Go outside. Take a walk. Work off the extra pounds you put on stuffing yourself with obscene amounts of food last Thursday. And while you're out there, walking around, contemplate the fact that our nation is in an unwinnable war, the gap between rich and poor is expanding at a record rate (partly due to the fact that our jobs are being sold to the lowest overseas bidder), our national savings rate is negative, and we're likely funding our economic "expansion" with home loans and credit-card debt.
Meanwhile, our leaders' chief concern seems to be that we buy enough shit during the weekend after thanksgiving.
The question presupposes too many things. Namely that muslims are either praying or plotting terror 24/7 and that no athiest ever plans to hurt anyone else.
Uh...yeah. That was kind of the point, fella. Atheists have moved down one slot in world of ignorant, bigoted stereotypes. Which is why Adams followed the sentence that you quoted with this one:
"On the scale of prejudice, atheists don't seem so bad lately."
Sarcasm is fun. When you get done feeling indignant, please feel free join in.
OK, you've loaded your camera with ISO 3200 film for a specific shot. The building rumbles, a plane has crashed outside. You spend the next couple of minutes trying to wind your film through, get it out without ruining your existing shots, searching for the ISO 200 that you didn't think to bring with you anyway. By the time you're ready to shoot, the drama of the once in a lifetime shot has long since past. Your buddy with a DSLR slides the dial to ISO 200, steps outside and gets the award winning shot.
Or you'd react like a knowledgable photographer, and you'd take a tenth of a second to stop your aperture down and take the same shot with the ISO 3200 film and (possibly) a fast shutter speed (I'm assuming that the scene is too bright due to a dramatic explosion -- otherwise, why would you bother switching to a slower film?)
Then you'd rib your buddy for fucking with his ISO settings when he should have been composing a good photo.
Perhaps I'm wrong (and you simply reversed the film speed ratings by accident in this example), but you sound like exactly the sort of person whom experienced photographers refer to when they tell people not to buy the newest whiz-bang SLR body in order to learn photography. If you had spent any amount of time learning with a simple film camera, you'd know enough about what an ISO setting actually means to know that you rarely have to change its value (certainly not in the situation that you describe).
Re:Hypothesis: people get married far too young.
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"I'm sure you're going to tell me I've misunderstood you again. Which is not surprising, because up to this point you've been steadily qualifying what you initially said further and further. Which is a good sign, because it indicates you now realize what you originally said doesn't make much sense."
No. I've quoted the same sentence from my original post, over and over again:
It is stupid for a couple to stay together for the "sake" of an institution.
My position has not changed.
"Are you against gay marriage? Have you paused to ask yourself why many gay people are so upset that this sacrament and legal framework are being denied to them? Maybe they're just nuts....Or maybe, like other people, they see the value to themselves and to society of a public commitment with public rights and responsibilities tied to it. That's pretty much what marriage is."
1) No, I'm not.
2) They're upset because they're being denied rights that straight people take for granted. They're upset because in many/most places in America, they can be prohibited from adopting, seeing their partner in the hospital, acting as a legal or financial guardian for their partner, or even making arrangements for their partner's funeral. They're upset because at this moment in America, marriage is a bigoted institution, and if nothing else, represents a way that religious and cultural forces are attempting to marginalize gay and lesbian citizens.
3) Gay and lesbian couples have been in loving, committed relationships for years, without the "incentive" of marriage. Giving them the right to marry will not change this fact. And, incidentally, gay and lesbian couples have been holding public commitment ceremonies for years -- it's assinine and arrogant to suggest that gay people want the legal right to marry because they're otherwise unable to express love and commitment for their partners.
"You seem to have a bug up your butt about the fact that many people also want a sacrament associated with their commitment, also, but what business is that of yours? If two people feel strongly about expressing their commitment with a spiritual sacrament, why are you obligated to care one way or another?"
But I don't care, jimbo. You're twisting my argument again. In case you missed it:
It is stupid for a couple to stay together for the "sake" of an institution.
Perhaps one of these times, you'll actually read it.
Re:Hypothesis: people get married far too young.
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"Every other time? Every third time? You said couples should split up if they had "fundamental" problems. So if you're not saying every time, then how many? Give me a number."
Do you know what a straw man argument is? Your insistence that I "give you a number" either totally misses, or totally ignores the statement that I made: it is stupid to stay in a relationship "for the sake of" an institution. On the other hand, you have consistently ignored the last sentence in my post: people should stay together because they want to stay together.
In other words, Jimbo, people should stick togther through difficult times because they still see value in their relationship. Not because a preacher said "no divorces," not because divorces give the pope indigestion, and certainly not because some nutball believes that divorce "violates" the text of an internally-inconsistent, poorly-written book written before the dawn of modern civilization.
"What a weaselly construction. "Relationships" are not animate beings. They don't just "form, develop,...,dissolve" like a chemical solution. To be worth anything, people must actively invest in them, sacrifice for them, work at them."
Hey Jimbo....are you really trying to make an argument based on my use of the passive voice? (...you do know that I can say the same thing in the active voice, and it would mean the same thing, right?)
"No social need for commitment? No social need for unconditional love? No social need to learn compromise instead of giving up after your encounter a "fundamental" problem?"
Your words, not mine. Marriage is not a prerequisite for commitment, love or compromise. Therefore, divorce does not invalidate their existence.
(Also....I suppose you think you're being sneaky by slipping that "unconditional" in there...but really, you're just being absurd. As most of us know, a dog will love you unconditionally. A spouse has boundaries.)
Noodle on, Jimbo....
Re:Like I said, marriage itself has no value anymo
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Incredibly stupid? Why even get married then... if you aren't going to stick it out? The way you talk, its stupid for people to realize that a disagreement is not the end of the world... and stay in their marriage. If anything, "Americans" these days don't "man up" and own ANY responsibility or decisions. Its always someone else's fault, its always someone else's burden to carry, its always all about *me*. Being married means that you are going to stick with a person, love them, through the good and the bad. If you don't want the bad, then don't get married -- because it comes with the territory.
What a very feisty rant. Two points:
1) You meant to respond to the grandparent post, not the parent.
2) "Being married" means that you have certain legal rights and obligations. Everything else is a strictly personal interpretation and/or value judgment, and as such, is relevant only to you. Hence, my argument: it is incredibly stupid to stay in a non-functional relationship (or to argue thereof) for the "sake" of a marriage. A marriage is a thing, not a value.
My argument does not preclude responsibility, love, decision-making or morality. It does, however, preclude the unnecessary psychological damage that unhappy couples inflict on one another in the name of religious and social dogma.
Re:Hypothesis: people get married far too young.
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"If you leave someone every time you don't happen to feel attracted to them, or have a disagreement about money, or family, or something else fundamental, how can you ever be intimate with someone, love someone, know someone beyond a superficial level? Maybe sometimes, a relationship, love, is worth sacrificing for?"
I didn't say that couples should split up "every time" they had problems. I argued that it's incredibly stupid for two people to stay together for the sake of an institution. That said, consider the universe of relationships outside of the institution of marriage -- people are regularly intimate, loving and caring with one another without the need for a sacrament or legal framework to bind them.
Only the pious seem to have the (perverse) need to force couples to stay together in the face of obvious evidence to the contrary. We would all be much happier if we allowed our relationships to form, develop and -- if necessary -- dissolve without penalty or social stigma, in order to meet our intellectual, sexual, and social needs.
May you be touched by His noodly appendage, -tim
Hypothesis: people get married far too young.
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"These days, people divorce because they argue too much. Or because "the spice" is gone. Or because they don't like arguing about money. Or because the in-laws hate each other. Or because wife gained some weight and doesn't look good enough anymore. Get over it. Man up and deal with it and treat the marriage with the importance it deserves."
In my experience, most people get married at far too young an age -- right out of college, typically. But when you're 22-ish, fresh out of the sheltered womb of academia, and you've never had a full-time job, a home of your own, or even more than one or two serious relationships in your life, you know virtually nothing about who you are, or you're going to become. Nevertheless, people think that they can commit themselves to another person "for eternity" at this ridiculously early stage of the game.
I believe that this is why a lot of couples split up in their early 30s for reasons that seem trivial or fundamental (i.e. "the wife gained weight," or "the spice is gone"). Couples marry young, grow apart as they grow up (you do a lot of growing in your 20s!), and discover that what seemed like True Love at 23 was really only an intoxicating mixture of youthful horniness and the fear of being alone. I'm an unmarried guy in my late 20s, and I've heard this same, sad story on many, many dates.
That said, it's a typical, puritannical American response to suggest that people should "man up," hunker down and stay in a failing relationship because the "institution" of marriage is somehow sacred or important. If two people want a divorce because they're no longer attracted to one another, or because they have disagreements about money, or family, or any number of other very fundamental things, it's incredibly stupid to suggest that they should stay together "for the marriage." People should stay together because they want to stay together -- not because some cultural police officer told them that their marriage was inviolable.
"The internet is a buzz for months with people making jokes about how stupid this movie is going to be, and they are suprised its not the next Titanic?!"
For the record: I wasn't referring to *you* as an arrogant asshole. Hope that was clear.
I also have some experience working with elaborate statistical systems, and I'm very familiar with the truth of the "unanticipated result" argument. Frequently, you can't know what your data should look like until you've massaged it enough to have done most of the design. In fact, I think that's true most of the time, when you're doing novel research. There are very few situations where an off-the-shelf plot or graph will serve all of your needs -- which is why I'm skeptical of the idea of anything like a "TufteScatterplot" widget. It won't really be useful unless it's supremely flexible, and by that point, you might as well have written a generalized data graphics language.
Ultimately, you don't hire an artist until you know the message that you want to present. That means that you have a handle on your data, it's meaning and properties, and you'll be able to use your artist for their best purpose -- making your message visually appealing.
While I think that you have a nugget of a good idea, I have my doubts that it's possible to make a software tool that encourages or enforces good design. Software can't legislate good taste, and a lack of good taste is the problem.
Now for a crass generalization: techies always think that a problem can be solved with software and/or obsession. But sometimes, it takes actual skill to do good work. After all, programmers rarely hesitate to get pissy with some noob who works in Visual Basic, but they somehow think that art and design are skills that can be picked up from a book.
If it's really important to you to have attractive visuals, then don't be an arrogant asshole, and hire someone to do the work. It doesn't have to be expensive (go to any art school, and you'll find dozens of young, eager artists and graphic designers looking for a break, and willing to work for reasonable rates), and it will go a long way to making you look more professional and polished.
Unlikely. Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disorder, and even if new nerves could be generated, they would be just as susceptible to attack by the host immune system.
It has been my repeated experience that "Cruddy and complex" code is that way because the problem space is cruddy and complex and thats what bugfixes do to code.
Yes, yes. Cruddy and Complex code is cruddy and complex because it needs to be cruddy and complex (not because it was hacked together on an impossibly short schedule, or written by a novice developer using a fundamentally bad design. Or both.) And you should never rewrite code. Ever (except when you should).
There are no absolute rules in software engineering. Part of the art of the game is knowing when to toss code that is so impossibly bloated that it would take many times longer to "re-factor" than to "re-write." And despite the fact that many (most?) people are bad at making this decision, it is not automatically true that code should never be re-written.
Fine, fine...I understand. I was pointing out that OPEC has very little, if anything, to do with our energy production. The figures I've seen estimate that oil-burning power plants make up about 2% of the US generation capacity.
That would mean total independence from fossil fuels for electric production for a long time to come. Just think what that would do towards stabilizing the price of energy, especially when compared to OPEC's cartel.
You do realize that the majority of US electric power is generated by burning domestically-mined coal, right?
Common carrier has more to do with legal liability and responsibility for content, and much less (as in nothing at all) to do with interconnection of data networks and charging fees for traffic going over them.
No.
A common carrier is a carrier (of anything) who offers services indiscriminately to the public. By definition, you can't be a common carrier if you discriminate between customers. There are definitely laws surrounding the legal obligations of common carriers, but these don't change the definition of the term.
"There is nothing to stop telcos for instance from blocking any traffic they choose - they do so all the time to stop DOS attacks. There is further nothing to stop them from charging for complex QOS access schemes with thier customers and content providers liek google"
It isn't that simple.
The FCC has long regulated the "telecommunication" aspect of internet access as a common carrier service. We pay universal service fees on our phone bills because of legislation that sees the phone ("telecommunication") network as a common carrier.
However, the "enhanced service" of internet packet switching and connectivity, has been traditionally considered something different. The FCC didn't regulate these "enhanced services" because they were a niche industry, and it wanted to promote innovation and competition. Thus, it's perfectly acceptable for Verizon the ISP to block your Vonage packets (Verizon the ISP is an "enhanced service"), but it has never been acceptable for Verizon the telecommunications provider to block or regulate access to any other ISP who wishes to use the same lines.
The problem is that today, there is less and less distinction between the "telecommunication" service of old, and the "enhanced service" of today. The legal framework is set up for a bright-line, 1960s-era distinction, when modern networks routinely blur the line between telecommunication and "enhanced service." The telcos know this, and are actively using the fuzziness of the issue to extort their biggest customers, while simultaneously claiming a number of benefits that are only guaranteed to common carriers.
You also seem to misunderstand my point, which is that I simply want NO additional legislation around this topic, for or against the telcos.
This is a red herring. The whole reason that "enhanced services" have been able to survive in a poorly-regulated environment is because there has been the promise of competition for the wires, which is only guaranteed by common carrier regulations. But with the advent of fiber optics, digital voice and video, and the movement of nearly every traditional service to packet-swtiched networks, there is no longer any guarantee of competition.
In other words, it's complete bullshit to suggest that "network neutrality" legislation is some sort of onerous new form of regulation on the poor, bealeagured telecoms. The telecoms are doing their best to escape the existing regulations -- this is just an attempt to keep things the way they are now.
"Verizon has said they would like to charge large companies like Google money for the bandwith users of those services use. Fine. It's not illegal, so... why have they not done so?"
Because it is illegal. Who mods this crap up, anyway?
One of the biggest confusions about this whole debate -- a confusion perpetuated by the astroturf campaigns of the telco industry -- is the status of the current law.
Right now, the law says that data is data. Whether it's voice or IP traffic, the telcos are obligated to treat it all equally. This is what people refer to as "common carrier" provisions. Again, this is the current law.
Thanks to a bought-and-sold congress, however, the major telcos have worked legislation into the pipeline that would eliminate the common carrier provisions for internet data. The "net neutrality" supporters are trying to ammend this shitty legislation, in order to eliminate the massive and obvious example of corporate welfare.
Of course, your local telco CEO would like you to believe that this ammendment is anti-competitive and as un-American as wrapping a puppy in Old Glory and setting it aflame. Hence, the doublespeak rhetoric about "freedom" and "competition," when the currently-proposed legislation would accomplish the opposite.
Businesses compete for your dollars. Some win, some lose.
And it's especially easy to "win" when you can buy a law that allows you to legally extort your competitors.
What is needed is less regulation, not more regulation in the guise of "Net Neutrality."
Actually, you have it backwards: the current law requires common-carrier status. The side that you're supporting requires that a new "regulation" be written...it just happens that the new regulation favors big ISPs, so you're OK with the idea.
"Some idiot with a PhD in molecular genetics (not population genetics) while debating me once blurted out that the human race is in a "Hardy-Wienberg Equilibrium", which is essentially the impression intended by the referenced article."
The "idiot" was wrong, but so are you: the article makes no reference to Hardy-Weinburg equilibria, nor does it need to -- it doesn't discuss allele frequencies.
"What HRE means is that there is no "population structure" such as "races" -- which plays very well with the PC Feelgoodism that has been elevated to a state of theocratic dogma by the current zeigeist pervading not just media and academia but governmental circles."
Whoa...settle down, there, Cletus. The liberals aren't coming to get you today!
Incoherent, vaguely conservative ranting about "dogma" and "zeigests" aside, you don't understand the definition of Hardy-Weinburg equilibria (perhaps that's why you're so upset!) Simply put, HRE tells us how to predict the stable frequencies of dominant and recessive alleles within a closed population. It's a fundamental theorem of population genetics, not a wedge issue in the Culture War.
This article is about ancestry, and makes a simple mathematical argument that human beings are all related. It doesn't make a commentary about race or geographical diversity. Get a grip.
I think this analogy really does a nice job of describing Microsoft's behavior. And it probably also explains why my personal feeling is that, by-and-large, Microsoft has done more good than bad for folks like me (software developer). That's because I'm essentially "inside the empire".
Actually, being a third-party developer in the Microsoft world is a lot more like being a pig on a factory farm than a citizen in ancient Rome. They feed you well, keep you in a confined little intellectual space, and bore you to tears with stable life of.NET coding for business scraps. If nothing else, it's a steady life. If you're the right type of pig, you might even grow to enjoy the lifestyle. Get too big, however, and you're a hot dog.
I have never felt more free than when I hopped on a Shinkansen with little more than 30 minutes' notice, and traveled all the way across Japan in less than four hours -- all while reading a book.
I have never felt less free than when paying for an auto loan, auto insurance, registration, maintenance and gasoline, just to make life in my home city possible.
Latent taxation, poor public transportation and a national dependence on black goop sucked from beneath some of the most US-hostile countries on earth: you have a funny definition of freedom.
First off, it's Tim, not Tom. If you want me to take your opinion seriously, do me the courtesy of not misspelling my name.
Now...
You seem to believe that we chose to forgo health, education, housing, and infrastructure *just* so that we could compete better with the first-world countries.
No, that's not what I said at all. I said that your labor is cheap because your nation doesn't invest nearly the amount of money that first-world nations do on annoying little things like sanitation and public health. Did you, personally, choose this state of affairs? Of course not. But that doesn't change the fact that you can undercut our labor costs because you undercut our standard of living...and you mostly do this on the backs of your poor citizens.
How do we bootstrap this? We can either get investments from outside...or we can 'steal your jobs' and make money out of that.
I never used the word "steal"...that's your wording. My feeling is that US politicians are to blame for this mess. Our country should have the foresight to regulate the kind of intellectual labor that goes overseas.
As far as "bootstrapping" India, however, I don't accept your premise. It isn't the US white-collar worker's responsibility to bring Indian quality of life up to first-world standards. India has one of the largest populations of any nation on the earth. I'm sure, if you tried, you could find a way to build an economy on the backs of your own people. You know why you aren't? It's quicker and easier for you to undercut the costs of American workers.
a country of a billion people needs a lot of high-tech equipment, just to run the place. You think 1000MW power plants get created on their own? Or perhaps you suggest we just import those? With what money?
So...those "technology parks" popping up all over Bangalore are making electricity for you now? How about the nice new condominiums for all of those white-collar Indian workers? And the.NET programmers...are they building new power plants with their American CS training? Are they curing malaria? Buying mosquito nets for the Untouchables?
I didn't just fall off of the turnip truck. The vast majority of the newly-created wealth in India is concentrated amongst the citizens who are already well-off. In this respect, you are no different than the US. Our politicians have created a very efficient wealth transfer machine -- it moves money from the US middle-class, to the US upper class, with a small amount of that diverted to you, the Indian upper-class. But don't delude yourselves: when you become too expensive for our executives, our money will go elsewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
Ugh.
Here's a suggestion: STOP BUYING UNNECESARY CRAP.
Go outside. Take a walk. Work off the extra pounds you put on stuffing yourself with obscene amounts of food last Thursday. And while you're out there, walking around, contemplate the fact that our nation is in an unwinnable war, the gap between rich and poor is expanding at a record rate (partly due to the fact that our jobs are being sold to the lowest overseas bidder), our national savings rate is negative, and we're likely funding our economic "expansion" with home loans and credit-card debt.
Meanwhile, our leaders' chief concern seems to be that we buy enough shit during the weekend after thanksgiving.
The question presupposes too many things. Namely that muslims are either praying or plotting terror 24/7 and that no athiest ever plans to hurt anyone else.
Uh...yeah. That was kind of the point, fella. Atheists have moved down one slot in world of ignorant, bigoted stereotypes. Which is why Adams followed the sentence that you quoted with this one:
"On the scale of prejudice, atheists don't seem so bad lately."
Sarcasm is fun. When you get done feeling indignant, please feel free join in.
OK, you've loaded your camera with ISO 3200 film for a specific shot. The building rumbles, a plane has crashed outside. You spend the next couple of minutes trying to wind your film through, get it out without ruining your existing shots, searching for the ISO 200 that you didn't think to bring with you anyway. By the time you're ready to shoot, the drama of the once in a lifetime shot has long since past. Your buddy with a DSLR slides the dial to ISO 200, steps outside and gets the award winning shot.
Or you'd react like a knowledgable photographer, and you'd take a tenth of a second to stop your aperture down and take the same shot with the ISO 3200 film and (possibly) a fast shutter speed (I'm assuming that the scene is too bright due to a dramatic explosion -- otherwise, why would you bother switching to a slower film?)
Then you'd rib your buddy for fucking with his ISO settings when he should have been composing a good photo.
Perhaps I'm wrong (and you simply reversed the film speed ratings by accident in this example), but you sound like exactly the sort of person whom experienced photographers refer to when they tell people not to buy the newest whiz-bang SLR body in order to learn photography. If you had spent any amount of time learning with a simple film camera, you'd know enough about what an ISO setting actually means to know that you rarely have to change its value (certainly not in the situation that you describe).
What? Karma?
"I'm sure you're going to tell me I've misunderstood you again. Which is not surprising, because up to this point you've been steadily qualifying what you initially said further and further. Which is a good sign, because it indicates you now realize what you originally said doesn't make much sense."
No. I've quoted the same sentence from my original post, over and over again:
It is stupid for a couple to stay together for the "sake" of an institution.
My position has not changed.
"Are you against gay marriage? Have you paused to ask yourself why many gay people are so upset that this sacrament and legal framework are being denied to them? Maybe they're just nuts....Or maybe, like other people, they see the value to themselves and to society of a public commitment with public rights and responsibilities tied to it. That's pretty much what marriage is."
1) No, I'm not.
2) They're upset because they're being denied rights that straight people take for granted. They're upset because in many/most places in America, they can be prohibited from adopting, seeing their partner in the hospital, acting as a legal or financial guardian for their partner, or even making arrangements for their partner's funeral. They're upset because at this moment in America, marriage is a bigoted institution, and if nothing else, represents a way that religious and cultural forces are attempting to marginalize gay and lesbian citizens.
3) Gay and lesbian couples have been in loving, committed relationships for years, without the "incentive" of marriage. Giving them the right to marry will not change this fact. And, incidentally, gay and lesbian couples have been holding public commitment ceremonies for years -- it's assinine and arrogant to suggest that gay people want the legal right to marry because they're otherwise unable to express love and commitment for their partners.
"You seem to have a bug up your butt about the fact that many people also want a sacrament associated with their commitment, also, but what business is that of yours? If two people feel strongly about expressing their commitment with a spiritual sacrament, why are you obligated to care one way or another?"
But I don't care, jimbo. You're twisting my argument again. In case you missed it:
It is stupid for a couple to stay together for the "sake" of an institution.
Perhaps one of these times, you'll actually read it.
May frese be with you....
"Every other time? Every third time? You said couples should split up if they had "fundamental" problems. So if you're not saying every time, then how many? Give me a number."
Do you know what a straw man argument is? Your insistence that I "give you a number" either totally misses, or totally ignores the statement that I made: it is stupid to stay in a relationship "for the sake of" an institution. On the other hand, you have consistently ignored the last sentence in my post: people should stay together because they want to stay together.
In other words, Jimbo, people should stick togther through difficult times because they still see value in their relationship. Not because a preacher said "no divorces," not because divorces give the pope indigestion, and certainly not because some nutball believes that divorce "violates" the text of an internally-inconsistent, poorly-written book written before the dawn of modern civilization.
"What a weaselly construction. "Relationships" are not animate beings. They don't just "form, develop,...,dissolve" like a chemical solution. To be worth anything, people must actively invest in them, sacrifice for them, work at them."
Hey Jimbo....are you really trying to make an argument based on my use of the passive voice? (...you do know that I can say the same thing in the active voice, and it would mean the same thing, right?)
"No social need for commitment? No social need for unconditional love? No social need to learn compromise instead of giving up after your encounter a "fundamental" problem?"
Your words, not mine. Marriage is not a prerequisite for commitment, love or compromise. Therefore, divorce does not invalidate their existence.
(Also....I suppose you think you're being sneaky by slipping that "unconditional" in there...but really, you're just being absurd. As most of us know, a dog will love you unconditionally. A spouse has boundaries.)
Noodle on, Jimbo....
Incredibly stupid? Why even get married then... if you aren't going to stick it out? The way you talk, its stupid for people to realize that a disagreement is not the end of the world... and stay in their marriage. If anything, "Americans" these days don't "man up" and own ANY responsibility or decisions. Its always someone else's fault, its always someone else's burden to carry, its always all about *me*. Being married means that you are going to stick with a person, love them, through the good and the bad. If you don't want the bad, then don't get married -- because it comes with the territory.
What a very feisty rant. Two points:
1) You meant to respond to the grandparent post, not the parent.
2) "Being married" means that you have certain legal rights and obligations. Everything else is a strictly personal interpretation and/or value judgment, and as such, is relevant only to you. Hence, my argument: it is incredibly stupid to stay in a non-functional relationship (or to argue thereof) for the "sake" of a marriage. A marriage is a thing, not a value.
My argument does not preclude responsibility, love, decision-making or morality. It does, however, preclude the unnecessary psychological damage that unhappy couples inflict on one another in the name of religious and social dogma.
"If you leave someone every time you don't happen to feel attracted to them, or have a disagreement about money, or family, or something else fundamental, how can you ever be intimate with someone, love someone, know someone beyond a superficial level? Maybe sometimes, a relationship, love, is worth sacrificing for?"
Nice straw man.
I didn't say that couples should split up "every time" they had problems. I argued that it's incredibly stupid for two people to stay together for the sake of an institution. That said, consider the universe of relationships outside of the institution of marriage -- people are regularly intimate, loving and caring with one another without the need for a sacrament or legal framework to bind them.
Only the pious seem to have the (perverse) need to force couples to stay together in the face of obvious evidence to the contrary. We would all be much happier if we allowed our relationships to form, develop and -- if necessary -- dissolve without penalty or social stigma, in order to meet our intellectual, sexual, and social needs.
May you be touched by His noodly appendage,
-tim
"These days, people divorce because they argue too much. Or because "the spice" is gone. Or because they don't like arguing about money. Or because the in-laws hate each other. Or because wife gained some weight and doesn't look good enough anymore. Get over it. Man up and deal with it and treat the marriage with the importance it deserves."
In my experience, most people get married at far too young an age -- right out of college, typically. But when you're 22-ish, fresh out of the sheltered womb of academia, and you've never had a full-time job, a home of your own, or even more than one or two serious relationships in your life, you know virtually nothing about who you are, or you're going to become. Nevertheless, people think that they can commit themselves to another person "for eternity" at this ridiculously early stage of the game.
I believe that this is why a lot of couples split up in their early 30s for reasons that seem trivial or fundamental (i.e. "the wife gained weight," or "the spice is gone"). Couples marry young, grow apart as they grow up (you do a lot of growing in your 20s!), and discover that what seemed like True Love at 23 was really only an intoxicating mixture of youthful horniness and the fear of being alone. I'm an unmarried guy in my late 20s, and I've heard this same, sad story on many, many dates.
That said, it's a typical, puritannical American response to suggest that people should "man up," hunker down and stay in a failing relationship because the "institution" of marriage is somehow sacred or important. If two people want a divorce because they're no longer attracted to one another, or because they have disagreements about money, or family, or any number of other very fundamental things, it's incredibly stupid to suggest that they should stay together "for the marriage." People should stay together because they want to stay together -- not because some cultural police officer told them that their marriage was inviolable.
"The internet is a buzz for months with people making jokes about how stupid this movie is going to be, and they are suprised its not the next Titanic?!"
Is that good or bad?
For the record: I wasn't referring to *you* as an arrogant asshole. Hope that was clear.
I also have some experience working with elaborate statistical systems, and I'm very familiar with the truth of the "unanticipated result" argument. Frequently, you can't know what your data should look like until you've massaged it enough to have done most of the design. In fact, I think that's true most of the time, when you're doing novel research. There are very few situations where an off-the-shelf plot or graph will serve all of your needs -- which is why I'm skeptical of the idea of anything like a "TufteScatterplot" widget. It won't really be useful unless it's supremely flexible, and by that point, you might as well have written a generalized data graphics language.
Ultimately, you don't hire an artist until you know the message that you want to present. That means that you have a handle on your data, it's meaning and properties, and you'll be able to use your artist for their best purpose -- making your message visually appealing.
While I think that you have a nugget of a good idea, I have my doubts that it's possible to make a software tool that encourages or enforces good design. Software can't legislate good taste, and a lack of good taste is the problem.
Now for a crass generalization: techies always think that a problem can be solved with software and/or obsession. But sometimes, it takes actual skill to do good work. After all, programmers rarely hesitate to get pissy with some noob who works in Visual Basic, but they somehow think that art and design are skills that can be picked up from a book.
If it's really important to you to have attractive visuals, then don't be an arrogant asshole, and hire someone to do the work. It doesn't have to be expensive (go to any art school, and you'll find dozens of young, eager artists and graphic designers looking for a break, and willing to work for reasonable rates), and it will go a long way to making you look more professional and polished.
taco needs to create windersvistabeta.slashdot.org for all this shit.
Nah...they just need to give it its own icon. A panoramic view of a landfill seems appropriate....
Unlikely. Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disorder, and even if new nerves could be generated, they would be just as susceptible to attack by the host immune system.
It has been my repeated experience that "Cruddy and complex" code is that way because the problem space is cruddy and complex and thats what bugfixes do to code.
Yes, yes. Cruddy and Complex code is cruddy and complex because it needs to be cruddy and complex (not because it was hacked together on an impossibly short schedule, or written by a novice developer using a fundamentally bad design. Or both.) And you should never rewrite code. Ever (except when you should).
There are no absolute rules in software engineering. Part of the art of the game is knowing when to toss code that is so impossibly bloated that it would take many times longer to "re-factor" than to "re-write." And despite the fact that many (most?) people are bad at making this decision, it is not automatically true that code should never be re-written.
Dude. Who pissed in your heparin drip this morning?
Fine, fine...I understand. I was pointing out that OPEC has very little, if anything, to do with our energy production. The figures I've seen estimate that oil-burning power plants make up about 2% of the US generation capacity.
That would mean total independence from fossil fuels for electric production for a long time to come. Just think what that would do towards stabilizing the price of energy, especially when compared to OPEC's cartel.
You do realize that the majority of US electric power is generated by burning domestically-mined coal, right?
Common carrier has more to do with legal liability and responsibility for content, and much less (as in nothing at all) to do with interconnection of data networks and charging fees for traffic going over them.
No.
A common carrier is a carrier (of anything) who offers services indiscriminately to the public. By definition, you can't be a common carrier if you discriminate between customers. There are definitely laws surrounding the legal obligations of common carriers, but these don't change the definition of the term.
"There is nothing to stop telcos for instance from blocking any traffic they choose - they do so all the time to stop DOS attacks. There is further nothing to stop them from charging for complex QOS access schemes with thier customers and content providers liek google"
It isn't that simple.
The FCC has long regulated the "telecommunication" aspect of internet access as a common carrier service. We pay universal service fees on our phone bills because of legislation that sees the phone ("telecommunication") network as a common carrier.
However, the "enhanced service" of internet packet switching and connectivity, has been traditionally considered something different. The FCC didn't regulate these "enhanced services" because they were a niche industry, and it wanted to promote innovation and competition. Thus, it's perfectly acceptable for Verizon the ISP to block your Vonage packets (Verizon the ISP is an "enhanced service"), but it has never been acceptable for Verizon the telecommunications provider to block or regulate access to any other ISP who wishes to use the same lines.
The problem is that today, there is less and less distinction between the "telecommunication" service of old, and the "enhanced service" of today. The legal framework is set up for a bright-line, 1960s-era distinction, when modern networks routinely blur the line between telecommunication and "enhanced service." The telcos know this, and are actively using the fuzziness of the issue to extort their biggest customers, while simultaneously claiming a number of benefits that are only guaranteed to common carriers.
You also seem to misunderstand my point, which is that I simply want NO additional legislation around this topic, for or against the telcos.
This is a red herring. The whole reason that "enhanced services" have been able to survive in a poorly-regulated environment is because there has been the promise of competition for the wires, which is only guaranteed by common carrier regulations. But with the advent of fiber optics, digital voice and video, and the movement of nearly every traditional service to packet-swtiched networks, there is no longer any guarantee of competition.
In other words, it's complete bullshit to suggest that "network neutrality" legislation is some sort of onerous new form of regulation on the poor, bealeagured telecoms. The telecoms are doing their best to escape the existing regulations -- this is just an attempt to keep things the way they are now.
"Verizon has said they would like to charge large companies like Google money for the bandwith users of those services use. Fine. It's not illegal, so... why have they not done so?"
Because it is illegal. Who mods this crap up, anyway?
One of the biggest confusions about this whole debate -- a confusion perpetuated by the astroturf campaigns of the telco industry -- is the status of the current law.
Right now, the law says that data is data. Whether it's voice or IP traffic, the telcos are obligated to treat it all equally. This is what people refer to as "common carrier" provisions. Again, this is the current law.
Thanks to a bought-and-sold congress, however, the major telcos have worked legislation into the pipeline that would eliminate the common carrier provisions for internet data. The "net neutrality" supporters are trying to ammend this shitty legislation, in order to eliminate the massive and obvious example of corporate welfare.
Of course, your local telco CEO would like you to believe that this ammendment is anti-competitive and as un-American as wrapping a puppy in Old Glory and setting it aflame. Hence, the doublespeak rhetoric about "freedom" and "competition," when the currently-proposed legislation would accomplish the opposite.
Businesses compete for your dollars. Some win, some lose.
And it's especially easy to "win" when you can buy a law that allows you to legally extort your competitors.
What is needed is less regulation, not more regulation in the guise of "Net Neutrality."
Actually, you have it backwards: the current law requires common-carrier status. The side that you're supporting requires that a new "regulation" be written...it just happens that the new regulation favors big ISPs, so you're OK with the idea.
Nice troll, though.
"Some idiot with a PhD in molecular genetics (not population genetics) while debating me once blurted out that the human race is in a "Hardy-Wienberg Equilibrium", which is essentially the impression intended by the referenced article."
The "idiot" was wrong, but so are you: the article makes no reference to Hardy-Weinburg equilibria, nor does it need to -- it doesn't discuss allele frequencies.
"What HRE means is that there is no "population structure" such as "races" -- which plays very well with the PC Feelgoodism that has been elevated to a state of theocratic dogma by the current zeigeist pervading not just media and academia but governmental circles."
Whoa...settle down, there, Cletus. The liberals aren't coming to get you today!
Incoherent, vaguely conservative ranting about "dogma" and "zeigests" aside, you don't understand the definition of Hardy-Weinburg equilibria (perhaps that's why you're so upset!) Simply put, HRE tells us how to predict the stable frequencies of dominant and recessive alleles within a closed population. It's a fundamental theorem of population genetics, not a wedge issue in the Culture War.
This article is about ancestry, and makes a simple mathematical argument that human beings are all related. It doesn't make a commentary about race or geographical diversity. Get a grip.
I think this analogy really does a nice job of describing Microsoft's behavior. And it probably also explains why my personal feeling is that, by-and-large, Microsoft has done more good than bad for folks like me (software developer). That's because I'm essentially "inside the empire".
.NET coding for business scraps. If nothing else, it's a steady life. If you're the right type of pig, you might even grow to enjoy the lifestyle. Get too big, however, and you're a hot dog.
Actually, being a third-party developer in the Microsoft world is a lot more like being a pig on a factory farm than a citizen in ancient Rome. They feed you well, keep you in a confined little intellectual space, and bore you to tears with stable life of
Americans, we like our freedom.
I have never felt more free than when I hopped on a Shinkansen with little more than 30 minutes' notice, and traveled all the way across Japan in less than four hours -- all while reading a book.
I have never felt less free than when paying for an auto loan, auto insurance, registration, maintenance and gasoline, just to make life in my home city possible.
Latent taxation, poor public transportation and a national dependence on black goop sucked from beneath some of the most US-hostile countries on earth: you have a funny definition of freedom.
First off, it's Tim, not Tom. If you want me to take your opinion seriously, do me the courtesy of not misspelling my name.
.NET programmers...are they building new power plants with their American CS training? Are they curing malaria? Buying mosquito nets for the Untouchables?
Now...
You seem to believe that we chose to forgo health, education, housing, and infrastructure *just* so that we could compete better with the first-world countries.
No, that's not what I said at all. I said that your labor is cheap because your nation doesn't invest nearly the amount of money that first-world nations do on annoying little things like sanitation and public health. Did you, personally, choose this state of affairs? Of course not. But that doesn't change the fact that you can undercut our labor costs because you undercut our standard of living...and you mostly do this on the backs of your poor citizens.
How do we bootstrap this? We can either get investments from outside...or we can 'steal your jobs' and make money out of that.
I never used the word "steal"...that's your wording. My feeling is that US politicians are to blame for this mess. Our country should have the foresight to regulate the kind of intellectual labor that goes overseas.
As far as "bootstrapping" India, however, I don't accept your premise. It isn't the US white-collar worker's responsibility to bring Indian quality of life up to first-world standards. India has one of the largest populations of any nation on the earth. I'm sure, if you tried, you could find a way to build an economy on the backs of your own people. You know why you aren't? It's quicker and easier for you to undercut the costs of American workers.
a country of a billion people needs a lot of high-tech equipment, just to run the place. You think 1000MW power plants get created on their own? Or perhaps you suggest we just import those? With what money?
So...those "technology parks" popping up all over Bangalore are making electricity for you now? How about the nice new condominiums for all of those white-collar Indian workers? And the
I didn't just fall off of the turnip truck. The vast majority of the newly-created wealth in India is concentrated amongst the citizens who are already well-off. In this respect, you are no different than the US. Our politicians have created a very efficient wealth transfer machine -- it moves money from the US middle-class, to the US upper class, with a small amount of that diverted to you, the Indian upper-class. But don't delude yourselves: when you become too expensive for our executives, our money will go elsewhere.