable. Reason does not lead to a conclusion that a god, fairies, angels, demons, sprites, willow wisps, trolls, dragons, fairy godmothers, harpies, ghosts, and so forth are real. These things have all been believed by reasonable people at some point. Reaching the conclusion that they are real is a question of faith, not reason.
Reason always leads to believing the simpliest natural conclusion that can be reached based upon credible observation.
Slashdot Mirror
"I would be a member of our uniformed military fighting an invading army."
You seem to have missed the part where the uniformed military already lost. Our nation has already been conquered.
"If some actual extremists were to intervene in the conflict, by say bombing catholic churches or setting up IEDs at police academies to kill kids about to become cops, I'd use all my time off duty to hunt them down and beat the living hell out of them."
They are becoming the police force of the new regime (the kids part is just an appeal to emotion and neither true nor relevant). Personally I would see nothing wrong with killing the traitors who support the invaders along with the invaders themselves. Any extremists of the variety you refer to would have to wait for my attention if 80% of the civilians dying were dying at the hands of the invaders and most of the rest were dying at the hands of death squads formed from the traitor police for the invaders assembled.
Another note to add. Let us not forget that the US is primarily responsible for keeping iraq impoverished for 10 years prior to invasion. We basically prevented them from selling their only major economic resource, oil. I am sure it didn't help that we bombed them now and then because we didn't think they were fully cooperating when it came to weapons inspections (nevermind that we now know that Iraq didn't have anything to hide all along).
"1 - No govt healthcare, but regulation of insurance companies. This is better. Competition, with limits. Executive pay limits, mandatory coverage for those who are working, etc."
This does not guarantee that every US citizen can have comprehensive healthcare regardless of their means or employment.
"2 - Tax everyone the same. Flat tax. Those who are at a reasonable poverty line will recieve their taxes back in the form of food coupons. Everyone is equal, everyone pays the same rate. This creates incentives for those with little money to work harder and gain more money. Its ludicrous to punish those who work harder by more taxes."
This does not resolve the problem of almost all the economic resources in the nation pooling at the top. That needs to be prevented. The rest of your post rests on the work ethic fallacy. Hard work is not a formula for success and it never has been. In reality it is the poorest who must work the hardest to survive. Not everyone can be successful. For every business there must be employees and an owner. Therefore there will always be a gap and a lower finacial class. The ideal is to make the gap as small as possible.
"Those who are at a reasonable poverty line will recieve their taxes back in the form of food coupons."
This of course is obviously ridiculous. First someone need not be impoverished to get a tax break. Middle class families are the goal and therefore they should recieve the tax break. The top 5% have FAR more wealth than the other 95% combined. But the completely ridiculous part is the implication that these people should be policed on how they can spend their money by only giving them food coupons. Perhaps they want to put that money toward repairing their vehicle, or buying medicine for themselves or their child (since you have put us back into a situation where nobody has healthcare).
"3 - Cut out subsidies, corporate tax breaks, state-driven corporate tax relief. Make corporations all pay the same tax rate. Allow reasonable deductions just as you would a citizen. Punish heavily those who commit tax or financial fraud."
There is nothing concrete in this point. It does not address the problem that my suggestion solves. Corporations will always play tricks with taxes. The only way to assure that corporations pay taxes is to have a minimum rate.
"4 - Promote small business loans, small business community incentives, and small business government assistance (not money, but help DEALING with the government regulations -- ie employment tax issues, healthcare issues, employer requirements, etc)"
Yes we got it. You fall in the top 20% who pay the lion share of the taxes. Unfortunately the lion share you pay is not in proportion to the income you have.
"5 - Cut the defense budget, and put the rest into completely reforming schools through optional (but significant) federal incentives. So school townships that dont want to change, or that are working and have money, dont have to change, but those who are poor, change to work better. Hire teachers with real degress from real universities, and pay them free-market wages (you know, like, $60k for teaching, instead of 32k)."
Not the worst idea I have heard nor the best. I can not speak for other areas of school spending but I have seen numerous schools that have entire labs filled with overpowered pc that have LCD displays (in every case on a desk or table that would have accomadated a CRT equally well).
"1 - Campaign Finance Reform -- No Donations From Anyone. Equal government money to all candidates with a set number of signatures. This is all they get. Deal with it."
Agreed, and lets abolish the parties while we are at it. It certainly would not hurt to go back to voting for people instead of corrupt political organizations.
Hell as long as we are going on to reforms. We should not forget to abolish the current social security scheme. Of course it would need to be replaced with a new entity for disability (retirement should be privatized. The
You are ignoring the fact that US Troops have been responsible for 80% of the Iraqi deaths (or had been at the last count, about 18 months in). In other words, of the 100,000 Iraqi Civs who are dead, we killed 80,000 of them.
There may be foreign insurgents killing their own people, but US Troops claim responsibility for most of the dead Iraqis.
I prefer to let you do your own research. I only do that for pay. I will give you a hint though, I've given links to some of this information in other posts within this thread. Are you so lazy that you really can't google for yourself? Or you do genuinely feel it is a sane practice to assume that all statements that run contrary to what you wish to believe are lies without even the slightest effort to ascertain their merit?
As for the censorship of web browsing and news, anyone who reads slashdot was privledged to see these stories within the past couple weeks. Hell, the news piped into soldiers in military controlled facilities is monitored and filtered during peacetime. In fact, sometimes potential recruits have to put up in a hotel to make scheduled times for physicals and ASVAB exams. Because you are a citizen and not military personel they advise you that the phones are monitored and the television is censored.
Apparently, somebody with authority reached the conclusion that the troops perform better if they aren't aware of negative sentiments. In the view of the military it is really irrelevant whether what they are telling the troops is true or not so long as it makes the troops believe they are doing something positive.
Assuming you mean military personal, you are aware that their communications with you are monitored? You are also aware that their news is censored and even altered to include political propoganda that "boosts moral"?
According to actual studies done by neutral organizations 100,000 Iraqi civilians died in the first 18 months of occupation. 80,000 of them were killed by US Troops; the largest foreign insurgent element in Iraq.
Read more here:
According to who? The US military?
Is that why iraqi citizens are dying? I thought the US supported iraqi police death squads were part of it? Not to mention the US troops putting caps in the back of 7 month year old babies heads.
Lets see if we can find some imagery. Here is a video
Actually cutting the US defense budget and routing the billions pumped into military research into legitimate non-military motivated research grants should do the trick. Or if you want to get really crazy you could just cut that money from the budget altogether, add government provided healthcare (since that doesn't mean privatized healthcare can't exist for those that can afford it), and stop taxing citizens that make less than 6 figures.
;)
Fsck, if we are doing crazy financials that would make sense you could set a reasonable minimum tax rate for corporations. That way no matter how many deduction loopholes they jump through they still have to pay say 20% like citizens. Then we can use the proceeds to supplement the income of the average american to something closer to six figures.
That depends. Are the 'rebels' a foreign superpowers military that is overthrowing the dictator under the guise of motives that turn out to be completely fraudulent and more likely than not just going to exploit your national resources and establish a puppet government?
"failed to take into account the insurgency made up of extremists"
ROFL. Is that what you call the citizens of Iraq who fight the oppresion of a foreign invader? If Iraq had invaded the U.S. would you be an "extremist"?
Is the system intelligent enough to figure out that the rpg was fired over the heads of friendly troops and not to detonate where it will do more damage than it would hitting a fully armored tank?
That depends, I see when exploit code was released into the wild and Microsoft acknowledged it. But how long before that was microsoft made aware of the problem and refused to acknowledge before the developer got frustrated enough to release the code?
"okay, when looking at iis 6.0, there are a lot less security issues than in any of their previous versions.
0 /7882.aspx"
http://msmvps.com/blogs/bernard/archive/2004/06/1
That might be good news, or might not. We have no way of knowing if there are less security issues in IIS than previous versions because we do not have the source to review. Instead we only know how many officially recognized security holes there are. There are no shortage of known exploitable bugs that Microsoft has not acknowledged and not patched. I am forced to leave this as a blanket statement for all microsoft products since there are obviously no official stats on unoffical bugs.
"right. To point out that it is not always the fault of microsoft, but of the dumbass admins and users that don't update their systems."
That is kind of passing the buck don't you think? Yes an admin who has not applied a security patch has a share of the blame. But that hardly changes the fact that Microsoft shipping a product with a security hole is the root of the problem. The lion share of blame for all the security issues with Microsoft products rests with Microsoft.
This is like firestone shipping defective and dangerous tires. If firestone issues a recall to exchange the tires for new ones, no blame falls with the individual who never hears about the issue at all. Some does fall on the trucking company that does not immediately call in all the trucks and reoutfit the fleet. But the root of the problem and the ultimate liability would belong to firestone for shipping faulty tires to begin with. Doubly so if firestone avoided the recall until they had no choice instead of immediately issuing it upon discovering there was a problem. Microsoft certainly avoids admitting to exploitable holes when they think they can get away with it.
"I'm not really sure about the developer increase. I think there are a lot less developers working on linux than you think. At the core level, there aren't a lot of people even experienced enough to add fixes or updates (maybe even less than the amount of engineers working at Microsoft)."
Yes but kernel development is a tree with many branches. Each of those core are who Linus trusts to pass off good code. They in turn will be recieving patches from a far larger number of developers. Again, these developers may be passing along patches from still more developers. Only at the furthest reaches of the development model do untested and unreviewed patches come into play.
When the EU did a study on open source source software and distributed information for government bodies considering adopting it; they estimated the number of open source developers to be at least 3 million.
"open source sounds great on paper, but in the end, 1% of the people getting the source are doing the work. The rest are just interested in it because of the price."
Now that is just plain trolling. The open source development model is more than a party favor and is highly effective in practice. In fact, it is so much more effective than closed models that corporations (including microsoft) are trying to take as much from the model as they can without actually opening up.
In any case, this is not a debate that will be settled by us today. It is obvious that you either work for a MS shop or for MS though. Some of your points are almost word for word the arguments that Microsoft makes to defend itself.
This is a rather ridiculous argument. They split up the issue in a rather odd way. On one hand you have one editor taking the anti-female position. The strange thing is that this editor has a problem with the women being sex symbols (despite millions of years of built in instinct that assures that this is a natural aspect of gender relations in our species).
Then you have the other editor pretending to support women being taken seriously in gaming, and that editor sees no problem with them showing their assets.
Where are the more realistic positions that desire women to be sex objects first and being able to compete is just a bonus. And the counter example of the guy that wants women to be taken seriously and not treated as sex objects.
As far as I know there there are no hetro male dominated parties that actually do not want women around at gatherings. Whether they want them there for talent, fairness, sexuality, or all of the above Yes it is possible to not deny your male instincts that see women as sex objects and still respect their non-cosmetic features and intellect at the same time.
You are breaking one of the basic laws of economics. A house is a liability, not an asset. The same is true of cars and electronics. You could get lucky and purchase a house in a neighborhood where property values skyrocket but most people lose money on their home, not make it.
Investing in a house is like saving in a checking account. The bank gets the interest, not you. In addition to the interest you are losing, you have to pay for the upkeep on the house and live with the depreciation (which is merely slower on a house than most things, wiring gets outdated and so forth) or pay substantially to fix it back up again. Don't forget taxes on that sucker. Last but not least, you have made an excellent point regarding the way a house ties you down.
"it's sad to see people like you trapped in your mental shortcomings, to go through life and think about the world around you the way you do, a helpless "us" versus an all-controlling "them""
This cracks me up. That people can be so secure in their trust of the government and powers at be that they feel it is laughable to think said powers have an agenda. And this, despite the fact that the powers at be are exposed in conspiracy after conspiracy. Despite the fact that anyone reading smaller news sites will see stories about US troops murdering 5 children execution style to the back of the head in iraq, including a 7 month year old. Oddly that never makes CNN and FOX.
Why? The offically CHANGED story says that the building was bombed (nevermind the bullet holes and previous press releases) and that 5 people were there. Wait... that can't be a coverup, we wouldn't cover anything up.
The government AND powerful corporations are caught again and again in conspiracy. Every round of declassification yields dozens of government conspiracies that are real and DID happen. How many more remain classified? When the government is caught in a conspiracy nobody is surprised, everyone knows they are crooked. Yet, when someone suggests the government could be involved in something crooked they are laughed at and ridiculed.
There are conspiracy nuts who read tabloids and have pyramid hats. But not everyone who suspects the government and/or corporate interests of conspiracy is a wacko or out of line.
"o please: i applaud those who decry slave labor in the third world. but please recognize reality: to properly destroy the slave labor conditions YOU HAVE TO PROPOSE A SUPERIOR SOLUTION"
The point is not "down with slave labor" the point is "down with allowing US corporations outsource to nations that do not play on a level playing field. If an indian firm will meet up to US labor requirements and still be cost effective to outsource to then great. If not imports from that plant should be banned.
True enough, but a reduction in the rate that the IT market flushes down the toilet is hardly saying that IT is hot. IT does have to reach bottom at some point.
Both innocent, and no need to be removed from your statement. You have already prequalified it and that takes away the moderates grounds for "depends".
"Is bombing people evil?"
Extremist A: Yes
Extremist B: No
Moderate: Depends (on whether the people are innocent and there is a good reason)
However, the moderate view is still not always the correct one. Simply because one's view is decidedly on one side of the issue or the other does not mean one is incorrect.
hmm... a software developer posting his opinions on software patents. Doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to me. Or do you really suggest that matters of innovation be left in the hands of lawyers rather than developers and engineers?
Personally I am against both software and physical patents at this point. Patents were never about inventors rights. Patents were supposed to be a way to get inventors to reveal how their machines functioned so that society could benefit from them after the patent expired. It's not like someone is entitled to exclusive rights simply because they develop the next step in technological progression first.
To that end, there is no evidence of patents increasing innovation at all. In fact, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that they have reduced the speed of innovation. Software is easily reverse engineered and so are physical inventions. Although it may be easier to devise the function from a patent than reverse engineering it will not take decades. At this point it really is much more beneficial to toss out patents. One good example of delayed innovation is the steam engine; the inventor literally held up the entire industrial revolution by the length of his patent.
"The $100 laptop doesn't have a hard disk. It'll initially have 512 MB flash storage."
This leads to the question of why? 512mb flash is going to cost nearly as much as a small hard drive and will build in obsolescence due to very limited write cycles.
"Why the hell should I waste time writing dozens of poorly-optimised routines for myself, when I could just plug in someone else's finely tuned, heavily optimised library?"
I certainly would never do this. I would write a highly optimized and finely tuned routine myself. Generalized libraries, are by definition, generalized rather than optimized.
Yes there are a handful of shared libraries that are beneficial. There are thousands that are not. It is a reasonable guess that 99% of the shared libraries on the average linux system are never utilized by more than one program at the same time (if programs do not use them at the same time then dynamic linking requires MORE memory AND a performance hit). Probably 80-90% aren't used by more than one app on the system at all.
"I hate VB because it's a nasty language."
I hate vb because it is bloated, inefficient, and slow. The reason is that vb programs consist almost entirely of generalized functions, libraries, and an entire vb specific widget set that vb 'programmers' tie together with a little spit and glue.
"Once again, a complete dogmatic assertion of "truth". Since you know for a fact that there is no evidence for a God, I guess that clears up the whole argument."
Now you must simply be trolling. Either there is evidence of God or not. A typical part of most religions is that God will not prove himself to you. There literally is NO evidence that could hold up scientific scrutiny that points to a diety. There are no holes in the theories of life are most reasonably filled with one. This is not dogma, it is an evaluation of EVIDENCE.
"How is this different than the person that claims that all evidence for Evolution has been doctored up by the Evolutionists?"
You thousands of scientists of completely independant scientists to have doctored information in a such a way that it has held up to the scrutiny of some of the most powerful minds mankind has to offer. It has also held up to scrutiny by those other scientists that do believe in a diety.
"Its simply a blanket assertion that upholds the person's pre-existing blind-faith belief."
No, it is a factual argument. One can not prove a negative, so the burden is on you to supply FACTUAL evidence of creation. It is extremely simple for me to do the same for evolution, refer to the article we are posting under. It is arguably not merely evidence but as solid a proof as will ever be had.
"I'm perfectly willing to listen to the arguments for evolution as are many who are willing to listen to arguments for God. As someone else posted earlier, the two need not be mutually exclusive."
That is not at all what you are expressing. Your message is quite clear. You are not interested in hearing arguments for evolution without a diety. It is true that the two are not exclusive, it is quite possible for there to be a diety (God, with a capital 'G' implies the christian god and there are factual errors in that doctrine that rule out that possibility).
You will never have evolution + diety mixed from a respectable scientist. This is not because it is not possible, it is because it is not a valid part of science. First, the existance of a diety can not be disproven and therefore is disqualified from the scientific method. No matter what evidence you find, the diety could have made it that way. Second, a diety is not needed to complete the theory, thus occams razor eliminates it. Third, magic all powerful entities in the sky who do not show themselves in modern days but did so back when men were very superstitious, gullible, and believed in magic do not top the list of most likely explanations for any reasonable person.
"it is also not unreasonable to believe in God"
Reasonable people can believe in a god and still be reasonable. That is not the same thing as saying a belief in a god is reasonable. Reason does not lead to a conclusion that a god, fairies, angels, demons, sprites, willow wisps, trolls, dragons, fairy godmothers, harpies, ghosts, and so forth are real. These things have all been believed by reasonable people at some point. Reaching the conclusion that they are real is a question of faith, not reason.
Reason always leads to believing the simpliest natural conclusion that can be reached based upon credible observation.