When you get to the moon, the notion of "Earth's nations" is relatively insignificant other than where the funding and suppies are coming from. The moon rotates around the entire planet and no nation can claim the lunar geography by fiat. Short term you could say it belongs to the U.S. because we landed on it first and there are a few U.S. Flags there. Also, we will probably be financing the entire Moon Unit Zappa project.
Long term though, the only reasonable decision is to grant the moon sovereignty and then establish trade relations and very relaxed "we help you more than you help us" international treaties. This would be a good move towards interstellar colonization: Independant sovereignty.
Arthur Clark said, "There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum."
First the instinctive revulsion when the internet tax ban did not sunset, and now illustration of the absurdity that is political correctness...
Is Slashdot becoming politically conservative?
I love the ad that was running on Slashdot for a while that said, "INTERNET TAX? / ARE YOU NUTS?" It made me want to pose the question to everyone, "If taxes are bad for the internet, if they would stifle commerce, invade your privacy, and overall act as a wet blanket on internet culture... what makes you think it is any different from EVERY OTHER AREA OF LIFE?"
Mod me down or ignore me, but I do pine for a conservative groundswell (a celebration of reason) in the Slashdot community.
...is not in corporations themselves, but in special-interest policymaking in Washington.
When lawmakers single out one particular sliver of the population (because admittedly everything we all do is "business" of some sort) and decide to pass legislation that advances only those elite anointed few's business initiatives, everyone else is left to twist in the wind.
We all do business every day, and profit motive (or self-interest) is really the only restraining force in the economy. If a business wants to integrate something into their product that frustrates customers and erodes the value of their product, the market will shift around it. People will buy what they want, and not what pisses them off. Businesses don't want to cut themselves off at the knees so they give people what they want.
Like Intuit with TurboTax: The market spoke, and they rolled back their idoitic license management scheme.
The problem is when what pisses consumers off becomes law and consumers don't have an alternative available off the shelf at some place like Target, on cable or satellite TV, etc. Lawmakers do a disservice to everyone when they remove the right for people to choose between products freely and shape the marketplace with their free will.
It is so arbitrary that these limitations are selected. It wastes time and benefits nobody ultimately. It's just a "switch" for you to tip that can be objectively measured when the suits come to sue you. This is just another joke. If you can decode something to play it, you can decode it to convert it. DeCSS all over again.
It takes a LOT of work to make good user interfaces, and nearly all of that work is repetitive and boring. It is easy to create inconsistencies, too. Programmers who just want to work on core or library-type routines are a dime a dozen because they basically don't have to know much about the end use of the app, just the technical requirements of the toolkit they're writing. Sort these records, rip this data from a file into memory, pack these strings into this byte array, etc. They are generalized functions that get used over and over, so there is some satisfaction in perfecting them and a need for them to be optimized. UI programmers have to know as much as possible about the people using the program, the business model that the end users have (why are they using this feature/function?... what is the ultimate goal?), and the types of environments it gets deployed into. It puts more of a burden on their mind as they work.
UI design on the other hand requires a TON of manual labor that cannot be done by anyone but a good programmer. You have to account for all the little things that a user just might do to your UI while maintaining the state of the form/program. That means coding responses to any number of potential events that might be fired instead of just letting the OS decide what will happen. UI design is frustrating and boring for most people because of this. If you have a form that has 60 fields on it spread over several tab pages and you have a status bar with an explanation of each field, you instantly have 120 callback functions, an enter and exit to and from each field to update that status line with that field's description and then to clear it. You have to write form field validator routines that check each field's data before packing it back into the database, issuing the right kind of error if the data is unacceptable. Heck, just the task of plugging all the database fields into the form elements can be painstaking for a form of moderate complexity.
And all the code has to be consistent, clean, etc, so the next guy knows what is going on. To impliment ONE well-designed form can take days of uninterrupted programming time. Forms with many many fields just slow things down even more... halfway through the afternoon your mind is swimming in a sea of callbacks and field names. Debugging a form? Don't go there.
I think basic "quality application interface programming," not even design, is the most underappriciated aspect of the complete software engineering task. If you had to pick just ONE THING to say, "We're going to make absolutely sure we don't **** this up."... this would be it after (out of obvious necessity) the data engine and memory model.
To make an analogy: The UI programming is like the Marine Corps (boring sweaty grunt work) like the "rest of the job" is to being an Air Force fighter pilot.
You cannot control a man's money withought controlling every other aspect of his life. Communism is blatantly political. It ceases to be an economic phenomenon when it diverges from being subordinate to "the market" and starts trying to dictate to the market what the market will be.
The market is the free will of everyone to choose to value one thing over another. It is a fact that all value is personal. This does not mean all "moral value" is unique to the individual, it means all economic (the demand for and method of acquisition of scarce resources) worth is determined by the wants of each individual person independant of others. This fact of existence is diametrically opposed to the premise of Communism.
Communism is political in the enforcement of its irrational ideals, because people do not naturally fall into communist practices - they instinctively resist them. It is not greed that resists Communism: it is good productive self-interest and enlightened self-interest working itself out. Enlightened self-interest is voluntarily helping others because it makes you happy and your personal life ultimately better. Giving a gift to your girlfriend, buying food for a widow, sending AIDS money to Africa, etc. People love giving gifts but they hate getting robbed even if the theif has noble plans for the money. Why should the thief take credit for the charity?
It is a NiceThought(tm) for everyone to have what they need but it always comes down to this: Who will guarantee your life? If someone else is shouldered with the responsibility of guaranteeing your life, their ass is hanging out in the wind. Someone always gets left out in Communism because a few people/are/ elevated above the fray and supported to excess and others are ignored. At the/very least/ in Capitalism it is YOUR choice where you want to fit in and settle. But it is better because in Capitalism the economy never stops growing. Communism takes reality and reduces it to a zero-sum game where instead of reaching into the ground and working to pull out something of BRAND NEW value to the world (economic growth), people are forced to redistribute a common set of wealth. No wonder things fall into decay in those places. It is not sustainable.
I didn't want to politicize the discussion beyond the fact that it is politically significant when people deal technology to China.
Your comment doesn't make sense. I have to imagine that is why you posted anonymously. You forget the Marshall plan where we spent (in today's dollars) hundreds of billions of dollars rebuilding Europe. That's right, the U.S.A. spent ALL that money over there helping to get things straight after WW2.
Everything worth doing takes time and everything that is valuable is worth fighting for. Even more importantly, it is worth LIVING for. I would die for freedom. For my own freedom, and for yours.
In Animal Farm, George Orwell perfectly described Communism: "Everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others."
And I would add: "The problem with Communism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."
The common-man in China is nowhere equal to government suits, and has no authority to shape or elect his government or influence their effects in his life. It is demeaning to a human to propose to him that "some other guy" has power of him. Says who? And who picked those guys? When the U.S. Constitution says, "All men are created equal" they were asserting that nobody has the right to hold power over your life unless you grant them permission. No one man is "anointed by God" to rule you. We all agree to loan some measure of power to a central government to most effeciently enforce contractual agreements and defend national interests. Anything else is nonsensical and theivery.
"Equality" in my book deals with rights and the rule of law. Humans should all have the same rights, responsiblities, and be ultimately held to the same standards and laws. Nobody should be above the law or outside of it. Leaders should be servants to the people, foundations of society... holding it up from the dirt, not sultans or kings in lavish palaces. Nothing wrong with capitol buildings I am just commenting about the attitudes of people who lead others.
Equality has NOTHING to do with finances. To demand that nomatter what process of cause and effect people go through result in equal financial standings is absurd. That's like saying: Kid A sits on his duff and plays PS2 all day and Kid B works two jobs delivering newspapers and designing websites for local small businesses. After ten months they should BOTH have the SAME amount of money so that life is FAIR! What the heck kind of nonsense is that? It sure isn't fair for Kid B who worked his rear end off to have the right to OWN that cash he brought in.
I agree with you in that nobody should wait around for the U.S. to stamp their approval on their lives. By all means proceed with the persuit of excellence.
When people do anything to support communism/in any way/ you have to understand why American's react as they do. Communism strips people of their dignity and freedom and erodes any concept of human rights. It is fundamentally war-oriented and diametrically opposed to the existance of opposing schools of thought: I.E. democracy. It isn't a "big happy world," either so spare us the hubris. There are a lot of people who's lives are literally broken by bloody tyrants in places like Communist China, Africa, and the middle-east. People said of those in Iraq, "They're not good enough for democracy, they're not advanced enough." That's racism, folks... every human spirit years to be free. It is very important to note that no governmental decision should be made in a vacuum outside the framework of interest and information in the rest of the world. China doesn't need any help producing long-range ballistic missile technology... which is just a whisker away from any aerospace research that might be shared to them.
I am a little shocked by your statement: "reasonably satisfied with one big, happy world-except-America."
Take the united states out of the world, and imagine the reprocussions. Look at all the R&D contributions we have made to the global quality of life over the last 100 years. Look who spilled their blood to spare everyone from Japanese and German occupation. Who is sending and supplying soldiers to guard the wall between terrorists and free people everywhere? Who just spend $10,000,000,000 on HIV/AIDS in Africa? Not the EU.
People get overobsessed with "the sins of America," even if they don't know any of them, but let me tell you... the "goodness of America" is much greater, FAR out of proportion to any of its mistakes.
I mean, China's interests are not the world's interests. History folks: read it.
I don't know how to say this withought sounding paranoid, but just because you have a science co-op doesn't mean everyone is interested in the same thing. China is more than gung ho about this project because EVERY space launch technology is dual-use for military application. I think it is a little cavalier (that's "dangerous" for you folks in high school) to do anything that puts more power in the hands of anti-freedom communists. Look at what they are doing to democratic Taiwan if you want to see what they would do to Europe or the U.S.A. if they had the ability.
You're talking about a nation that has a reverse-firewall on the entire CONTINENT... to keep people from being "infected" by rogue ideas like ownership, equality, and government existing through the sanction of the governed. You're talking about a nation that controls the news media with an iron fist to keep people from knowing when bad things happen as a result of communism. China is the closest thing to 1984 on the planet right now. Do we really want to share technology with them?
I use PowerBASIC every day. It is the best Win32 (soon to be cross-platform) compiler I have ever seen. And yes, it has TCP/IP stack.:) Being a 32-bit compiler it using OS APIs to create TCP/IP connections.
I use it in conjunction with.NET and ANSI C. Check out their company history for some background then take a look at the delicious capabilities of their Windows and Console compilers.
They also have a kick-ass DOS Compiler that has put dinner on my table for years. As we know, many people are still using DOS and DOS-mode apps every day.
When looking at PowerBASIC you have to get rid of any preconcieved notions of BASIC or how it has been implimented in the past. PowerBASIC is a dream to use, has a huge community, and compilers smaller and faster than most ANSI C programs I've seen. Also, check out their partial client list - you'll be in good company.
No, I do not work for them. I am a loyal customer and a geek that loves cool stuff. PB delivers.
I believe most arrogant dweebs are still here on planet earth - anxiously awaiting a viable alternative.
Soon everyone will lament that the arrogant dweebs really are on another planet as computers all over the earth go unrepaired, and grandmother's DELL goes unsupported.
So are you saying the country should belong only to the people who pay for it?
Absolutely not.
I did not state that at all, or even make an inference to that notion. I stated a fact from the IRS website. They offer the figures and statistics in several forms, including Excel spreadsheets, and you can see for yourself.
It is a fact that less than half of the people in this country carry the weight of paying for everything in the public sector while the other half is, realistically, getting a free ride. That does not mean those people lead expense-free lives... I just say that to correct the notion that financially destitute people can look the "big government" as a source of inspiration and in any way take pride in its big-ness or accomplishments. What contribution does that person make? In point of fact, they only/recieve gifts/ from it! Medicare/medicaid is a perfect example.
You never hear it called a gift but that is exactly what it is. People who make money, have money, pay it in taxes... they are giving a gift to those who do not have money. All they ever hear in return is "Hey! That gift isn't enough!"
It's really bogus, no? People should express more GRATITUDE for the producers instead of complaining or refusing to recognize them at all - only pointing to a big overlording government like communists and saying, "geee... look what I MADE!" Well, who paid for it?
What I was trying to say is that "wealth" is the incentive that inspires regular people to begin to live with excellence. People who become wealthy do so mostly by the virtue of their own distinguishing efforts and not by mere chance or good timing.
Read "The Millionare Mind" which is a book written after some 10 years of analysis and sit-down surveys with "the millionaire next door" type people. They said that over 40% of all current millionaires are self-made starting out with nothing. Wage-slaves, as you say. They start their own plumbing companies, become roofing contractors, or software consultants... and take the risk of bringing in the money needed to pay themselves a salary (instead of relying on someone else to take that risk) for decades until they have built a business process that has residual inertia. It requires concerted determined effort applied over a long period of time - not life handing you loaded dice.
Tax breaks exist for the lower income brackets because those people contribute least to the economy by the lower value of their efforts, yet their vote carries just as much force as that of a multi-billionaire. It doesn't take much intelligence to see that a certain political mindset in Washington will attempt to "buy" that vote by telling the person that they don't need to pay taxes, they get this that or the other thing as a "handout"... appealing to class envy and other sentiments and all kinds of fallacies are introduced like the notion of "federal money" to cover your needs. Since when should YOU PAY for my medical bills, PELL grant, or food stamps? You don't know me, and I've done nothing for you. That same logic is also true of the prescription drug plan in place for seniors. They are the wealthiest demographic in the nation, why don't we give "free drugs" to the broke college students instead? The fact to note though is that the senior citizens turn out to vote in VASTLY greater numbers than any other demographic. So... Washingtonites do what they have to do to "buy those votes!"
People are not wage-slaves. You can quit a job and find another one, close to what you enjoy doing. You can work hard in your spare time and study... better yourself. You CANNOT avoid risk. We are have the right to life, liberty, and to the pursue happiness but in fact we are not guaranteed HAPPINESS ITSELF and we must/personally defend/ our life and liberty. We are born into a situation that involves risk. It is up to you to try and make the absolute best of what time you're given. Step one: Put down the Coors and Playstation 2 controller.;)
Everyone must choose. And those who choose to better themselves always rise to the level of their ambition and character.
Slashdot Mirror
When you get to the moon, the notion of "Earth's nations" is relatively insignificant other than where the funding and suppies are coming from. The moon rotates around the entire planet and no nation can claim the lunar geography by fiat. Short term you could say it belongs to the U.S. because we landed on it first and there are a few U.S. Flags there. Also, we will probably be financing the entire Moon Unit Zappa project.
Long term though, the only reasonable decision is to grant the moon sovereignty and then establish trade relations and very relaxed "we help you more than you help us" international treaties. This would be a good move towards interstellar colonization: Independant sovereignty.
Arthur Clark said, "There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum."
But what about the /donation/ of genetically modified fish?
What about internet sales, isn't that interstate commerce?
The pioneers get the arrows, the settlers get the corn.
First the instinctive revulsion when the internet tax ban did not sunset, and now illustration of the absurdity that is political correctness...
... what makes you think it is any different from EVERY OTHER AREA OF LIFE?"
Is Slashdot becoming politically conservative?
I love the ad that was running on Slashdot for a while that said, "INTERNET TAX? / ARE YOU NUTS?" It made me want to pose the question to everyone, "If taxes are bad for the internet, if they would stifle commerce, invade your privacy, and overall act as a wet blanket on internet culture
Mod me down or ignore me, but I do pine for a conservative groundswell (a celebration of reason) in the Slashdot community.
I was just out in the wilderness camping this weekend, and I listened to the radio out there in the hills while I cooked dinner.
Why don't we ask, "Why have blogs anymore?" The blog/reader ratio is a lot closer to 1:1 than radio stations to listeners.
Rush Limbaugh (and his guest host's) 20 MILLION LISTENERS every week is pretty damn significant.
While it seems most slashdot readers are socialist left-wingers... some of us, myself included, listen to many hours of radio daily.
Of course that wouldn't occur to the slashdot moderator who accepted this story since nearly every successful talk radio program is conservative.
%bash bush
...is not in corporations themselves, but in special-interest policymaking in Washington.
When lawmakers single out one particular sliver of the population (because admittedly everything we all do is "business" of some sort) and decide to pass legislation that advances only those elite anointed few's business initiatives, everyone else is left to twist in the wind.
We all do business every day, and profit motive (or self-interest) is really the only restraining force in the economy. If a business wants to integrate something into their product that frustrates customers and erodes the value of their product, the market will shift around it. People will buy what they want, and not what pisses them off. Businesses don't want to cut themselves off at the knees so they give people what they want.
Like Intuit with TurboTax: The market spoke, and they rolled back their idoitic license management scheme.
The problem is when what pisses consumers off becomes law and consumers don't have an alternative available off the shelf at some place like Target, on cable or satellite TV, etc. Lawmakers do a disservice to everyone when they remove the right for people to choose between products freely and shape the marketplace with their free will.
It is so arbitrary that these limitations are selected. It wastes time and benefits nobody ultimately. It's just a "switch" for you to tip that can be objectively measured when the suits come to sue you. This is just another joke. If you can decode something to play it, you can decode it to convert it. DeCSS all over again.
"The Matrix 3 will be released simultaneously in 70 sectors of the matri.. I mean... the world. CRAP!"
First post?...
It takes a LOT of work to make good user interfaces, and nearly all of that work is repetitive and boring. It is easy to create inconsistencies, too. Programmers who just want to work on core or library-type routines are a dime a dozen because they basically don't have to know much about the end use of the app, just the technical requirements of the toolkit they're writing. Sort these records, rip this data from a file into memory, pack these strings into this byte array, etc. They are generalized functions that get used over and over, so there is some satisfaction in perfecting them and a need for them to be optimized. UI programmers have to know as much as possible about the people using the program, the business model that the end users have (why are they using this feature/function?... what is the ultimate goal?), and the types of environments it gets deployed into. It puts more of a burden on their mind as they work.
... this would be it after (out of obvious necessity) the data engine and memory model.
UI design on the other hand requires a TON of manual labor that cannot be done by anyone but a good programmer. You have to account for all the little things that a user just might do to your UI while maintaining the state of the form/program. That means coding responses to any number of potential events that might be fired instead of just letting the OS decide what will happen. UI design is frustrating and boring for most people because of this. If you have a form that has 60 fields on it spread over several tab pages and you have a status bar with an explanation of each field, you instantly have 120 callback functions, an enter and exit to and from each field to update that status line with that field's description and then to clear it. You have to write form field validator routines that check each field's data before packing it back into the database, issuing the right kind of error if the data is unacceptable. Heck, just the task of plugging all the database fields into the form elements can be painstaking for a form of moderate complexity.
And all the code has to be consistent, clean, etc, so the next guy knows what is going on. To impliment ONE well-designed form can take days of uninterrupted programming time. Forms with many many fields just slow things down even more... halfway through the afternoon your mind is swimming in a sea of callbacks and field names. Debugging a form? Don't go there.
I think basic "quality application interface programming," not even design, is the most underappriciated aspect of the complete software engineering task. If you had to pick just ONE THING to say, "We're going to make absolutely sure we don't **** this up."
To make an analogy: The UI programming is like the Marine Corps (boring sweaty grunt work) like the "rest of the job" is to being an Air Force fighter pilot.
That's call "enlightened self-interest" ... see some of my other posts for other examples/contexts of this.
Doing what is best for you nearly always means helping your fellow man.
Democracy = People choosing government, limiting it to save everyone from too much of it.
Communism = Government choosing for people, limiting them to save them from themselves.
They are incompatible.
You cannot control a man's money withought controlling every other aspect of his life. Communism is blatantly political. It ceases to be an economic phenomenon when it diverges from being subordinate to "the market" and starts trying to dictate to the market what the market will be.
/are/ elevated above the fray and supported to excess and others are ignored. At the /very least/ in Capitalism it is YOUR choice where you want to fit in and settle. But it is better because in Capitalism the economy never stops growing. Communism takes reality and reduces it to a zero-sum game where instead of reaching into the ground and working to pull out something of BRAND NEW value to the world (economic growth), people are forced to redistribute a common set of wealth. No wonder things fall into decay in those places. It is not sustainable.
The market is the free will of everyone to choose to value one thing over another. It is a fact that all value is personal. This does not mean all "moral value" is unique to the individual, it means all economic (the demand for and method of acquisition of scarce resources) worth is determined by the wants of each individual person independant of others. This fact of existence is diametrically opposed to the premise of Communism.
Communism is political in the enforcement of its irrational ideals, because people do not naturally fall into communist practices - they instinctively resist them. It is not greed that resists Communism: it is good productive self-interest and enlightened self-interest working itself out. Enlightened self-interest is voluntarily helping others because it makes you happy and your personal life ultimately better. Giving a gift to your girlfriend, buying food for a widow, sending AIDS money to Africa, etc. People love giving gifts but they hate getting robbed even if the theif has noble plans for the money. Why should the thief take credit for the charity?
It is a NiceThought(tm) for everyone to have what they need but it always comes down to this: Who will guarantee your life? If someone else is shouldered with the responsibility of guaranteeing your life, their ass is hanging out in the wind. Someone always gets left out in Communism because a few people
I didn't want to politicize the discussion beyond the fact that it is politically significant when people deal technology to China.
Your comment doesn't make sense. I have to imagine that is why you posted anonymously. You forget the Marshall plan where we spent (in today's dollars) hundreds of billions of dollars rebuilding Europe. That's right, the U.S.A. spent ALL that money over there helping to get things straight after WW2.
Everything worth doing takes time and everything that is valuable is worth fighting for. Even more importantly, it is worth LIVING for. I would die for freedom. For my own freedom, and for yours.
In Animal Farm, George Orwell perfectly described Communism: "Everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others."
And I would add: "The problem with Communism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."
The common-man in China is nowhere equal to government suits, and has no authority to shape or elect his government or influence their effects in his life. It is demeaning to a human to propose to him that "some other guy" has power of him. Says who? And who picked those guys? When the U.S. Constitution says, "All men are created equal" they were asserting that nobody has the right to hold power over your life unless you grant them permission. No one man is "anointed by God" to rule you. We all agree to loan some measure of power to a central government to most effeciently enforce contractual agreements and defend national interests. Anything else is nonsensical and theivery.
"Equality" in my book deals with rights and the rule of law. Humans should all have the same rights, responsiblities, and be ultimately held to the same standards and laws. Nobody should be above the law or outside of it. Leaders should be servants to the people, foundations of society... holding it up from the dirt, not sultans or kings in lavish palaces. Nothing wrong with capitol buildings I am just commenting about the attitudes of people who lead others.
Equality has NOTHING to do with finances. To demand that nomatter what process of cause and effect people go through result in equal financial standings is absurd. That's like saying: Kid A sits on his duff and plays PS2 all day and Kid B works two jobs delivering newspapers and designing websites for local small businesses. After ten months they should BOTH have the SAME amount of money so that life is FAIR! What the heck kind of nonsense is that? It sure isn't fair for Kid B who worked his rear end off to have the right to OWN that cash he brought in.
I agree with you in that nobody should wait around for the U.S. to stamp their approval on their lives. By all means proceed with the persuit of excellence.
/in any way/ you have to understand why American's react as they do. Communism strips people of their dignity and freedom and erodes any concept of human rights. It is fundamentally war-oriented and diametrically opposed to the existance of opposing schools of thought: I.E. democracy. It isn't a "big happy world," either so spare us the hubris. There are a lot of people who's lives are literally broken by bloody tyrants in places like Communist China, Africa, and the middle-east. People said of those in Iraq, "They're not good enough for democracy, they're not advanced enough." That's racism, folks... every human spirit years to be free. It is very important to note that no governmental decision should be made in a vacuum outside the framework of interest and information in the rest of the world. China doesn't need any help producing long-range ballistic missile technology... which is just a whisker away from any aerospace research that might be shared to them.
... the "goodness of America" is much greater, FAR out of proportion to any of its mistakes.
When people do anything to support communism
I am a little shocked by your statement: "reasonably satisfied with one big, happy world-except-America."
Take the united states out of the world, and imagine the reprocussions. Look at all the R&D contributions we have made to the global quality of life over the last 100 years. Look who spilled their blood to spare everyone from Japanese and German occupation. Who is sending and supplying soldiers to guard the wall between terrorists and free people everywhere? Who just spend $10,000,000,000 on HIV/AIDS in Africa? Not the EU.
People get overobsessed with "the sins of America," even if they don't know any of them, but let me tell you
...when you're cooperating with the enemy.
I mean, China's interests are not the world's interests. History folks: read it.
I don't know how to say this withought sounding paranoid, but just because you have a science co-op doesn't mean everyone is interested in the same thing. China is more than gung ho about this project because EVERY space launch technology is dual-use for military application. I think it is a little cavalier (that's "dangerous" for you folks in high school) to do anything that puts more power in the hands of anti-freedom communists. Look at what they are doing to democratic Taiwan if you want to see what they would do to Europe or the U.S.A. if they had the ability.
You're talking about a nation that has a reverse-firewall on the entire CONTINENT... to keep people from being "infected" by rogue ideas like ownership, equality, and government existing through the sanction of the governed. You're talking about a nation that controls the news media with an iron fist to keep people from knowing when bad things happen as a result of communism. China is the closest thing to 1984 on the planet right now. Do we really want to share technology with them?
Oh come-on you insensitive clod, I for one welcome our new Nerf(tm)-stuffing overlords!
1. Stuff Nerf(tm)
2. ??? (water?)
3. Overlord!
4. CowboyNeal is my overlord. (BONUS!)
FINALLY! We will be rid of the Anonymous Coward for good. Sucks to be you, man.
This is why BitTorrent rocks so much...
Download rate: 210kB/s
Upload rate: 12kB/s
AOL: Connection Reset... 0kB/s
I'll be keeping my BT window open for others. Thanks guys!
I use it in conjunction with .NET and ANSI C. Check out their company history for some background then take a look at the delicious capabilities of their Windows and Console compilers.
They also have a kick-ass DOS Compiler that has put dinner on my table for years. As we know, many people are still using DOS and DOS-mode apps every day.
When looking at PowerBASIC you have to get rid of any preconcieved notions of BASIC or how it has been implimented in the past. PowerBASIC is a dream to use, has a huge community, and compilers smaller and faster than most ANSI C programs I've seen. Also, check out their partial client list - you'll be in good company.
No, I do not work for them. I am a loyal customer and a geek that loves cool stuff. PB delivers.
I believe most arrogant dweebs are still here on planet earth - anxiously awaiting a viable alternative. Soon everyone will lament that the arrogant dweebs really are on another planet as computers all over the earth go unrepaired, and grandmother's DELL goes unsupported.
On the contrary, I do know better.
I used facts to found my thinking and conclusion.
I didn't offer feelings from a vacuum of information.
Absolutely not.
I did not state that at all, or even make an inference to that notion. I stated a fact from the IRS website. They offer the figures and statistics in several forms, including Excel spreadsheets, and you can see for yourself.
It is a fact that less than half of the people in this country carry the weight of paying for everything in the public sector while the other half is, realistically, getting a free ride. That does not mean those people lead expense-free lives... I just say that to correct the notion that financially destitute people can look the "big government" as a source of inspiration and in any way take pride in its big-ness or accomplishments. What contribution does that person make? In point of fact, they only /recieve gifts/ from it! Medicare/medicaid is a perfect example.
You never hear it called a gift but that is exactly what it is. People who make money, have money, pay it in taxes... they are giving a gift to those who do not have money. All they ever hear in return is "Hey! That gift isn't enough!"
It's really bogus, no? People should express more GRATITUDE for the producers instead of complaining or refusing to recognize them at all - only pointing to a big overlording government like communists and saying, "geee... look what I MADE!" Well, who paid for it?
What I was trying to say is that "wealth" is the incentive that inspires regular people to begin to live with excellence. People who become wealthy do so mostly by the virtue of their own distinguishing efforts and not by mere chance or good timing.
Read "The Millionare Mind" which is a book written after some 10 years of analysis and sit-down surveys with "the millionaire next door" type people. They said that over 40% of all current millionaires are self-made starting out with nothing. Wage-slaves, as you say. They start their own plumbing companies, become roofing contractors, or software consultants... and take the risk of bringing in the money needed to pay themselves a salary (instead of relying on someone else to take that risk) for decades until they have built a business process that has residual inertia. It requires concerted determined effort applied over a long period of time - not life handing you loaded dice.
Tax breaks exist for the lower income brackets because those people contribute least to the economy by the lower value of their efforts, yet their vote carries just as much force as that of a multi-billionaire. It doesn't take much intelligence to see that a certain political mindset in Washington will attempt to "buy" that vote by telling the person that they don't need to pay taxes, they get this that or the other thing as a "handout" ... appealing to class envy and other sentiments and all kinds of fallacies are introduced like the notion of "federal money" to cover your needs. Since when should YOU PAY for my medical bills, PELL grant, or food stamps? You don't know me, and I've done nothing for you. That same logic is also true of the prescription drug plan in place for seniors. They are the wealthiest demographic in the nation, why don't we give "free drugs" to the broke college students instead? The fact to note though is that the senior citizens turn out to vote in VASTLY greater numbers than any other demographic. So... Washingtonites do what they have to do to "buy those votes!"
People are not wage-slaves. You can quit a job and find another one, close to what you enjoy doing. You can work hard in your spare time and study... better yourself. You CANNOT avoid risk. We are have the right to life, liberty, and to the pursue happiness but in fact we are not guaranteed HAPPINESS ITSELF and we must /personally defend/ our life and liberty. We are born into a situation that involves risk. It is up to you to try and make the absolute best of what time you're given. Step one: Put down the Coors and Playstation 2 controller. ;)
Everyone must choose. And those who choose to better themselves always rise to the level of their ambition and character.