The evolution of biological organisms, or evolution of computer code, share many similarities indeed. The key word here is "evolution" defined as "improvement through descent". Even as a business programmer your ability to contribute to projects is limited. What you should see is the broader picture. A world where a large number of programmers work on a large number of projects. If the quick fixes in your program didnt hold up in the long run, it is because: 1.the fix just wasnt good enough. 2.the requirements for the program changed.
What you should do is ask yourself how many programmers do write software that is not rock solid, release it early, with bugs, and the product gets accepted, refined polished etc...
Just because a quick fix isnt good for the long run doesnt mean it cannot be fixed again and again over the span of time.
From a paleontological point of view, dinosaurs were EXTREMELY successful creatures, that perfectly adapted into a HUGE number of ecosystems and with a mindboggling number of species and subspecies. Their extinction is surely not the cause of a faulty evolution but the abrupt changes in all of earths ecosystem by the suspected meteorite impact. If this were to happen nowadays, our chances of survival would be slim at best. So your argument rests on very shoddy legs...
De Raadt obviously has no knowledge of the theory of evolution. In nature genetic code that produces different proteins seems to appear by mutation and coincidence. This can be likened to "quick and dirty hacks" style of linux development, where only code that actually fulfills a purpose, will eventually survive and be perfected. The philosophy of bulding "high quality code only" through slow development cycles, will indeed produce programs that are very efficient and stable for a very specific and narrow task, but that means that the range of practical applications for BSD software will not increase dramatically.
Everybody is sensitive to stress, you just may deal with it differently. Just as some people react differently to a painfull stimulus. You may not show that you are stressed, or maybe not consciously perceive it that way, but subconsciously it can very well have a strong impact.
Just think of all the bruxers in the US!
Not only is this consistent with the nightmarish "big brother is watching you" trend raging in the US, but the fact that "race" is still considered to be a valid identifiable information is shocking.
I mean, shouldnt it be "ethnic background", since the scientific community univocally rejects the concept of "race" as a dangerous social construct?
And this particular method is also used by the MPAA. On rental DVD/VHS you have a notice, asking you to call a toll free number in case you are watching a purchased copy of the copyrighted material.
If i am not mistaken, most people who buy a computer, buy it with Windows preinstalled, paying directly or indirectly for the license. I know very few shops that offer you a computer with a virgin harddrive, and then ask you: "So what operating system would you like to buy?"
Now if vendors start selling computers with pirated versions preinstalled, that would substantially affect M$ income from OS sales.
I believe this is actually a mind game. It is hard for me to believe that a company like M$ has no way of determining the validity of a Windows installation. Back when there was the discussion about permitting sp2 installation on machines with well known pirated serial numbers, it occured to me that maybe M$ actually intends to make its product prone to piracy. My conclusion as to why M$ is doing this is that they want to see if computer users are willing to denounce a vendor in return for amnesty and the rehabilitation of their license.
One can imagine for example that if many users are willing to do that, a next step would be lets say, on multiuser machines, or within a network: "denounce music/movie pirates sharing files on your network, and you will get amnesty, and x free CD's/DVD's"
This was the second time in a short while, that i ran across the "lazyness argument".
First of all, argumenting that laziness alone is the reason for the failure of a social system, is extremely short sighted and oversimplified. As a person whose family members have all lived under communism, and now living and studying in an ex-communist country, i can tell you that this conjecture is completely false.
Interestingly, most people have no clue about what communism actually is, and that it actually never existed per se.
Communism is the very final stage of the transistion from cruel raw capitalism to the "dictatorship of the working class".
It passes through socialism, which is a hybrid stage, combining capitalist and communist ideals.
All so called "communist" governments are in fact socialist countries, because for the simple fact that there is money, and thus capital.
It is argued that communism cant actually be achieved, and the reasons for this, do not include lazyness at all.
Secondly, suggesting that all human beings are inherently lazy, is yet another blatant generalization and represents a serious prejudice. If money and greed where the only psychological motor driving poeple to work, then why is it that people have also hobbies, produce art, read books etc...
If it were true that only material reward can sustain a working society, then society as we know it could never have come into existence in the first place. The central argument to this is that the satisfaction of ones "work done well" and the wish for self-improvement is the actual motor for human productivity, The monetary system was only intended to facilitate the exchange of these goods between individuals.
Thus follows, that you cannot generalize that people are essentially lazy, just as people arent essentially dumb, or essentially blonde, or essentially tall etc...
That is a serious prejudice.
Communism isnt a good social system because it completely disregards the individual traits of each human being, trying to equalize them intellectually, monetarily, and socially. This is in blatant contrast with the reality and nature, in which each and every single entity has its own particularities and wishes to have social peers recognize their individuality and its superiority in some way.
When you try to generalize, and affirm that people are lazy, ironically you are argumenting like a communist, who consider all men and women to be psychologically, intellectually and physically equal(in its literal sense).
Capitalism works much better because it mimics the natural environment of competition and the mecanisms of evolution, like competition for a sexual mate, a territory, food and so on.
Some say that it is actually too natural, and that the capital system actually completely disregards our human, conscious and moral side, because it only strives to satisfy the "animal" needs of a human being. It does not adress the more ideal concepts of morality, compassion, kindness, humbleness, because as a capitalist, those are only incumbrances to "making more profit".
This is why, IMHO, neither capitalism nor communism are social systems compatible with human nature, and why both are going to fail in the long run.
Up until now, under windows xp sp2, firefox 1.0 final is running very smoothly, no crashes, im using it all the time.
Under linux also, there are no issues, exept maybe with the mplayer-embedded plugin, but that is the plugins fault actually, experiencing the same problem with epiphany, konqueror and opera. So no, from my point of view firefox is as good as it gets!
To my knowledge there is and never has been a government in the world not acting hypocritically towards another nation at all. It is the very nature of politics to deceive, misinform, lie and to hide your true intentions and motivations. Accusing the French government of being hypocritical, before criticising your own government or omitting its own hypocrisy is simply wrong. Clean up your own garden before picking on the neighbours.
I would like to say:
I think no source of information can be deemed 100% accurate, as many have pointed out already, no one normally considers any encyclopedia as a complete and sufficient source of information for serious, deep research.
Even established views and theories can be challenged and eventually overthrown by newer/better ones. That is the scientific process. The Wikipedia imitates this process quite nicely: Scientists publicise their findings, their peers and colleagues verify, comment, complement etc...
It is very probable that classical encyclopedias contain inaccuracies, erroneous information as well.
As many here have pointed out already:
Maybe the literary style and wording is not ideal, but as is mentioned in the linked article:
People dont come looking for poetry, they come looking for information (that needs to be correct) no matter how bad the wording is.
Example:
If you were to read the truth about the ultimate knowledge, would you care if it were written in bad english/german/french etc..? Or would you be just happy to have access to that ultimate knowledge.(And being able to rewrite it in better words? Something McHenry hasnt even considered doing)
True, there is a problem with people trying to get satisfaction out of posting an article, but that is the actual driving force!
The system is not perfect, but neither are encyclopedias, there is a downside to both systems, one may be better researched, written etc... but it is static and expensive.
Even if the points he is making are valid, the project has been existing for only 3 years!
Historically encyclopedias have taken far longer to be written/published, somewhere between 5 to 10 years on average.
And, although i did not search fo any evidence supporting this claim, i am sure the first versions were always error plagued, and containing untrue,and/or biased articles.
McHenry completely seems to forget that this effort is being made only since a short period of time, competing with an encyclopedic system hundreds if not thousands of years old.
I am sure by the time Diderot got his volumes out, there was just another MacHenri le Stupide, criticising his effort, and pointing out all the infant sicknesses of his works.
Although his criticism is distructive in nature, i think it retains a certain validity and shows that the system needs to be improved, and that the people that hail the wikipedia as the best encyclopedia are just as disconnected from reality as this dude.
There are flaws, just as in everything that is man-made, we can only hope to improve the system and the content, in order to satisfy the high standards of truth and literature.
x.org is great!!!
yes... definitely do the quickpkg thing just to be sure
plus, if you dont want to be left without an X while compiling, i suggest you use following command:
that way your system will fully compile xorg, while you can still use xfree.
after it compiled you can then unmerge xfree and merge x.org manually
the fonts in xorg are really nice!
In essence you are right. It IS possible to avoid pregnancy in our day of age, and there could be made better effort to educate people and have abortion only as a last resort measure.
But there are hundreds of problems more alerting, more imminent, and even more barbaric, that can easily be remedied by education and intelligent programs and campaigns:
world hunger
agressive war
malaria
AIDS
tuberculosis
analphabetism
poverty
alcoholism
drug abuse
mine fields
lack of fresh water
etc...
Focussing on abortion and being so outraged at it, because morally you cannot understand why humans choose to harm unborn life, whilst not at all considering problems of higher priority, reflects a narrow view of the world,
First of all, considering a zygote as a person is not justifiable in any way. After the fecundation of an oocyte, there are many scenarios in which the zygote will not continue its evolution to become a morula or blastocyst, due to various reasons: faulty fecundation, genetic anomalies incompatible with life etc...
Hence it is not determined that fecundation of an oocyte will eventually result in the birth of a healthy new human being.
In embryology there is a lot of controversy about the "point of no return" where scientists try to determine at what stage the embryologic evolution has progressed so far, that birth will be a 100% probability. A 1 hour old zygote/morula is NOT a person.
Natural selection already acts at this level, this phenomena is called "spontaneous abortion".
About that euthanasia argument:
Interestingly, it is well known that early mammals, that stood no chance against the predominant reptilian race during the age of dinosaurs, frequently killed and ate their progenity when they had to make their escape for survival.
In our age, and our stage of evolution, the complexity of ourselves and our society is able to avoid such drastic measures.(welfare, child support... etc...)
Neurologically we even still grow approximatly 10 years after our birth.
I agree, i was actually thinking of this while posting my original comment. But when it comes down to staying mentally active, how many metally exercising persons do you think are out there?My best guess is that they are a small minority. And even then, i think you cannot completely counteract the progress of mental anchilosis, just slow the process down.
As far as i am concerned, the aging process and the ongoing involution are unavoidable.
Still, one should exercise physically (oxigenation of the cells, also brain cells) as well as mentally (increasing the blood stream to cortical areas) to stay fit and flexible.
man the astroturfing on that site really flies into your face!
how can they believe that someone may actually consider these posts as something genuine?
Pardon me but i see an essential flaw in your reasoning.
In the point you are making, you try to extend the reasoning by implying that although you know much about computers, you are ignorant on many/most other fields of expertise that humans have specialized in.
But using a computer can not be counted as a professional skill, like being a programmer as yourself, or a car mechanic.
In order to become a specialist in any of the fields you mentioned: teacher, constructor, car mechanic etc... you have to study and train at least 2 to 3 years, if not more. But using a computer requires little less than a 2 week intensive training course, in which you can convey the basic knowledge and skills to help that person "get started", since he/her has to be an alphabet, and obviously can learn from then on.
The point the elitists are making, is that most individuals prefer to remain ignorant out of convenience.
I tend to think that making the "poeple are dumb" accusation is a sign of frustration, since most normal users seem to be unwilling or deem it unnecessary to improve their basic skills.
Just on the side: in order to pass the car license test in europe, one has to have basic knowledge of all the elements necessary to the correct functioning of a motorvehicle, like tire pressure, tire conditions, profile, engine strenght, the principle of gear shifting, what the engine needs to work smoothly etc etc...
You cannot be a total ignorant, if the police stops you and your tire profiles are below the 4mm threshold, you get a HEFTY fine!
With all respect to your uncle, if he is retired, then he is probably over 60, a senior citizen. The psychology of an adult at the 3rd age is very different from that of young adults and adolescents, that has nothing to do with his/her intellectual capacity. As i understand it is a natural phenomenon to become reluctant to change, new things (like features etc...) or new methods of completing a task, even if after the little effort of getting accustomed, the tasks become simpler.
So i dont think that is a good example. It is more a matter of flexibility and boldness rather than of intelligence to try to change ones habits.
Both articles mention the carcinogenic effects of the molecules resulting from burning dry tobacco leaves and their inhalation, among many other detrimental effects of tobacco to human health. So i dont understand how you can not see any article linking tobacco to lung cancer, or atherosclerosis!
For example the Wikipedia article on atherosclerosis mentions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arteriosclerosis/
RISK FACTORS: ... tobacco smoking, even just once a day
See, the lovely thing here is that this whole issue is just going to fade away because people by and large aren't sophisticated enough to realize that voter fraud can be taking place unless they see people squinting at punchcard ballots. And the media ain't going to look into it for the exact same reasons.
You suggest that the lack of physical evidence aggravates the ignorance poeple have towards possible voting fraud?
I think it is much more concerning that there is no way of checking the correctness of all digitally recorded and collected results against a paper trail. It simply leaves a great opportunity for anyone unscrupulous enough to look for a way to massively manipulate the election process. Just like the good old murphy's law goes, if there is potential for abuse, it will most definitely be exploited sooner or later.
Whislt searching google for any material related to Stephen Evans, i could only find a message criticizing some show in which he argued that the EU is killing the poor Record companies of the world for not letting them expant their copyright claims above the actual 50 year period. The conclusion being that this "reporter" is undoubtedly not objective, nor does he seem eager to dig for truth or a balanced representation of facts.
About those claiming that slashdot is "begging" for being accused by sco, by posting ironical messages about the MyDoom virus etc..:
As an analogy i point out following argument:
"No wonder a woman gets raped if she dresses up sexy".
To enlighten those who are not capable of benefitting from the use of their brain, there is no excuse for accusing a person or community without any proof.
All of the comments and opinions about who wrote the virus are essentially worthless, (the gardener did it!) unless there is hard proof.
Just because you are happy the evil mafioso got shot in the head, doesnt mean you aimed and pulled the trigger. It is much more likely some other criminal was the one.
If you want logic, it is most likely the spammer who wrote that virus saw a wonderful opportunity to strike 2 targets at once, as Bruce Perens pointed out, criminals hate linux just as much as microsoft and sco, for their effort to kill off their moneymaking spam schemes and credit-card/account theft (spamassassin. there is no pendant to it for microsoft). So what better thing than shoot your enemy, and have another enemy blamed for it?
To those pointing out the double standard of slashdot when it comes to attacking microsoft/linux:
The enourmous amount of deliberate lies and distortion of facts spreaded by MS along all those years makes it very easy to go down to their level and strike back. Its like someone insulting you repeatedly, and at some point, you just cant hold it back and you curse back. I think that is only human. Of course everyone in the linux community should behave better, but, we use water for cooking too, and although i think most linux users aspire to make the world a better place, we are just as imperfect as Bill Gates.
Slashdot Mirror
The evolution of biological organisms, or evolution of computer code, share many similarities indeed. The key word here is "evolution" defined as "improvement through descent". Even as a business programmer your ability to contribute to projects is limited. What you should see is the broader picture. A world where a large number of programmers work on a large number of projects. If the quick fixes in your program didnt hold up in the long run, it is because: 1.the fix just wasnt good enough. 2.the requirements for the program changed. What you should do is ask yourself how many programmers do write software that is not rock solid, release it early, with bugs, and the product gets accepted, refined polished etc... Just because a quick fix isnt good for the long run doesnt mean it cannot be fixed again and again over the span of time. From a paleontological point of view, dinosaurs were EXTREMELY successful creatures, that perfectly adapted into a HUGE number of ecosystems and with a mindboggling number of species and subspecies. Their extinction is surely not the cause of a faulty evolution but the abrupt changes in all of earths ecosystem by the suspected meteorite impact. If this were to happen nowadays, our chances of survival would be slim at best. So your argument rests on very shoddy legs...
De Raadt obviously has no knowledge of the theory of evolution. In nature genetic code that produces different proteins seems to appear by mutation and coincidence. This can be likened to "quick and dirty hacks" style of linux development, where only code that actually fulfills a purpose, will eventually survive and be perfected. The philosophy of bulding "high quality code only" through slow development cycles, will indeed produce programs that are very efficient and stable for a very specific and narrow task, but that means that the range of practical applications for BSD software will not increase dramatically.
Everybody is sensitive to stress, you just may deal with it differently. Just as some people react differently to a painfull stimulus.
You may not show that you are stressed, or maybe not consciously perceive it that way, but subconsciously it can very well have a strong impact.
Just think of all the bruxers in the US!
Not only is this consistent with the nightmarish "big brother is watching you" trend raging in the US, but the fact that "race" is still considered to be a valid identifiable information is shocking.
I mean, shouldnt it be "ethnic background", since the scientific community univocally rejects the concept of "race" as a dangerous social construct?
And this particular method is also used by the MPAA. On rental DVD/VHS you have a notice, asking you to call a toll free number in case you are watching a purchased copy of the copyrighted material.
If i am not mistaken, most people who buy a computer, buy it with Windows preinstalled, paying directly or indirectly for the license. I know very few shops that offer you a computer with a virgin harddrive, and then ask you: "So what operating system would you like to buy?"
Now if vendors start selling computers with pirated versions preinstalled, that would substantially affect M$ income from OS sales.
I believe this is actually a mind game. It is hard for me to believe that a company like M$ has no way of determining the validity of a Windows installation. Back when there was the discussion about permitting sp2 installation on machines with well known pirated serial numbers, it occured to me that maybe M$ actually intends to make its product prone to piracy.
My conclusion as to why M$ is doing this is that they want to see if computer users are willing to denounce a vendor in return for amnesty and the rehabilitation of their license.
One can imagine for example that if many users are willing to do that, a next step would be lets say, on multiuser machines, or within a network: "denounce music/movie pirates sharing files on your network, and you will get amnesty, and x free CD's/DVD's"
This was the second time in a short while, that i ran across the "lazyness argument".
First of all, argumenting that laziness alone is the reason for the failure of a social system, is extremely short sighted and oversimplified. As a person whose family members have all lived under communism, and now living and studying in an ex-communist country, i can tell you that this conjecture is completely false.
Interestingly, most people have no clue about what communism actually is, and that it actually never existed per se.
Communism is the very final stage of the transistion from cruel raw capitalism to the "dictatorship of the working class".
It passes through socialism, which is a hybrid stage, combining capitalist and communist ideals.
All so called "communist" governments are in fact socialist countries, because for the simple fact that there is money, and thus capital.
It is argued that communism cant actually be achieved, and the reasons for this, do not include lazyness at all.
Secondly, suggesting that all human beings are inherently lazy, is yet another blatant generalization and represents a serious prejudice. If money and greed where the only psychological motor driving poeple to work, then why is it that people have also hobbies, produce art, read books etc...
If it were true that only material reward can sustain a working society, then society as we know it could never have come into existence in the first place. The central argument to this is that the satisfaction of ones "work done well" and the wish for self-improvement is the actual motor for human productivity, The monetary system was only intended to facilitate the exchange of these goods between individuals.
Thus follows, that you cannot generalize that people are essentially lazy, just as people arent essentially dumb, or essentially blonde, or essentially tall etc...
That is a serious prejudice.
Communism isnt a good social system because it completely disregards the individual traits of each human being, trying to equalize them intellectually, monetarily, and socially. This is in blatant contrast with the reality and nature, in which each and every single entity has its own particularities and wishes to have social peers recognize their individuality and its superiority in some way.
When you try to generalize, and affirm that people are lazy, ironically you are argumenting like a communist, who consider all men and women to be psychologically, intellectually and physically equal(in its literal sense).
Capitalism works much better because it mimics the natural environment of competition and the mecanisms of evolution, like competition for a sexual mate, a territory, food and so on.
Some say that it is actually too natural, and that the capital system actually completely disregards our human, conscious and moral side, because it only strives to satisfy the "animal" needs of a human being. It does not adress the more ideal concepts of morality, compassion, kindness, humbleness, because as a capitalist, those are only incumbrances to "making more profit".
This is why, IMHO, neither capitalism nor communism are social systems compatible with human nature, and why both are going to fail in the long run.
Up until now, under windows xp sp2, firefox 1.0 final is running very smoothly, no crashes, im using it all the time.
Under linux also, there are no issues, exept maybe with the mplayer-embedded plugin, but that is the plugins fault actually, experiencing the same problem with epiphany, konqueror and opera. So no, from my point of view firefox is as good as it gets!
To my knowledge there is and never has been a government in the world not acting hypocritically towards another nation at all. It is the very nature of politics to deceive, misinform, lie and to hide your true intentions and motivations. Accusing the French government of being hypocritical, before criticising your own government or omitting its own hypocrisy is simply wrong.
Clean up your own garden before picking on the neighbours.
I would like to say:
I think no source of information can be deemed 100% accurate, as many have pointed out already, no one normally considers any encyclopedia as a complete and sufficient source of information for serious, deep research.
Even established views and theories can be challenged and eventually overthrown by newer/better ones. That is the scientific process. The Wikipedia imitates this process quite nicely: Scientists publicise their findings, their peers and colleagues verify, comment, complement etc...
It is very probable that classical encyclopedias contain inaccuracies, erroneous information as well. As many here have pointed out already:
Maybe the literary style and wording is not ideal, but as is mentioned in the linked article:
People dont come looking for poetry, they come looking for information (that needs to be correct) no matter how bad the wording is.
Example:
If you were to read the truth about the ultimate knowledge, would you care if it were written in bad english/german/french etc..? Or would you be just happy to have access to that ultimate knowledge.(And being able to rewrite it in better words? Something McHenry hasnt even considered doing)
True, there is a problem with people trying to get satisfaction out of posting an article, but that is the actual driving force!
The system is not perfect, but neither are encyclopedias, there is a downside to both systems, one may be better researched, written etc... but it is static and expensive.
Even if the points he is making are valid, the project has been existing for only 3 years!
Historically encyclopedias have taken far longer to be written/published, somewhere between 5 to 10 years on average.
And, although i did not search fo any evidence supporting this claim, i am sure the first versions were always error plagued, and containing untrue,and/or biased articles.
McHenry completely seems to forget that this effort is being made only since a short period of time, competing with an encyclopedic system hundreds if not thousands of years old. I am sure by the time Diderot got his volumes out, there was just another MacHenri le Stupide, criticising his effort, and pointing out all the infant sicknesses of his works.
Although his criticism is distructive in nature, i think it retains a certain validity and shows that the system needs to be improved, and that the people that hail the wikipedia as the best encyclopedia are just as disconnected from reality as this dude. There are flaws, just as in everything that is man-made, we can only hope to improve the system and the content, in order to satisfy the high standards of truth and literature.
x.org is great!!!
/usr/portage/x11-base/xorg-x11/xorg-x11-6.8.0-r2.e build compile
yes... definitely do the quickpkg thing just to be sure plus, if you dont want to be left without an X while compiling, i suggest you use following command:
ebuild
that way your system will fully compile xorg, while you can still use xfree.
after it compiled you can then unmerge xfree and merge x.org manually
the fonts in xorg are really nice!
In essence you are right. It IS possible to avoid pregnancy in our day of age, and there could be made better effort to educate people and have abortion only as a last resort measure. But there are hundreds of problems more alerting, more imminent, and even more barbaric, that can easily be remedied by education and intelligent programs and campaigns:
world hunger
agressive war
malaria
AIDS
tuberculosis
analphabetism
poverty
alcoholism
drug abuse
mine fields
lack of fresh water
etc...
Focussing on abortion and being so outraged at it, because morally you cannot understand why humans choose to harm unborn life, whilst not at all considering problems of higher priority, reflects a narrow view of the world,
First of all, considering a zygote as a person is not justifiable in any way. After the fecundation of an oocyte, there are many scenarios in which the zygote will not continue its evolution to become a morula or blastocyst, due to various reasons: faulty fecundation, genetic anomalies incompatible with life etc... Hence it is not determined that fecundation of an oocyte will eventually result in the birth of a healthy new human being. In embryology there is a lot of controversy about the "point of no return" where scientists try to determine at what stage the embryologic evolution has progressed so far, that birth will be a 100% probability. A 1 hour old zygote/morula is NOT a person. Natural selection already acts at this level, this phenomena is called "spontaneous abortion".
About that euthanasia argument: Interestingly, it is well known that early mammals, that stood no chance against the predominant reptilian race during the age of dinosaurs, frequently killed and ate their progenity when they had to make their escape for survival. In our age, and our stage of evolution, the complexity of ourselves and our society is able to avoid such drastic measures.(welfare, child support... etc...)
Neurologically we even still grow approximatly 10 years after our birth.
I agree, i was actually thinking of this while posting my original comment. But when it comes down to staying mentally active, how many metally exercising persons do you think are out there?My best guess is that they are a small minority. And even then, i think you cannot completely counteract the progress of mental anchilosis, just slow the process down.
As far as i am concerned, the aging process and the ongoing involution are unavoidable.
Still, one should exercise physically (oxigenation of the cells, also brain cells) as well as mentally (increasing the blood stream to cortical areas) to stay fit and flexible.
man the astroturfing on that site really flies into your face! how can they believe that someone may actually consider these posts as something genuine?
I remember someone saying:
Im not sure thats the exact quote, i i dont know who exactly said this either.
Pardon me but i see an essential flaw in your reasoning. In the point you are making, you try to extend the reasoning by implying that although you know much about computers, you are ignorant on many/most other fields of expertise that humans have specialized in. But using a computer can not be counted as a professional skill, like being a programmer as yourself, or a car mechanic. In order to become a specialist in any of the fields you mentioned: teacher, constructor, car mechanic etc... you have to study and train at least 2 to 3 years, if not more. But using a computer requires little less than a 2 week intensive training course, in which you can convey the basic knowledge and skills to help that person "get started", since he/her has to be an alphabet, and obviously can learn from then on. The point the elitists are making, is that most individuals prefer to remain ignorant out of convenience. I tend to think that making the "poeple are dumb" accusation is a sign of frustration, since most normal users seem to be unwilling or deem it unnecessary to improve their basic skills.
Just on the side: in order to pass the car license test in europe, one has to have basic knowledge of all the elements necessary to the correct functioning of a motorvehicle, like tire pressure, tire conditions, profile, engine strenght, the principle of gear shifting, what the engine needs to work smoothly etc etc...
You cannot be a total ignorant, if the police stops you and your tire profiles are below the 4mm threshold, you get a HEFTY fine!
With all respect to your uncle, if he is retired, then he is probably over 60, a senior citizen. The psychology of an adult at the 3rd age is very different from that of young adults and adolescents, that has nothing to do with his/her intellectual capacity. As i understand it is a natural phenomenon to become reluctant to change, new things (like features etc...) or new methods of completing a task, even if after the little effort of getting accustomed, the tasks become simpler. So i dont think that is a good example. It is more a matter of flexibility and boldness rather than of intelligence to try to change ones habits.
Thats the first thing i always do when freshly installing a windows system.... not that i want to...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lung_cancer/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco/
Both articles mention the carcinogenic effects of the molecules resulting from burning dry tobacco leaves and their inhalation, among many other detrimental effects of tobacco to human health. So i dont understand how you can not see any article linking tobacco to lung cancer, or atherosclerosis!
For example the Wikipedia article on atherosclerosis mentions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arteriosclerosis/
...
tobacco smoking, even just once a day
(Amongst many others)
See, the lovely thing here is that this whole issue is just going to fade away because people by and large aren't sophisticated enough to realize that voter fraud can be taking place unless they see people squinting at punchcard ballots. And the media ain't going to look into it for the exact same reasons.
You suggest that the lack of physical evidence aggravates the ignorance poeple have towards possible voting fraud?
I think it is much more concerning that there is no way of checking the correctness of all digitally recorded and collected results against a paper trail. It simply leaves a great opportunity for anyone unscrupulous enough to look for a way to massively manipulate the election process. Just like the good old murphy's law goes, if there is potential for abuse, it will most definitely be exploited sooner or later.
Whislt searching google for any material related to Stephen Evans, i could only find a message criticizing some show in which he argued that the EU is killing the poor Record companies of the world for not letting them expant their copyright claims above the actual 50 year period. The conclusion being that this "reporter" is undoubtedly not objective, nor does he seem eager to dig for truth or a balanced representation of facts. About those claiming that slashdot is "begging" for being accused by sco, by posting ironical messages about the MyDoom virus etc..: As an analogy i point out following argument: "No wonder a woman gets raped if she dresses up sexy". To enlighten those who are not capable of benefitting from the use of their brain, there is no excuse for accusing a person or community without any proof. All of the comments and opinions about who wrote the virus are essentially worthless, (the gardener did it!) unless there is hard proof. Just because you are happy the evil mafioso got shot in the head, doesnt mean you aimed and pulled the trigger. It is much more likely some other criminal was the one. If you want logic, it is most likely the spammer who wrote that virus saw a wonderful opportunity to strike 2 targets at once, as Bruce Perens pointed out, criminals hate linux just as much as microsoft and sco, for their effort to kill off their moneymaking spam schemes and credit-card/account theft (spamassassin. there is no pendant to it for microsoft). So what better thing than shoot your enemy, and have another enemy blamed for it? To those pointing out the double standard of slashdot when it comes to attacking microsoft/linux: The enourmous amount of deliberate lies and distortion of facts spreaded by MS along all those years makes it very easy to go down to their level and strike back. Its like someone insulting you repeatedly, and at some point, you just cant hold it back and you curse back. I think that is only human. Of course everyone in the linux community should behave better, but, we use water for cooking too, and although i think most linux users aspire to make the world a better place, we are just as imperfect as Bill Gates.