The TCP/IP suite was designed to provide multiple routes to a given destination, to allow network viability in case of disaster (think nuclear attack). It's supposed to be a mesh, not a tree.
The way it should work is for everyone to have multiple network connections. I should peer with my neighbors, so that his DSL connection and my cable connection share bandwidth over our wireless gateways, or perhaps just falling over when one of the two is down. If he quits paying his DSL bill and or otherwise starts abusing my connection, I can either be charitable or not.
The same is true at the ISP level. Each ISP should pay for an upstream connection, and they all should peer with their local competitors. It's in everyone's interest, in the long run.
In the consumer era (since 1994), the twig-branch ISP rented a pipe from a bigger provider. A big portion of their fixed costs were their upstream charges. Having more than one upstream provider is expensive. Because of a combination of competitive zeal and market lockins, they don't peer with their competitors (at least, not as much as they should). The result is a tree. That's why you hear that someone's Internet connection is down. If implemented as conceived, you'd never hear that.
This round of pipe-throttling is an attempt by the dark side to enforce the tree structure that increases profit potential at the top of the tree, while it also increases risk of downtime for everyone. Its cause is avarice, but I don't know whether that is allowed expression due to foolish ignorance or informed evil. After all, perhaps they don't know that if they charge for something and can't provide it, the market will show its wrath in equal proportion to their greed.
(I am anti-copyright and put all my creations into the public domain immediately)
Why? Why not use a Creative Commons License, and place no restrictions? Or simply ask for attribution as your only restriction? While I understand a distaste for copyright on philosophical grounds, by disregarding it completely you are actually making your work less attractive to most people.
the country has reached a critical mass that although could be unravelled, seems to be for the most part on autopilot.
I understand your point, and I'm glad we don't all have to be constantly fighting to keep the Vandals from the gates. Luckily for you and me, there are lots of people who think otherwise:
Consider the young men and women to join the military to defend their country. Never mind your opinion of any particular war - they joined risking their lives, if necessary, to protect the nation.
Consider the thousands of lawyers who give up vastly greater income for a chance to serve as judges, public defenders, and district attorneys. Yes, the jobs have their perks, but almost all of them have as their driving force a commitment that the rule of law, one of the fundamental principles of our country, should be preserved.
Most people in the media (including bloggers) do their jobs hoping to influence society and keep the government and institutions of power from becoming more corrupt. Some of them get seduced by the camera and glamour, but most of them are there to do good.
Know any policemen, firefighters, citizen's group activists, or teachers? Some are there to collect a paycheck or something, but most of them are there to do good as well. In the same way, each of us should do our part to make the whole thing work.
In other words, it's not autopilot. It's just that the hard work of keeping the republic together happens out of sight. Not knowing your background I can't guess at your contributions, but you might ask yourself what you have done to deserve citizenship.
Not only that, but the number of flaws and their severity is so much more important than how nice your patch system is that they shouldn't even be compared.
Remember the old "if Windows were a car" joke?
I'd rather have a car that just keeps running than one that I need to get fixed all the time, even if the dealer makes it really easy. I'd rather have a car that doesn't get taken over by organized crime if I don't buy the optional armor plating. I'd rather have a car I can let the kids drive without having to give them the title.
I'd rather be able to upgrade my car for free, whenever I want. I'd rather not have pull off the highway and restart the engine to fix whatever is wrong (and it's just the CD player acting up). It's great that it comes with a CD player, but I'd rather not be stuck with that one if I find something better. Same for the engine, transmission, and even the armor plating: if I find a better part, I'd like to be able to slap it on and have it fit. Without restarting the engine, unless that's what I'm replacing.
I am probably not the smartest person in the world...
First lesson: yes, you are. If you want to be a programmer, that's how you will start. You're the smartest, but you just don't know everything.
What platform are you using? It makes a difference.
I learned to progam (well, if you call it that) using BASIC on a TRS-80 Model II (with the 16K expansion, thank you very much!). The cassette tape storage would lose half my saves, so my devotion to backups was burned in.
Just pick a language you can use on your own computer that has a "hello, world" program. That's what we call a simple program that just prints "Hello, world!" to your screen. Read the manual. Alter the program a little. Find other programs, and alter them a little. Eventually you'll get it.
You might try Javascript. There's not much barrier to entry, and you can run it anywhere you have a browser.
I found Python confusing at first, so I wouldn't recommend it to a raw beginner. Maybe for the second or third language.
If the syntax (all the little braces and symbols and how they go together) is confusing, you might try BASIC on a TRS-80 Model II:-).
It sounds like they do need to throw some more resources to the departments involved to shorten the critical path, but with a system this complex, test cycles are going to be long and involved.
Would throwing more resources actually help speed the process, though? More resources (meaning more people) just tend to get more done in the same or longer time. It's not a linear relationship, anyway. And the "more" they get done is not necessarily productive. On its face, adding more resources to the test phase would seem to make testing faster, but what happens to the bugs that the testers find? More testers, more bugs, and an increased need to analyze and correct them.
What it comes down to is setting arbitrary deadlines, and project-managing backwards to say how thorough a job you'll do with the time and resources at hand. In other words, the only thing more resources buys you is additional thoroughness, and maybe not even that.
Are ideas like virtual citizenship beyond the nation-state, untraceable electronic currency, and the consciousness expanding powers of radical interconnectivity defunct? Is there untapped revolutionary power waiting to be unleashed?
The Internet levels the playing field for those who have access to it. A search bar, a blog, and ebay are all you need to find out almost anything, tell the world your take on it, or operate a business. And with so many sources of information, voices, and people selling things it is impossible for a monopoly to exist in any one of those areas.
We aren't to the point of virtual citizenship, but we may be in the middle of a trend toward borderless loyalty. People are becoming less loyal to the nation-state and more loyal to ideas and movements (religions, software models, companies, professions). I hope that the trend doesn't result in a single world government before the individual borderless movements get powerful enough to keep one in check.
Untraceable electronic currency doesn't have any chance: the people issuing the currency want to know where it is. It's enough that numbers are inherently abstract, though. It will always be necessary to launder your funds if you want their movement kept discrete.
As far as the conciousness expansion of free information goes, that too is the wrong question. (Some) people will always choose to be blissfully ignorant about (some) things, and you can't force them to learn. The network makes it easy to find information, but it's always going to be more like fishing than a floodlight. People have to want the information you have.
In general, it's too soon for Utopia but the world is getting newer all the time.
The correct spelling is Kansas Board of "Education"
--
If you can't make your case without name-calling, labelling or profanity, you've automatically lost the argument
Am I the only one who sees the irony of posting that with that sig?
While it didn't name-call, did't label, and wasn't profane, there was no attempt at making an argument.
We are made of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus, sodium, iron, etc. Those building blocks are strewn throughout the universe, as far as we know. Now we think we see some complex, life-like compounds. We assume that means those formed where they are.
But it's a common violation of scientific principles to assume that the conditions we see now are those that have always existed. It makes for neater theories, but counterexamples are ubiquitous.
The FA merely suggests that DNA components could form in space. The same evidence suggests that if a planet is destroyed by catastrophic collision, it's hard to find the DNA afterwards.
Kids don't "discover their own faith", they're indoctrinated into whatever supertition their parents force-feed them. Raising kids to believe in mythology is child abuse
That statement stands as an affront to anyone who's been truly abused.
It also display remarkable intolerance for the beliefs of others.
Denying parents the right to pass their beliefs (whatever they are) to their children is not only unconscionable, it's impossible -- unless you outlaw parenting, that is. Whoever raises kids automatically indoctrinates them with their beliefs. You can't counter with an example of a parent who has no beliefs, because there is no one like that. If you counter with a parent who tries not to indoctrinate their children, you must think a little deeper: they're still doing it.
Whether the indoctrination works is another matter.
Removing the freedom of religion is a terrible mistake. It opens the way to religious tyranny of one sort or another. The freedom of religion is an important buffer between us and tyranny. Whatever else the freedom of religion means it must include practicing it with your family.
Parents must and do have the right to teach their children whatever the parents believe, whether that's that the moon is made of cheese or what sports team to follow. It's what makes them parents, and once you have kids you realize it's the greatest joy in life. If we remove that right, the world would become a dull, dreary, oppressive place. It would also be an Orwellian nightmare.
I see that idea of criminalizing incorrect beliefs echoed on slashdot alot. It's quite troubling that our schools, in their proper effort to be agnostic, have failed to teach the basic principles which led to our nation's founding. Religious intolerance poses the danger, not religion itself.
The moment they went public, their defining philosophy turned into maximizing profits for their share holders
That's wrong, or at least, the premise is incorrect. A publicly traded corporation is only required to abide by what their SEC paperwork says. For most companies, that does mean maximizing profits. But that's not an absolute rule.
In Google's SEC filings, and in most of its public statements, it says they won't be evil. Any investor in the company is assumed to have read those filings and public comments. Caveat emptor.
An accountant will tell you that "profit" is a somewhat artificial result. A complex set of corporate books allows you to attribute money to expenses, investment in future growth, savings for future tax liability, or whatever. Some companies choose to pay dividends, others choose to buy back their own stock. They have a range of options, as long as they cover themselves in their SEC filings.
They do have to play by the rules, but maximizing profit isn't necessarily one of them, and it doesn't have to mean maximizing quarterly profit.
Why is spyware taken for granted as something that exists? That there is a whole industry segment devoted solely to the removal of viruses, spyware, and the like is a tribute to Microsoft's incompetence. Now they release their own product into that segment.
It would be a triumph of marketing audacity if it weren't so despicable.
the minimum they have to do in order to keep people just happy enough to stick with their products.
There was a business mantra in the '90s, and still out there today, that defines "quality" as whatever it takes to please the customer. Consultants hauled in buckets of money generating cliches out of that. Companies may be driven by customer satisfaction, which is fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't mean their products are any good.
The flaw in the cliched definition is that often the customer doesn't know what they're getting or have any basis to judge how good the product is.
Microsoft, being driven by market share, is a step removed even from that level of quality. They only want their customers to be happier with their products than with the competition (which is often another of their products or an earlier version of the same one).
Making things properly is not in their range of capability.
This could actually change not just the way music is developed, but all of human-computer interaction.
Ramifications include:
Systems for air piano, air sax, air drums, etc. You could have a whole air band.
Air music instruction. Learn to play some instrument using a mockup cardboard model, then just air.
New air instruments. A program could interpret how a dancer/artist moves as music.
New art medium. Life magazine ran a picture of Picasso painting in air with a flashlight, captured by a long-exposure camera. This technology has a direct application.
Air martial arts instruction.
Air athletics. Practice your golf swing, ball throwing, etc without going outside. These already exist, but they're not ubiquitous.
Air computer keyboard / mouse. Why have a keyboard, when you have a webcam and software?
It will be nice to be able to "type" by moving around the room (or even the back yard) instead of sitting at a desk and keyboard.
I'd write them if I didn't think they'd already been bought and paid for by big industry. Face it: congressmen and senators stopped being for the people a long long time ago.
I see you're in need of some encouragement.
Why do politicians politic? It isn't to amass wealth or fame, but power. Never mind what they want to do with that power, be it what you consider "good" or what you consider "evil". The LCD is that they all need power to get their goals accomplished, though for some of them power is itself the goal.
To amass power, they need wealth and fame. To get fame (or "get their message out", as they say) they need wealth. So that's why they need money. And that's why they listen to the rich.
But don't forget, what they really want is power. If they can skip the middleman with the money and go straight to the voter, they'll do that. After all, if they take the money they are beholden to the giver, lest the river run dry. They want votes, both from you and from their fellow politicians.
They also know that most people don't bother to contact them unless they really have a hot issue. Most people won't contact them at all, but the sample of contact they do get is probably representative of how people will vote.
So your one letter, call, or fax is very important. They listen, not because they care (which they may or may not do) but because they want your vote. If they can get your vote by paying attention to your issue, then they'll have you in their pocket when what they really want comes up.
How many examples do we need (patenting story lines, genes, methods of evaluating employees) of the idiocy that is allowing business process and software patents?
Write them. Call them. Fax them.
Somebody else karma whore with the contact info, I have to go somewhere and be ill.
Conditions they forgot
on
Space Lichens
·
· Score: 2, Funny
- Reentry heat (need to be inside a big rock or something)
- Boredom. Lichens are fairly uncontemplative creatures, however.
How exactly do you deduce you can do as you please with animals and plants?
Within reason, of course. They're here and they're made of food. I'm faster than most plants and more clever than most animals, so I eat the ones I like, get labor from the ones that are fit for it, and build things out of, or even burn for heat, the big plants. Next question?
How is it, exactly, that I kill millions of animals a day?
Do you have white blood cells, nasal mucus, and stomach acid? Sorry for being an insensitive clod if you don't.
So, in defeating a mean "galatic Stalin" it is OK to destroy a hundred planets, but it's also OK to destroy a hundred planets to save ONE person?
It's ok to destroy a hundred planets full of plants and animals to save one person, yes. Yes, people are more important than animals. Yes, people are more important than plants and rocks.
If it's necessary to defeat a galactic Stalin that 100 planets full of people die, then yes. There are evils so great that they must be resisted by otherwise unconscionable means.
Yes, plants and animals are here for me to use as I see fit. Of course it's wrong to abuse them. But just try living without killing them. Why, your body does that millions of times a day.
If you don't believe there are ideals worth dying for, then your world is a pretty sorry place. If you don't believe in killing plants or animals to survive, you will either die or fail to follow your own beliefs.
They know that folowing ideas and principles (such as liberty and justice) can be worth all the people on a hundred planets.
It appears that you did, and also that I took little care in phrasing it. I meant simply that there are situations in which adhering to principle can lead to loss of life, even on a mass scale. Standing up to a galactic Stalin might mean loss of life for the people on a hundred planets.
Respect the planet? I wouldn't say that in the same way you would, I gather. I would be loyal to Earth as my home planet, but I don't worship it. Sorry if that offends you. I don't go out of my way to pollute, but I don't try to "green camp" my life, either.
Slashdot Mirror
The TCP/IP suite was designed to provide multiple routes to a given destination, to allow network viability in case of disaster (think nuclear attack). It's supposed to be a mesh, not a tree.
The way it should work is for everyone to have multiple network connections. I should peer with my neighbors, so that his DSL connection and my cable connection share bandwidth over our wireless gateways, or perhaps just falling over when one of the two is down. If he quits paying his DSL bill and or otherwise starts abusing my connection, I can either be charitable or not.
The same is true at the ISP level. Each ISP should pay for an upstream connection, and they all should peer with their local competitors. It's in everyone's interest, in the long run.
In the consumer era (since 1994), the twig-branch ISP rented a pipe from a bigger provider. A big portion of their fixed costs were their upstream charges. Having more than one upstream provider is expensive. Because of a combination of competitive zeal and market lockins, they don't peer with their competitors (at least, not as much as they should). The result is a tree. That's why you hear that someone's Internet connection is down. If implemented as conceived, you'd never hear that.
This round of pipe-throttling is an attempt by the dark side to enforce the tree structure that increases profit potential at the top of the tree, while it also increases risk of downtime for everyone. Its cause is avarice, but I don't know whether that is allowed expression due to foolish ignorance or informed evil. After all, perhaps they don't know that if they charge for something and can't provide it, the market will show its wrath in equal proportion to their greed.
Why? Why not use a Creative Commons License, and place no restrictions? Or simply ask for attribution as your only restriction? While I understand a distaste for copyright on philosophical grounds, by disregarding it completely you are actually making your work less attractive to most people.
I understand your point, and I'm glad we don't all have to be constantly fighting to keep the Vandals from the gates. Luckily for you and me, there are lots of people who think otherwise:
In other words, it's not autopilot. It's just that the hard work of keeping the republic together happens out of sight. Not knowing your background I can't guess at your contributions, but you might ask yourself what you have done to deserve citizenship.
As a favorite poet put it:
Not only that, but the number of flaws and their severity is so much more important than how nice your patch system is that they shouldn't even be compared.
Remember the old "if Windows were a car" joke?
I'd rather have a car that just keeps running than one that I need to get fixed all the time, even if the dealer makes it really easy. I'd rather have a car that doesn't get taken over by organized crime if I don't buy the optional armor plating. I'd rather have a car I can let the kids drive without having to give them the title.
I'd rather be able to upgrade my car for free, whenever I want. I'd rather not have pull off the highway and restart the engine to fix whatever is wrong (and it's just the CD player acting up). It's great that it comes with a CD player, but I'd rather not be stuck with that one if I find something better. Same for the engine, transmission, and even the armor plating: if I find a better part, I'd like to be able to slap it on and have it fit. Without restarting the engine, unless that's what I'm replacing.
I just looked at Python. I must have been thinking of a different language, probably ruby or tcl.
First lesson: yes, you are. If you want to be a programmer, that's how you will start. You're the smartest, but you just don't know everything.
What platform are you using? It makes a difference.
I learned to progam (well, if you call it that) using BASIC on a TRS-80 Model II (with the 16K expansion, thank you very much!). The cassette tape storage would lose half my saves, so my devotion to backups was burned in.
Just pick a language you can use on your own computer that has a "hello, world" program. That's what we call a simple program that just prints "Hello, world!" to your screen. Read the manual. Alter the program a little. Find other programs, and alter them a little. Eventually you'll get it.
You might try Javascript. There's not much barrier to entry, and you can run it anywhere you have a browser.
I found Python confusing at first, so I wouldn't recommend it to a raw beginner. Maybe for the second or third language.
If the syntax (all the little braces and symbols and how they go together) is confusing, you might try BASIC on a TRS-80 Model II :-).
Would throwing more resources actually help speed the process, though? More resources (meaning more people) just tend to get more done in the same or longer time. It's not a linear relationship, anyway. And the "more" they get done is not necessarily productive. On its face, adding more resources to the test phase would seem to make testing faster, but what happens to the bugs that the testers find? More testers, more bugs, and an increased need to analyze and correct them.
What it comes down to is setting arbitrary deadlines, and project-managing backwards to say how thorough a job you'll do with the time and resources at hand. In other words, the only thing more resources buys you is additional thoroughness, and maybe not even that.
We aren't to the point of virtual citizenship, but we may be in the middle of a trend toward borderless loyalty. People are becoming less loyal to the nation-state and more loyal to ideas and movements (religions, software models, companies, professions). I hope that the trend doesn't result in a single world government before the individual borderless movements get powerful enough to keep one in check.
Untraceable electronic currency doesn't have any chance: the people issuing the currency want to know where it is. It's enough that numbers are inherently abstract, though. It will always be necessary to launder your funds if you want their movement kept discrete.
As far as the conciousness expansion of free information goes, that too is the wrong question. (Some) people will always choose to be blissfully ignorant about (some) things, and you can't force them to learn. The network makes it easy to find information, but it's always going to be more like fishing than a floodlight. People have to want the information you have.
In general, it's too soon for Utopia but the world is getting newer all the time.
Ah, now you're finally starting to put together a chain of reasoning.
Am I the only one who sees the irony of posting that with that sig?
While it didn't name-call, did't label, and wasn't profane, there was no attempt at making an argument.
Still, it was funny.
We are made of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus, sodium, iron, etc. Those building blocks are strewn throughout the universe, as far as we know. Now we think we see some complex, life-like compounds. We assume that means those formed where they are.
But it's a common violation of scientific principles to assume that the conditions we see now are those that have always existed. It makes for neater theories, but counterexamples are ubiquitous.
The FA merely suggests that DNA components could form in space. The same evidence suggests that if a planet is destroyed by catastrophic collision, it's hard to find the DNA afterwards.
I hope we never get hit.
That statement stands as an affront to anyone who's been truly abused.
It also display remarkable intolerance for the beliefs of others.
Denying parents the right to pass their beliefs (whatever they are) to their children is not only unconscionable, it's impossible -- unless you outlaw parenting, that is. Whoever raises kids automatically indoctrinates them with their beliefs. You can't counter with an example of a parent who has no beliefs, because there is no one like that. If you counter with a parent who tries not to indoctrinate their children, you must think a little deeper: they're still doing it.
Whether the indoctrination works is another matter.
Removing the freedom of religion is a terrible mistake. It opens the way to religious tyranny of one sort or another. The freedom of religion is an important buffer between us and tyranny. Whatever else the freedom of religion means it must include practicing it with your family.
Parents must and do have the right to teach their children whatever the parents believe, whether that's that the moon is made of cheese or what sports team to follow. It's what makes them parents, and once you have kids you realize it's the greatest joy in life. If we remove that right, the world would become a dull, dreary, oppressive place. It would also be an Orwellian nightmare.
I see that idea of criminalizing incorrect beliefs echoed on slashdot alot. It's quite troubling that our schools, in their proper effort to be agnostic, have failed to teach the basic principles which led to our nation's founding. Religious intolerance poses the danger, not religion itself.
Was it spotted before, or just mottled like other beagles?
That's wrong, or at least, the premise is incorrect. A publicly traded corporation is only required to abide by what their SEC paperwork says. For most companies, that does mean maximizing profits. But that's not an absolute rule.
In Google's SEC filings, and in most of its public statements, it says they won't be evil. Any investor in the company is assumed to have read those filings and public comments. Caveat emptor.
An accountant will tell you that "profit" is a somewhat artificial result. A complex set of corporate books allows you to attribute money to expenses, investment in future growth, savings for future tax liability, or whatever. Some companies choose to pay dividends, others choose to buy back their own stock. They have a range of options, as long as they cover themselves in their SEC filings.
They do have to play by the rules, but maximizing profit isn't necessarily one of them, and it doesn't have to mean maximizing quarterly profit.
Why is spyware taken for granted as something that exists? That there is a whole industry segment devoted solely to the removal of viruses, spyware, and the like is a tribute to Microsoft's incompetence. Now they release their own product into that segment.
It would be a triumph of marketing audacity if it weren't so despicable.
There was a business mantra in the '90s, and still out there today, that defines "quality" as whatever it takes to please the customer. Consultants hauled in buckets of money generating cliches out of that. Companies may be driven by customer satisfaction, which is fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't mean their products are any good.
The flaw in the cliched definition is that often the customer doesn't know what they're getting or have any basis to judge how good the product is.
Microsoft, being driven by market share, is a step removed even from that level of quality. They only want their customers to be happier with their products than with the competition (which is often another of their products or an earlier version of the same one).
Making things properly is not in their range of capability.
This could actually change not just the way music is developed, but all of human-computer interaction.
Ramifications include:
It will be nice to be able to "type" by moving around the room (or even the back yard) instead of sitting at a desk and keyboard.
>^pointer
:-)
Oh yeah, I forgot.
>better strings .
Hrrumph!
I'd write them if I didn't think they'd already been bought and paid for by big industry. Face it: congressmen and senators stopped being for the people a long long time ago.
I see you're in need of some encouragement.
Why do politicians politic? It isn't to amass wealth or fame, but power. Never mind what they want to do with that power, be it what you consider "good" or what you consider "evil". The LCD is that they all need power to get their goals accomplished, though for some of them power is itself the goal.
To amass power, they need wealth and fame. To get fame (or "get their message out", as they say) they need wealth. So that's why they need money. And that's why they listen to the rich.
But don't forget, what they really want is power. If they can skip the middleman with the money and go straight to the voter, they'll do that. After all, if they take the money they are beholden to the giver, lest the river run dry. They want votes, both from you and from their fellow politicians.
They also know that most people don't bother to contact them unless they really have a hot issue. Most people won't contact them at all, but the sample of contact they do get is probably representative of how people will vote.
So your one letter, call, or fax is very important. They listen, not because they care (which they may or may not do) but because they want your vote. If they can get your vote by paying attention to your issue, then they'll have you in their pocket when what they really want comes up.
The system is broken.
How many examples do we need (patenting story lines, genes, methods of evaluating employees) of the idiocy that is allowing business process and software patents?
Write them. Call them. Fax them.
Somebody else karma whore with the contact info, I have to go somewhere and be ill.
- Reentry heat (need to be inside a big rock or something)
- Boredom. Lichens are fairly uncontemplative creatures, however.
How exactly do you deduce you can do as you please with animals and plants?
Within reason, of course. They're here and they're made of food. I'm faster than most plants and more clever than most animals, so I eat the ones I like, get labor from the ones that are fit for it, and build things out of, or even burn for heat, the big plants. Next question?
How is it, exactly, that I kill millions of animals a day?
Do you have white blood cells, nasal mucus, and stomach acid? Sorry for being an insensitive clod if you don't.
It's ok to destroy a hundred planets full of plants and animals to save one person, yes. Yes, people are more important than animals. Yes, people are more important than plants and rocks.
If it's necessary to defeat a galactic Stalin that 100 planets full of people die, then yes. There are evils so great that they must be resisted by otherwise unconscionable means.
Yes, plants and animals are here for me to use as I see fit. Of course it's wrong to abuse them. But just try living without killing them. Why, your body does that millions of times a day.
If you don't believe there are ideals worth dying for, then your world is a pretty sorry place. If you don't believe in killing plants or animals to survive, you will either die or fail to follow your own beliefs.
It appears that you did, and also that I took little care in phrasing it. I meant simply that there are situations in which adhering to principle can lead to loss of life, even on a mass scale. Standing up to a galactic Stalin might mean loss of life for the people on a hundred planets.
Respect the planet? I wouldn't say that in the same way you would, I gather. I would be loyal to Earth as my home planet, but I don't worship it. Sorry if that offends you. I don't go out of my way to pollute, but I don't try to "green camp" my life, either.
As far as raising my children goes, butt out.
Write on the bare silicon, with a microscope and an electron beam.
Compilers are for feebs who can't read schmatics!
Portability is for indecisive cowards!