What measures should be taken to prevent the 15-30 dead school children and whose fault is it that the kid took a black market AK-47 to school?
The first should lie with the parents who allowed the kid access to the black market while he was having difficulties. The second, though, lies with the school social structure that creates the difficulties.
I don't think the schools should replace the ATF. Sometimes a fucking crazy lunatic will snap and go on a rampage. An incredibly small amount of bullied kids turn into homicidal lunatics, while majority do not. Let's skip the arguments about slippery slopes in security vs. freedom.
I was the kid who snapped- though my weapon of choice was gasoline-soaked notepaper and hitting a locker, but it's really the same thing. ANY human being will, when pushed over the edge, react. I guarantee that if I had you in my control I could reapeatedly verbally attack you until you reacted- and all that is needed is for you to be forced to be in my presence for a few hours a day. The Internet just expands that capability a little bit.
15-30 kids is a very small amount of people. An unfortunate tragedy that is the price of living the way we do. There are a vast number of ways we can reduce the number of deaths in the world, and they all bear their costs. Thus, a reasonable accounting of return on investment must be made. A human life has a price and we make that decision constantly.
True enough- so why jump on the school for making a policy that costs them next to nothing, yet could catch these situations early enough so that the victim isn't pushed beyond the breaking point?
For example, the computers we're posting on slashdot with could have saved an african kid from death. But we don't care. We like our computers. It takes about $200 bucks to fix a cleft palate so that a kid can live a normal life instead of being ostracized, maybe murdered for not having a minor surgery that would leave them looking completely normal except for a small scar on their lip.
True enough- though I do both (part of my charitable giving is to Doctors Without Borders who do such surgeries. However, I'd point out, that you're missing something: those 15-20 lives might not mean very much to you, but they can result in a lawsuit that takes the next year's operating budget from a school that is charged with protecting those lives.
That's the cost of a human life. Some human lives cost more than others, proximity is a huge factor in the value of a life. 15-30 dead kids vs. inconveniecing many many millions of kids.
You'd have a bigger inconvience if your school board had to shut down early for the year, depriving you of an education, because a lawsuit took away the operating budget. Or if you ended up losing your computer anyway because your parents had to pay an extra $1000 a year in property taxes for added liability insurance for the schools.
Buying our way out of inconveniences with human lives isn't a new decision to be made, it's one that we've already made by living our lifestyle. Even living as a hermit in the woods has an economic cost of the lives that could have been saved by volunteer work.
The problem is, you're not talking about mere inconviences, or mere human lives- there's a whole other level you're not understanding in the responsibilities of a school board.
And if the original offer was in writing, QUIT AND SUE. If it wasn't in writing, quit and take this as a lessons learned to always get everything in writing.
Now, that kid can either learn the "social skill" of "dealing with it" from the experience or he can declare himself "emotionally devastated" by the "trauma".
Or, and this is what school administrators are really worried about, he can come in with a black market purchased AK-47 and commit suicide by cop after taking out 15 to 30 classmates.
Bullying in this day and age is dangerous- and the really dangerous person isn't the bully, it's the victim.
Nope, would not count. But do get back to me, when you hear rumors of plans to burn all representatives of an economic class in gas-chambers.
Not needed under capitalism- it's far easier just to let them become homeless and die of exposure the next winter; far cheaper too. Gas chambers are a luxury; too expensive and can no longer be justified on the quarterly report.
US is not targeting neither Sunnis nor Shia for systematic extermination.
Bullshit. We're supporting a Shi'a government in Iraq- and that support is going directly to the extermination of the Sunni for their crimes when they were in charge. That's what this "surge" is all about- support for the Shi'a majority.
Until you can name a racial, national, or religious minority that is being systematically exterminated (in cold blood, preferably) by "BushCo" -- or any hints of same -- kindly cease from dragging up "American decline into Fascism" all the time. (This request also applies to your fan(s) among moderators.)
How about an economic class minority? Well, ok, so really they're the majority (people making between $36,000/year and $64,000/year) but they won't be for long if we continue ill-advised free-trade treaties.
Oh yeah, and then there are Sunni Iraqis- our support of a terrorist Shi'a government in Iraq could well result in their extermination, if it wasn't for Syria.
How, exactly? How are you proposing that Bush's grandfather's dealings with Nazis and Arabs directly led Western intelligence services to mistakenly believe that Saddam had WMDs?
The WMD is just the intelligence the Bush Administration was asking for. The real start to all of this started with Prescott Bush and his dealings to import Arabic Oil- without which we would never have gotten involved with the Middle East at all. No interest in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait would have meant no Gulf War I, and no need to remove Saddam Hussien in Gulf War II.
How are you proposing that Bush's grandfather's dealings with Nazis and Arabs directly led the vast majority of American congressmen and women to support regime change in Iraq?
Regime change in Iraq became neccessary because of the Assassination Attempt on Former President Bush I, and 9-11. That assasination attempt would never have been tried if not for Gulf War I, which would not have happened had we not been importing oil from the Middle East. It's all linked.
Now having said that- Prescott Bush wasn't exactly the begining of the story either. Our sale of Rum to the region in the late 1700s is closer to the begining. But that just goes to show what a national security risk foreign trade really is.
That's among the most ridiculous comments I've read today. (Are you suggesting that he would take to the field himself if the supply of volunteers dried up?)
More like, we would have found a way without war if he was forced to go himself (or for that matter, if any family member of any elected official in the Beltway was at risk in this war).
Seriously, even if we set aside the issue of age, it is not cowardice for a public figure to refrain from taking to the field himself. If Mr Bush were in fact to kit up and join a front-line squad in Baghdad, it would not be an act of bravery but an act of stupidity: he would be recklessly endangering the lives of those around him, because to kill or capture George W. Bush would immediately become the single highest-priority task for every single insurgent in Iraq. Since when was taking obvious precautions to protect American troops and Iraqi civilians alike "cowardly"?
Seems to me that by drawing every single insurgent to attacking a single man, that would protect any American troop or Iraqi civilian that was *not* that man. In fact, knowing that, one could put forth a very interesting honeypot tactic in which you surround that man with a killzone, and anybody coming near him is killed. As the insurgents take the bait, you'd end up with nice piles of dead insurgents. Is the military mind really so naive not to see such an opportunity?
If you were somehow trying (rather ineptly) to allude to his not having taken part in combat during Vietnam, then you might almost have a hint of a point. Except that it's disputable whether avoiding front-line combat in Vietnam was really cowardly. Some would say it was merely common sense.
Actually, I was only alluding to the idea that a leader should either take the same risks he asks others to take, or find a way that does not include those risks.
The job of a CEO is to paint a glowing and radiant picture firmly grounded in the hopes and dreams of investors, and protect it from those who would engage in critical thinking. The person who becomes a CEO is the person who has made it their lifes work to understand what others want and convince them it is just around the next bend, thus eliciting their ongoing co-operation.
I saw this as being dishonest- mainly because I'm not motivated that way. I want the full picture, and without it, I have a tendency to choose my priorities wrong. Drives my management crazy.
Someone who has forged themselves into CIO material is most likely not going to be very good or happy at the CEO job for that reason. They require different personality strengths.
I was with you clear up until you called the dishonesty of the CEO a "personality strength". This must be some strange meaning of the word strength of whick I have not previously been aware.
The problem with this is that the grandfather's actions dealing with Nazis and Arabs led directly to the war the grandson is fighting right now. Or rather, specifically NOT fighting, as he's too big of a coward to take to the field himself as long as there are other people's children volunteering to be sent.
Absolutely, though communism is an ECCONOMIC, not GOVERNMENTAL system, and so is capitalism. The problem is that capitalism discourages such discrimination. In fact, capitalism rewards those who are the most dishonest, in all cases. Capitalism is anti-government in that it rewards CEOs far in excess of anybody else on the planet, including those at the highest levels of government (President George W. Bush's salary is a mere $200,000/year).
Well, that's the key isn't it? We want the guy who would never apply, but would serve if asked, and the guy who sees the job as SERVICE rather than RULE.
So in an effort to make us a more gentle society, our newly elected leaders should force the likes of Chavez and others through MRI machines to confirm they're not altruistic enough and then lock them up in jail?
Almost, but not quite. In an effort to make us a more gentle society, we shouldn't elect any leaders without an MRI scan on record to confirm that they're altruistic enough. Anybody gaining enough money to be a lobbyist or start a business should also have a similar scan to make sure that they are honest enough to run a business.
But of course, they can't do that unless their not really altrustic, as now we're causing them to make value judgements about altruism for one or many.
Nah, let the computers do that part- they're better at if-then-else statements to begin with.
I suppose this is neatly tied up as long as we can selectively let a few of those people our of your jails. Maybe this guy: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0252230/ in a redux of his role as 'the operative' would be sufficiently efficient at rounding up all these non-altrustic people. Then we'd have a nice civil place to live like here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106697/
IMDB is linked as NSFW here. So your argument makes no sense to me.
Point being that being against the state is not just about being a con artist or working for yourself. Dissidents aren't always evil, and if I have to choose between splitting the last bit of food on a boat out at sea with just my family, or everyone and my family, I know that I'm not going to share with anyone other than my family.
Who gives a shit about dissidents anymore? Every revolution has been an utter failure. My point is only that communism and altruism go hand in hand- a way to make communism more honest would be to filter the potential rulers for only the honest ones.
Altrusim has it's limits for a reason, and i'd suspect that there's a body of subtle darwinian influence that contributes to our modern sense of 'social' selfishness.
George W Bush has proven to me that those limits are no longer reasonable.
I don't want to be juiced up to be nice all the time to everyone, regardless of if they deserve it or not.
Who cares, as long as you're not a politician or a civil servant?
Aren't there times when being altrustic is counter productive?
Only if you're a con artist or working for yourself. If you're supposed to be a public servant, then it helps to actually serve the public.
Unless everyone in the sample is altruistic, a single rogue can disrupt the process and from a society or organizations perspective, having the altruistic leaders would result in a net negative affect for your group.
Yes, that's the point. If we can link a brain structure to being altruistic, we can use MRI scans to keep the single rogues out, powerless and pennyless.
I would very reluctantly vote into power a bloc of politicians who proved themselves to be utterly altruistic in a world like ours, notwithstanding any possible contributions we've made to that world by making it less safe for our leaders.
Yes, the other half has to go along- if you're going to elect a slate of utterly altruistic leaders, you have to balance it by throwing the selfish into jail.
Universities should look at such things more the way cities do. Yes, it's all funny money anyway- but it makes more sense it seems to me that you should provide ports as part of the cost of creating the building full of offices that those ports go to. Physical wire networks are much more like electricity in an office building than it is like a Happy Meal from McDonald's, and it makes more sense to charge like the first than the second.
Best of all however we should make all political candidates demonstrate that THEY aren't selfish bastards.
Bingo. Since Brave New World by Alex Huxley seems to be no longer required reading in high school (Politicians in that book are "Alpha citizens", Bureaucrats are "Betas", workers are "Gammas", and "Deltas" are outcasts living out in the hinterlands), you captured my meaning exactly. Only altruistic individuals should be allowed to become elected officials, and selfish bastards should be the Deltas, outcast from the society that they really hate anyway.
Hmmm... seems you have mixed up "We" (later redone as "1984") with "Brave New World" - however, IMHO - there is not much room for altruism in either version.
Both are interesting, but incomplete, models of communistic governments. The point is the Communism COULD work if you had a way to sort out the most altruistic individuals for committee positions, the next most altruistic individuals for bureaucrats, and keep the greedy away from power or resources that could be used to harm society.
Until you run it, at which point it encrypts the guilty instructions (and the innocent instruction immediately preceeding a jump) to something entirely different.....
Firehosing refers to the new "Firehose" feature available to subscribers here at Slashdot to recommend journal entries for front page status.
Technocrat.net is another site that FOSS geeks hang out at, starte by Bruce Perens for the discussion of governmental policy related to ham radios and computer topics.
I had just assumed that you did know- I should have warned you. Technocrat is *very* minor compared to a slashdotting, and God Help You if you get Link Of The Day on User Friendly....
Better yet- this could be the key to a new version of communism. Only those with well-developed altruistic brains need apply to be Alphas or Betas in our brave, new world.
Comparative advantage has 30 years worth of evidence against it at this point- the amount of time that America, Inc. has been running at a loss. If we were to handle our finances realistically, by making EVERYTHING one big balance sheet and counting the losses of business against our trade, we've been running in the red since 1972.
If you do things X (+1), Y(+2) and Z(+3) better than person A, you should only concentrate on doing the thing that you are MOST better than them (in this case Z). Doing so makes everyone better off.
That was the theory- but David Ricardo was working in the 19th century, not the 21s. Today, the Absolute Advantage of low-wage areas has decimated the ability of a high-wage culture to survive. We're now to the point that we are losing the ability to manufacture basic components such as magnets and capacitors- without which high technology is impossible. We are at the mercy of the countries that DO manufacture such items. If they're smart, they will press their absolute advantage into military conquest.
Nice theory - actually have any evidence to back it up?
Yes, because right now, the United States can't make a radio for our armed forces without using foreign manufacture components. Economic warfare is always superior to guns and bombs, because you can simply deny your enemy the ability to fight.
Thats not even remotely true. The internet today barely resembles the network that DARPA put together. The computer of the 1930s is less powerful than most watches. Sure, the military can push some innovation - but only at immense cost with little practical use. It takes competition to truly deliver innovation.
You apparently are NOT an assembly-language level programmer, and have never bothered to even look at an IP packet, if you believe that one. Military contracts are what drives innovation- otherwise the Amiga (a great machine for civilian use, but utterly useless from a military standpoint) would have totally destroyed IBM's death grip in 1986, and driven Microsoft out of the market.
What possible purpose could Iraq have to do with the private sector?
The whole idea of a wiki is for the community to build the content. The Rosetta Code is rather new, of course it's not complete. But it's a damned good idea, and deserves wider advertising so that the wiki will be filled!
However, having said that, I agree, which is why I wasn't sure about firehosing this journal entry just yet. Better to let the professional FOSS experts at Technocrat have a crack at it first.
So what happens when those kids get to have some free unprogrammed time - which will happen when they move out of home, at the latest - and have no practice in neither entertaining themselves nor dealing with other people or life in general without a referee, assuming they haven't gone stark raving mad from being monitored and therefore having to watch all they say, do or think all their life of course ?
We're all still monitored. If it isn't our parents, it's the Bush Administration. Good behavior becomes a habit.
It's actually based on the experience of my family and my wife's family. My family because we needed to work on the farm, my wife's family because her father was very strict in that the family did *everything* together. There simply wasn't time to get into situations like this. I'm not saying we never got into trouble- I was often suspended for fighting at school (where once every two years is "often"). But outside of school, our activities were planned and regulated.
Slashdot Mirror
What measures should be taken to prevent the 15-30 dead school children and whose fault is it that the kid took a black market AK-47 to school?
The first should lie with the parents who allowed the kid access to the black market while he was having difficulties. The second, though, lies with the school social structure that creates the difficulties.
I don't think the schools should replace the ATF. Sometimes a fucking crazy lunatic will snap and go on a rampage. An incredibly small amount of bullied kids turn into homicidal lunatics, while majority do not. Let's skip the arguments about slippery slopes in security vs. freedom.
I was the kid who snapped- though my weapon of choice was gasoline-soaked notepaper and hitting a locker, but it's really the same thing. ANY human being will, when pushed over the edge, react. I guarantee that if I had you in my control I could reapeatedly verbally attack you until you reacted- and all that is needed is for you to be forced to be in my presence for a few hours a day. The Internet just expands that capability a little bit.
15-30 kids is a very small amount of people. An unfortunate tragedy that is the price of living the way we do. There are a vast number of ways we can reduce the number of deaths in the world, and they all bear their costs. Thus, a reasonable accounting of return on investment must be made. A human life has a price and we make that decision constantly.
True enough- so why jump on the school for making a policy that costs them next to nothing, yet could catch these situations early enough so that the victim isn't pushed beyond the breaking point?
For example, the computers we're posting on slashdot with could have saved an african kid from death. But we don't care. We like our computers. It takes about $200 bucks to fix a cleft palate so that a kid can live a normal life instead of being ostracized, maybe murdered for not having a minor surgery that would leave them looking completely normal except for a small scar on their lip.
True enough- though I do both (part of my charitable giving is to Doctors Without Borders who do such surgeries. However, I'd point out, that you're missing something: those 15-20 lives might not mean very much to you, but they can result in a lawsuit that takes the next year's operating budget from a school that is charged with protecting those lives.
That's the cost of a human life. Some human lives cost more than others, proximity is a huge factor in the value of a life. 15-30 dead kids vs. inconveniecing many many millions of kids.
You'd have a bigger inconvience if your school board had to shut down early for the year, depriving you of an education, because a lawsuit took away the operating budget. Or if you ended up losing your computer anyway because your parents had to pay an extra $1000 a year in property taxes for added liability insurance for the schools.
Buying our way out of inconveniences with human lives isn't a new decision to be made, it's one that we've already made by living our lifestyle. Even living as a hermit in the woods has an economic cost of the lives that could have been saved by volunteer work.
The problem is, you're not talking about mere inconviences, or mere human lives- there's a whole other level you're not understanding in the responsibilities of a school board.
And if the original offer was in writing, QUIT AND SUE. If it wasn't in writing, quit and take this as a lessons learned to always get everything in writing.
Now, that kid can either learn the "social skill" of "dealing with it" from the experience or he can declare himself "emotionally devastated" by the "trauma".
Or, and this is what school administrators are really worried about, he can come in with a black market purchased AK-47 and commit suicide by cop after taking out 15 to 30 classmates.
Bullying in this day and age is dangerous- and the really dangerous person isn't the bully, it's the victim.
Nope, would not count. But do get back to me, when you hear rumors of plans to burn all representatives of an economic class in gas-chambers.
Not needed under capitalism- it's far easier just to let them become homeless and die of exposure the next winter; far cheaper too. Gas chambers are a luxury; too expensive and can no longer be justified on the quarterly report.
US is not targeting neither Sunnis nor Shia for systematic extermination.
Bullshit. We're supporting a Shi'a government in Iraq- and that support is going directly to the extermination of the Sunni for their crimes when they were in charge. That's what this "surge" is all about- support for the Shi'a majority.
It's sad, but this is how the US government has been running since 1933.
Some would say since 1840. Or at the very least, since 1864.
Until you can name a racial, national, or religious minority that is being systematically exterminated (in cold blood, preferably) by "BushCo" -- or any hints of same -- kindly cease from dragging up "American decline into Fascism" all the time. (This request also applies to your fan(s) among moderators.)
How about an economic class minority? Well, ok, so really they're the majority (people making between $36,000/year and $64,000/year) but they won't be for long if we continue ill-advised free-trade treaties.
Oh yeah, and then there are Sunni Iraqis- our support of a terrorist Shi'a government in Iraq could well result in their extermination, if it wasn't for Syria.
How, exactly? How are you proposing that Bush's grandfather's dealings with Nazis and Arabs directly led Western intelligence services to mistakenly believe that Saddam had WMDs?
The WMD is just the intelligence the Bush Administration was asking for. The real start to all of this started with Prescott Bush and his dealings to import Arabic Oil- without which we would never have gotten involved with the Middle East at all. No interest in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait would have meant no Gulf War I, and no need to remove Saddam Hussien in Gulf War II.
How are you proposing that Bush's grandfather's dealings with Nazis and Arabs directly led the vast majority of American congressmen and women to support regime change in Iraq?
Regime change in Iraq became neccessary because of the Assassination Attempt on Former President Bush I, and 9-11. That assasination attempt would never have been tried if not for Gulf War I, which would not have happened had we not been importing oil from the Middle East. It's all linked.
Now having said that- Prescott Bush wasn't exactly the begining of the story either. Our sale of Rum to the region in the late 1700s is closer to the begining. But that just goes to show what a national security risk foreign trade really is.
That's among the most ridiculous comments I've read today. (Are you suggesting that he would take to the field himself if the supply of volunteers dried up?)
More like, we would have found a way without war if he was forced to go himself (or for that matter, if any family member of any elected official in the Beltway was at risk in this war).
Seriously, even if we set aside the issue of age, it is not cowardice for a public figure to refrain from taking to the field himself. If Mr Bush were in fact to kit up and join a front-line squad in Baghdad, it would not be an act of bravery but an act of stupidity: he would be recklessly endangering the lives of those around him, because to kill or capture George W. Bush would immediately become the single highest-priority task for every single insurgent in Iraq. Since when was taking obvious precautions to protect American troops and Iraqi civilians alike "cowardly"?
Seems to me that by drawing every single insurgent to attacking a single man, that would protect any American troop or Iraqi civilian that was *not* that man. In fact, knowing that, one could put forth a very interesting honeypot tactic in which you surround that man with a killzone, and anybody coming near him is killed. As the insurgents take the bait, you'd end up with nice piles of dead insurgents. Is the military mind really so naive not to see such an opportunity?
If you were somehow trying (rather ineptly) to allude to his not having taken part in combat during Vietnam, then you might almost have a hint of a point. Except that it's disputable whether avoiding front-line combat in Vietnam was really cowardly. Some would say it was merely common sense.
Actually, I was only alluding to the idea that a leader should either take the same risks he asks others to take, or find a way that does not include those risks.
Ah, ok, I misread you:
The job of a CEO is to paint a glowing and radiant picture firmly grounded in the hopes and dreams of investors, and protect it from those who would engage in critical thinking. The person who becomes a CEO is the person who has made it their lifes work to understand what others want and convince them it is just around the next bend, thus eliciting their ongoing co-operation.
I saw this as being dishonest- mainly because I'm not motivated that way. I want the full picture, and without it, I have a tendency to choose my priorities wrong. Drives my management crazy.
Someone who has forged themselves into CIO material is most likely not going to be very good or happy at the CEO job for that reason. They require different personality strengths.
I was with you clear up until you called the dishonesty of the CEO a "personality strength". This must be some strange meaning of the word strength of whick I have not previously been aware.
The problem with this is that the grandfather's actions dealing with Nazis and Arabs led directly to the war the grandson is fighting right now. Or rather, specifically NOT fighting, as he's too big of a coward to take to the field himself as long as there are other people's children volunteering to be sent.
Absolutely, though communism is an ECCONOMIC, not GOVERNMENTAL system, and so is capitalism. The problem is that capitalism discourages such discrimination. In fact, capitalism rewards those who are the most dishonest, in all cases. Capitalism is anti-government in that it rewards CEOs far in excess of anybody else on the planet, including those at the highest levels of government (President George W. Bush's salary is a mere $200,000/year).
Well, that's the key isn't it? We want the guy who would never apply, but would serve if asked, and the guy who sees the job as SERVICE rather than RULE.
So in an effort to make us a more gentle society, our newly elected leaders should force the likes of Chavez and others through MRI machines to confirm they're not altruistic enough and then lock them up in jail?
Almost, but not quite. In an effort to make us a more gentle society, we shouldn't elect any leaders without an MRI scan on record to confirm that they're altruistic enough. Anybody gaining enough money to be a lobbyist or start a business should also have a similar scan to make sure that they are honest enough to run a business.
But of course, they can't do that unless their not really altrustic, as now we're causing them to make value judgements about altruism for one or many.
Nah, let the computers do that part- they're better at if-then-else statements to begin with.
I suppose this is neatly tied up as long as we can selectively let a few of those people our of your jails. Maybe this guy: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0252230/ in a redux of his role as 'the operative' would be sufficiently efficient at rounding up all these non-altrustic people. Then we'd have a nice civil place to live like here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106697/
IMDB is linked as NSFW here. So your argument makes no sense to me.
Point being that being against the state is not just about being a con artist or working for yourself. Dissidents aren't always evil, and if I have to choose between splitting the last bit of food on a boat out at sea with just my family, or everyone and my family, I know that I'm not going to share with anyone other than my family.
Who gives a shit about dissidents anymore? Every revolution has been an utter failure. My point is only that communism and altruism go hand in hand- a way to make communism more honest would be to filter the potential rulers for only the honest ones.
Altrusim has it's limits for a reason, and i'd suspect that there's a body of subtle darwinian influence that contributes to our modern sense of 'social' selfishness.
George W Bush has proven to me that those limits are no longer reasonable.
I don't want to be juiced up to be nice all the time to everyone, regardless of if they deserve it or not.
Who cares, as long as you're not a politician or a civil servant?
Aren't there times when being altrustic is counter productive?
Only if you're a con artist or working for yourself. If you're supposed to be a public servant, then it helps to actually serve the public.
Unless everyone in the sample is altruistic, a single rogue can disrupt the process and from a society or organizations perspective, having the altruistic leaders would result in a net negative affect for your group.
Yes, that's the point. If we can link a brain structure to being altruistic, we can use MRI scans to keep the single rogues out, powerless and pennyless.
I would very reluctantly vote into power a bloc of politicians who proved themselves to be utterly altruistic in a world like ours, notwithstanding any possible contributions we've made to that world by making it less safe for our leaders.
Yes, the other half has to go along- if you're going to elect a slate of utterly altruistic leaders, you have to balance it by throwing the selfish into jail.
Universities should look at such things more the way cities do. Yes, it's all funny money anyway- but it makes more sense it seems to me that you should provide ports as part of the cost of creating the building full of offices that those ports go to. Physical wire networks are much more like electricity in an office building than it is like a Happy Meal from McDonald's, and it makes more sense to charge like the first than the second.
Best of all however we should make all political candidates demonstrate that THEY aren't selfish bastards.
Bingo. Since Brave New World by Alex Huxley seems to be no longer required reading in high school (Politicians in that book are "Alpha citizens", Bureaucrats are "Betas", workers are "Gammas", and "Deltas" are outcasts living out in the hinterlands), you captured my meaning exactly. Only altruistic individuals should be allowed to become elected officials, and selfish bastards should be the Deltas, outcast from the society that they really hate anyway.
Hmmm ... seems you have mixed up "We" (later redone as "1984") with "Brave New World" - however, IMHO - there is not much room for altruism in either version.
Both are interesting, but incomplete, models of communistic governments. The point is the Communism COULD work if you had a way to sort out the most altruistic individuals for committee positions, the next most altruistic individuals for bureaucrats, and keep the greedy away from power or resources that could be used to harm society.
Until you run it, at which point it encrypts the guilty instructions (and the innocent instruction immediately preceeding a jump) to something entirely different.....
Firehosing refers to the new "Firehose" feature available to subscribers here at Slashdot to recommend journal entries for front page status.
Technocrat.net is another site that FOSS geeks hang out at, starte by Bruce Perens for the discussion of governmental policy related to ham radios and computer topics.
When you learn to use a computer, let us know.
I had just assumed that you did know- I should have warned you. Technocrat is *very* minor compared to a slashdotting, and God Help You if you get Link Of The Day on User Friendly....
Better yet- this could be the key to a new version of communism. Only those with well-developed altruistic brains need apply to be Alphas or Betas in our brave, new world.
You need to study up on comparative advantage
Comparative advantage has 30 years worth of evidence against it at this point- the amount of time that America, Inc. has been running at a loss. If we were to handle our finances realistically, by making EVERYTHING one big balance sheet and counting the losses of business against our trade, we've been running in the red since 1972.
If you do things X (+1), Y(+2) and Z(+3) better than person A, you should only concentrate on doing the thing that you are MOST better than them (in this case Z). Doing so makes everyone better off.
That was the theory- but David Ricardo was working in the 19th century, not the 21s. Today, the Absolute Advantage of low-wage areas has decimated the ability of a high-wage culture to survive. We're now to the point that we are losing the ability to manufacture basic components such as magnets and capacitors- without which high technology is impossible. We are at the mercy of the countries that DO manufacture such items. If they're smart, they will press their absolute advantage into military conquest.
Nice theory - actually have any evidence to back it up?
Yes, because right now, the United States can't make a radio for our armed forces without using foreign manufacture components. Economic warfare is always superior to guns and bombs, because you can simply deny your enemy the ability to fight.
Thats not even remotely true. The internet today barely resembles the network that DARPA put together. The computer of the 1930s is less powerful than most watches. Sure, the military can push some innovation - but only at immense cost with little practical use. It takes competition to truly deliver innovation.
You apparently are NOT an assembly-language level programmer, and have never bothered to even look at an IP packet, if you believe that one. Military contracts are what drives innovation- otherwise the Amiga (a great machine for civilian use, but utterly useless from a military standpoint) would have totally destroyed IBM's death grip in 1986, and driven Microsoft out of the market.
What possible purpose could Iraq have to do with the private sector?
Having an oil supply AT ALL.
It must have hit the front page.
The whole idea of a wiki is for the community to build the content. The Rosetta Code is rather new, of course it's not complete. But it's a damned good idea, and deserves wider advertising so that the wiki will be filled!
However, having said that, I agree, which is why I wasn't sure about firehosing this journal entry just yet. Better to let the professional FOSS experts at Technocrat have a crack at it first.
So what happens when those kids get to have some free unprogrammed time - which will happen when they move out of home, at the latest - and have no practice in neither entertaining themselves nor dealing with other people or life in general without a referee, assuming they haven't gone stark raving mad from being monitored and therefore having to watch all they say, do or think all their life of course ?
We're all still monitored. If it isn't our parents, it's the Bush Administration. Good behavior becomes a habit.
It's actually based on the experience of my family and my wife's family. My family because we needed to work on the farm, my wife's family because her father was very strict in that the family did *everything* together. There simply wasn't time to get into situations like this. I'm not saying we never got into trouble- I was often suspended for fighting at school (where once every two years is "often"). But outside of school, our activities were planned and regulated.