He doesn't have to give specific examples. You are doing an excellent job of providing them for him.
As an aside, The same sort of thing also happens in linux land. Puffed up individuals like yoursleves make no distinction between "newbie" and "idiot looser", regardless of what OS they happen to espouse.
The posters statement merely points out that it is slightly more prevelent in FreeBSD land then it is in Linux land, which is true. Additionally, the newbie resources are not as complete nor as plentiful, and keeping that as a status quo almost seems to be a priority.
I'm a FreeBSD user. This commentary has nothing to do with my prefference of OS, merely with my preferrence of people. Think before you flame.
Educators is a broad term. There must be a line drawn between teachers and administrators. Above a certain level in the administrative food chain, the number of people involved who actually talk to kids slowly diminishes. In many states, superintendents, school boards, etc, are elected officials and don't neccissarily have anything to do with education at all. Things like Mosaic-2000 look good to most of these peoples constituents. You can't get a faster knee-jerk reaction from people then the one you get with a threat (or "potential threat") to their children. No, don't blame teachers for this idiocy. They're way to busy teaching and surviving to worry about this crap. Blame people who say "I'm an educator." They aren't teachers and they do this shit and don't really give a damn about the kids. -Tilde
And I also believe mob behavior is in large part a physical phenomenon, and wouldn't have much parallel in the digital world. Are we reading the same slashdot?
There has been alot of talk about digital democracy. It's significantly more thought out than the last time this topic came up, which amounted to a flame war.
I've seen a bunch of comments come up and i guess i feel the need to talk about some of them, because this is an issue that is very important to me.
The initial auther of this post had it absolutely correct in recognizing that the buffering effect of a representative government is A Good Thing(tm) and that instant voting on any/all issues, would be A Bad Thing(tm).
Someone stomped on this by pointing out crooked politicians. Sure, they exist. However, one must recognize that these crooked politicians were infact elected by the people some want to give the instant vote too. They didn't just step out of the void, and they weren't handed their position at birth. Someone decided to vote for them, the majority of someone's actually. The argument that instant vote avoids power-broking/bad policy through the elimination of the currupt middleman misses the fact that that power that's brokered comes from the voters and that policy that's bad is passed because it's what that crooked middleman thinks will make his constiuents happy so he can continue to broker power.
Next, the idea that "online town meetings" will stop propaganda/bad policy. Absolutely not. Even if you abolish congress and rely on the online vote, there will still be charasmic leaders who effect the public vote with a collection of information that they believe/want the public to believe is true. This will come in to play regardless of the average level of education of the voter. The policys that win won't neccissarily be the best policies, but the policies that have the best propagada/retoric behind them. Balanced budgets will be marked like Nike shoes. "Just do it". Is this how you want your tax law created? Don't say that intellegent/educated people won't fall it. How many of you are wearing clothing/accessories from Nike, Adidas, Bugle Boy, or The Gap? Think Lobbiests are bad now? What happens when coporations don't need them, and take clever intuitive multi-million dollar marketing campaigns aimed at making policy directly to the people.
It won't abolish political parties either. Those charismic leaders need a group with them. It might radically change them. Think on this... All this policy making requires people to keep up with an aweful lot of public dissertation, even it it's limited to just the issues that they are concerned about. They'll look to these charasmatic leaders for a quick summary or break down. It happens now. How many people listen to talk radio stations, each with it's own slant? From Rush to Gush Raving Concervatives and Bleeding Heart liberal shows rule our largest public forums. Non-profit organizations would form to allow these people to quit honest jobs to keep informed in order to inform voters. These will be virtual legislatues with NO CHECKS OR BALANCES.
Something else that is seemingly ignored, is network intrusion. The current voting system is bad enough, and around the nation, continuosly there are calls for recounts and charges of election fraud. (Most recently, in my memory, in the goubenatorial elections in Maryland and New Jersey). Again the amount of funding that could be poured into this is silly. Imagine the effects of anouther nation channeling it's resources to effect american voting. It would happen at least once.
Do i see a possible good thing in istant voting? Possibly - Bad policy could be recinded almost as soon as it was passed. But even this is a mixed blessing. Beurcarcys are slow, and they are also a requirement to accomplish anything. Pass a national healthcare law one evening. Two days later the government and mandated HMO's are restucturing and Joe Schmoe finds out how much this is costing and is going to cost, and the policy is recinded. That money's already lost. How many times could that happen? How much money would be blown in changes of policy that happen to quick? Additionally, who's voting, and when are they taking the time to learn the facts. Apply this to criminal law, and the people who go to jail one day for a law thats recinded the next. Couple this with the slowness of the Jusdicial system. Lets not even get into making the Judicial system an instant vote thing. Do you want to air the dirty laundry of your divorce before the nation?
If the world were a perfect place, we wouldn't need government. If people were even close to perfect, then unlimited democracy would be best. But people aren't, and the unlimited democracy rests it's faith entirely in the good common sence of the good common man. In the united states at least, this is the comman man who sues McDonalds over spilling hot coffee on itself. Perhaps this is a pessimistic view of people. Weather or not it is, it's a far more realistic view than believing people are ready or capable of dealing with issues directly and immediatly.
Maybe some individuals are. Go into politics. I'll vote for you. But i don't think any Individuals are ready for the wide sweeping and unpredictable changes that would happen if such a system were implemented. The ability to make desire policy would rest so much more firmly with those with economic power than it does now, that it would be silly.
As a prediction, if such a system gets implemented, (and i think it will) then i believe there will very quickly be a "luddite" uprising. But i don't think it will consist of the lunatic fringe the way it seems to be implied above. I think it'll be a large collection of average joes who are sick of seeing the idiot policys that pass day after day and are recinded 3 days later and cripple the government with constantly changing policy and mire the entire nation in all encompasing politcal debate.
I addressed your bigoted splooge in a post slightly above this one.
Before people knock out crap like this, i suggest they get to know some people who have served in the military. They're no more brainwashed than you are (which might not be saying much).
The idea behind Heinliens limited democracy with respect to serving in the military had nothing to do with neccissarily becoming a good soldier. No one could be denied military services. A blind def dumb invalid who insisted on serving would be accomadated. Pacifists would have jobs created for them which did not interfere with their personal morality, etc. etc. etc.
The binding factor? All possible jobs would concievable put a person at risk of life at one point in time, or anouther. Care enough about policy to risk your life on it?
Breaking MS into an apps division and an OS division with a clause to on cooperate through publicly available API's i feel, is definitely the way to go.
You also have to drive home the fact that the lack of starry eyed idealism WILL hurt YOU, specifically, and in the pocket book. Especially if you own a buisness.
Sun very much wants to rule the entire world. Embracing sun at this juncture especially to the detriment of real open source projects, like Linux or the BSD's is asking to get nailed later on.
As for the masses not being able to be bought, think about what wonders could be fiddeled up out of the wellfare system. Especially if the voting took place at a time when most people are working.
As for the validity of the current system, sure, it works kinda, but i hardly think it's perfect, and i definitly believe it needs a major overhaul.
However, why implement a system that is flawed in theory just to see if it works? "Try it and see" isn't a good argument for implementing/not implementing something that would inarguable effect the lives, for better or for worse, of every person in the a given place.
Individual American's are not stupid, but mob mentality dynamics apply to the internet as well as the local town hall meeting. Just use slashdot as real life example. In addition, we don't often think about what we say or the impact that it will have. Again, using slashdot as an example, even the best of us (my self CERTAINLY included) tend to shoot off at the keyboard as it were and instantly attack something. What if that knee-jerk reaction had law-making capability? A live action reprisentative government with a nice healthy beuracracy does two things. One, it allows a very large group of people to pick a much small group of people who they believe accuratly represent them, and thus streamline the actual voting process. This first part is more and more irrelevant. The second thing it does, is slow the process so that all possible policies/new bills/laws/whatever have some time to percilate. Think of it as a burn-in process. Real life example of what could of happened? Remember a/. posting about FIDNET (couldn't think up URL)... President Edwardo today gave an impassioned speech about cyber terrorism today followed by a national refferendum where 77% of americans voted to bring the bill that would establish FIDNET into law... That sort of thing even happens now with our current molassis-slow beurocracy. The gun controll bill on the floor and rarin to go less than a week after columbine highschool... a bill that at the time, was only known as trying to stop kids from shooting other kids. Weather or not you agree with gun control is not the issue here, buecause on the wave of sentimate they tried to ride several other things into law with that bill. If we had instant complete democratic government, several nasty suprises would of snuck into law through subterfuge. Stupidity is not to blame, Human Dynamics and ignorance are. -Tilde
How about a different take on why the 10 commandments should be allowed.
For almost 2000 years they've been a large part of the make up of western culture. Christianity influenced everything, including the founding of this country. ("One nation, under God...") Should people not be told that, Should they not be told that those were the founding principles, weather or not they are correct, or applicable to day, they WERE the founding principles. Hell, Baltimore was founded as a haven for english and german catholics, Pennsylvania as a christian land were all people were brothers (though William Penn was a Quaker) an several of the origianal 13 colonies were places founded where puritans could be free to pursicuit their own instead of having some one else do it.
Why would be post the Wiccan Read except in a vaguely historical sence (it's after all, a reconstructed regligion that may infact bare no resemblace to the way it was orignally practiced)?
Not teaching things or removing things from a curriculum because they're aren't PC, is flat wrong, more or less regardless of religion/political stance, unless your a fascist.
God i hate being drawn into flame wars with the fanatic faithful but what the hell.
Lets start with the economy stupid. Reagon, bush, clinton, all, did JACK. The only president to have a really significant impact on the economy this century was FDR, who's policys were meant to be short term and have caused an incredible amount of chaos and crapola in the wait to be repealed.
We have probably the feest market system, which means that the economy is run by the market, not the government. The government can be a consumer, and thus help the market, but no more than any large spending body; or it can not consume, and not really hurt it. Economics is cylical, pulled about by the gravity of different population groups market inovation and strength. There was a recession in the 70's, a boom in the 80's a recession in the early 90's, followed by a recovery that's still ongoing. Attributing these characteristics to the presidents at the time is silly. It makes out Carter as putz, Reagon out to be fantastic, bush to be iffy, and clinton to be equally inept and then ok. Additionally, economics is slower to change than government policy regarding econimics, thus, if you still want to attribute things to presidents, to it to the one of the preceding 10 years. Carter was struggling with fords screwup, reagan finished carters work, then fudged it up, bush fixed again, and clinton is taking credit for bush's work. Attributing the strength and robustness of an economy to the actions of a president is like predicting a craps game with astrology.
As to the rasing taxes BS, it was congress than re-ordered the budget to payoff debts -- a plan that clinton was categically opposed to until it was so painfully obvious (with the republicans gaing control of the house and senate) that that was what the american public wanted that he couldn't ignore it anymore... so he flip-flopped and took credit for it.
What did he want to do with the extra money from raising taxes? More pork. Read his old speeches and press releases.
In the context of your first paragraph, your second one is idiotic.
This article is slanted to display the hideous bias of the author, which can be interpreted as common sence, or sheer ignorance depending on your own personal politcal stance.
They only managed to get two issues out untainted. The first being that washington politco's are horridly disconnected. This is true, whatever side of the 2.0+-.1 party system fence you sit on, strattle, or stare at.
I think he's right that there won't be a huge impact anytime soon. Polititions and their machines will most likely avoid the interactive part of the Net, because it's uncontrollable, at least in the conventional sence.
Personally, other than immedeate and continuing information distribution, and maybe public forums, i really don't WANT the net to have that big an impact on politics.
what? hunh?
Ok, almost the entire world would readily agree that the american public on the whole is rather knee-jerky and ignorant. The passing of law, regardless of the feelings of the public, is a process that needs to be spread over a period of time, so that both the governed and the governors can examine it in it's detail, and it what it's consequences mean.
For example, one thing i never ever want to see, is on-line voting. Let's assume it won't be abusing such a system to vote multiple times. I'll use a rather exaggurated example here of why we don't want a stream-line some of these processes. Some guys walking down the street. A watermelon falls from a 10th story window and hits him. a thousand news sites pick it up, as the guy was on his way to save someone from cancer and suppored a family of 20 by working 4 jobs etc. Big tragidy. Some polition instantly puts up a speech about the horrors and evil of watermelons and they must be banned. Instantly, touched voters hit they're little submit buttons and viola! water melons are banned. Thousands of watermelon distribution channels close. Watermelon farmers are out of buisness, perhaps even jailed for continuing to grow their products. And noone has a juicy delicios fruit to eat in the summer time. A bout a month later, anouther man is killed when a pineapple falls from a 10th story window on his head. Only this time it's discoverd that it was thrown from that window by a serial fruit killer... who also killed the first guy by throwing the watermelon at him...
It's several orders of magnitude more difficult to repeal a law than to get one passed in the first place, and even with a stream-lined kneejerk voting process, that is very hard to change. Bingo, you've ruined 100's of peoples lives for lack of facts, facts that indead may not have been able to be discovered quickly enough to support good voting in an instant process. Lets not even talk about the metal processes of the voters (long known to be rather retarded)
Thats a rather extreme example, but apply it to something more mundane and think it through and the ugly consequences flow forth. If you think i'm pessimistic, think on this; One bad law, historically, ALWAYS causes more harm than the good done by 6 good laws.
For a more indepth fictional look at what can happen to us if we alter our law-making and polition electing processes to quickly, to irresponsibly, read Tracy Hickman's book _Immortals_.
Margin in the OS for the vender only applies to commidity machines where the margin for the hardware is next to nill, and the software itself is proprietarily controlled by the hardware vender.
This doesn't (in general) apply to SGI. SGI does not own or control linux and is not responsible for any of the core development.
Visual Workstations don't have anything to do with this statement as all the OS fee's are payed as royalties to microsoft.
The only OS the support AND control, is IRIX, and it isn't free of charge, in addition, the're hardware has very large margins, which is supposed to make some breathing room for the OS.
The only company that could possibly fit that statement would be apple, but the money they charge for basically commidity parts is silly, so your obviously paying a couple hundred dollars (like 500 for the low end. I have no idea how they set their pricing or scale their pricing; they're pricing model appears ridiculous without more information than they ever release.) for the OS.
I can only assume from the brevity of the comment that distributing linux with their hardware reduces they're prices to an unacceptable margin.
Hardly. They can charge a little less for the machine (no royalties) for the same expenditures on systems integration any hardware vendor has to pay, and still maintian the exact same margin. Maintaining the price and switching to a free operating system raises the margin for the hardware venders, making each machine more profitable.
Up front, a good programmer needs nothing but echo int main(int argc, char argv[]) >>whatever.c. That said, writing anything in that manner is neither enjoyable nor particularly productive or efficient. Solid flexable IDE's aim at productivity and efficiency.
Emacs, no matter how well configured is dated, and in a multi-tasking multi-threaded graphical environment, its shortcommings as an all in one tool are painfully obvious. The whole buffer system is rather obsolete, and the interface obviously intended for the console.
I won't even comment on vim. (though personally i use elvis, which is a vim cloney thing)
One of the things i've missed from visual studio under linux is multiple code windows and a multi-threaded ide. I've worked with vdk builder, kdevelop and gIDE and none of them have allowed me to do a simple thing i do constantly in VC, open two source windows and tile them next to eachother. This is just one simple example of things from mature IDE's that one finds oneself missing when moving to linux.
I wonder at people who thumb their noses at IDE's. It's like grandpa's walk to school tales of programmer. Is it some how more macho to use a cheesier editor to write code? Judge people on the quality of their code, not the editor used to write it. I think many minimalists would be suprised at the results.
Weather or not they all look the same and have spiffy integration with each other or not isn't exactly the issue.
I think what people keep attempting to say is that it should be a couple of things,
1 - it should be stable. 2 - it should have a small memory footprint.
The second one is optional if you want the features but the first one is not. It's more condusive this way, to have multiple binaries, that way if one crashes it doesn't take everything else down with it (like current netscape). If you accomplish this with a loadable module type bit fine, whatever. What i think people are worried about is that it's not being accomplished at all. And that worries me too.
true pnp? who knows, the specs were all sealed. external serial busses now there's something to brag about. Built in networking Appletalk only counts to those who think the pony express is better than UPS.
Your right though, the apple 2 was a great computer, It was also insanely overpriced.
I keep hearing that the iMac is groundbreaking or a breakthrough or something. Other than it's sales recorods, could someone explain to me why?
Slashdot Mirror
and BSD uses an aweful lot of
GNU software... GNU does not
mean Linux, and Linux does not
mean GNU.
It's hard to take someone seriously who can't spell the same word the saim way twice in the seighm sentence.
That's an error of the reader that is independent of the writers errors in spelling.
I love the way that spelling
is such an important issue.
You could at least attempt a little
subtlety with your ad hominem arguments.
He doesn't have to give specific examples.
You are doing an excellent job of providing them for him.
As an aside, The same sort of thing also happens in linux land. Puffed up individuals like yoursleves make no distinction between "newbie" and "idiot looser", regardless of what OS they happen to espouse.
The posters statement merely points out that it is slightly more prevelent in FreeBSD land then it is in Linux land, which is true. Additionally, the newbie resources are not as complete nor as plentiful, and keeping that as a status quo almost seems to be a priority.
I'm a FreeBSD user. This commentary has nothing to do with my prefference of OS, merely with my preferrence of people. Think before you flame.
-T
Educators is a broad term. There must be a line drawn between teachers and administrators. Above a certain level in the administrative food chain, the number of people involved who actually talk to kids slowly diminishes. In many states, superintendents, school boards, etc, are elected officials and don't neccissarily have anything to do with education at all. Things like Mosaic-2000 look good to most of these peoples constituents. You can't get a faster knee-jerk reaction from people then the one you get with a threat (or "potential threat") to their children. No, don't blame teachers for this idiocy. They're way to busy teaching and surviving to worry about this crap. Blame people who say "I'm an educator." They aren't teachers and they do this shit and don't really give a damn about the kids. -Tilde
And I also believe mob behavior is in large part a physical phenomenon, and wouldn't have much parallel in the digital world. Are we reading the same slashdot?
It is not a straw man.
Immediacy was clearly stated in the original post.
You've read too much plato
and not enough locke
There has been alot of talk about digital democracy. It's significantly more thought out than the last time this topic came up, which amounted to a flame war.
I've seen a bunch of comments come up and i guess i feel the need to talk about some of them, because this is an issue that is very important to me.
The initial auther of this post had it absolutely correct in recognizing that the buffering effect of a representative government is A Good Thing(tm) and that instant voting on any/all issues, would be A Bad Thing(tm).
Someone stomped on this by pointing out crooked politicians. Sure, they exist. However, one must recognize that these crooked politicians were infact elected by the people some want to give the instant vote too. They didn't just step out of the void, and they weren't handed their position at birth. Someone decided to vote for them, the majority of someone's actually. The argument that instant vote avoids power-broking/bad policy through the elimination of the currupt middleman misses the fact that that power that's brokered comes from the voters and that policy that's bad is passed because it's what that crooked middleman thinks will make his constiuents happy so he can continue to broker power.
Next, the idea that "online town meetings" will stop propaganda/bad policy. Absolutely not. Even if you abolish congress and rely on the online vote, there will still be charasmic leaders who effect the public vote with a collection of information that they believe/want the public to believe is true. This will come in to play regardless of the average level of education of the voter. The policys that win won't neccissarily be the best policies, but the policies that have the best propagada/retoric behind them. Balanced budgets will be marked like Nike shoes. "Just do it". Is this how you want your tax law created? Don't say that intellegent/educated people won't fall it. How many of you are wearing clothing/accessories from Nike, Adidas, Bugle Boy, or The Gap? Think Lobbiests are bad now? What happens when coporations don't need them, and take clever intuitive multi-million dollar marketing campaigns aimed at making policy directly to the people.
It won't abolish political parties either. Those charismic leaders need a group with them. It might radically change them. Think on this... All this policy making requires people to keep up with an aweful lot of public dissertation, even it it's limited to just the issues that they are concerned about. They'll look to these charasmatic leaders for a quick summary or break down. It happens now. How many people listen to talk radio stations, each with it's own slant? From Rush to Gush Raving Concervatives and Bleeding Heart liberal shows rule our largest public forums. Non-profit organizations would form to allow these people to quit honest jobs to keep informed in order to inform voters. These will be virtual legislatues with NO CHECKS OR BALANCES.
Something else that is seemingly ignored, is network intrusion. The current voting system is bad enough, and around the nation, continuosly there are calls for recounts and charges of election fraud. (Most recently, in my memory, in the goubenatorial elections in Maryland and New Jersey). Again the amount of funding that could be poured into this is silly. Imagine the effects of anouther nation channeling it's resources to effect american voting. It would happen at least once.
Do i see a possible good thing in istant voting?
Possibly - Bad policy could be recinded almost as soon as it was passed. But even this is a mixed blessing. Beurcarcys are slow, and they are also a requirement to accomplish anything. Pass a national healthcare law one evening. Two days later the government and mandated HMO's are restucturing and Joe Schmoe finds out how much this is costing and is going to cost, and the policy is recinded. That money's already lost. How many times could that happen? How much money would be blown in changes of policy that happen to quick? Additionally, who's voting, and when are they taking the time to learn the facts. Apply this to criminal law, and the people who go to jail one day for a law thats recinded the next. Couple this with the slowness of the Jusdicial system. Lets not even get into making the Judicial system an instant vote thing. Do you want to air the dirty laundry of your divorce before the nation?
If the world were a perfect place, we wouldn't need government. If people were even close to perfect, then unlimited democracy would be best. But people aren't, and the unlimited democracy rests it's faith entirely in the good common sence of the good common man. In the united states at least, this is the comman man who sues McDonalds over spilling hot coffee on itself. Perhaps this is a pessimistic view of people. Weather or not it is, it's a far more realistic view than believing people are ready or capable of dealing with issues directly and immediatly.
Maybe some individuals are. Go into politics. I'll vote for you. But i don't think any Individuals are ready for the wide sweeping and unpredictable changes that would happen if such a system were implemented. The ability to make desire policy would rest so much more firmly with those with economic power than it does now, that it would be silly.
As a prediction, if such a system gets implemented, (and i think it will) then i believe there will very quickly be a "luddite" uprising. But i don't think it will consist of the lunatic fringe the way it seems to be implied above. I think it'll be a large collection of average joes who are sick of seeing the idiot policys that pass day after day and are recinded 3 days later and cripple the government with constantly changing policy and mire the entire nation in all encompasing politcal debate.
-Tilde
I addressed your bigoted splooge in a post
slightly above this one.
Before people knock out crap like this, i suggest they get to know some people who have served in the military. They're no more brainwashed than you are (which might not be saying much).
The idea behind Heinliens limited democracy with respect to serving in the military had nothing to do with neccissarily becoming a good soldier. No one could be denied military services. A blind def dumb invalid who insisted on serving would be accomadated. Pacifists would have jobs created for them which did not interfere with their personal morality, etc. etc. etc.
The binding factor?
All possible jobs would concievable put a person at risk of life at one point in time, or anouther.
Care enough about policy to risk your life on it?
It's a good concept.
-Tilde
Breaking MS into an apps division and an OS division with a clause to on cooperate through publicly available API's i feel, is definitely the way to go.
Your not absolutely dependant on javascript or jscript or whatever. It can all be accomplished through server side scripts and a cookie or two.
You also have to drive home the fact that the lack of starry eyed idealism WILL hurt YOU, specifically, and in the pocket book. Especially if you own a buisness.
Sun very much wants to rule the entire world. Embracing sun at this juncture especially to the detriment of real open source projects, like Linux or the BSD's is asking to get nailed later on.
-Tilde
As for the masses not being able to be bought, think about what wonders could be fiddeled up out of the wellfare system. Especially if the voting took place at a time when most people are working.
As for the validity of the current system, sure, it works kinda, but i hardly think it's perfect, and i definitly believe it needs a major overhaul.
However, why implement a system that is flawed in theory just to see if it works? "Try it and see" isn't a good argument for implementing/not implementing something that would inarguable effect the lives, for better or for worse, of every person in the a given place.
Individual American's are not stupid, but mob mentality dynamics apply to the internet as well as the local town hall meeting. Just use slashdot as real life example. In addition, we don't often think about what we say or the impact that it will have. Again, using slashdot as an example, even the best of us (my self CERTAINLY included) tend to shoot off at the keyboard as it were and instantly attack something. What if that knee-jerk reaction had law-making capability? A live action reprisentative government with a nice healthy beuracracy does two things. One, it allows a very large group of people to pick a much small group of people who they believe accuratly represent them, and thus streamline the actual voting process. This first part is more and more irrelevant. The second thing it does, is slow the process so that all possible policies/new bills/laws/whatever have some time to percilate. Think of it as a burn-in process. Real life example of what could of happened? Remember a /. posting about FIDNET (couldn't think up URL)... President Edwardo today gave an impassioned speech about cyber terrorism today followed by a national refferendum where 77% of americans voted to bring the bill that would establish FIDNET into law... That sort of thing even happens now with our current molassis-slow beurocracy. The gun controll bill on the floor and rarin to go less than a week after columbine highschool... a bill that at the time, was only known as trying to stop kids from shooting other kids. Weather or not you agree with gun control is not the issue here, buecause on the wave of sentimate they tried to ride several other things into law with that bill. If we had instant complete democratic government, several nasty suprises would of snuck into law through subterfuge. Stupidity is not to blame, Human Dynamics and ignorance are. -Tilde
How about a different take on why the 10 commandments should be allowed.
For almost 2000 years they've been a large part of the make up of western culture. Christianity influenced everything, including the founding of this country. ("One nation, under God...") Should people not be told that, Should they not be told that those were the founding principles, weather or not they are correct, or applicable to day, they WERE the founding principles. Hell, Baltimore was founded as a haven for english and german catholics, Pennsylvania as a christian land were all people were brothers (though William Penn was a Quaker) an several of the origianal 13 colonies were places founded where puritans could be free to pursicuit their own instead of having some one else do it.
Why would be post the Wiccan Read except in a vaguely historical sence (it's after all, a reconstructed regligion that may infact bare no resemblace to the way it was orignally practiced)?
Not teaching things or removing things from a curriculum because they're aren't PC, is flat wrong, more or less regardless of religion/political stance, unless your a fascist.
-Tilde
God i hate being drawn into flame wars with the fanatic faithful but what the hell.
Lets start with the economy stupid.
Reagon, bush, clinton, all, did JACK.
The only president to have a really significant
impact on the economy this century was FDR,
who's policys were meant to be short term and
have caused an incredible amount of chaos and crapola in the wait to be repealed.
We have probably the feest market system, which means that the economy is run by the market, not the government. The government can be a consumer, and thus help the market, but no more than any large spending body; or it can not consume, and not really hurt it. Economics is cylical, pulled about by the gravity of different population groups market inovation and strength. There was a recession in the 70's, a boom in the 80's a recession in the early 90's, followed by a recovery that's still ongoing. Attributing these characteristics to the presidents at the time is silly. It makes out Carter as putz, Reagon out to be fantastic, bush to be iffy, and clinton to be equally inept and then ok. Additionally, economics is slower to change than government policy regarding econimics, thus, if you still want to attribute things to presidents, to it to the one of the preceding 10 years. Carter was struggling with fords screwup, reagan finished carters work, then fudged it up, bush fixed again, and clinton is taking credit for bush's work. Attributing the strength and robustness of an economy to the actions of a president is like predicting a craps game with astrology.
As to the rasing taxes BS, it was congress than re-ordered the budget to payoff debts -- a plan that clinton was categically opposed to until it was so painfully obvious (with the republicans gaing control of the house and senate) that that was what the american public wanted that he couldn't ignore it anymore... so he flip-flopped and took credit for it.
What did he want to do with the extra money from raising taxes? More pork. Read his old speeches and press releases.
In the context of your first paragraph, your second one is idiotic.
-Tilde
This article is slanted to display the hideous bias of the author, which can be interpreted as common sence, or sheer ignorance depending on your own personal politcal stance.
They only managed to get two issues out untainted. The first being that washington politco's are horridly disconnected. This is true, whatever side of the 2.0+-.1 party system fence you sit on, strattle, or stare at.
I think he's right that there won't be a huge impact anytime soon. Polititions and their machines will most likely avoid the interactive part of the Net, because it's uncontrollable, at least in the conventional sence.
Personally, other than immedeate and continuing information distribution, and maybe public forums, i really don't WANT the net to have that big an impact on politics.
what? hunh?
Ok, almost the entire world would readily agree that the american public on the whole is rather knee-jerky and ignorant. The passing of law, regardless of the feelings of the public, is a process that needs to be spread over a period of time, so that both the governed and the governors can examine it in it's detail, and it what it's consequences mean.
For example, one thing i never ever want to see, is on-line voting. Let's assume it won't be abusing such a system to vote multiple times. I'll use a rather exaggurated example here of why we don't want a stream-line some of these processes. Some guys walking down the street. A watermelon falls from a 10th story window and hits him. a thousand news sites pick it up, as the guy was on his way to save someone from cancer and suppored a family of 20 by working 4 jobs etc. Big tragidy. Some polition instantly puts up a speech about the horrors and evil of watermelons and they must be banned. Instantly, touched voters hit they're little submit buttons and viola! water melons are banned. Thousands of watermelon distribution channels close. Watermelon farmers are out of buisness, perhaps even jailed for continuing to grow their products. And noone has a juicy delicios fruit to eat in the summer time. A bout a month later, anouther man is killed when a pineapple falls from a 10th story window on his head. Only this time it's discoverd that it was thrown from that window by a serial fruit killer... who also killed the first guy by throwing the watermelon at him...
It's several orders of magnitude more difficult to repeal a law than to get one passed in the first place, and even with a stream-lined kneejerk voting process, that is very hard to change. Bingo, you've ruined 100's of peoples lives for lack of facts, facts that indead may not have been able to be discovered quickly enough to support good voting in an instant process. Lets not even talk about the metal processes of the voters (long known to be rather retarded)
Thats a rather extreme example, but apply it to something more mundane and think it through and the ugly consequences flow forth. If you think i'm pessimistic, think on this; One bad law, historically, ALWAYS causes more harm than the good done by 6 good laws.
For a more indepth fictional look at what can happen to us if we alter our law-making and polition electing processes to quickly, to irresponsibly, read Tracy Hickman's book _Immortals_.
-Tilde
Margin in the OS for the vender only applies to commidity machines where the margin for the hardware is next to nill, and the software itself is proprietarily controlled by the hardware vender.
This doesn't (in general) apply to SGI. SGI does not own or control linux and is not responsible for any of the core development.
Visual Workstations don't have anything to do with this statement as all the OS fee's are payed as royalties to microsoft.
The only OS the support AND control, is IRIX, and it isn't free of charge, in addition, the're hardware has very large margins, which is supposed to make some breathing room for the OS.
The only company that could possibly fit that statement would be apple, but the money they charge for basically commidity parts is silly, so your obviously paying a couple hundred dollars (like 500 for the low end. I have no idea how they set their pricing or scale their pricing; they're pricing model appears ridiculous without more information than they ever release.) for the OS.
I can only assume from the brevity of the comment that distributing linux with their hardware reduces they're prices to an unacceptable margin.
Hardly. They can charge a little less for the machine (no royalties) for the same expenditures on systems integration any hardware vendor has to pay, and still maintian the exact same margin.
Maintaining the price and switching to a free operating system raises the margin for the hardware venders, making each machine more profitable.
-Tilde
A well configured emacs?
Up front, a good programmer needs nothing but
echo int main(int argc, char argv[]) >>whatever.c. That said, writing anything in that manner is neither enjoyable nor particularly productive or efficient. Solid flexable IDE's aim at productivity and efficiency.
Emacs, no matter how well configured is dated, and in a multi-tasking multi-threaded graphical environment, its shortcommings as an all in one tool are painfully obvious. The whole buffer system is rather obsolete, and the interface obviously intended for the console.
I won't even comment on vim. (though personally i use elvis, which is a vim cloney thing)
One of the things i've missed from visual studio under linux is multiple code windows and a multi-threaded ide. I've worked with vdk builder, kdevelop and gIDE and none of them have allowed me to do a simple thing i do constantly in VC, open two source windows and tile them next to eachother. This is just one simple example of things from mature IDE's that one finds oneself missing when moving to linux.
I wonder at people who thumb their noses at IDE's. It's like grandpa's walk to school tales of programmer. Is it some how more macho to use a cheesier editor to write code? Judge people on the quality of their code, not the editor used to write it. I think many minimalists would be suprised at the results.
-T
Weather or not they all look the same and have spiffy integration with each other or not isn't exactly the issue.
I think what people keep attempting to say is
that it should be a couple of things,
1 - it should be stable.
2 - it should have a small memory footprint.
The second one is optional if you want the features but the first one is not. It's more condusive this way, to have multiple binaries, that way if one crashes it doesn't take everything else down with it (like current netscape). If you accomplish this with a loadable module type bit fine, whatever. What i think people are worried about is that it's not being accomplished at all. And that worries me too.
whattya mean fud?
It doesn't get more proprietary than
the mac ROMS.
sure you don't need them for anything
but macOS but come on.
Lets not start technological
Lets start in the mac-domain. Graphics.
Specifically high quality modeling in rendoring.
Oh wait... their aren't any...
true pnp?
who knows, the specs were all sealed.
external serial busses
now there's something to brag about.
Built in networking
Appletalk only counts to those who
think the pony express is better than
UPS.
Your right though, the apple 2 was a great computer, It was also insanely overpriced.
I keep hearing that the iMac is groundbreaking or a breakthrough or something. Other than it's sales recorods, could someone explain to me why?
-T