It's not in fashion here on Slashdot to actually be optimistic about the mechanisms of change in a representative government.
Imagine that the country wakes up and eventually stops voting for the current crop of dung beetles, how do you take back property rights that have already been granted. Even if you believe that representative governments reflect the desire of the population and that the population is smart enough to vote in their own interest, how do we take back property rights granted world wide by treaties the US is a signatory too.
I think the corporations recognized that the people are fickle and may eventually recognize they are being ripped off, so they made sure that the US stamped the current order of things on nascent world law.
While I certainly support non-lethal weapons in use of riot dispersion
I actually worry about this somewhat. One reason that reliable long distance non-lethal weapons have been so strongly controlled for civilians is that it is believed that violent criminals will be more likely to use such a weapon. It follows that a cop in charge of breaking up a riot (or any public gathering that the powers that be disapprove of) is going to be willing to not be so worried about whether it is a riot or a peaceable demonstration, whether or not innocent bystanders (or pesky reporters) are caught by the weapons effect, etc.
I can't wait to hear what they consider to be acceptable levels of casualties as the result of using this thing on people.
I imagine that any casualties will be subject to incredible levels of propaganda. Human nature is such that we are very very good at accepting the most hateful propaganda if it matches what we want to believe - and Americans still desperately want to believe that we are not monsters. So any casualties that result from this will be painted (and widely believed) to have got what was coming to them.
Yes they grow, but they are not the direct object of the verb 'to grow'.
A business grows. He grows his business.
The first is fine, the second is nails on a chalkboard.
That has got be up there with "when in doubt - use brute force" and "premature optimization is the root of all evil" for useful little aphorisms.
Integration and performance testing will catch many cases that need to be optimized and real world use will catch many more, but over designed super optimization from the get go turns out things like CORBA, ASN.1 and Ada. How long have those specs been out, and how well does anyone understand or use them - governments and utilities use them because they are mandated, but programmers that are not forced to use them tend to look into them and then throw up their hands and use something simpler that works for the vast majority of their needs.
Simpler is better until you really understand what you need.
That is all well and good, but I think it would also be completely fair to require that Disney and any agent of Disney (travel agency most likely) make the consumer aware that they will be subjected to this to enter the park.
I really think a fair number of purchasers (not a majority by any stretch, but at least a couple percent) would think twice before planing a Disney vacation if they knew they would be subject to this procedure.
The problem is that back before fascism became trendy again Western governments got in the habit of funding the arts, companies that make money off the arts would like to see this done away with.
Libraries, co-ops, public theatre and public music are competition for the buying power of the public. If you are happy with something provided free of charge you will not spend your money on a similar product provided by private enterprise.
In the twisted worldview shared by all those with wealth and power it is more than okay for private enterprise to cherry pick the results of government funded programs - but somehow imoral for the public to benefit from such programs.
So who gets to categorize third party information sources so consumers can give credability ratings to sources?
Bias can be introduced into such a system nearly everywhere. Even something as simple as the order in which choices are presented can influence decisions.
You can't pretend that "environmental track record" and "labor relations" are some sort of simple variable that can be rated from 1 to 10.
I was saying that you didn't get jobs because you were a teen. Regardless of your level of maturity, most teenagers are very immature, those with computer skills doubly so. You come across as a bit arrogant, but I have no idea how you are in real life.
My basic point is that regardless of your level of skill, most places would never hire a teenager for any job that required common sense. I think your age counted against you much more than lack of cert.
The biggest fucking IDIOTS had jobs I could have done in my sleep. I had practical experience, and I have the knowledge. I didn't have a certificate, so I had no job!
The real reason you couldn't get a job at that point was because you were a teenager. If you were good enough to be worth hiring you were more than likely an arrogant prick and much more trouble than you were worth.
Even interns are more trouble than they are worth most of the time. What little common sense and maturity most people develop does not even start development until age 23 or so.
"Player of Games" and "Use of Weapons" are two of my favorites and are pretty good introductions, both are set in the "Culture" that most people think of when they think of Banks. I never did find a US release of these two so I wound up ordering UK versions from a used book dealer online for $6 a pop or so.
Fanatics think anyone not marching to their anthem and singing their jingle is the enemy, to such persons anyone pointing out that a corporate news organization may be more interested in self serving hype than news must be a conspiracy theorist.
But anyway if you really care about deep characters and stuff like that over "gee whiz" why are you reading sci fi in the first place?
Probably why I am reading less and less sci-fi as I get older. I still really enjoy some space opera type stuff (Vernor Vinge, Ian Banks) which is gee whiz without being concerned with technical detail or realism - but by and large sci-fi has lost the ability to entertain me.
I always thought of Card as "mature new wave". The difference was that good new wave (as opposed to the sophomoric pseudo philosophical junk that was produced by most of the people in that movement) was almost entirely in short story or serial form and Card was one of the people who managed to bring its best points to novel form.
But then I like very little "hard" sci-fi, Bear is about it and that is because he cares more about story, characters, and consequences than gadgets and gee whiz science.
In the real world of low pay and low prestige IT work it is fairly common for things to be done in a far less than optimal manner.
People who know how to do better may just not bother, why make it complicated if it meets the spec - it's not like anyone is gonna give you a cookie if you build an order entry system that is twice the speed they expected.
At the other end programmers just out of school or training programs may have learned some theory and much of the nuts and bolts, but not really have an understanding of how to connect theory to practice. In an effort to save money I can easily imagine a shop in which such inexperienced coders are the vast majority of the workers.
Either way in reality you are gonna have people who cannot or won't bother applying basic knowledge to optimization. It is short sighted greed that is behind the poor state of things today, acceptance of adequacy is nothing more than a result of that greed.
The "EXEMPTION FROM INFRINGEMENT FOR SKIPPING AUDIO AND VIDEO CONTENT IN MOTION PICTURES" may qualify as family friendly, but is just another weasel move because it says nothing about creating and distributing derivative works - merely allows an exemption for a specific activity the religious right happens to approve of.
Not only that, they are quite likely to believe that if I tell them "No, Don't buy that, its a scam!" Its because I want to buy it and sell it to whoever they intended to sell it to!
I would think you were joking had I not run into this sort of "crafty peasant" mentality myself. I'm sure some such persons could be educated - but I don't want to waste my time doing so.
That is exactly what I did, I forgot it was april fools and made the mistake of glancing at the slashdot front page.
So, no, I didn't spend the day crying and weeping about slashdot - I came, saw that there were nothing but stupid prank stories, posted a comment, and left.
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine that the country wakes up and eventually stops voting for the current crop of dung beetles, how do you take back property rights that have already been granted. Even if you believe that representative governments reflect the desire of the population and that the population is smart enough to vote in their own interest, how do we take back property rights granted world wide by treaties the US is a signatory too.
I think the corporations recognized that the people are fickle and may eventually recognize they are being ripped off, so they made sure that the US stamped the current order of things on nascent world law.
The states rights movement is an attempt to give businesses the ability to use jobs and taxes as a bludgeon against state governments.
Maybe. Although the laws you are being charged with breaking and details of the crime of which you are accused may be top secret or something.
I actually worry about this somewhat. One reason that reliable long distance non-lethal weapons have been so strongly controlled for civilians is that it is believed that violent criminals will be more likely to use such a weapon. It follows that a cop in charge of breaking up a riot (or any public gathering that the powers that be disapprove of) is going to be willing to not be so worried about whether it is a riot or a peaceable demonstration, whether or not innocent bystanders (or pesky reporters) are caught by the weapons effect, etc.
I imagine that any casualties will be subject to incredible levels of propaganda. Human nature is such that we are very very good at accepting the most hateful propaganda if it matches what we want to believe - and Americans still desperately want to believe that we are not monsters. So any casualties that result from this will be painted (and widely believed) to have got what was coming to them.
Yes they grow, but they are not the direct object of the verb 'to grow'. A business grows. He grows his business. The first is fine, the second is nails on a chalkboard.
That has got be up there with "when in doubt - use brute force" and "premature optimization is the root of all evil" for useful little aphorisms.
Integration and performance testing will catch many cases that need to be optimized and real world use will catch many more, but over designed super optimization from the get go turns out things like CORBA, ASN.1 and Ada. How long have those specs been out, and how well does anyone understand or use them - governments and utilities use them because they are mandated, but programmers that are not forced to use them tend to look into them and then throw up their hands and use something simpler that works for the vast majority of their needs.
Simpler is better until you really understand what you need.
I really think a fair number of purchasers (not a majority by any stretch, but at least a couple percent) would think twice before planing a Disney vacation if they knew they would be subject to this procedure.
Libraries, co-ops, public theatre and public music are competition for the buying power of the public. If you are happy with something provided free of charge you will not spend your money on a similar product provided by private enterprise.
In the twisted worldview shared by all those with wealth and power it is more than okay for private enterprise to cherry pick the results of government funded programs - but somehow imoral for the public to benefit from such programs.
Bias can be introduced into such a system nearly everywhere. Even something as simple as the order in which choices are presented can influence decisions.
You can't pretend that "environmental track record" and "labor relations" are some sort of simple variable that can be rated from 1 to 10.
This moment of black helicopter zen brought to you by Slashdot.
My basic point is that regardless of your level of skill, most places would never hire a teenager for any job that required common sense. I think your age counted against you much more than lack of cert.
Have you ever talked to an executive? These people are Amway salesman with the right family. With such people wishing always makes it so.
The real reason you couldn't get a job at that point was because you were a teenager. If you were good enough to be worth hiring you were more than likely an arrogant prick and much more trouble than you were worth.
Even interns are more trouble than they are worth most of the time. What little common sense and maturity most people develop does not even start development until age 23 or so.
"Player of Games" and "Use of Weapons" are two of my favorites and are pretty good introductions, both are set in the "Culture" that most people think of when they think of Banks. I never did find a US release of these two so I wound up ordering UK versions from a used book dealer online for $6 a pop or so.
Fanatics think anyone not marching to their anthem and singing their jingle is the enemy, to such persons anyone pointing out that a corporate news organization may be more interested in self serving hype than news must be a conspiracy theorist.
Probably why I am reading less and less sci-fi as I get older. I still really enjoy some space opera type stuff (Vernor Vinge, Ian Banks) which is gee whiz without being concerned with technical detail or realism - but by and large sci-fi has lost the ability to entertain me.
But then I like very little "hard" sci-fi, Bear is about it and that is because he cares more about story, characters, and consequences than gadgets and gee whiz science.
In the real world of low pay and low prestige IT work it is fairly common for things to be done in a far less than optimal manner. People who know how to do better may just not bother, why make it complicated if it meets the spec - it's not like anyone is gonna give you a cookie if you build an order entry system that is twice the speed they expected.
At the other end programmers just out of school or training programs may have learned some theory and much of the nuts and bolts, but not really have an understanding of how to connect theory to practice. In an effort to save money I can easily imagine a shop in which such inexperienced coders are the vast majority of the workers.
Either way in reality you are gonna have people who cannot or won't bother applying basic knowledge to optimization. It is short sighted greed that is behind the poor state of things today, acceptance of adequacy is nothing more than a result of that greed.
The "EXEMPTION FROM INFRINGEMENT FOR SKIPPING AUDIO AND VIDEO CONTENT IN MOTION PICTURES" may qualify as family friendly, but is just another weasel move because it says nothing about creating and distributing derivative works - merely allows an exemption for a specific activity the religious right happens to approve of.
I would think you were joking had I not run into this sort of "crafty peasant" mentality myself. I'm sure some such persons could be educated - but I don't want to waste my time doing so.
So, no, I didn't spend the day crying and weeping about slashdot - I came, saw that there were nothing but stupid prank stories, posted a comment, and left.
People like salt, people need salt, people don't want a big heaping bowl of salt.