I have nothing against Python. Just was trying to explain why a large group on engineers around me take offense at the mention of Python. Unfortunately it offense taken for the wrong reasons.
I personally have a problem with interpreted vs. compiled "delivered" applications for only one small reason. By forcing an application to be compiled, some of the simpler errors are caught. I can't count the number of times I've made a "quick" change right before delivering an application that "won't harm anything", and the process of compiling the app caught a stupid error. If it were an interpreted application, having great confidence in my perfection, I would have delivered an app that didn't work (or had a bug). Yes, there are many things you can do to catch those bugs, but you are not forced to do them, while in a compiled language you are. This is not a complaint about Python, but a reason for me to choose a different language, and my belief why others often shun interpreted languages.
It's almost like there are a large group of people who take offense at the mention of Python...
It is an interpreted language, and in general, interpreted languages don't get much respect. In addition, Python users are often as fanatical as mac users, and end up pushing python into inappropriate uses. A fairly senior manager at my work got hooked on python, and is now trying to use it for embedded real-time applications. He is not a programmer, and tries to use python as a solution to every problem. Now, all the software engineers cringe when python is mentioned. Not python's fault, but now we all take offense at its mention.
Is the problem really that they are paid "too much"? Pay them less and see how well that works - might open the door to more corruption.
Try making it easier to run for office. Having to spend millions to get elected causes incoming politicians to be encumbered by more than just the views of the voters of their districts.
You apparently didn't watch (or maybe didn't watch YET) Bin Laden's most recent tape
Correct (at the time), but Bin Laden is just one of many. If your trust his words, then backing out of the area would seemingly dowse his hate, but I think there is much more to the problem than just what he articulates. Doing what you suggest would be a great step in starting to repair our wrongs, but hate is a hard thing to change. Hate is directed, intense, and irrational - it takes generations to create and generations to diffuse. If Bin Ladden stop his attacks, there is enough hatred for some others to fill in for him.
Too late by over 100 years- the Monroe Doctrine
Why do you feel it is possible to put the genie of "free trade" back into the bottle, but not the Monroe Doctrine? If the US left the trade market, the whole world economy would crash. It would be a devastating blow. If the US left its currently self-appointed role of Judge/Jury/Executioner would the world suffer? No, the world would probably be much better off. We need to return to being engaged in the UN and we need to support it and its ideals through more than just words.
The best way we can do that is to admit that we don't have all the answers- admit that we've FAILED We're not competent enough to run a stable economy or an honest government
Agreed.
Everything that is bad in our society is tied to two basic wrong headed ideas: 1. That multinational corporations are good for anybody other than the investors and C-level executives of multinational corporations.
That is a stretch. Its like arguing that everything wrong today is because Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. I think Robert Burns said it best: "Nae man can tether time or tide". Multinationals are the result of a combination and evolution of the original American ideals - freedom and free trade (between States)
2. That we can duplicate the freedom we had in the 1820s by mimicing the economy and government we had in the 1920s elsewhere.
I certainly hope we are not trying to duplicate the "freedom we had in the 1820s" anywhere. It is not a brighter period of American "freedom". I agree this is bad, but how is this idea being presented today? In Iraq I'd argue that we are trying to mimic the freedom we had in the 1980s by mimicking the government and economy of the 1770s.
Ask a friendly Irishman what that means and then you will see what kind of reputation American's have.
I spend over a year in Ireland and thoroughly enjoyed it. I dressed in my normal clothes (jeans, respectable t-shirt) and was constantly being accused:) of being a European. Even had many people in Paris come up and talk to me in French, and received some shocked looks when all I could rattle off in broken French was "j'ne parle pas Francais."
While I Ireland, I went to a tourist area on the west coast (Dingle) and witnessed both the funniest and saddest display of American ignorance I've ever encountered. An elderly man in his 50s or 60s marched into the tourist shop and bee-lined for the information desk. He cut in line, and once there, demanded the attention of the helpful employee, and whipped out his distinctive dark blue passport. He opened to a blank page and started to insist that the employee stamp his passport. When the employee very politely explained that only customs could stamp it, the man when totally ballistic. Demanding to see supervisors, report the shop to the police, and claim that because he was an "American" that he deserved more. His argument was that at the airport, the man did not stamp it and he wanted the stamp in his passport as a soveigner. I keep hoping that the poor employee would just grab the thing and get a big red VOID stamp and stamp away, but he never did. I left the shop and couldn't stop laughing, but after thinking about it a bit, realized that this could not have been the first place that he attacked. I think the nearest international airport was over 100 miles away in Cork, and in between there must have been at least 10 tourist traps that any tourist would stop at first.
I came away from that encounter realizing why "green pants" are so disrespected.
My guy won. If there are any doubts about the accuracy of the vote, then I want them straightened out now
I agree. There is not too much doubt about the fact that the president won. But that doesn't mean that the investigations won't turn up foul play. Nixon was ridiculously in the lead when his guys did that little Watergate thing. And Nixon's mistake was finding out about it and trying to cover it up. The president would be smart to start the investigation now. It would convince the average Joe, impress a lot of liberals, and he would gain the respect of the average./er.
only grabs the daily polls that lean the most towards kerry
His comments only lean Kerry, but the methods he uses to track the polls are balanced.
It always amazes me how the conservative third has changed our dictionary. "liberal" now means tax and spend; "fair and balanced" now means rnc talking points. Get a clue.
If you haven't visited the Current Electoral Vote Predictor site, give it a try. The site is very interesting and his daily updates of the polls in each state is very interesting. The comments in his "News from the Votemaster" might infuriate the conservative third, but are usually insightful, and not pretended to be balanced.
Very unfortunate choice of words. Maybe you should have said Asian nations.
At this point, do you really believe that closing the borders would make everyone else all of the sudden think differently of us and stop terrorist attacks? No way.
We need to engage the world as equals, not superiors. We need to practice what we preach, show compassion for the less fortunate nations, and try and gain morality once again. None of this can be done if we close ourselves up like 1700s China trying to stop Christianity. Look what the close door policy did to China. Do you really want us to go there?
The problem was, as you said, Gore tried to steal the election, and his self centeredness cost him. Had he done the right thing (as in integrity and honesty, not Rush and friends) and asked for a recount for the whole state, things would have been different.
The 2000 election set a precedence, and every election after will be a mess. Both sides have plenty of blame - the president for allowing his state election leader to be the secretary of state, Gore for trying to steal the election by only recounting Democratic counties, so on and so on.
So having machines that incorrectly work is just asking for trouble. Having the maker's of these machines strongly support a single party - of course there is suspicion (not founded, but warranted).
The real question is, "How do we, as a nation, get out of this mess?"
1) A strong, overwhelming victory by the president would have been nice. But he is so incompetent, all he has done is divide the nation more.
1) A strong, overwhelming victory by Kerry would have been nice. But he is a weak candidate and is having trouble gaining much ground vs this nations worst president (ever).
3) A strong third party to "balance" the system. Things got to be really screwed up before this will happen. Maybe there is hope for Nov. 3.
Wow. Great regurgitation of right wing propaganda.
However, you need to adjust your RDF. (when did rove steal that from Jobs?)
for insulting our allies
- got a reference? Link? Anything but an accusation?
falsely calling them the coalition of the coerced and the bribed
Many of the nations in the coalition formed for the 2003 invasion of Iraq stand to receive substantial aid packages and trade benefits from the United States in return for their support. The administration is provided billions of dollars in "aid packages" to coalition members. Of the 30+ original coalition "members', 19 countries offering only political and/or moral support, one was named without it's knowledge (Solomon Islands), and one was Afganistain. Nine were/are seeking membership into NATO. An Institute for Policy Studies report found that "most were recruited through coercion, bullying, and bribery."
or by calling our action unilateral.
Unilateral means something much different than you must perceive. England, Australia, and the US have stood together on international issues for decades. If you do not consider these three countries to be on the same side, then you have a very myopic view of world politics.
In March of 2003, Ari Fleischer said that the adminstration has "all along said, in terms of actual active combat, there will be very, very few countries."
The original invasion forces consisted of troops from only six countries. Nearly 99.9% of these troops were from the US, UK, or Australia.
The countries sending troops and the amount of troops were:
Without the US's politicing, would the coalition have been created? Did any nations besides the US and UK present evidence insisting immediate action? The coalition was a huge sham, created only for political purposes.
"A universe whose only claim to be believed in rests on the validity of inference must not start telling us the inference is invalid..." -- C.S. Lewis
that thinks we should protect contest notices with deadly force, but not human passengers.
I think the difference is that contest notices can not piss off a pilot enough to want to use deadly force, while a drunk buisness travel will do so every day.
True, but what if she was a pshyco, and this was a clue. To us, we read it and it is obvious that she is not serious. But if it were our job to step in front of a bullet for the president, it is worth investigating any possible trigger pullers.
The cost of investigating is much less than the cost of not, even given the context of her message.
How do they know if she is serious or not. If she was a threat and something happened, then the Secret Service would be blasted for not doing more. A visit is a non-issue. The Secret Service had better be doing everything they can to protect our president, including reading blogs. Just hope they have some software to scan it all for them.
And why is this in politics? Obviously her post was politically motivated, but the Secret Service is not acting based on politics.
Slashdot Mirror
Is sex a religious, creative, or cultural activity?
no, it's exercise
OpenDoc -- It had such promise. Maybe, someday, it will live again.
Every time I go to Taiwan, I feel more like I am in the US (except for the language) than anywhere else in the world - even parts of the US.
:)
I bet the communist would be {much} more supportive of Taiwan becoming the 51st star than letting the green party declare independence
I have nothing against Python. Just was trying to explain why a large group on engineers around me take offense at the mention of Python. Unfortunately it offense taken for the wrong reasons.
I personally have a problem with interpreted vs. compiled "delivered" applications for only one small reason. By forcing an application to be compiled, some of the simpler errors are caught. I can't count the number of times I've made a "quick" change right before delivering an application that "won't harm anything", and the process of compiling the app caught a stupid error. If it were an interpreted application, having great confidence in my perfection, I would have delivered an app that didn't work (or had a bug). Yes, there are many things you can do to catch those bugs, but you are not forced to do them, while in a compiled language you are. This is not a complaint about Python, but a reason for me to choose a different language, and my belief why others often shun interpreted languages.
It's almost like there are a large group of people who take offense at the mention of Python...
It is an interpreted language, and in general, interpreted languages don't get much respect. In addition, Python users are often as fanatical as mac users, and end up pushing python into inappropriate uses. A fairly senior manager at my work got hooked on python, and is now trying to use it for embedded real-time applications. He is not a programmer, and tries to use python as a solution to every problem. Now, all the software engineers cringe when python is mentioned. Not python's fault, but now we all take offense at its mention.
Is the problem really that they are paid "too much"? Pay them less and see how well that works - might open the door to more corruption.
Try making it easier to run for office. Having to spend millions to get elected causes incoming politicians to be encumbered by more than just the views of the voters of their districts.
The viewer is on the CD. Not the best solution, but Virtual PC should allow you to view it.
You apparently didn't watch (or maybe didn't watch YET) Bin Laden's most recent tape
Correct (at the time), but Bin Laden is just one of many. If your trust his words, then backing out of the area would seemingly dowse his hate, but I think there is much more to the problem than just what he articulates. Doing what you suggest would be a great step in starting to repair our wrongs, but hate is a hard thing to change. Hate is directed, intense, and irrational - it takes generations to create and generations to diffuse. If Bin Ladden stop his attacks, there is enough hatred for some others to fill in for him.
Too late by over 100 years- the Monroe Doctrine
Why do you feel it is possible to put the genie of "free trade" back into the bottle, but not the Monroe Doctrine? If the US left the trade market, the whole world economy would crash. It would be a devastating blow. If the US left its currently self-appointed role of Judge/Jury/Executioner would the world suffer? No, the world would probably be much better off. We need to return to being engaged in the UN and we need to support it and its ideals through more than just words.
The best way we can do that is to admit that we don't have all the answers- admit that we've FAILED
We're not competent enough to run a stable economy or an honest government Agreed.
Everything that is bad in our society is tied to two basic wrong headed ideas:
1. That multinational corporations are good for anybody other than the investors and C-level executives of multinational corporations.
That is a stretch. Its like arguing that everything wrong today is because Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. I think Robert Burns said it best: "Nae man can tether time or tide". Multinationals are the result of a combination and evolution of the original American ideals - freedom and free trade (between States)
2. That we can duplicate the freedom we had in the 1820s by mimicing the economy and government we had in the 1920s elsewhere.
I certainly hope we are not trying to duplicate the "freedom we had in the 1820s" anywhere. It is not a brighter period of American "freedom". I agree this is bad, but how is this idea being presented today? In Iraq I'd argue that we are trying to mimic the freedom we had in the 1980s by mimicking the government and economy of the 1770s.
Ask a friendly Irishman what that means and then you will see what kind of reputation American's have.
:) of being a European. Even had many people in Paris come up and talk to me in French, and received some shocked looks when all I could rattle off in broken French was "j'ne parle pas Francais."
I spend over a year in Ireland and thoroughly enjoyed it. I dressed in my normal clothes (jeans, respectable t-shirt) and was constantly being accused
While I Ireland, I went to a tourist area on the west coast (Dingle) and witnessed both the funniest and saddest display of American ignorance I've ever encountered. An elderly man in his 50s or 60s marched into the tourist shop and bee-lined for the information desk. He cut in line, and once there, demanded the attention of the helpful employee, and whipped out his distinctive dark blue passport. He opened to a blank page and started to insist that the employee stamp his passport. When the employee very politely explained that only customs could stamp it, the man when totally ballistic. Demanding to see supervisors, report the shop to the police, and claim that because he was an "American" that he deserved more. His argument was that at the airport, the man did not stamp it and he wanted the stamp in his passport as a soveigner. I keep hoping that the poor employee would just grab the thing and get a big red VOID stamp and stamp away, but he never did. I left the shop and couldn't stop laughing, but after thinking about it a bit, realized that this could not have been the first place that he attacked. I think the nearest international airport was over 100 miles away in Cork, and in between there must have been at least 10 tourist traps that any tourist would stop at first.
I came away from that encounter realizing why "green pants" are so disrespected.
My guy won. If there are any doubts about the accuracy of the vote, then I want them straightened out now
./er.
I agree. There is not too much doubt about the fact that the president won. But that doesn't mean that the investigations won't turn up foul play. Nixon was ridiculously in the lead when his guys did that little Watergate thing. And Nixon's mistake was finding out about it and trying to cover it up. The president would be smart to start the investigation now. It would convince the average Joe, impress a lot of liberals, and he would gain the respect of the average
only grabs the daily polls that lean the most towards kerry
His comments only lean Kerry, but the methods he uses to track the polls are balanced.
It always amazes me how the conservative third has changed our dictionary. "liberal" now means tax and spend; "fair and balanced" now means rnc talking points. Get a clue.
If you haven't visited the Current Electoral Vote Predictor site, give it a try. The site is very interesting and his daily updates of the polls in each state is very interesting. The comments in his "News from the Votemaster" might infuriate the conservative third, but are usually insightful, and not pretended to be balanced.
Asains, none of them ...
Very unfortunate choice of words. Maybe you should have said Asian nations.
At this point, do you really believe that closing the borders would make everyone else all of the sudden think differently of us and stop terrorist attacks? No way.
We need to engage the world as equals, not superiors. We need to practice what we preach, show compassion for the less fortunate nations, and try and gain morality once again. None of this can be done if we close ourselves up like 1700s China trying to stop Christianity. Look what the close door policy did to China. Do you really want us to go there?
I was sure the the president would roll him out as a prisioner this month.
boy was i wrong
(and remember, after the zillions of post facto recounts, Bush always won under any interpretation that would have passed the equal-protection test.)
A lot of legitimate recounts , except the one Gore wanted favored Gore.
The problem was, as you said, Gore tried to steal the election, and his self centeredness cost him. Had he done the right thing (as in integrity and honesty, not Rush and friends) and asked for a recount for the whole state, things would have been different.
The 2000 election set a precedence, and every election after will be a mess. Both sides have plenty of blame - the president for allowing his state election leader to be the secretary of state, Gore for trying to steal the election by only recounting Democratic counties, so on and so on.
So having machines that incorrectly work is just asking for trouble. Having the maker's of these machines strongly support a single party - of course there is suspicion (not founded, but warranted).
The real question is, "How do we, as a nation, get out of this mess?"
1) A strong, overwhelming victory by the president would have been nice. But he is so incompetent, all he has done is divide the nation more.
1) A strong, overwhelming victory by Kerry would have been nice. But he is a weak candidate and is having trouble gaining much ground vs this nations worst president (ever).
3) A strong third party to "balance" the system. Things got to be really screwed up before this will happen. Maybe there is hope for Nov. 3.
we like to refer to it as fromage
But on target, none the less.
another fool is here
Wow. Great regurgitation of right wing propaganda.
However, you need to adjust your RDF. (when did rove steal that from Jobs?)
for insulting our allies
- got a reference? Link? Anything but an accusation?
falsely calling them the coalition of the coerced and the bribed
Many of the nations in the coalition formed for the 2003 invasion of Iraq stand to receive substantial aid packages and trade benefits from the United States in return for their support. The administration is provided billions of dollars in "aid packages" to coalition members. Of the 30+ original coalition "members', 19 countries offering only political and/or moral support, one was named without it's knowledge (Solomon Islands), and one was Afganistain. Nine were/are seeking membership into NATO. An Institute for Policy Studies report found that "most were recruited through coercion, bullying, and bribery."
or by calling our action unilateral.
Unilateral means something much different than you must perceive. England, Australia, and the US have stood together on international issues for decades. If you do not consider these three countries to be on the same side, then you have a very myopic view of world politics.
In March of 2003, Ari Fleischer said that the adminstration has "all along said, in terms of actual active combat, there will be very, very few countries."
The original invasion forces consisted of troops from only six countries. Nearly 99.9% of these troops were from the US, UK, or Australia.
The countries sending troops and the amount of troops were:
Albania: 70
Australia: 2000
Romania: 278
UK: 45,000
US: 300,000
oh, and let's not forget
Poland: 200
Without the US's politicing, would the coalition have been created? Did any nations besides the US and UK present evidence insisting immediate action? The coalition was a huge sham, created only for political purposes.
"A universe whose only claim to be believed in rests on the validity of inference must not start telling us the inference is invalid..." -- C.S. Lewis
that thinks we should protect contest notices with deadly force, but not human passengers.
I think the difference is that contest notices can not piss off a pilot enough to want to use deadly force, while a drunk buisness travel will do so every day.
What is more revealing:
1) The fact that the explosives might have been gone by the time that the US got there
or
2) that the president didn't know they were gone until two weeks ago?
Of course. Online he gets lots of free advertising - /. is about the only website that doesn't start with his campaign motto in chant.
Marriage is the best way to stop sex. So those that truly believe that gay sex is wrong should support gay marriage.
Yeah, but did you see the bulge on his back?
True, but what if she was a pshyco, and this was a clue. To us, we read it and it is obvious that she is not serious. But if it were our job to step in front of a bullet for the president, it is worth investigating any possible trigger pullers.
The cost of investigating is much less than the cost of not, even given the context of her message.
How do they know if she is serious or not. If she was a threat and something happened, then the Secret Service would be blasted for not doing more. A visit is a non-issue. The Secret Service had better be doing everything they can to protect our president, including reading blogs. Just hope they have some software to scan it all for them.
And why is this in politics? Obviously her post was politically motivated, but the Secret Service is not acting based on politics.