I'm from Australia, where we only use imperial measurements for song lyrics. You gotta make a clean break. I moved to Canada, which uses a mixed system just as you described, and it's *nuts*.
btw: I have a friend that used to smoke pot every single day. He is now in a psychiatric hospital with a severe psychosis and paranoia.
If you want to fsck up your brain, do it alone. Don't mislead other people
There's no way to know if you friend wouldn't have developed psychosis anyway. It's likely that if he had no access to pot, he would have become addicted to another substance. It's also likely that genetic factors have to play.
By equivalence of argument, alcohol should be banned to, since it's addictive and has horrendous side-effects for chronic use. Stuff like fetal-alcohol syndrome (brain damaged kids), brain damage, and complete degeneration of the individuals life. I have alcohol in my fridge right now, and it gets touched once in a blue moon. For some people, if they touch alcohol, they may as well be injecting heroin. The difference is genetic, and the results are truly sad.
But we don't ban alcohol, because many people enjoy a little bit every now and again, and it's fine. Same goes for pot.
Perhaps the situation for people like your friend, is to understand why it happened, and then take proactive steps for other at risk individuals. Understanding is what that brain on the top of you head is for.
Your post is disingenuous - your "problem" is no more than a distraction from the facts. A kind-of chewbacca defence.
More people voted for Gore in Florida, yet the state was given to Bush, and the supreme court cancelled the official re-count just hours before it was complete. It was a close election, but Bush lost. Facts are facts.
The Florida election wouldn't have been as close if the then governor of Texas didn't deliberately conspire to take as many democrats off the voting role as possible. "Cast as wide a net as possible", I think is the term that Jeb Bush used.
The Republican party might have the/best/ policies in the world, but their wild-west disrespect for the spirit of the rules is disappointing at best, and down-right Neanderthal at worst. The 2000 election isn't an isolated incidence in that regard.
The problem with a state run insurance plan is that that the state has never made anything more efficient. Ever.
Except perhaps the fire department, post office and schools. In the last two cases, we have private and semi-private solutions competing against state based solutions, which seems to work well enough. I guess that means that one solution doesn't fit all situations.
On another note, it costs 11x as much to treat a broken leg in the USA than in Canada, purely from a billing perspective. Clearly the private insurance companies don't have sufficient incentives to keep prices low - perhaps because of a conflict of interest. So it seems that once again laissez-faire economics can introduce inefficiencies.
I'm 100% pro free-market, contingent upon when it works better. The history of public and private institutions shows that private institutions work better most of the time, but not all of the time. I thus support public schools, fire departments, police, libraries and health care. It's not perfect world.
While it's probably not true that politicians fight for their constituents, it does not follow that therefore all politicians have the same agenda. There are ideological differences between the sides, and it does show up in policy. For example, do you think that the Iraq war would have happened with Rumsfeld and co. were not in the Pentagon?
I guess it comes down to discriminating where they are different, and voting based on a choice between those differences. The differences may not be immediately obvious.
Gun ownership is not so much about morality as it is about mortality. Same goes for wearing seat-belts. I guess it comes down to how you measure the public good. The conservatives want to assume that everybody is equal in their self-direction and responsibilities. The liberals want to measure the cost to the rest of us, when people can't be trusted to act wisely. It's interesting that conservatives see morality as something that can be imposed, despite evidence to the contrary (think war on drugs, abortion, or pretty much any other moral crusade), where as liberals think that self-determination and responsibility can be imposed.
It's moral authoritarianism that liberals find so heinous, and for good reason. A true moral standard is humble in its prescription for the behaviour of others. After-all, history is laced with the horrors of conventional wisdom gone mad.
Luckily these people die to be replaced by other conservatives who are trying to conserve a slightly later rule set (the one that they grew up with, rather than their parents, allowing us to change the topics of debate at least once or a few times per generation.
Indeed.
I find it ironic that most conservatives think of liberals as trying to "take-control", a la Stalin style, but have a blind spot for enforcing their morality on others. It's well established that these values are socially constructed, so the more paranoid conservatives view education as part of some sneaky liberal agenda.
I wonder what the conservative landscape will look like in 20 years? The current crop were teens and twenties during the social revolutions of the 60s. Teen society seems altogether more conservative now than in the 70s, yet the conservatives poll very poorly amongst the young.
Hi,
There's something very interesting about what I said, and how you responded. If you are really interested in the "extraordinary social intelligence" bit, then you need to understand some theory about the human condition. We're all arm-chair philosophers, and this kid is too. So why do I think what he said is so smart? Well, it takes a *long* time for us arm-chair philosophers to understand people and society - part of the reason why Eastern cultures place so much emphasis on wisdom and old age. Consider the following theories:
Either the kid is parroting, or he's plain smart. He doesn't see himself as entitled to imposing his ego or style on others (narcissim). He knows that people will compare themselves to him (social comparison theory), and that that's a delicate situation for others. He doesn't want to make other's feel inferior (interpersonal circumplex). It's not someone else's/fault/ that they don't have your gifts. By treating this matter delicately, he can inspire others - bring out their best.
He might just be repeating a platitude, or he might understand something that we should all understand.
It's also an incredibly shallow triumph of an Olympic grade platitudinous pandering politically correct aphorism. The kid's teacher says he can "see right through the complications," but he's still been brainwashed into thinking that he's not unusual. What a shame. And how typical.
There is something profoundly true about what he said - it cuts to the inherent vulnerability of the human condition, and shows extraordinary social intelligence. Perhaps he can see through more complications than you give him credit for.
You're right, the whole article is fundamentally missing the point. Evolution is just a product of a liberal education system - just like slashdot. We all know that science is a conspiracy to gain control of the government and children. I'm with you on that. These evolutionists should be gagged and put in their place.
The free market is the *best* solution for *all* problems. Domain squatting is a perfect example of the efficacy of the free market in solving the fundamental problem of the distribution of scarce resources. Not that I'm ideological about it or anything.
Didn't the communists have a part to play in causing the famine? As part of a war effort? One chinese communist supporter at the time lost heart in the revolution, describing her government as a bunch of armed thugs.
There is a social contract between the government and the people that the government will return increasing prosperity to the people. The present growth of China/must/ end, because of the laws of nature (economists be damned). When that happens, will we see a loosening of government censorship in China? Seems unlikely.
In the eyes of the government, stamping on freedom is about saving face and rationalised as being for the public good.
This is/terrible/ advise: dangerous, unethical, and inconsistent with human nature.
There is lots of research on addictions, and there's lots of ways to approach treatment, but *nothing* works unless your friend asks for help. That has to be the first step. It's nothing personal, just something to do with the way the brain processes information about the self. Any action you take will elicit defence mechanisms if it is based on downward social comparison.
My advise is to go talk to a clinical psychologist about your friends case. They may be able to suggest appropriate reading materials, or communication strategies.
I am dedicated to helping people and understanding the human mind - it's a passion for me, and why I returned to school after working for years as a programmer. In my experience, the only way to truly help someone is to get to know them better, without any sense of agenda.
To me, this single runtime sounds like a much better alternative that the kludge that is HTML/CSS/JavaScript/AJAX support a multitude of IE6/IE7/IE8/Firefox/Safari/Chrome/Opera browser runtimes, especially if there's no framework behind them.
Hallelujah, somebody making sense. This slashbash discussion has missed the single biggest problem with delivering complex applications over html - lack of a consistent framework.
HTML will continue to be popular for what it is, but it's a horrible way to write the front end for a distributed database application. It cripples the user interface, and we see all sorts of complex tricks with piles of inscrutable cross-platform javascript to accomplish straight-forward application programming tasks.
IMHO, Silverlight, Flash and JavaFX are version "1.0" of coming RIA platform. Version "2.0", will by elegant and simple.
I guess you just gotta/know/ what libraries your linking to. It's really nowhere near as complex as actually understanding how to program the libraries.
Life's full of hassles - the law ain't going to change that.
No, by design, IE8 isn't backward compatible with crappy corporate intranet sites that were coded up for IE6's crappy eccentricities. That's a good thing for most people, but bad for companies that don't want to spend millions revamping their internal apps at MicroSoft's whim.
Those asses developing those apps should have RTFM on html, instead of treating IE6 like it was a standard.
If capitalism can't do at least as well as a socialist solution, then I'd say the capitalist solution needs to go - at least until a viable business model can be found. Otherwise we're just wasting money on being ideologically "correct"
Since capitalism seems to be generally better, then we should expect capitalistic solutions to most problems.
So... getting away from any sort of ideology... if TWC can't offer a better solution than meat-n-potatoes state run solution, then why subsidize the inefficient TWC solution?
To grok that, we've got to move beyond the socialism == dirty word.
Wouldn't it be great if the government employed key developers on projects like kde, samba, openoffice, and whatever else glues together the basic workhorse computer? Just a thought.
You're missing one option: borrow the money. That doesn't cause inflation like printing money, because the borrowed money comes at a cost - the interest. It essentially all you can do to spur the economy, and when times are good, you should be paying back the deficit, which effectively cools the whole things down.
Hell of a poor rationale for locking up our culture.
This change of law increases the value of something already produced. I guess the copyright cartels are arguing that they are creating wealth, when really they're printing money. Further to that, the cost to society is not even considered.
This is yet another example of uncreative trolls, completely estranged from the artistic process, lining their pockets with silver.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm from Australia, where we only use imperial measurements for song lyrics. You gotta make a clean break. I moved to Canada, which uses a mixed system just as you described, and it's *nuts*.
btw: I have a friend that used to smoke pot every single day. He is now in a psychiatric hospital with a severe psychosis and paranoia. If you want to fsck up your brain, do it alone. Don't mislead other people
There's no way to know if you friend wouldn't have developed psychosis anyway. It's likely that if he had no access to pot, he would have become addicted to another substance. It's also likely that genetic factors have to play.
By equivalence of argument, alcohol should be banned to, since it's addictive and has horrendous side-effects for chronic use. Stuff like fetal-alcohol syndrome (brain damaged kids), brain damage, and complete degeneration of the individuals life. I have alcohol in my fridge right now, and it gets touched once in a blue moon. For some people, if they touch alcohol, they may as well be injecting heroin. The difference is genetic, and the results are truly sad.
But we don't ban alcohol, because many people enjoy a little bit every now and again, and it's fine. Same goes for pot.
Perhaps the situation for people like your friend, is to understand why it happened, and then take proactive steps for other at risk individuals. Understanding is what that brain on the top of you head is for.
Your post is disingenuous - your "problem" is no more than a distraction from the facts. A kind-of chewbacca defence.
/best/ policies in the world, but their wild-west disrespect for the spirit of the rules is disappointing at best, and down-right Neanderthal at worst. The 2000 election isn't an isolated incidence in that regard.
More people voted for Gore in Florida, yet the state was given to Bush, and the supreme court cancelled the official re-count just hours before it was complete. It was a close election, but Bush lost. Facts are facts.
The Florida election wouldn't have been as close if the then governor of Texas didn't deliberately conspire to take as many democrats off the voting role as possible. "Cast as wide a net as possible", I think is the term that Jeb Bush used.
The Republican party might have the
The problem with a state run insurance plan is that that the state has never made anything more efficient. Ever.
Except perhaps the fire department, post office and schools. In the last two cases, we have private and semi-private solutions competing against state based solutions, which seems to work well enough. I guess that means that one solution doesn't fit all situations.
On another note, it costs 11x as much to treat a broken leg in the USA than in Canada, purely from a billing perspective. Clearly the private insurance companies don't have sufficient incentives to keep prices low - perhaps because of a conflict of interest. So it seems that once again laissez-faire economics can introduce inefficiencies.
I'm 100% pro free-market, contingent upon when it works better. The history of public and private institutions shows that private institutions work better most of the time, but not all of the time. I thus support public schools, fire departments, police, libraries and health care. It's not perfect world.
While it's probably not true that politicians fight for their constituents, it does not follow that therefore all politicians have the same agenda. There are ideological differences between the sides, and it does show up in policy. For example, do you think that the Iraq war would have happened with Rumsfeld and co. were not in the Pentagon?
I guess it comes down to discriminating where they are different, and voting based on a choice between those differences. The differences may not be immediately obvious.
Gun ownership is not so much about morality as it is about mortality. Same goes for wearing seat-belts. I guess it comes down to how you measure the public good. The conservatives want to assume that everybody is equal in their self-direction and responsibilities. The liberals want to measure the cost to the rest of us, when people can't be trusted to act wisely. It's interesting that conservatives see morality as something that can be imposed, despite evidence to the contrary (think war on drugs, abortion, or pretty much any other moral crusade), where as liberals think that self-determination and responsibility can be imposed.
It's moral authoritarianism that liberals find so heinous, and for good reason. A true moral standard is humble in its prescription for the behaviour of others. After-all, history is laced with the horrors of conventional wisdom gone mad.
Luckily these people die to be replaced by other conservatives who are trying to conserve a slightly later rule set (the one that they grew up with, rather than their parents, allowing us to change the topics of debate at least once or a few times per generation.
Indeed.
I find it ironic that most conservatives think of liberals as trying to "take-control", a la Stalin style, but have a blind spot for enforcing their morality on others. It's well established that these values are socially constructed, so the more paranoid conservatives view education as part of some sneaky liberal agenda.
I wonder what the conservative landscape will look like in 20 years? The current crop were teens and twenties during the social revolutions of the 60s. Teen society seems altogether more conservative now than in the 70s, yet the conservatives poll very poorly amongst the young.
Either the kid is parroting, or he's plain smart. He doesn't see himself as entitled to imposing his ego or style on others (narcissim). He knows that people will compare themselves to him (social comparison theory), and that that's a delicate situation for others. He doesn't want to make other's feel inferior (interpersonal circumplex). It's not someone else's /fault/ that they don't have your gifts. By treating this matter delicately, he can inspire others - bring out their best.
He might just be repeating a platitude, or he might understand something that we should all understand.
It's also an incredibly shallow triumph of an Olympic grade platitudinous pandering politically correct aphorism. The kid's teacher says he can "see right through the complications," but he's still been brainwashed into thinking that he's not unusual. What a shame. And how typical.
There is something profoundly true about what he said - it cuts to the inherent vulnerability of the human condition, and shows extraordinary social intelligence. Perhaps he can see through more complications than you give him credit for.
You're right, the whole article is fundamentally missing the point. Evolution is just a product of a liberal education system - just like slashdot. We all know that science is a conspiracy to gain control of the government and children. I'm with you on that. These evolutionists should be gagged and put in their place.
The free market is the *best* solution for *all* problems. Domain squatting is a perfect example of the efficacy of the free market in solving the fundamental problem of the distribution of scarce resources. Not that I'm ideological about it or anything.
Didn't the communists have a part to play in causing the famine? As part of a war effort? One chinese communist supporter at the time lost heart in the revolution, describing her government as a bunch of armed thugs.
/must/ end, because of the laws of nature (economists be damned). When that happens, will we see a loosening of government censorship in China? Seems unlikely.
There is a social contract between the government and the people that the government will return increasing prosperity to the people. The present growth of China
In the eyes of the government, stamping on freedom is about saving face and rationalised as being for the public good.
I'd vote for a gay seal-clubber - if only because he's probably comfortable enough with himself to go his own ways.
Persistence. Intervene adn then do not stop.
/terrible/ advise: dangerous, unethical, and inconsistent with human nature.
This is
There is lots of research on addictions, and there's lots of ways to approach treatment, but *nothing* works unless your friend asks for help. That has to be the first step. It's nothing personal, just something to do with the way the brain processes information about the self. Any action you take will elicit defence mechanisms if it is based on downward social comparison.
My advise is to go talk to a clinical psychologist about your friends case. They may be able to suggest appropriate reading materials, or communication strategies.
I am dedicated to helping people and understanding the human mind - it's a passion for me, and why I returned to school after working for years as a programmer. In my experience, the only way to truly help someone is to get to know them better, without any sense of agenda.
To me, this single runtime sounds like a much better alternative that the kludge that is HTML/CSS/JavaScript/AJAX support a multitude of IE6/IE7/IE8/Firefox/Safari/Chrome/Opera browser runtimes, especially if there's no framework behind them.
Hallelujah, somebody making sense. This slashbash discussion has missed the single biggest problem with delivering complex applications over html - lack of a consistent framework.
HTML will continue to be popular for what it is, but it's a horrible way to write the front end for a distributed database application. It cripples the user interface, and we see all sorts of complex tricks with piles of inscrutable cross-platform javascript to accomplish straight-forward application programming tasks.
IMHO, Silverlight, Flash and JavaFX are version "1.0" of coming RIA platform. Version "2.0", will by elegant and simple.
I guess you just gotta /know/ what libraries your linking to. It's really nowhere near as complex as actually understanding how to program the libraries.
Life's full of hassles - the law ain't going to change that.
I have to agree with you, except wireless networking does not 'just work'. It's a PITA.
No, by design, IE8 isn't backward compatible with crappy corporate intranet sites that were coded up for IE6's crappy eccentricities. That's a good thing for most people, but bad for companies that don't want to spend millions revamping their internal apps at MicroSoft's whim.
Those asses developing those apps should have RTFM on html, instead of treating IE6 like it was a standard.
If capitalism can't do at least as well as a socialist solution, then I'd say the capitalist solution needs to go - at least until a viable business model can be found. Otherwise we're just wasting money on being ideologically "correct"
Since capitalism seems to be generally better, then we should expect capitalistic solutions to most problems.
So... getting away from any sort of ideology... if TWC can't offer a better solution than meat-n-potatoes state run solution, then why subsidize the inefficient TWC solution?
To grok that, we've got to move beyond the socialism == dirty word.
Wouldn't it be great if the government employed key developers on projects like kde, samba, openoffice, and whatever else glues together the basic workhorse computer? Just a thought.
You're missing one option: borrow the money. That doesn't cause inflation like printing money, because the borrowed money comes at a cost - the interest. It essentially all you can do to spur the economy, and when times are good, you should be paying back the deficit, which effectively cools the whole things down.
Hell of a poor rationale for locking up our culture.
This change of law increases the value of something already produced. I guess the copyright cartels are arguing that they are creating wealth, when really they're printing money. Further to that, the cost to society is not even considered.
This is yet another example of uncreative trolls, completely estranged from the artistic process, lining their pockets with silver.
The use of violence and terror for political aims.
That's why it's called terrorism
a material that has shown great promise for use as nanoscale transistors
Won't a stray cosmic ray cause my cpu to fall over?
Time machine is awesome. So are the multiple desktop. Leopard is pretty good, although the folders look terrible.