I've thought about this before. I think there is an innate need in human beings for religion. Atheists fill this need with non-theistic things. When you get groups of atheists together, they tend to product their own non-theist religion, complete with ethos, priesthoods, sacred texts, rituals, etc.
The prime example is communism (as opposed to socialism). The state is revered as holy, the works or Marx are sacred, party leaders are priests, etc.
Many geeks are agnostics or atheists, and I think there is a similar psychology at work here. It's not just licensing, but also covers programming languages, Linux distributions, and other things. Anything which can be a "one true way" can become a substitute religion for some geeks.
How do you know if a geed has gone beyond mere preference (good) and into religious worship (bad)? Look for the priesthood. Are there people whose primary task it is to promote the "one true way"? Look for the proselytization. Is your current distro not good enough for them, and are they following you around urging you to try theirs? Look for the preaching. How many times have you been told that a certain license will save your soul^H^H^H^Hfreedom? Look for the taboos. Have your ever seriously offended a geek by using the word "Linux" without the prefix of "GNU/"?
Not all geeks are this way. But a significant number of them are. This charge of "religion" didn't come out of nowhere. There are so many more things to be properly religious about, that to waste your spirituality on software is sad.
It's not all about hell. Sometimes it's about heaven. Destroy the World Trade Center and get laid by seventy seven babes for all of eternity. Free your mind to get out of the karmic rat race. Etc, etc.
It's too confusing for Joe 6-Pack to be able to decide on a linux distrobution to use. Lets Look at Joe's thoughts.
You really didn't read the grandparent post, did you?
You can't get rid of all those umpteen Linux distros. Joe 6-Pack's head explodes trying to choose among umpteen Linux distros. Result: Joe's head winds up on all four walls of his cubicle.
I wonder if you might have a study or two that supports your assertion that private and parochial schools are cheaper than government schools.
I don't have any on hand, but last I recall, was public education in my state costing $6000 per student per year why non-public education averages only $4000. Some private schools are of course way more expensive, but I usually discount those elite private schools where the State Secretary of Schools sends his kids from my analysis:-)
In my rural small hometown growing up there were/are two religious schools (one of which boasts the Rutan brothers as alumni) within town, and two more in the next town down the road. Of these four, three were for poorer congregations.
I wonder what fundamentalist Christians would think of subsidizing the cost of Korans in Muslim private schools.
This is the major reason I dislike most voucher plans I have seen. I would be much less opposed if the vouchers were paid directly to the parents instead of the schools. My personal preference is a straight tax credit.
But without a similar leap in software design methodology, we'll still be writing crap software. The more powerful the software, the more complex it will be. The more complex, the more bug ridden. History already demonstrates what happens when you give more computer power to programmers: eye candy that crashes a lot. All quantum computing will do will be to make your software crash that much faster.
I'm not being cynical here, I'm being realistic. I work on a large project, and software complexity is our achilles heal. Computing power is increasing faster than the ability to design software for it. The tired mantra of "garbage collection prevents all bugs" is wearing thin. The only software technology that manages complexity is "simplicity". Smaller is better. Standardize and decouple all components. Go the Unix route of tiny utilities doing only one thing but doing well. Eschew the Microsoft model of jamming more and more features that no one will ever use into a twenty year old code base.
In most 3D games you still navigate on a 2D map. Left, right, forward, back. Even when you have steps and ramps, it's still essentially 2D. The only real third dimension are elevators and stairs to different levels.
Some 3D games are really 3D, like flight simulators, but most are no more 3D than the original Wizardry was.
Budweiser is in the most prime areas of every supermarket...
Actually, at the supermarket I frequent, the first beers I see when I enter the beer aisle are the microbrews. Budweiser is halfway down the aisle. I'm starting to see this in more and more places. IIRC, I actually have to walk past Millers to get there.
Of course, this is a grocery store. Bud is five cents cheaper around the corner at the liquor store, where the Budweiser is prominently displayed. If you're the type of beer drinker where five cents is more important than a beer that tastes like beer, then you'll go to the liquor store and buy Bud.
You don't go far enough in your argument. Solaris gives away Solaris for both SPARC and x86. Yet one of them manages to sell Sun hardware while the other borders on an embarassment. Okay, it's not an embarassment, but neither is it in the same league as Solaris SPARC.
The choices are more than just governments, corporations and homeschooling. There are also private schools and parochial schools. The vast majority of private schools are not public corporations (though most are incorporated for tax purposes). Most private schools are not terribly expensive. Parochial schools cheaper yet. In terms of real dollars, both are far cheaper than government schools. Although I am not in favor of most voucher plans I have seen, they are the way we should be thinking. The key though is that the choice is for the parents, not the politician.
There is another option which homeschoolers are (re-)discovering. And that is that they don't need to go it alone. Oftentimes homeschooling families will join together to distribute resources and the work. You don't need five parents to teach five children, so why not share the teaching? Mrs. Smith teaches on Monday, Mr. Jones on Tuesday, Mrs. Franks on Wednesday, etc.
Yes, it's a financial burden to have one parent quit work to stay at home to homeschool. But what if you only had to give up work one day a week to homeschool? Would you be interested then? Most parents would jump at that chance I think.
I grew up in a "red" rural county that was decidely conservative and christian in character. We were not required to say the Pledge of Allegiance. We never hassled kids who didn't say it.
Actually I am a libertarian, only a few nanometers off the upper apex. But I tend to have a lot of sympathy with conservatives because they at least understand the nature of freedom, even if they frequently compromise it. To liberals (by which I mean the US style progressives) freedom is merely a government created privilege to be doled out as a tool for social change.
Conservatives are not libertarian, but their rhetoric often is. Just because they frequently compromise with liberty doesn't mean they don't want it.
When you lump conservatives in with racists and fascists, we have nothing to talk about, because there is no common ground upon which to stand and converse.
You know, I always hear about the ACLU defending Rush Limbaugh, the KKK, and other fascists whenever their freedoms are being curtailed.
I am quite insulted that you lump the KKK and fascists in with conservatives. Just because they are not liberal does not make them conservative! Defending the KKK in Skokie is wholly unrelated to defending conservatives. If you cannot tell the difference, then we have nothing to talk about.
I'm curious, since we seem to be speaking separate languages, just what is your definition of "leader"?
There are too many definitions in my dictionary to list, but my personal definition is "a person who guides, directs or motivates a group of people towards a common goal." As such this includes military leaders, community leaders, music conductors, scoutmasters, statesmen (but not necessarily politicians), and... successful businessmen.
If you cannot direct your employees towards a common goal, there is no way in heck you can be successful in business! Some businesses, of course, muddle along without any leadership. But they will not be successful. At best they will stagnate.
Actually no student is required to say the Pledge of Allegiance. There's not a problem there. The problem is that some people get too offended when other people's children say the word "God" in a classroom.
And that's the core of why kids don't understand about freedom of speech: the left (yes, the left) has taught them all the way from their Headstart preschool that they are not allowed to say anything that someone else might take offense at.
Hey conservatives! Maybe if instead of worrying about absitence only education and attacking Darwinism you spent your efforts in communicating why and how we are a free society, and why that is of tantamount importance, we could all get along here, hm?
Hey liberals! Maybe if instead of worrying about teenagers knowing how to use a condom and teaching them to be properly sensitive to the subculture du jour, you spent your efforts in communicating why freedom of speech applies to political viewpoints you don't agree with, and why it is of tantamount importance and that if you stop shitting on every conservative you meet then we might actually get along here.
This is what you get when you put the government in charge of our children's education. Did you really think the government would teach them what the government didn't want them to think?
He had free money from his mommy, therefore he had no risk, it didnt matter if it all failed.
So you're saying everyone who has rich parents is able to create a monopoly to completely dominate an industry? Sure, any of us could create a start up if we had the capital. But how many of us could take $50k and turn it into multiple billions?
Duhh... any idiot can do a rough upward 20% graph with googled statements saying how market size is increasing etc... crap.
But no one can keep it up for decades. I'm sorry, but it's simply not possible. Stop being delusional and face the fact that Bill Gates did not get to where he is by lying to his shareholders for thirty years.
being a businessman is not the same as being a leader
But being a successful businessman is.
They usually get someone else to do the boring management stuff.
That's what leadership is! It's not about doing everything yourself, it's about getting other people to help you achieve your goals. That someone is not motivating other people the way you yourself would want them motived is completely beside the point.
My High School Journalism teacher was one of the few people qualified to testify in court based on her knowledge of graphology.
So you're saying psychic powers are legitimate because some police forces use them to "solve" crimes? Don't laugh, phrenology used to be considered legitimate in courts as well.
Dislike him all you want, but the lack of technical skills does not equate to a lack of leadership. As a businessman, he is one of the world's top leaders. Yes, he got a few lucky breaks and happened to be in a few right places at the right time. As the old saying goes, "when opportunity knocks, answer the door". Bill Gates is a leader because he answered the door, walked through it, and kept on going. How many of us would have bet our fledgling business in 1981 by buying a CPM/86 clone?
Or to put it another way, you don't take a two man firm financed off your mother's credit cards and shape it into a monopoly with 90%+ marketshare by being a follower.
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I hate our pragmatic transportation system
Yup, nothing worse than pragmatism. What America really needs is a good old fashioned ideolistic transportation system!
Libertarians support the highway system? Holy crap! When the heck did that happen? Do you have any references?
I've thought about this before. I think there is an innate need in human beings for religion. Atheists fill this need with non-theistic things. When you get groups of atheists together, they tend to product their own non-theist religion, complete with ethos, priesthoods, sacred texts, rituals, etc.
The prime example is communism (as opposed to socialism). The state is revered as holy, the works or Marx are sacred, party leaders are priests, etc.
Many geeks are agnostics or atheists, and I think there is a similar psychology at work here. It's not just licensing, but also covers programming languages, Linux distributions, and other things. Anything which can be a "one true way" can become a substitute religion for some geeks.
How do you know if a geed has gone beyond mere preference (good) and into religious worship (bad)? Look for the priesthood. Are there people whose primary task it is to promote the "one true way"? Look for the proselytization. Is your current distro not good enough for them, and are they following you around urging you to try theirs? Look for the preaching. How many times have you been told that a certain license will save your soul^H^H^H^Hfreedom? Look for the taboos. Have your ever seriously offended a geek by using the word "Linux" without the prefix of "GNU/"?
Not all geeks are this way. But a significant number of them are. This charge of "religion" didn't come out of nowhere. There are so many more things to be properly religious about, that to waste your spirituality on software is sad.
It's not all about hell. Sometimes it's about heaven. Destroy the World Trade Center and get laid by seventy seven babes for all of eternity. Free your mind to get out of the karmic rat race. Etc, etc.
It's too confusing for Joe 6-Pack to be able to decide on a linux distrobution to use. Lets Look at Joe's thoughts.
You really didn't read the grandparent post, did you?
You can't get rid of all those umpteen Linux distros. Joe 6-Pack's head explodes trying to choose among umpteen Linux distros. Result: Joe's head winds up on all four walls of his cubicle.
Sad.
But there's nothing we can do about.
Except to bring an umbrella.
I wonder if you might have a study or two that supports your assertion that private and parochial schools are cheaper than government schools.
:-)
I don't have any on hand, but last I recall, was public education in my state costing $6000 per student per year why non-public education averages only $4000. Some private schools are of course way more expensive, but I usually discount those elite private schools where the State Secretary of Schools sends his kids from my analysis
In my rural small hometown growing up there were/are two religious schools (one of which boasts the Rutan brothers as alumni) within town, and two more in the next town down the road. Of these four, three were for poorer congregations.
I wonder what fundamentalist Christians would think of subsidizing the cost of Korans in Muslim private schools.
This is the major reason I dislike most voucher plans I have seen. I would be much less opposed if the vouchers were paid directly to the parents instead of the schools. My personal preference is a straight tax credit.
But without a similar leap in software design methodology, we'll still be writing crap software. The more powerful the software, the more complex it will be. The more complex, the more bug ridden. History already demonstrates what happens when you give more computer power to programmers: eye candy that crashes a lot. All quantum computing will do will be to make your software crash that much faster.
I'm not being cynical here, I'm being realistic. I work on a large project, and software complexity is our achilles heal. Computing power is increasing faster than the ability to design software for it. The tired mantra of "garbage collection prevents all bugs" is wearing thin. The only software technology that manages complexity is "simplicity". Smaller is better. Standardize and decouple all components. Go the Unix route of tiny utilities doing only one thing but doing well. Eschew the Microsoft model of jamming more and more features that no one will ever use into a twenty year old code base.
In most 3D games you still navigate on a 2D map. Left, right, forward, back. Even when you have steps and ramps, it's still essentially 2D. The only real third dimension are elevators and stairs to different levels.
Some 3D games are really 3D, like flight simulators, but most are no more 3D than the original Wizardry was.
Budweiser is in the most prime areas of every supermarket...
Actually, at the supermarket I frequent, the first beers I see when I enter the beer aisle are the microbrews. Budweiser is halfway down the aisle. I'm starting to see this in more and more places. IIRC, I actually have to walk past Millers to get there.
Of course, this is a grocery store. Bud is five cents cheaper around the corner at the liquor store, where the Budweiser is prominently displayed. If you're the type of beer drinker where five cents is more important than a beer that tastes like beer, then you'll go to the liquor store and buy Bud.
You don't go far enough in your argument. Solaris gives away Solaris for both SPARC and x86. Yet one of them manages to sell Sun hardware while the other borders on an embarassment. Okay, it's not an embarassment, but neither is it in the same league as Solaris SPARC.
Homeschooling for everyone?
The choices are more than just governments, corporations and homeschooling. There are also private schools and parochial schools. The vast majority of private schools are not public corporations (though most are incorporated for tax purposes). Most private schools are not terribly expensive. Parochial schools cheaper yet. In terms of real dollars, both are far cheaper than government schools. Although I am not in favor of most voucher plans I have seen, they are the way we should be thinking. The key though is that the choice is for the parents, not the politician.
There is another option which homeschoolers are (re-)discovering. And that is that they don't need to go it alone. Oftentimes homeschooling families will join together to distribute resources and the work. You don't need five parents to teach five children, so why not share the teaching? Mrs. Smith teaches on Monday, Mr. Jones on Tuesday, Mrs. Franks on Wednesday, etc.
Yes, it's a financial burden to have one parent quit work to stay at home to homeschool. But what if you only had to give up work one day a week to homeschool? Would you be interested then? Most parents would jump at that chance I think.
I grew up in a "red" rural county that was decidely conservative and christian in character. We were not required to say the Pledge of Allegiance. We never hassled kids who didn't say it.
Actually I am a libertarian, only a few nanometers off the upper apex. But I tend to have a lot of sympathy with conservatives because they at least understand the nature of freedom, even if they frequently compromise it. To liberals (by which I mean the US style progressives) freedom is merely a government created privilege to be doled out as a tool for social change.
Conservatives are not libertarian, but their rhetoric often is. Just because they frequently compromise with liberty doesn't mean they don't want it.
When you lump conservatives in with racists and fascists, we have nothing to talk about, because there is no common ground upon which to stand and converse.
A lot of them are rather lacking in interpersonal skills in fact.... they were all British.
:-)
Does this surprise anyone?
You know, I always hear about the ACLU defending Rush Limbaugh, the KKK, and other fascists whenever their freedoms are being curtailed.
I am quite insulted that you lump the KKK and fascists in with conservatives. Just because they are not liberal does not make them conservative! Defending the KKK in Skokie is wholly unrelated to defending conservatives. If you cannot tell the difference, then we have nothing to talk about.
I'm curious, since we seem to be speaking separate languages, just what is your definition of "leader"?
... successful businessmen.
There are too many definitions in my dictionary to list, but my personal definition is "a person who guides, directs or motivates a group of people towards a common goal." As such this includes military leaders, community leaders, music conductors, scoutmasters, statesmen (but not necessarily politicians), and
If you cannot direct your employees towards a common goal, there is no way in heck you can be successful in business! Some businesses, of course, muddle along without any leadership. But they will not be successful. At best they will stagnate.
Actually no student is required to say the Pledge of Allegiance. There's not a problem there. The problem is that some people get too offended when other people's children say the word "God" in a classroom.
And that's the core of why kids don't understand about freedom of speech: the left (yes, the left) has taught them all the way from their Headstart preschool that they are not allowed to say anything that someone else might take offense at.
Hey conservatives! Maybe if instead of worrying about absitence only education and attacking Darwinism you spent your efforts in communicating why and how we are a free society, and why that is of tantamount importance, we could all get along here, hm?
Hey liberals! Maybe if instead of worrying about teenagers knowing how to use a condom and teaching them to be properly sensitive to the subculture du jour, you spent your efforts in communicating why freedom of speech applies to political viewpoints you don't agree with, and why it is of tantamount importance and that if you stop shitting on every conservative you meet then we might actually get along here.
This is what you get when you put the government in charge of our children's education. Did you really think the government would teach them what the government didn't want them to think?
He had free money from his mommy, therefore he had no risk, it didnt matter if it all failed.
So you're saying everyone who has rich parents is able to create a monopoly to completely dominate an industry? Sure, any of us could create a start up if we had the capital. But how many of us could take $50k and turn it into multiple billions?
Duhh... any idiot can do a rough upward 20% graph with googled statements saying how market size is increasing etc... crap.
But no one can keep it up for decades. I'm sorry, but it's simply not possible. Stop being delusional and face the fact that Bill Gates did not get to where he is by lying to his shareholders for thirty years.
being a businessman is not the same as being a leader
But being a successful businessman is.
They usually get someone else to do the boring management stuff.
That's what leadership is! It's not about doing everything yourself, it's about getting other people to help you achieve your goals. That someone is not motivating other people the way you yourself would want them motived is completely beside the point.
My High School Journalism teacher was one of the few people qualified to testify in court based on her knowledge of graphology.
So you're saying psychic powers are legitimate because some police forces use them to "solve" crimes? Don't laugh, phrenology used to be considered legitimate in courts as well.
That's not leadership. It's business.
Dislike him all you want, but the lack of technical skills does not equate to a lack of leadership. As a businessman, he is one of the world's top leaders. Yes, he got a few lucky breaks and happened to be in a few right places at the right time. As the old saying goes, "when opportunity knocks, answer the door". Bill Gates is a leader because he answered the door, walked through it, and kept on going. How many of us would have bet our fledgling business in 1981 by buying a CPM/86 clone?
Or to put it another way, you don't take a two man firm financed off your mother's credit cards and shape it into a monopoly with 90%+ marketshare by being a follower.
Send 'em all sorts of formats.
Then that's their problem. If Word can open the file but they choose not to let it, don't blame it on me.