"The drug problem isn't just about "cost of drugs", but the social problems that they bring. Never had a family torn apart by drug addiction, have you?"
And why is it the job of the government to keep me from making poor descisions for myself, or to help keep your family from being torn apart. I know several people who can responsibably handle drugs. I responsiably handle alcohol, myself.
We should not punish all for the actions of a few...
...perhaps reflected in a bad jobs report on October 8 -- the last unemployment report before the election -- or in a stock market swoon.
If a bad jobs report did come out next week, I have a feeling the Bush Administration/Campaign would just spin it as uncertainty about the outcome of the presidential election. Espeically if Kerry can bridge, or overcome, the gap in the polls.
And the sad part is, people will probably believe the lying sack of . Oops... Sorry, looks like I contributed to the liberal-bent of Slashdot. Conservitives, go head and jump on me...
Course the failed War on Drugs should be canned, all drugs should be legalised, taxed and the cash used for rehabilitation services.
Seriously... Think about this. Druggies have already proved they'll pay just about any price to feed their habit. So, if you leagalize it, you reduce the cost of getting the drugs here, and selling them (black market goes away...). So, lets say the markup on your tyipcal drug is 17,000% from the black market. What should the markup be if the drugs where legal? Lets just say 500%, for arguments sake.
The government could charge a 100% tax on the profit, and the end user would only see a markup of about 1000% (17 times less than the current markup, for those who suck at math).
So, the druggies win (cheaper drugs). And the government wins (more taxes, less money spent on the worthless drug war). And the tax payer wins, provided the shills we elect don't siphon off all these extra funds into some type of 'special account'...
I'm still waiting for some sort of objective comparison of major X11 environments against OSX and Windows XP. But I don't think that sort of thing is possible in this day and age.
I agree... That would definitly be useful. However, it would be almost impossible. You'd have to find a dozen similarly intelligent people who had never used a computer. You couldn't use the same person on multiple systems. The systems are too similar. They'd learn tricks from 1 that they could use on 2, tricks on 1 and 2 that they could use on 3, and so on. The last system tested would almost certainly be deemed the most usable.
I use it a lot when I'm looking for info on Oracle. If you've ever tried to do a search with 'Oracle' in you keywords, you get a bunch of results about training and certification and such nonsence. So I always add a "-training -course" to my search, and it helps me refine what I'm looking for.
"One of the major benefits of the EC is to make sure that the candidate is selected by a "geographic" majority, not a simple majority."
Using this system makes some's vote count more, based upon geography. Its stupid, and antiquated. If you wanted to ensure a geographic majority, just give one state, one vote. But then, people in Texas and California would likely complain that their votes count less than some one in Alaska and North Dakota.
Why should the geographic precision be limited to a whole state? I like the idea of a congressional distict type of precision...
Who cares if Kerry admitted publically to commiting war crimes 30 years ago? I do. It means he either lied for political purposes, or actually commited war crimes.
Kerry didn't admit to commiting war crimes... The stories he relating to the Senete Committee where related to him. Guilty of hear-say? Yes. Guilty of war crimes? No...
I was well aware of that issue... I was simply making a point about a user group for nothing more than a particular brand of cdrom drive users.... Sounded wierd...
Now, to get back on topic: Go Mandrake! (that should keep me from getting modded Offtopic, right?)
Differentiation is absolutely critical, but using low prices as your primary differentiator is a well-worn path to failure. More on this later.
So, Microsofts take is that people are unwilling to pay less for the same functionality? I half get his point about price not being the only decision maker. But the other half just sounds like more anti-oss fud.
The last thing we should want to see is an Install Wizard on Linux. The software should be smart enough to install itself, without any help on my part (unless I want something special, like a different install directory, or some such). We're almost there with apt-rpm-autopackage. Dependecy resolution is the tough nut to crack for all distros.
Why do people think that Install Wizards are so easy? For someone who has never installed software (or, used a computer beyond checking email, etc), they are not. To an experienced user, most of the questions are un-important (they just accept the defaults). But, to a true new user, all of the questions are important, because they don't know what's not important! All they see is this baradge of questions: Install path, menu location, modules, etc, etc, etc. Those kinds of questions could be overwhelming.
The install wizards where the product of lazy programers who wanted to off load the resposibility decision making during the installation process to the user. Simple as that.
Linux is on the right track with simple commands like urpmi gimp. No questions. Just install the damn thing.
People that want install wizards are probably more likley to throw the baby out with the bath-water, too. The pkg systems on Linux are close. We need dependcy resolution, and cross-platform menuentries (so users know where to look for the new software). Get those, and we've got software that is easy as pie to install.
But some people would prefer to take the easy way out, and require the user to make all the decisions.
Actually, I think the problem is more that law-makers feel the need to create laws to make it harder to break existing laws. Pure bull shit. The existance of P2P software is not bad. There are some very legitimate uses for it (we use it at work for large document sharing). But its already illegal to trade in copyrighted material without the copyright holders consent (as it should be).
This is just like so-called open container laws. It is already illegal to drive drunk. But, the very act of having an open bottle of booze in my car is illegal. Why? By itself, there is nothing wrong with it. The only problem is when I, as a drive, start drinking from it. But then I'm breaking an already existing law!!!
How about we just start enforcing the laws we already have before we start writing new ones.
Or these fancy new filesystems like WinFS that categorize things in multiple ways simultaneously? Oh, wait, you CAN'T.
Completely agree. Especially with this one. It drives me crazy that I have to have a one to one relationship between files and folders. Why, because a pieace of paper can only be in one folder at a time?
Or the fact that I can only put an email in one folder in outlook (and can't catorgorize!). That's why gmail's so cool. I can but mulitple labels on an email, and view by any label I want...
Next on my hit list is people who think everything should go into an Excel spreadsheet. Gah! The in-humanity!
Slashdot Mirror
And why is it the job of the government to keep me from making poor descisions for myself, or to help keep your family from being torn apart. I know several people who can responsibably handle drugs. I responsiably handle alcohol, myself.
We should not punish all for the actions of a few...
You're right... My bad. Down she goes!
If a bad jobs report did come out next week, I have a feeling the Bush Administration/Campaign would just spin it as uncertainty about the outcome of the presidential election. Espeically if Kerry can bridge, or overcome, the gap in the polls.
And the sad part is, people will probably believe the lying sack of . Oops... Sorry, looks like I contributed to the liberal-bent of Slashdot. Conservitives, go head and jump on me...
Seriously... Think about this. Druggies have already proved they'll pay just about any price to feed their habit. So, if you leagalize it, you reduce the cost of getting the drugs here, and selling them (black market goes away...). So, lets say the markup on your tyipcal drug is 17,000% from the black market. What should the markup be if the drugs where legal? Lets just say 500%, for arguments sake.
The government could charge a 100% tax on the profit, and the end user would only see a markup of about 1000% (17 times less than the current markup, for those who suck at math).
So, the druggies win (cheaper drugs). And the government wins (more taxes, less money spent on the worthless drug war). And the tax payer wins, provided the shills we elect don't siphon off all these extra funds into some type of 'special account'...
That, and I think people would be happier :D
Is there anyway that I can mod this whole article up as obvious?
And where was Javascript on this survey, huh? Because only real programmers can handle javascript :-/
Either that, or someone with magical powers...
I agree... That would definitly be useful. However, it would be almost impossible. You'd have to find a dozen similarly intelligent people who had never used a computer. You couldn't use the same person on multiple systems. The systems are too similar. They'd learn tricks from 1 that they could use on 2, tricks on 1 and 2 that they could use on 3, and so on. The last system tested would almost certainly be deemed the most usable.
Translation: ...focusing on crappier music...
Now THAT is a damn good question...
The exclude search is probably the most under-utlized feature on google. You can find some more info on it here:
http://www.google.com/help/refinesearch.html#exclu de
I use it a lot when I'm looking for info on Oracle. If you've ever tried to do a search with 'Oracle' in you keywords, you get a bunch of results about training and certification and such nonsence. So I always add a "-training -course" to my search, and it helps me refine what I'm looking for.
Using this system makes some's vote count more, based upon geography. Its stupid, and antiquated. If you wanted to ensure a geographic majority, just give one state, one vote. But then, people in Texas and California would likely complain that their votes count less than some one in Alaska and North Dakota.
Why should the geographic precision be limited to a whole state? I like the idea of a congressional distict type of precision...
No. Wait. That was the Swift Boat Verterans... My mistake. People have been screaming about this liberal media for years, I figured it must be true.
Kerry didn't admit to commiting war crimes... The stories he relating to the Senete Committee where related to him. Guilty of hear-say? Yes. Guilty of war crimes? No...
Liberal media my ass...
Now, to get back on topic: Go Mandrake! (that should keep me from getting modded Offtopic, right?)
And they say Linux people are geeks...
Differentiation is absolutely critical, but using low prices as your primary differentiator is a well-worn path to failure. More on this later.
So, Microsofts take is that people are unwilling to pay less for the same functionality? I half get his point about price not being the only decision maker. But the other half just sounds like more anti-oss fud.
I use Kivio. Works well. And is relativly feature rich. I believe is supports most of what you're looking for.
The last thing we should want to see is an Install Wizard on Linux. The software should be smart enough to install itself, without any help on my part (unless I want something special, like a different install directory, or some such). We're almost there with apt-rpm-autopackage. Dependecy resolution is the tough nut to crack for all distros.
Why do people think that Install Wizards are so easy? For someone who has never installed software (or, used a computer beyond checking email, etc), they are not. To an experienced user, most of the questions are un-important (they just accept the defaults). But, to a true new user, all of the questions are important, because they don't know what's not important! All they see is this baradge of questions: Install path, menu location, modules, etc, etc, etc. Those kinds of questions could be overwhelming.
The install wizards where the product of lazy programers who wanted to off load the resposibility decision making during the installation process to the user. Simple as that.
Linux is on the right track with simple commands like urpmi gimp. No questions. Just install the damn thing.
People that want install wizards are probably more likley to throw the baby out with the bath-water, too. The pkg systems on Linux are close. We need dependcy resolution, and cross-platform menu entries (so users know where to look for the new software). Get those, and we've got software that is easy as pie to install.
But some people would prefer to take the easy way out, and require the user to make all the decisions.
You mean porn is illegal?
This is just like so-called open container laws. It is already illegal to drive drunk. But, the very act of having an open bottle of booze in my car is illegal. Why? By itself, there is nothing wrong with it. The only problem is when I, as a drive, start drinking from it. But then I'm breaking an already existing law!!!
How about we just start enforcing the laws we already have before we start writing new ones.
Completely agree. Especially with this one. It drives me crazy that I have to have a one to one relationship between files and folders. Why, because a pieace of paper can only be in one folder at a time?
Or the fact that I can only put an email in one folder in outlook (and can't catorgorize!). That's why gmail's so cool. I can but mulitple labels on an email, and view by any label I want...
Next on my hit list is people who think everything should go into an Excel spreadsheet. Gah! The in-humanity!
Actually, knowing how much google uses python, it would be more like:
:D
#!/usr/bin/env python