I'm not able to understand your first response. My point is mathematical. In my country a seat in the house requires about 65000 votes. Only if the vote I bring out causes the number to go from 64999 to 65000 that results in an extra seat for my party. One can vote for the house on average about every 3 years, so it that chance of 1 in 65000 never happens.
>> Voting inaccuracies (have you never been surprised that if they do a recount after an election, that they don't end up with the same outcome, but may be hundreds off?). >Hundreds may be a very slight margin of error.
Yes, and my single vote is a fraction of only that. The point is, you are made to believe that your vote counts. But it doesn't. It is even a fraction of the slight margin of error.
Yeah, you missed my point.
My point is that you are not a unique entity. Your brain may not be totally deterministic but it surely has non-zero correlation to a deterministic decision-maker.
Your brain's decision making gets inputs from the environment (media, rumors, etc), a bit of "random" inputs (your mood, hormonal state, etc), processes this through some process that we shall call P, and generates an output VOTE (who to vote for).
You are not alone in the world. There is (non-perfect) correlation between the P process and the inputs that you have and with other people that have similar or somewhat "isomorphic" decision making mechanisms in their minds.
Those people who are similar to you have a process P' which has some correlation factor to P, that makes them biased towards making the same decision as your mechanism P. Whatever you choose does not influence, but is correlated (which is equivalent to influence in this case) to what those other similar people choose.
When your mind decides to go and vote, its not only your mind that does, thousands of other minds running a nearly-identical decision making process also choose to vote because of the same process. If your mind decides not to, those thousands also decide not to, as they use the same process.
Of course, we don't have any lobbying in my country. Right? And in my country the situation is better than in e.g. the US, as here the nominees don't need large election funds.
Yes, the current systems in the world are mostly problematic, but compared with pretty much every non-voting system ever created, they are pretty great.
I hate it when someone thinks that a new idea must be perfect in every sense before it can be accepted. I love it when I come across people capable of balancing the sum of good and bad of the current situation versus the sum for the proposal. But I don't care for this idea, as it still doesn't take into account the knowledge and problem-solving capabilities in society.
Its impossible to sum the goods and bads of an idea that wasn't tried out. Its barely possible to do so on an idea that has been tried out. Most regime changes fail, miserably. Creating a non-voting system is a regime change and is therefore dangerous. So are e-voting machines and other proposed changes, all of which I oppose without highly paranoid precautions.
Or it could not. It is not rocket science. And it could work very simple. Everyone has a social security number. This year, those with a social security number ending with 42 are the ones who get to vote. I hate it when I'm confronted with counter-arguments that really take 5 seconds of thought to brush off.
Politicians may even plan long-term and influence the numbering of citizens from various areas in order to later control who votes:-)
Also, 1% of the population is not viable enough a sample to correlate to the population.
Then use Linux or Mac. Sorry, just a joke. It really has nothing to do with computer security. In fact, everything is in the open. One way of preventing moderators to have too much effect is to let everyone look over their shoul
Of course no code is bug-free. Ever. Regardless of the test coverage (which can be 100% complete only for the most trivial examples anyway). This is not true. I worked on a large project where reliability was a top priority, and many of our very non-trivial modules had 100% test coverage. We indeed worked hard to get there, but my point is that this is a question of resources.
However, having the code X working at the customer, with a few months of real-life testing behind it, without showing any bugs, means that the potential bugs in that code are not triggered the way your customer uses the program. Yes, and it is a very sad state of affairs if this is your only reliability indicator. In that case, you really are afraid to make changes to your code, and when you fear making changes and cannot refactor the code, its already started to bitrot.
"Re-factoring" the code, e.g. by changing the layout of the variables in the memory, could suddenly change that: if the code now, under certain unlucky conditions, smears junk into *another*, more critical variable, you could introduce very hard-to-find regression bugs. Now, if those "unlucky" conditions don't get cought during your internal tests, and if they *do* get triggered by the way your customer uses the program... If you have memory overruns, you deserve what you get:-) Seriously, though, the consequences of bitrot which is sure to result from fear of making changes are much worse than the danger of making your customer trigger a new bug by making changes to the code. Hopefully your QA team and system tests are doing a better job at challenging the software in its various aspects than a customer.
And let's agree that we don't agree about whether "In order to get this done, I am going to reorganize classes, rename variables, and split/move functions around" is or is not more informative to the rest of the team than "I am going to do some refactoring".:-) My point is that its not very informative either way - but the idea is "I am going to make changes that improve the code base without changing functionality".
I think the "no code change is safe" claim is bogus because it assumes that the code works properly to begin with! This is typically not the case, unless test coverage is used, in which case it can be used again.
Also, saying "In order to get this done, I am going to reorganize classes, rename variables, and split/move functions around" is probably not more informative to the rest of the team than "I am going to do some refactoring". Detailing the exact changes is an orthogonal issue that can be done regardless of whether you use the term "refactoring".
Some changes can be known to not alter functionality, in some languages. Refactoring tools can perform changes on the code that create provably equivalent code.
With programming environments/languages of the future like Subtext, refactoring becomes trivial and always side-effect-free.
All voting system are bad because they give the voter the idea that by voting he can influence the outcome of the voting process. That is only the case if there is a draw. Even if there are only 2 voters, that chance is only 1/3rd. That's a philosophical question, and my personal stance on it, is that people are similar. When one person chooses something, his choice does not cause, but is correlated to the choices of others, simply because of the similarity of their brain and their circumstance.
Thus, when I vote, my choice to vote is not only mine, but of other people who are making the same selection and have similar or isomorphic factors affecting their decision.
This means that when I vote, I put just 1 note down, but in an abstract sense, I am actually participating in the same choice of many more people who place notes for the same candidate. If I choose not to vote, those others will participate and make the same choice.
Voting inaccuracies (have you never been surprised that if they do a recount after an election, that they don't end up with the same outcome, but may be hundreds off?). Hundreds may be a very slight margin of error.
People who believe in voting suffer as much from delusion as a creationist. An election is just a very expensive poll with a large sample (yet still very often biased). It could be less biased by asking only 1% of the population to vote (computers select the voters randomly). People who "believe in voting" do so empirically. Systems of vote tend to respect their citizens far more than other systems. Also, I "believe in voting" but I believe the purpose of voting to be something entirely different than you seem to be.
Your idea to sample the population might even work, if it weren't so susceptible to corruption:
The "random" choice is made by a computer. This computer's choice may be secretly influenced by interest holders.
If everyone knows the few people who vote - they are open to bribes and other influential techniques.
If only the people who vote know this - they still may request and get bribes to affect their votes.
If noone knows who votes, then you're back to very expensive voting mechanisms.
Also, voting takes away any nuance you may have. For example, I'm a democrat in the sense that I'd want that civilians can influence the outcome of decisions by the government by supplying facts, arguments and ideas, and that the process is transparent. The party that defends democracy in the Netherlands, but they are old hat proponents of chosen mayor etc. More elections doesn't give an individual voter any more effect!! I want someone capable, not someone popular!! Democracy indeed fails to let the people make the governing choices. But this is not the purpose that it succeeds in filling.
My idea of democracy is a kind of public wiki per topic that the government decides on, but it must be a moderated wiki to keep things organized, and civil. Politicians will be smoked out when they say stupid things that have been proven wrong in the wiki. Media will have a field day. So, politicians will pay attention. And yes, it is possible to do that without the moderators giving too much power. Computer networks are not mature enough to be trusted for this purpose at this time. This may be an interesting idea for the future, but it assumes that it is desirable that people make governing choices.
The real purpose of Democracy, as I see it, is not that people are involved in decision making. It is merely that leaders should fear the people and can be kicked out. This is an effective balance to the government's power and prevents the decay into dictatorship. I think democratically elected people are often smarter than the average person, and often make better leaders and government officials than the average person - so I think this may actually be preferrable to the real involvement of people in the decision making process.
Refactoring isn't just "any random change of the code".
Refactoring means modifications of the code that are not supposed to alter its functionality. Things like renaming variables or moving code or data from one place to another.
I re-factor a lot of code, much of it I did not write (but sometimes its my old code where I didn't get it perfect or account for future developments). Semantic transformations of code that do not alter functionality allow you to remain relatively sure that you are not breaking anything (especially if there's good test coverage) while fixing a bad design, or after having found a novel way to reduce code duplication or such. Once code duplication and tight coupling was removed or reduced, adding new functionality, finding and fixing bugs is much easier.
Last time I tried using Tkinter, it wanted me to micromanage the scrollbars in the listboxes I use. This is unheard of in pygtk, where I just create the listbox and it does all the necessary scrollbar stuff on its own.
I got the feeling Tkinter was way too "low level". So what do you mean when you say it is higher level?
I sometimes do this (race to be first to stand at the red light) even though I know I will be "sitting there".
The reason? I don't like having to wait 15 seconds for the guy in front of me to reach 50kph after the traffic light, thereby missing the next lights. If I am first at the red light, I can accelerate much faster at the green light, and catch the next green traffic light more successfully.
Are there any interesting scientific facts that you can deduce from the bible? Or is it all just pseudo-moral stuff and metaphorical mumbo jumbo that cannot be rightfully interpreted in any meaningful way?
Does seem that the writers made it just vague enough that people will fail to directly contradict it with newly discovered truths, but seemingly close enough to saying something that people do try to read meanings into it.
There's no easy shortcut to opening in new window in the background (so you can switch to it when its loaded).
Tabs let you form a hierarchy of windows (organizing your tabs into groups that are windows).
Tabs namespace the browser windows into its own space, not messing up the other applications' namespaces.
Window switching sucks (The task bar is a bad interface).
I agree that tabs suck, but unfortunately, they are the best we have right now:-)
If an easy shortcut to open in a new window existed, and window organization (easily!) into hierarchies was allowed in the general case, such that switching inside any level of the hierarchy was possible, and was convenient (the Window scale effect comes to mind), then tabs would become an unnecessary ad-hoc kludge.
Since I ditched my Linux desktop and server, I spent more time doing the things I want on the computer, instead of trying to figure out what text file I got wrong and then being told to RTM (which doesn't exist).
Really?
Can you describe a problem or two that you encountered?
Every time I use Windows I am again amazed by the insane things that happen...
I try to compress a folder via "add to compressed folder", and it actually quietly fails to add files whose names begin with a dot. Insane! I try to compress via WinZip, and it actually wants me to pay more money!
To get working _compression_, which is a trivial commodity, you have to buy extra software with Windows. Insane!
And this is one of thousands of examples where Windows is interfering with my work.
In Ubuntu, things just tend to work (Granted, except on some exotically new or rare hardware). Ofcourse, an informed user would buy hardware after verifying software compatibility.
I wonder how hard it will be to get a bot that automatically posts Slashdot cliche jokes in articles, to get Funny moderations. Ofcourse, some people will moderate Insightful instead of Funny, so this bot will eventually have high karma. Does anyone answer to the "karma challenge"?
Christ, that's not what the Israeli PR guys would have the world believe. Y'know the line: gotta take out their power plant because a home-made rocket landed on someone's lawn.
Firstly, re-read what you just wrote. There is no connection between your two sentences.
The Israeli media never portrayed Hezbollah as an existential threat. Hezbollah is portrayed as what it is: A terrorist organization that until shut down, will continue to fire at Israeli civilians and kidnap Israeli soldiers.
When Israel was at war with Hezbollah, shutting down the power plant as a war effort to prevent loss of Israeli soldiers' lives was definitely a move to consider.
Instead of replying to each paragraph, due to the repeat of points in both our posts, I'll just address the points:
Point A: Situation in 1948 was symmetric or not.
Rephrasing your words: "Ottoman empire was the last legitimate owner of the land, therefore, Arabs of the region had more claims to ownership of the land."
Was the Ottoman empire hold of the land any more legitimate than the British? Is there really a connection between the local Arab tribes in Palestine and the Ottoman rule? I believe the answer to both questions is No, and therefore the situation was symmetrical.
I think the legal question of who owns the land is less important. I think the actual issue was whether the peoples who lived in the land were willing to give up some of the land (about 30% in case of the Arabs) so that the other peoples can have self-rule. The Jews were willing to give up 70% of the area and have a self-run state on 30%, but the Arabs were not, and wanted to control the entire area, including the Jews. If their justification was that the Ottomans who occupied the land before the British were also Arab, I think it is a very weak one.
Point B: Even assuming it was not right for Jews to take over the lands in Palestine/Israel, is it right to kick 3rd generation Jews who lived in Israel for generations to make room for the many offspring of the refugees?
If I understood you correctly, you tried saying that its exactly the wrong that the Jews did before (which I disagree), but even if that is true - does that wrong (done by the grand-grand parents) justify doing the same wrong to the grand grand children?
Sure, if the Palestinians manage to conquer the land and perform genocide on the Jews in Israel, and only Palestinians live here, then in 60-100 years, they will gain the moral standing where it would again be wrong to expel them. But that is not the situation now, and it does not make the expelling itself right.
To answer to the refugee question, it does not matter at all if the Jews settlement of Israel was justified or not 60 years ago. What matters now, are the moral consequences of kicking out 6 million Jews to make room for 3 million refugees' offspring. And that is morally wrong. If you believe it is right because 2 wrongs make a right, then your (and Ahmadinajad's) answer to the refugee question is clear. But those who believe that the Jewish settlement was not wrong, OR believe that 2 wrongs do not make a right, know that it is morally absurd to let the 3 million refugees into Israel.
Point C: Israel can help the peace cause (and thus should), by letting go of the occupation at any price.
You are basically saying that if Israel refuses to do anything evil to the Palestinians, and gives them complete freedom and autonomy, despite all terrorism, over the long run, the hatred will die out and the anti-Israeli propaganda will fail.
Here are the reasons why you are wrong:
Propaganda works regardless of a "grain of truth". Note the success of Nazi propaganda against the Jews in the 1930's. Was there a grain of truth there? What about the success of the Egyptian propaganda against Judaism and Israel? Do the Egyptians have good current reasons to hate Israel? There is an overwhelming support for anti-Israel movements in Egypt.
By blaming all faults of the Palestinian situation on Israel, they can direct hatred to Israel, whether or not that is true. If their regime is corrupt and steals the money of the people, it will become Israel's fault.
Every move Israel has made towards regaining the enemy's trust and towards peace was not recognized by the peoples as a move of good faith, but as a move of weakness, and surrender. The retreat from Lebanon was anticipated to weaken Hezbollah and strengthen the moderates, but had the exact opposite effect. The retreat from Gaza was the exact same. Instead of hating Israel less, they just boost their morale that Israel is weak and can be destroyed.
You have no idea whether warnings actually were thoroughly investigated or not. You have no idea what the signal to noise ratio is with those warnings (Do you know how many unjustified warnings are correctly discounted all the time?) You have no idea about the dynamic inside NASA, and how safety warnings can and should be handled.
So again, you speak out of ignorance, and you should give NASA the benefit of the doubt before you blame them for gross incompetence.
The fact that the refugees are still refugees is outrageous and is a result of the policy of various Arab countries that have an incentive to keep the Palestinian refugee problem (it helps divert public opinion against Israel, rather than against the local dictatorships).
What you basically explained is why Palestinians would hate Israel, not why it would make any sense to kick Jewish Israelis out to make room for Palestinians.
People need to understand the situation and that the "right of return" is just another name for "kick 6 million Jews out to make room for 3 million offspring of 300,000 people who believe they were immorally kicked out 60 years ago". Even if you do believe it is Israel's fault that they were "kicked out" in the first place (I put it in quotes because many of them actually left to make room for the "ethnic cleansing" of the Jews promised by incoming Arab militaries), you would still have to believe that two wrongs make a right. The latter wrong being quite a bit larger than the former.
This, btw, is exactly what Iran's leader is suggesting and pushing towards: Kick out 6 million Jews to make room for the 3 million refugees' grand grand sons and daughters.
If it is war, then you cant complain about the Palestinians launching missiles into Israel. Also, aren't there rules and regulations on the treatment of civilians in war?
I don't complain about their shooting missiles at military bases as part of war, I complain about shooting at schools and not even attempting to target only the military. Israel has no way to detain those that plan to blow up buses or shoot missiles into it, so its only option is to asasisante them. Note its not due to their pasts as a "legal action", its due to their plans for the future and to prevent further deaths. Israel is only targeting militias, while Hamas and the various terrorist movements of the Palestinians don't even bother to make it appear that way. Their aim - to kill whatever Jews they can find in Israel.
But, at the end of this, I don't see a declaration of war, I think calling it "war" is overly simplistic. The Palestinians dont really have a state of their own to have the conflict with. So, it looks a bit like a civil uprising.
Call it what you will, the Israeli side is targeting militants. The Palestinian side is targeting civilians.
Yes, part of the blame belongs on the terrorists. They dont have the resources to maintain a modern standing army, so what choices do they have? Terrorism, or bow down to the occupier.
Actually, they can target their missiles, suicide bombers, and gunfire at the military, and not civilians. Not to mention that they have the option of peaceful non-violent protests, peaceful strikes, etc. The only reason Israel keeps the checkpoints and control that bothers the Palestinians is those terrorist activities. If Israel removes checkpoints and that does not result in further terror - it may slowly remove the checkpoints and give the Palestinians all the autonomy and freedom they want. The problem is, every time Israel tries to make a tiny move in this direction, the result is abuse by the terrorists who use it to attack Israeli civilians.
I think that in actuality, the purpose of Hamas is to keep its power over the Palestinians, which it only has for as long as Israel is an "evil enemy conqueror". So Hamas's interest is that Israel keeps these checkpoints, and that Israel has military presence. That may explain why every peace agreement was followed by a Hamas terrorist bomb going off in a bus.
Hamas does not want to free the Palestinian people of occupation, because I think that the leadership of Hamas knows that the fastest road there is through gaining Israeli trust, by not attacking Israel whenever it backs off the occupation.
The next parts you have are interesting, but do not really match well to my admittedly limited understanding. My understanding is that there were Jews living in the area, but not as much as 25%. Also, if percentage of population is what determines ownership of land, then the US will have to be giving the Southern parts of the US to Mexico. Which way does it work?
The US already has an official owner. Part of my point about pre-48 Palestine, is that there was no official state. Just locals sitting around. Not sure about what percentages of Jews/arabs were there in 1890, but by 1948 it was about 75%/25%.
But that "homeland" was pulled from an area that was Majority Arab, and given to the Israelis without consultation to the peoples there. I cant imagine anyone being surprised about hostility in those conditions. And I don't buy that they have to give up feeling anything about it at the third generation. I wish they would, but I think saying to them "you have no right to feel this way" would be wrong.
I am not saying what they should feel. I am saying that it would be morally outrageous to kick out a people to make room for another people because those other peoples had (much fewer, btw) ancestors that used to live there and may have been w
That was my understanding, but what are the percentages?
I think about 500,000 Jews in Israel in 1948, and about 1.5 million arabs. So they had a significant minority at 25%.
On the "it happened generations ago", I dont know that there is a switch that gets thrown after n generations. I agree it *should* be growing less important, but I cant say I blame the Palestinians much for not wanting to let go at this point.
As I said in another post, virtually none of the people alive today were kicked out of anywhere or were refugees. Where else in the world do you see refugees stay refugees for whole generations?? Anywhere else, they are assimilated where-ever it is they are. The arab countries that host them don't want to assimilate them - having them as right-less refugees makes Israel the evil enemy, rather than the arab dictatorships. 3 generations after the fact, kicking a country out to make room for the refugees offspring (which are 10 times more numerous than the refugees themselves) is ridiculous.
While their leadership is not anywhere near a great example of superior qualities, Israel has been shooting Palestinians without due process in Palestine (Yes, I know, they are suspected of terrorism, and are very probably guilty of it, there is no due process, no collaberation (yeah, I know that would be difficult), just kill them.
Due process?? This is not a legal execution -- it is war. Palestinians are not killed as retaliation, they are killed as a part of a war. They are killed to prevent their next terrorist moves. They cannot be detained, they are not in Israeli controlled areas. This is not a legal action, its a wartime action meant to prevent more civilian casualties.
Satisfying, I am sure, unless you are relatively innocent of anything other than sitting in the wrong car when the Israeli helicopter "take out the target".).
You are placing blame wrong here, those who are to blame are the terrorists who are surrounding themselves with civilians for protection - so that when Israel hits them to prevent their next murderous attack, civilians will be killed and Israel will be unpopular. The terrorists know exactly what kind of danger they put civilians in when they hide amongst them.
Yeah, the current generation might not be being moved around, but they would likely know about what was taken from them. From the bitter parents. I can see why they would be a bit unhappy.
Bitter grand-grand parents, you mean, which are mostly dead by now. Its not relevant almost 60 years after the fact, and even then, they were standing on a weak base. After having attacked the Jews in Israel from their villages, Israel attacked the villages, and they run. Also, arab leaders promised to cleanse Israel from Jews, and requested local arabs to make room for the ethnic cleansing. Those that were kicked out now want to return. Its been 60 years. Sorry, but the answer to that will remain no, and Israelis are just as desperate about that and will continue fighting for that indefinitely. They have everything to lose.
They were the majority, I believe.
They were the majority only if you include the arabs that came to work and live in the prosperity brought by the rich European immigrants.
Did they?
Yes, they did. Before Jewish immigration (before 1890) the population in Israel, both arab and Jewish was a fraction of what it was in 1948.
The UN division plan imposed on them by force, without their consent?
The UN division plan represented the population ratios well. Tel Aviv was full of Jews, so would belong to the Jews. Arab areas belong to the arabs.
But no, the arabs wanted it all.
If the UN decided to partition your homeland, would you accept that
I just think about what kind of circumstances there must have been to make someone think that blowing themselves up looks like something they would contemplate.
Its also about poverty and religion. You can blame Israel for some of the poverty, but the real culprit is the corruption high and abound in the Palestinian territories. The PA under Arafat just stole all the money, and gave some of it to terrorists. Hamas is directing virtually all of it to weapons and terrorism, while its people are hungry and unemployed.
I definitely don't think that it is OK for any of those scenarios. The whole thing is messed up, and everyone involved probably needs a good spanking, and some time in the corner to reflect.
I think there are several courses of action for the Palestinians -- stop the terrorism. Peaceful protesting, and even civil disobedience (Ghandi style). They instead choose terrorism.
What courses of action do you think Israel has, besides the one it is acting in right now? It tried to take out all the Gaza settlers (a huge and painful move towards the Palestinians) and got Hamas rule in there (who took credit for this action). Israel cannot even contemplate to do the same in the west bank now.
I think a lot of side viewers just don't realize that Israel really has no choice. It tries every now and then to remove checkpoints to make Palestinians' life better, and is systematically rewarded for it with some terrorism (that would be prevented by that checkpoint).
It did not search women and handicapped for explosives, so Hamas used women and handicapped to transfer explosives into Israel. When Israel started searching them, Hamas started using fake pregnant bellies to carry explosives!
Virtually none of those who want the right of return, as they are all 2nd and 3rd generation refugees.
The refugees started out at 300,000. They are now 3 million!
At least 2,700,000 of them never lived there, but actually a lot more.
So why families that lived in some area for long periods of time would want to go back. simply does not apply here - they never lived there, their ancestors did.
I think the generation "switch" is thrown at about 3 generations, when none of the people alive were actually harmed by or relevant to the situation of the conflict. We are already after that point.
but I find it strange that the peoples that knew what it was like not to have a homeland cannot seem to empathize with the Palestinian position. And I think their current posturing is hypocritical in light of that.
Israelis most certainly can emphasize with that, and do! Israelis overwhelmingly support the 2-state solution for Palestinian self-determination.
Unfortunately, the Palestinians refuse this unless Israel allows three million Palestinian refugees entry and citizenship into Israel (Yes, into Israel, not into Palestine). This is automatic destruction of the state of Israel and its purpose, so by demanding this, the Palestinians are the ones denying themselves a free home land.
Along with the Palestinians that lived in Palestine, Jews did too.
Granted, a lot of these Jews migrated there between 1890 and 1948, but so did many of the "Palestinians" (I put that in quotes because that word was basically coined up in the 70's, and back in those days, they were just local tribes without a homeland).
The Jews that came from Europe brought a lot of wealth, settled the land (many of which they bought from the local arabs), and this caused an influx of arab migration too.
The land buying has put a lot of land workers out of their jobs (as their land owners sold it to the Jews) and created a lot of hostility to the incoming Jews. This, ofcourse, added to the hostility already based on xenophobia of a different (European) culture.
My point here, is that its not "black and white" ("They took our land!" is trivializing a more complicated situation). Another valid point is that this is no longer relevant. It happens generations ago. Everyone who lives now was born where he lives now, and shouldn't have to care or be moved because of the parents' conflicts.
While it is unfortunate for the few local tribes that lived here that such a conflict ensued the influx of Jewish migration, the vast majority of arabs affected came to Israel because of that influx, could have accepted the UN division plan and live in peace (or various peace offers since), but chose to continue to fight regardless.
Unlike the Jewish leadership of 1948, the PA was not willing to risk civil war in order to get rid of anarchy, and now Hamas is in control.
Hamas, by the way, is a "freely elected entity", but in fact is an armed terrorist militia. Can you think of a single western democracy that would let an armed militia run for government??
Hamas is not a legitimate organization, it is shooting improved Katyusha missiles at civilian populations as we speak, and is trying to blow up buses full of women and children whenever it gets the chance.
Hamas cannot be laundered into legitimacy by an election. It will remain illegitimate until it drops all arms and becomes a purely political movement.
Your claim that the Palestinians don't have much choice is moot, they could have respected the agreements they signed. They could have taken control over the terrorist organizations and applied law and the agreements to them. Israel would have happily gotten rid of virtually all the settlements and gave the Palestinians a free state if they had. The reason the agreements failed is not Israel - it is Palestinian terrorism, and it could have been stopped, but the cowards in Ramallah were too afraid to risk civil war, and now they're too late. Their enemies grew stronger, started civil war, and are winning it.
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I'm not able to understand your first response. My point is mathematical. In my country a seat in the house requires about 65000 votes. Only if the vote I bring out causes the number to go from 64999 to 65000 that results in an extra seat for my party. One can vote for the house on average about every 3 years, so it that chance of 1 in 65000 never happens.
>> Voting inaccuracies (have you never been surprised that if they do a recount after an election, that they don't end up with the same outcome, but may be hundreds off?).
>Hundreds may be a very slight margin of error.
Yes, and my single vote is a fraction of only that. The point is, you are made to believe that your vote counts. But it doesn't. It is even a fraction of the slight margin of error.
Yeah, you missed my point.
My point is that you are not a unique entity. Your brain may not be totally deterministic but it surely has non-zero correlation to a deterministic decision-maker.
Your brain's decision making gets inputs from the environment (media, rumors, etc), a bit of "random" inputs (your mood, hormonal state, etc), processes this through some process that we shall call P, and generates an output VOTE (who to vote for).
You are not alone in the world. There is (non-perfect) correlation between the P process and the inputs that you have and with other people that have similar or somewhat "isomorphic" decision making mechanisms in their minds.
Those people who are similar to you have a process P' which has some correlation factor to P, that makes them biased towards making the same decision as your mechanism P. Whatever you choose does not influence, but is correlated (which is equivalent to influence in this case) to what those other similar people choose.
When your mind decides to go and vote, its not only your mind that does, thousands of other minds running a nearly-identical decision making process also choose to vote because of the same process. If your mind decides not to, those thousands also decide not to, as they use the same process.
Of course, we don't have any lobbying in my country. Right? And in my country the situation is better than in e.g. the US, as here the nominees don't need large election funds.
Yes, the current systems in the world are mostly problematic, but compared with pretty much every non-voting system ever created, they are pretty great.
I hate it when someone thinks that a new idea must be perfect in every sense before it can be accepted. I love it when I come across people capable of balancing the sum of good and bad of the current situation versus the sum for the proposal. But I don't care for this idea, as it still doesn't take into account the knowledge and problem-solving capabilities in society.
Its impossible to sum the goods and bads of an idea that wasn't tried out. Its barely possible to do so on an idea that has been tried out.
Most regime changes fail, miserably. Creating a non-voting system is a regime change and is therefore dangerous. So are e-voting machines and other proposed changes, all of which I oppose without highly paranoid precautions.
Or it could not. It is not rocket science. And it could work very simple. Everyone has a social security number. This year, those with a social security number ending with 42 are the ones who get to vote.
I hate it when I'm confronted with counter-arguments that really take 5 seconds of thought to brush off.
Politicians may even plan long-term and influence the numbering of citizens from various areas in order to later control who votes :-)
Also, 1% of the population is not viable enough a sample to correlate to the population.
Then use Linux or Mac. Sorry, just a joke.
It really has nothing to do with computer security. In fact, everything is in the open. One way of preventing moderators to have too much effect is to let everyone look over their shoul
I think the "no code change is safe" claim is bogus because it assumes that the code works properly to begin with! This is typically not the case, unless test coverage is used, in which case it can be used again.
Also, saying "In order to get this done, I am going to reorganize classes, rename variables, and split/move functions around" is probably not more informative to the rest of the team than "I am going to do some refactoring". Detailing the exact changes is an orthogonal issue that can be done regardless of whether you use the term "refactoring".
Some changes can be known to not alter functionality, in some languages. Refactoring tools can perform changes on the code that create provably equivalent code.
With programming environments/languages of the future like Subtext, refactoring becomes trivial and always side-effect-free.
Thus, when I vote, my choice to vote is not only mine, but of other people who are making the same selection and have similar or isomorphic factors affecting their decision.
This means that when I vote, I put just 1 note down, but in an abstract sense, I am actually participating in the same choice of many more people who place notes for the same candidate. If I choose not to vote, those others will participate and make the same choice. Voting inaccuracies (have you never been surprised that if they do a recount after an election, that they don't end up with the same outcome, but may be hundreds off?). Hundreds may be a very slight margin of error. People who believe in voting suffer as much from delusion as a creationist. An election is just a very expensive poll with a large sample (yet still very often biased). It could be less biased by asking only 1% of the population to vote (computers select the voters randomly). People who "believe in voting" do so empirically. Systems of vote tend to respect their citizens far more than other systems. Also, I "believe in voting" but I believe the purpose of voting to be something entirely different than you seem to be.
Your idea to sample the population might even work, if it weren't so susceptible to corruption:
- The "random" choice is made by a computer. This computer's choice may be secretly influenced by interest holders.
- If everyone knows the few people who vote - they are open to bribes and other influential techniques.
- If only the people who vote know this - they still may request and get bribes to affect their votes.
- If noone knows who votes, then you're back to very expensive voting mechanisms.
Also, voting takes away any nuance you may have. For example, I'm a democrat in the sense that I'd want that civilians can influence the outcome of decisions by the government by supplying facts, arguments and ideas, and that the process is transparent. The party that defends democracy in the Netherlands, but they are old hat proponents of chosen mayor etc. More elections doesn't give an individual voter any more effect!! I want someone capable, not someone popular!! Democracy indeed fails to let the people make the governing choices. But this is not the purpose that it succeeds in filling. My idea of democracy is a kind of public wiki per topic that the government decides on, but it must be a moderated wiki to keep things organized, and civil. Politicians will be smoked out when they say stupid things that have been proven wrong in the wiki. Media will have a field day. So, politicians will pay attention. And yes, it is possible to do that without the moderators giving too much power. Computer networks are not mature enough to be trusted for this purpose at this time. This may be an interesting idea for the future, but it assumes that it is desirable that people make governing choices.The real purpose of Democracy, as I see it, is not that people are involved in decision making. It is merely that leaders should fear the people and can be kicked out. This is an effective balance to the government's power and prevents the decay into dictatorship.
I think democratically elected people are often smarter than the average person, and often make better leaders and government officials than the average person - so I think this may actually be preferrable to the real involvement of people in the decision making process.
Refactoring isn't just "any random change of the code".
Refactoring means modifications of the code that are not supposed to alter its functionality. Things like renaming variables or moving code or data from one place to another.
I re-factor a lot of code, much of it I did not write (but sometimes its my old code where I didn't get it perfect or account for future developments).
Semantic transformations of code that do not alter functionality allow you to remain relatively sure that you are not breaking anything (especially if there's good test coverage) while fixing a bad design, or after having found a novel way to reduce code duplication or such. Once code duplication and tight coupling was removed or reduced, adding new functionality, finding and fixing bugs is much easier.
hard. What's wrong with the term refactor?
Quite a few bugs are obvious to the experienced programmer.
Many are not obviously bugs, but are obviously "bad practice" which will often lead to bugs.
Once a proficient programmer re-factors "ugly" (full of "bad practice") code, most flaws also become obvious.
Last time I tried using Tkinter, it wanted me to micromanage the scrollbars in the listboxes I use. This is unheard of in pygtk, where I just create the listbox and it does all the necessary scrollbar stuff on its own.
I got the feeling Tkinter was way too "low level". So what do you mean when you say it is higher level?
I sometimes do this (race to be first to stand at the red light) even though I know I will be "sitting there".
The reason? I don't like having to wait 15 seconds for the guy in front of me to reach 50kph after the traffic light, thereby missing the next lights. If I am first at the red light, I can accelerate much faster at the green light, and catch the next green traffic light more successfully.
Are there any interesting scientific facts that you can deduce from the bible? Or is it all just pseudo-moral stuff and metaphorical mumbo jumbo that cannot be rightfully interpreted in any meaningful way?
Does seem that the writers made it just vague enough that people will fail to directly contradict it with newly discovered truths, but seemingly close enough to saying something that people do try to read meanings into it.
I agree that tabs suck, but unfortunately, they are the best we have right now
If an easy shortcut to open in a new window existed, and window organization (easily!) into hierarchies was allowed in the general case, such that switching inside any level of the hierarchy was possible, and was convenient (the Window scale effect comes to mind), then tabs would become an unnecessary ad-hoc kludge.
Really?
Can you describe a problem or two that you encountered?
Every time I use Windows I am again amazed by the insane things that happen...
I try to compress a folder via "add to compressed folder", and it actually quietly fails to add files whose names begin with a dot. Insane!
I try to compress via WinZip, and it actually wants me to pay more money!
To get working _compression_, which is a trivial commodity, you have to buy extra software with Windows.
Insane!
And this is one of thousands of examples where Windows is interfering with my work.
In Ubuntu, things just tend to work (Granted, except on some exotically new or rare hardware). Ofcourse, an informed user would buy hardware after verifying software compatibility.
I wonder how hard it will be to get a bot that automatically posts Slashdot cliche jokes in articles, to get Funny moderations.
:-)
Ofcourse, some people will moderate Insightful instead of Funny, so this bot will eventually have high karma.
Does anyone answer to the "karma challenge"?
Whose bot gets the highest karma?
Or am I too late and already replying to one?
Because maybe you should tell us about them too!
I always enjoying hearing about things people find disgusting or that they dislike.
Its so interesting!
Firstly, re-read what you just wrote. There is no connection between your two sentences.
The Israeli media never portrayed Hezbollah as an existential threat. Hezbollah is portrayed as what it is: A terrorist organization that until shut down, will continue to fire at Israeli civilians and kidnap Israeli soldiers.
When Israel was at war with Hezbollah, shutting down the power plant as a war effort to prevent loss of Israeli soldiers' lives was definitely a move to consider.
Point A: Situation in 1948 was symmetric or not.
Rephrasing your words: "Ottoman empire was the last legitimate owner of the land, therefore, Arabs of the region had more claims to ownership of the land."
Was the Ottoman empire hold of the land any more legitimate than the British? Is there really a connection between the local Arab tribes in Palestine and the Ottoman rule? I believe the answer to both questions is No, and therefore the situation was symmetrical.
I think the legal question of who owns the land is less important. I think the actual issue was whether the peoples who lived in the land were willing to give up some of the land (about 30% in case of the Arabs) so that the other peoples can have self-rule. The Jews were willing to give up 70% of the area and have a self-run state on 30%, but the Arabs were not, and wanted to control the entire area, including the Jews. If their justification was that the Ottomans who occupied the land before the British were also Arab, I think it is a very weak one.
Point B: Even assuming it was not right for Jews to take over the lands in Palestine/Israel, is it right to kick 3rd generation Jews who lived in Israel for generations to make room for the many offspring of the refugees?
If I understood you correctly, you tried saying that its exactly the wrong that the Jews did before (which I disagree), but even if that is true - does that wrong (done by the grand-grand parents) justify doing the same wrong to the grand grand children?
Sure, if the Palestinians manage to conquer the land and perform genocide on the Jews in Israel, and only Palestinians live here, then in 60-100 years, they will gain the moral standing where it would again be wrong to expel them. But that is not the situation now, and it does not make the expelling itself right.
To answer to the refugee question, it does not matter at all if the Jews settlement of Israel was justified or not 60 years ago. What matters now, are the moral consequences of kicking out 6 million Jews to make room for 3 million refugees' offspring. And that is morally wrong. If you believe it is right because 2 wrongs make a right, then your (and Ahmadinajad's) answer to the refugee question is clear. But those who believe that the Jewish settlement was not wrong, OR believe that 2 wrongs do not make a right, know that it is morally absurd to let the 3 million refugees into Israel.
Point C: Israel can help the peace cause (and thus should), by letting go of the occupation at any price.
You are basically saying that if Israel refuses to do anything evil to the Palestinians, and gives them complete freedom and autonomy, despite all terrorism, over the long run, the hatred will die out and the anti-Israeli propaganda will fail.
Here are the reasons why you are wrong:
What about the success of the Egyptian propaganda against Judaism and Israel? Do the Egyptians have good current reasons to hate Israel? There is an overwhelming support for anti-Israel movements in Egypt.
You speak out of ignorance.
You have no idea whether warnings actually were thoroughly investigated or not.
You have no idea what the signal to noise ratio is with those warnings (Do you know how many unjustified warnings are correctly discounted all the time?)
You have no idea about the dynamic inside NASA, and how safety warnings can and should be handled.
So again, you speak out of ignorance, and you should give NASA the benefit of the doubt before you blame them for gross incompetence.
Israel was willing to pay the refugees.
The fact that the refugees are still refugees is outrageous and is a result of the policy of various Arab countries that have an incentive to keep the Palestinian refugee problem (it helps divert public opinion against Israel, rather than against the local dictatorships).
What you basically explained is why Palestinians would hate Israel, not why it would make any sense to kick Jewish Israelis out to make room for Palestinians.
People need to understand the situation and that the "right of return" is just another name for "kick 6 million Jews out to make room for 3 million offspring of 300,000 people who believe they were immorally kicked out 60 years ago". Even if you do believe it is Israel's fault that they were "kicked out" in the first place (I put it in quotes because many of them actually left to make room for the "ethnic cleansing" of the Jews promised by incoming Arab militaries), you would still have to believe that two wrongs make a right. The latter wrong being quite a bit larger than the former.
This, btw, is exactly what Iran's leader is suggesting and pushing towards: Kick out 6 million Jews to make room for the 3 million refugees' grand grand sons and daughters.
I don't complain about their shooting missiles at military bases as part of war, I complain about shooting at schools and not even attempting to target only the military.
Israel has no way to detain those that plan to blow up buses or shoot missiles into it, so its only option is to asasisante them. Note its not due to their pasts as a "legal action", its due to their plans for the future and to prevent further deaths.
Israel is only targeting militias, while Hamas and the various terrorist movements of the Palestinians don't even bother to make it appear that way. Their aim - to kill whatever Jews they can find in Israel.
Call it what you will, the Israeli side is targeting militants. The Palestinian side is targeting civilians.
Actually, they can target their missiles, suicide bombers, and gunfire at the military, and not civilians. Not to mention that they have the option of peaceful non-violent protests, peaceful strikes, etc.
The only reason Israel keeps the checkpoints and control that bothers the Palestinians is those terrorist activities. If Israel removes checkpoints and that does not result in further terror - it may slowly remove the checkpoints and give the Palestinians all the autonomy and freedom they want. The problem is, every time Israel tries to make a tiny move in this direction, the result is abuse by the terrorists who use it to attack Israeli civilians.
I think that in actuality, the purpose of Hamas is to keep its power over the Palestinians, which it only has for as long as Israel is an "evil enemy conqueror". So Hamas's interest is that Israel keeps these checkpoints, and that Israel has military presence. That may explain why every peace agreement was followed by a Hamas terrorist bomb going off in a bus.
Hamas does not want to free the Palestinian people of occupation, because I think that the leadership of Hamas knows that the fastest road there is through gaining Israeli trust, by not attacking Israel whenever it backs off the occupation.
The US already has an official owner. Part of my point about pre-48 Palestine, is that there was no official state. Just locals sitting around. Not sure about what percentages of Jews/arabs were there in 1890, but by 1948 it was about 75%/25%.
I am not saying what they should feel. I am saying that it would be morally outrageous to kick out a people to make room for another people because those other peoples had (much fewer, btw) ancestors that used to live there and may have been w
I think about 500,000 Jews in Israel in 1948, and about 1.5 million arabs. So they had a significant minority at 25%.
As I said in another post, virtually none of the people alive today were kicked out of anywhere or were refugees. Where else in the world do you see refugees stay refugees for whole generations?? Anywhere else, they are assimilated where-ever it is they are. The arab countries that host them don't want to assimilate them - having them as right-less refugees makes Israel the evil enemy, rather than the arab dictatorships. 3 generations after the fact, kicking a country out to make room for the refugees offspring (which are 10 times more numerous than the refugees themselves) is ridiculous.
Due process?? This is not a legal execution -- it is war. Palestinians are not killed as retaliation, they are killed as a part of a war. They are killed to prevent their next terrorist moves. They cannot be detained, they are not in Israeli controlled areas. This is not a legal action, its a wartime action meant to prevent more civilian casualties.
You are placing blame wrong here, those who are to blame are the terrorists who are surrounding themselves with civilians for protection - so that when Israel hits them to prevent their next murderous attack, civilians will be killed and Israel will be unpopular. The terrorists know exactly what kind of danger they put civilians in when they hide amongst them.
Bitter grand-grand parents, you mean, which are mostly dead by now.
Its not relevant almost 60 years after the fact, and even then, they were standing on a weak base. After having attacked the Jews in Israel from their villages, Israel attacked the villages, and they run. Also, arab leaders promised to cleanse Israel from Jews, and requested local arabs to make room for the ethnic cleansing. Those that were kicked out now want to return. Its been 60 years. Sorry, but the answer to that will remain no, and Israelis are just as desperate about that and will continue fighting for that indefinitely. They have everything to lose.
They were the majority only if you include the arabs that came to work and live in the prosperity brought by the rich European immigrants.
Yes, they did.
Before Jewish immigration (before 1890) the population in Israel, both arab and Jewish was a fraction of what it was in 1948.
The UN division plan represented the population ratios well. Tel Aviv was full of Jews, so would belong to the Jews. Arab areas belong to the arabs.
But no, the arabs wanted it all.
See Section 4 in this paper.
Its also about poverty and religion. You can blame Israel for some of the poverty, but the real culprit is the corruption high and abound in the Palestinian territories. The PA under Arafat just stole all the money, and gave some of it to terrorists. Hamas is directing virtually all of it to weapons and terrorism, while its people are hungry and unemployed.
I think there are several courses of action for the Palestinians -- stop the terrorism. Peaceful protesting, and even civil disobedience (Ghandi style). They instead choose terrorism.
What courses of action do you think Israel has, besides the one it is acting in right now?
It tried to take out all the Gaza settlers (a huge and painful move towards the Palestinians) and got Hamas rule in there (who took credit for this action).
Israel cannot even contemplate to do the same in the west bank now.
I think a lot of side viewers just don't realize that Israel really has no choice. It tries every now and then to remove checkpoints to make Palestinians' life better, and is systematically rewarded for it with some terrorism (that would be prevented by that checkpoint).
It did not search women and handicapped for explosives, so Hamas used women and handicapped to transfer explosives into Israel. When Israel started searching them, Hamas started using fake pregnant bellies to carry explosives!
What viable course of action does Israel have?
Virtually none of those who want the right of return, as they are all 2nd and 3rd generation refugees.
The refugees started out at 300,000. They are now 3 million!
At least 2,700,000 of them never lived there, but actually a lot more.
So why families that lived in some area for long periods of time would want to go back. simply does not apply here - they never lived there, their ancestors did.
I think the generation "switch" is thrown at about 3 generations, when none of the people alive were actually harmed by or relevant to the situation of the conflict. We are already after that point.
Unfortunately, the Palestinians refuse this unless Israel allows three million Palestinian refugees entry and citizenship into Israel (Yes, into Israel, not into Palestine). This is automatic destruction of the state of Israel and its purpose, so by demanding this, the Palestinians are the ones denying themselves a free home land.
Along with the Palestinians that lived in Palestine, Jews did too.
Granted, a lot of these Jews migrated there between 1890 and 1948, but so did many of the "Palestinians" (I put that in quotes because that word was basically coined up in the 70's, and back in those days, they were just local tribes without a homeland).
The Jews that came from Europe brought a lot of wealth, settled the land (many of which they bought from the local arabs), and this caused an influx of arab migration too.
The land buying has put a lot of land workers out of their jobs (as their land owners sold it to the Jews) and created a lot of hostility to the incoming Jews. This, ofcourse, added to the hostility already based on xenophobia of a different (European) culture.
My point here, is that its not "black and white" ("They took our land!" is trivializing a more complicated situation). Another valid point is that this is no longer relevant. It happens generations ago. Everyone who lives now was born where he lives now, and shouldn't have to care or be moved because of the parents' conflicts.
While it is unfortunate for the few local tribes that lived here that such a conflict ensued the influx of Jewish migration, the vast majority of arabs affected came to Israel because of that influx, could have accepted the UN division plan and live in peace (or various peace offers since), but chose to continue to fight regardless.
Unlike the Jewish leadership of 1948, the PA was not willing to risk civil war in order to get rid of anarchy, and now Hamas is in control.
Hamas, by the way, is a "freely elected entity", but in fact is an armed terrorist militia. Can you think of a single western democracy that would let an armed militia run for government??
Hamas is not a legitimate organization, it is shooting improved Katyusha missiles at civilian populations as we speak, and is trying to blow up buses full of women and children whenever it gets the chance.
Hamas cannot be laundered into legitimacy by an election. It will remain illegitimate until it drops all arms and becomes a purely political movement.
Your claim that the Palestinians don't have much choice is moot, they could have respected the agreements they signed. They could have taken control over the terrorist organizations and applied law and the agreements to them. Israel would have happily gotten rid of virtually all the settlements and gave the Palestinians a free state if they had. The reason the agreements failed is not Israel - it is Palestinian terrorism, and it could have been stopped, but the cowards in Ramallah were too afraid to risk civil war, and now they're too late. Their enemies grew stronger, started civil war, and are winning it.
That's silly, as you can always make an obfuscator that compiles/decompiles.