I don't think anyone is suggesting to totally remove all government control. As someone said in another post, any resource needs some government control to protect consumers from predatory companies.
What people are saying is that Sacramento made(and is still making) some really bad decisions that eventually led to the energy crisis. They over-regulated by putting price caps on energy, as well as severely restricting the building of new power plants. PG&E was slowly running out of money for years, and anyone who actually paid attention saw it coming at least a year in advance, when PG&E started talking about bankrupcy. The problem is that 98% of people don't give a crap until their power goes out during "Friends", then they look up from their TV and start screaming "What the hell happened!?!? What big corporation is responsible!!". The funny thing is that the exact same thing is happening to the state in general, which is why I wouldn't touch real estate in CA with a 10 foot pole right now.
I think we all, hopefully, understand that some government supervision is required to make sure the people aren't getting screwed. We just don't want the government forcing a company to sell a product for a loss, causing it to eventually bankrupt itself, especially when that company is the one which keeps our power on at home.
The other problem with that colleged program is that it is totaly MS Windows based!
Yuck, that could be part of the problem right there.
Anyway, you are right, we did all of that in college so they should at least have heard of it, even if they couldn't remember the algorithm. The problem is that no matter how good a college is, if the person doesn't have a desire to learn new things and is just going through the motions for the money or some other reason, they will never learn much. As an example, I graduated with a guy who was a CS major too that didn't know how to replace his CD-ROM on his PC. And this guy was not some super genius who was too busy contemplating AI to worry about how a computer worked inside, he just cared only about what was on the tests.
I wouldn't let it bother you too much. I recently(about a year ago) had a similar experience with a company in the Bay Area where I live. The guy(some 25 year old "director") kept going on about how they were about to go IPO, and that I should feel privileged to interview for that highly competetive job. Now a year later they still haven't gone public and a number of competitors have sprung up in their niche. I have since found a much better job than they were offering, for more money.
Unfortunately five years ago these companies had god-like status, especially among computer people. Myself and almost every computer person I know worked for low wages in exchange for shares/options which never existed or in companies which were worth nothing. The world has moved on since then but these companies refuse to catch up.
Just be up front about it so you don't waste your time at interviews. If they start saying stuff like "We expect everyone to work 10-12 hour days, for low wages and stock options." just politely get up a leave. We, as computer people, get f'd over way too much because we are generally nice, non-confrontational people. For the few hours you are in an interview think like a used car salesman.
P.S. BTW, larger companies tend to put their worst employees in HR, like the ones that they can't quite justify getting rid of, but who can't be trusted with anything else. It's been like that for years and years, which is pretty scary if you think about it.
BS in CS doesn't equal proficiency in C++. Is it possible that s/he just didn't know C++? I know the college I went to used C exclusively then went to a highly Java oriented curriculum after I left, completely "skipping" C++. I had never heard of STL until you mentioned it, for example.
They should at least know what a hash table is though, even if they don't know a particular language's implementation of it.
In general I agree however there is one minor point I want to make.
Often the FPS they mention in reviews such as on tomshardware, etc are during flyovers on certain maps where nothing is happening. So say for instance your card gets 60FPS and you don't see the point in getting 100FPS with a better card.
In general that makes sense, however when you get 10-15 people on your screen all using weapons with trails and smoke, etc. FPS drops FAST. With your 60FPS, you might drop to 20FPS in a major firefight, and 20FPS is definately noticable. However the better card would drop to say 60FPS, which is still entirely playable.
In other words it is good to have a performance buffer so that you know that your worst case scenario is going to be still playable. I shoot for about 30+FPS as worst case. So I figure I need about 70+ average to get that in most games.
In general though I agree with you. If I was building a machine to play strictly one type of game, which wasn't too taxing I definately would not shoot for 200FPS.
You obviously don't live in the Bay Area in CA. Come out here to visit for a while and you'll be suprised. I understand you were joking, though. Me too.:-)
Excellent point. I find that I am much more inclined to spend my spare time working on someone else's computer if they mention a six-pack of something imported or micro-brewed.:-)
Just out of curiousity, what has your PC morphed into? What are the current specs?
Don't worry, I am not asking you in order to set you up to say "ooh, look mine is better because of this, this, and this and I only spent X" or anything like that. I am just curious, for reference. I have a slightly different style of upgrading and wanted to compare end results with actual dollars spent.
Ahhh, so you do admit that they did break an agreement. So legally we had the justification. You aren't denying that then.
So your point is that in your opinion the amount that they broke a treaty wasn't enough to justify war. There is a big, big difference between "it's a pre-emptive war"(meaning we attacked without any provokation, which is technically forbidden) and what you are saying now.
If you want to argue that it wasn't worth it, fine. That is debatable and a somewhat reasonable stance. What bothers me it when people call it a "pre-emptive strike", and an illegal war, when it clearly was neither.
>What's the next country you are going to invade? North Korea?
Clearly we can't since they are backed by China, although the world would be a much better place without Kim Jung Il(or however you spell it). Plus there is a difference between shooting at us from your own borders and airspace( or close to it ) which we encroach on occasionally, and breaking a treaty which you signed with an occupying power in exchange for being about to keep power in your country. Saddam knew what the conseqences were and he kept firing at us.
I never knew who paid for it. Since it was him then clearly it should be taken down. Even if it had nothing to do with religion it should be taken down, since the courthouse isn't a place for his personal things.
You at least explained yourself better than the previous poster. Thanks for that.
I understand your point completely, however I think you take what politicians say at face value too much. In politics especially you need to read between the lines, then read between those lines to get at anything resembling the complete reason for something. We have to be polite to our allies, but we also can't let them make billions in illegal deals without doing anything. In other words, all of the "selling points" to the war were just surface reasons(good reasons but not the whole picture). And just saying, "oh, well if it wasn't for WMD then it must have been for oil" isn't much better than buying the surface reasons. In fact it's worse, because you understand there is more than one layer of meaning to something, and then just assuming there is only two layers.
Politicians do this stuff with their eyes closed, thinking about how best to fake people out, or how best to make it look to people that they were faked out by the opposing party.
As a side note, they clearly did still have WMD, since we just found Sarin in small quantities. It may be old and somewhat less lethal than original, but I still wouldn't want to have it anywhere near a large city.
> If someone doesn't want the statue there, and the government fights to keep there and uses law enforcement to make sure it stays, then it is in essence making the law respect an establishment of religion.
I see what you are saying. But what if the majority of people(in that area, whose taxes paid for it) want it there, which is what happened in the Alabama case? Certainly the govt. has the right to protect public property, right? I'm assuming the Judge didn't buy this statue himself, BTW. If he did, then he certainly shouldn't display it on public property.
>or just grabbing voter registration records and claiming anyone who's not a Republican
I was wondering how you were going to turn this into an anti-Bush rant, and I wasn't disappointed. You do realize that registered Democrats far outnumber registered Republicans, don't you?
Someone with different views than my own who explains their position logically! Good post. I would mod you up, if I had points and hadn't already posted to this thread.
The few points I disagree with are these:
> It requires us not to snub our noses at the UN or any countyr who doesnt have a cowboy mentality that our administration seems to have.
We did go to the U.N. repeatedly and asked them many times for action against Iraq. Unfortunately Germany, France, and Russia were in the midst of massive illegal deals with Iraq at the time and would not approve action.
>The only thing to do is police everyone, NOT attack them, but be vigilant.
I agree that this should be the goal. However the fact that some of the terrorists are state sponsored changes things. It essentially becomes a war at that point. Iran and Iraq both supported terrorism against Israel(as well as S.A., Syria, etc.). The question is why. I believe that they want to maintain power over the moderate and liberal muslims, by destroying democracy and western influence in their region.
In other words, the couldn't care less about Palestine and the Palestinians, they are simply using that as a way to hide their real agenda. The whole thing is a big smoke and mirrors trick Iran, et. al. have us playing, keeping us occupied with Palestine/Israel, all the while continuing to oppress their people. It's no coincidence that every time a peace treaty is close a suicide bomber kills someone in Israel, which make Isreal attack Palestine, then the whole treaty is thrown away.
So I guess the real question that I ask myself is this: If there is a country(or region) run by a small group of radicals, which is oppressing(usually brutally) the majority of people who just want to live their lives in peace, is it our place to step in and help them free themselves? Some people say no, and that it isn't our place and our responsibility, or that we are forcing our views on people. I disagree. IMHO, if a crime is being committed and I am able to stop it and I don't, then I am as guilty of that crime as the person who committed it. So I figure it is American's moral responsibility to help out oppressed people.
Anyway, just my $.02. As I said, good post. It's nice to have some actual discussion on here rather than just rants and empty rhetoric(from both sides).
I was trying to find a way to express my disappointment and frustration with the article you responded to, but you summed it up so well, anything I could say would pale by comparison. Bravo!!
BTW, my favorite quote was, "The threat is not dumb Americans you pompous arrogant condescending coward, it's terrorists who want to fecking kill us."
>We need to find a way to get the moderate muslim majority off of their asses and get them to do the work of cleaning up what is really their problem not ours.
Agree completely. Unfortunately as the "big kid on the block" a lot of times cleaning up the worlds messes usually falls on the U.S. It should technically be the U.N. but we all know what a crock of shit that whole thing is.
The moderate Arabs, without our help, don't have the military muscle to take back their lives from the entrenched oppressive regimes. Actually the way we are going about it is probably better. If an all out war broke out over the history of the middle east, moderates vs. radicals, the death toll could be staggering. Hundreds of thousands probably. With a few quick, decisive victories we could be saving a lot of lives.
Since when do you only have two people to vote for?
If you think the government is screwed up and taking your rights away or whatever then vote someone who represents you into office. And if 90% of America disagrees with you and votes for Bush or Kerry, then maybe, just maybe, it's not some vast conspiracy. Maybe it's just that most people don't agree with you.
Unless your theory is that 90% of the world is so much stupider than you that they can't make intelligent decisions. In which case why do we allow "stupid" people to vote anyway? Let's make it so that only people of say, 130IQ or higher can vote.
You can't have your cake and eat it to. If you want representative government you have to allow people who don't agree with you to vote. And if they vote differently from you, you have to suck it up and deal with it.
>Any Mechanic I've even seen will look at a car for Free and try to tell you what's wrong.
This must be different in different parts of the country. Where I am any mechanic will charge you $50-60 just to diagnose the problem. They don't work for free. OTOH, when they fix the problem they usually use that charge as their first hour of labor on the car. So if it's a minor thing then can fix in a few minutes you only pay the diagnostic fee and parts.
As someone else said, it keeps them from doing tons of free diagnostics and then having you fix it yourself.
>Henry Rollins couldn't act his way out of a wet paper sack with a utility knife.
So how is that different from Hayden Christianson? At least Rollins can scare the crap out of people with his mean tattoos. Plus as an added bonus I think the tattoo on his back says "Search and Destroy", which corresponds nicely to Anakin/Vader's mission in life after his trade to the dark side.
You make a good point, however Columbus is far from a small town. Population in 2000 is about 700,000 people(15th largest in the US). So it 77 it may have been 500,000 or so. By comparison, the town I went to elementary school in had about 1200 people.
I'm sure the effect you describe occured where I lived, but Columbus is a very large city which should be pretty current.
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I don't think anyone is suggesting to totally remove all government control. As someone said in another post, any resource needs some government control to protect consumers from predatory companies.
What people are saying is that Sacramento made(and is still making) some really bad decisions that eventually led to the energy crisis. They over-regulated by putting price caps on energy, as well as severely restricting the building of new power plants. PG&E was slowly running out of money for years, and anyone who actually paid attention saw it coming at least a year in advance, when PG&E started talking about bankrupcy. The problem is that 98% of people don't give a crap until their power goes out during "Friends", then they look up from their TV and start screaming "What the hell happened!?!? What big corporation is responsible!!". The funny thing is that the exact same thing is happening to the state in general, which is why I wouldn't touch real estate in CA with a 10 foot pole right now.
I think we all, hopefully, understand that some government supervision is required to make sure the people aren't getting screwed. We just don't want the government forcing a company to sell a product for a loss, causing it to eventually bankrupt itself, especially when that company is the one which keeps our power on at home.
>Any company which starts an interview by saying what a privilege it is to work for them are arseholes.
Yeah, that is pretty much what I was thinking at the time. I couldn't get out of there fast enough.
The other problem with that colleged program is that it is totaly MS Windows based!
Yuck, that could be part of the problem right there.
Anyway, you are right, we did all of that in college so they should at least have heard of it, even if they couldn't remember the algorithm. The problem is that no matter how good a college is, if the person doesn't have a desire to learn new things and is just going through the motions for the money or some other reason, they will never learn much. As an example, I graduated with a guy who was a CS major too that didn't know how to replace his CD-ROM on his PC. And this guy was not some super genius who was too busy contemplating AI to worry about how a computer worked inside, he just cared only about what was on the tests.
I wouldn't let it bother you too much. I recently(about a year ago) had a similar experience with a company in the Bay Area where I live. The guy(some 25 year old "director") kept going on about how they were about to go IPO, and that I should feel privileged to interview for that highly competetive job. Now a year later they still haven't gone public and a number of competitors have sprung up in their niche. I have since found a much better job than they were offering, for more money.
Unfortunately five years ago these companies had god-like status, especially among computer people. Myself and almost every computer person I know worked for low wages in exchange for shares/options which never existed or in companies which were worth nothing. The world has moved on since then but these companies refuse to catch up.
Just be up front about it so you don't waste your time at interviews. If they start saying stuff like "We expect everyone to work 10-12 hour days, for low wages and stock options." just politely get up a leave. We, as computer people, get f'd over way too much because we are generally nice, non-confrontational people. For the few hours you are in an interview think like a used car salesman.
P.S. BTW, larger companies tend to put their worst employees in HR, like the ones that they can't quite justify getting rid of, but who can't be trusted with anything else. It's been like that for years and years, which is pretty scary if you think about it.
BS in CS doesn't equal proficiency in C++. Is it possible that s/he just didn't know C++? I know the college I went to used C exclusively then went to a highly Java oriented curriculum after I left, completely "skipping" C++. I had never heard of STL until you mentioned it, for example.
They should at least know what a hash table is though, even if they don't know a particular language's implementation of it.
In general I agree however there is one minor point I want to make.
Often the FPS they mention in reviews such as on tomshardware, etc are during flyovers on certain maps where nothing is happening. So say for instance your card gets 60FPS and you don't see the point in getting 100FPS with a better card.
In general that makes sense, however when you get 10-15 people on your screen all using weapons with trails and smoke, etc. FPS drops FAST. With your 60FPS, you might drop to 20FPS in a major firefight, and 20FPS is definately noticable. However the better card would drop to say 60FPS, which is still entirely playable.
In other words it is good to have a performance buffer so that you know that your worst case scenario is going to be still playable. I shoot for about 30+FPS as worst case. So I figure I need about 70+ average to get that in most games.
In general though I agree with you. If I was building a machine to play strictly one type of game, which wasn't too taxing I definately would not shoot for 200FPS.
You obviously don't live in the Bay Area in CA. Come out here to visit for a while and you'll be suprised. I understand you were joking, though. Me too. :-)
Excellent point. I find that I am much more inclined to spend my spare time working on someone else's computer if they mention a six-pack of something imported or micro-brewed. :-)
Just out of curiousity, what has your PC morphed into? What are the current specs?
Don't worry, I am not asking you in order to set you up to say "ooh, look mine is better because of this, this, and this and I only spent X" or anything like that. I am just curious, for reference. I have a slightly different style of upgrading and wanted to compare end results with actual dollars spent.
Ahhh, so you do admit that they did break an agreement. So legally we had the justification. You aren't denying that then.
So your point is that in your opinion the amount that they broke a treaty wasn't enough to justify war. There is a big, big difference between "it's a pre-emptive war"(meaning we attacked without any provokation, which is technically forbidden) and what you are saying now.
If you want to argue that it wasn't worth it, fine. That is debatable and a somewhat reasonable stance. What bothers me it when people call it a "pre-emptive strike", and an illegal war, when it clearly was neither.
>What's the next country you are going to invade? North Korea?
Clearly we can't since they are backed by China, although the world would be a much better place without Kim Jung Il(or however you spell it). Plus there is a difference between shooting at us from your own borders and airspace( or close to it ) which we encroach on occasionally, and breaking a treaty which you signed with an occupying power in exchange for being about to keep power in your country. Saddam knew what the conseqences were and he kept firing at us.
I never knew who paid for it. Since it was him then clearly it should be taken down. Even if it had nothing to do with religion it should be taken down, since the courthouse isn't a place for his personal things.
> pre-emptive war without any proof of anything
It wasn't pre-emptive. They attacked U.S. airplanes. No more justification is needed. The broke the cease-fire agreement.
>USA wanted a war with Iraq--nothing more, nothing less! No one else did
Of course not, they were getting rich off of illegal oil-for-weapons scams.
You at least explained yourself better than the previous poster. Thanks for that.
I understand your point completely, however I think you take what politicians say at face value too much. In politics especially you need to read between the lines, then read between those lines to get at anything resembling the complete reason for something. We have to be polite to our allies, but we also can't let them make billions in illegal deals without doing anything. In other words, all of the "selling points" to the war were just surface reasons(good reasons but not the whole picture). And just saying, "oh, well if it wasn't for WMD then it must have been for oil" isn't much better than buying the surface reasons. In fact it's worse, because you understand there is more than one layer of meaning to something, and then just assuming there is only two layers.
Politicians do this stuff with their eyes closed, thinking about how best to fake people out, or how best to make it look to people that they were faked out by the opposing party.
As a side note, they clearly did still have WMD, since we just found Sarin in small quantities. It may be old and somewhat less lethal than original, but I still wouldn't want to have it anywhere near a large city.
> If someone doesn't want the statue there, and the government fights to keep there and uses law enforcement to make sure it stays, then it is in essence making the law respect an establishment of religion.
I see what you are saying. But what if the majority of people(in that area, whose taxes paid for it) want it there, which is what happened in the Alabama case? Certainly the govt. has the right to protect public property, right? I'm assuming the Judge didn't buy this statue himself, BTW. If he did, then he certainly shouldn't display it on public property.
>or just grabbing voter registration records and claiming anyone who's not a Republican
I was wondering how you were going to turn this into an anti-Bush rant, and I wasn't disappointed. You do realize that registered Democrats far outnumber registered Republicans, don't you?
It's still not making a "law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof", no matter where you put it. Is it?
Someone with different views than my own who explains their position logically! Good post. I would mod you up, if I had points and hadn't already posted to this thread.
The few points I disagree with are these:
> It requires us not to snub our noses at the UN or any countyr who doesnt have a cowboy mentality that our administration seems to have.
We did go to the U.N. repeatedly and asked them many times for action against Iraq. Unfortunately Germany, France, and Russia were in the midst of massive illegal deals with Iraq at the time and would not approve action.
>The only thing to do is police everyone, NOT attack them, but be vigilant.
I agree that this should be the goal. However the fact that some of the terrorists are state sponsored changes things. It essentially becomes a war at that point. Iran and Iraq both supported terrorism against Israel(as well as S.A., Syria, etc.). The question is why. I believe that they want to maintain power over the moderate and liberal muslims, by destroying democracy and western influence in their region. In other words, the couldn't care less about Palestine and the Palestinians, they are simply using that as a way to hide their real agenda. The whole thing is a big smoke and mirrors trick Iran, et. al. have us playing, keeping us occupied with Palestine/Israel, all the while continuing to oppress their people. It's no coincidence that every time a peace treaty is close a suicide bomber kills someone in Israel, which make Isreal attack Palestine, then the whole treaty is thrown away.
So I guess the real question that I ask myself is this: If there is a country(or region) run by a small group of radicals, which is oppressing(usually brutally) the majority of people who just want to live their lives in peace, is it our place to step in and help them free themselves? Some people say no, and that it isn't our place and our responsibility, or that we are forcing our views on people. I disagree. IMHO, if a crime is being committed and I am able to stop it and I don't, then I am as guilty of that crime as the person who committed it. So I figure it is American's moral responsibility to help out oppressed people.
Anyway, just my $.02. As I said, good post. It's nice to have some actual discussion on here rather than just rants and empty rhetoric(from both sides).
I was trying to find a way to express my disappointment and frustration with the article you responded to, but you summed it up so well, anything I could say would pale by comparison. Bravo!!
BTW, my favorite quote was, "The threat is not dumb Americans you pompous arrogant condescending coward, it's terrorists who want to fecking kill us."
>We need to find a way to get the moderate muslim majority off of their asses and get them to do the work of cleaning up what is really their problem not ours.
Agree completely. Unfortunately as the "big kid on the block" a lot of times cleaning up the worlds messes usually falls on the U.S. It should technically be the U.N. but we all know what a crock of shit that whole thing is.
The moderate Arabs, without our help, don't have the military muscle to take back their lives from the entrenched oppressive regimes. Actually the way we are going about it is probably better. If an all out war broke out over the history of the middle east, moderates vs. radicals, the death toll could be staggering. Hundreds of thousands probably. With a few quick, decisive victories we could be saving a lot of lives.
My kingdom for some mod points. Unfortunately I have none and I already posted to this thread too. Someone please mod parent UP!!!
Since when do you only have two people to vote for?
If you think the government is screwed up and taking your rights away or whatever then vote someone who represents you into office. And if 90% of America disagrees with you and votes for Bush or Kerry, then maybe, just maybe, it's not some vast conspiracy. Maybe it's just that most people don't agree with you.
Unless your theory is that 90% of the world is so much stupider than you that they can't make intelligent decisions. In which case why do we allow "stupid" people to vote anyway? Let's make it so that only people of say, 130IQ or higher can vote.
You can't have your cake and eat it to. If you want representative government you have to allow people who don't agree with you to vote. And if they vote differently from you, you have to suck it up and deal with it.
>Any Mechanic I've even seen will look at a car for Free and try to tell you what's wrong.
This must be different in different parts of the country. Where I am any mechanic will charge you $50-60 just to diagnose the problem. They don't work for free. OTOH, when they fix the problem they usually use that charge as their first hour of labor on the car. So if it's a minor thing then can fix in a few minutes you only pay the diagnostic fee and parts.
As someone else said, it keeps them from doing tons of free diagnostics and then having you fix it yourself.
Thank you! I thought I was the only one noticed that. If (bytes/sec = bit/sec * 8) there is a major problem.
>Henry Rollins couldn't act his way out of a wet paper sack with a utility knife.
So how is that different from Hayden Christianson? At least Rollins can scare the crap out of people with his mean tattoos. Plus as an added bonus I think the tattoo on his back says "Search and Destroy", which corresponds nicely to Anakin/Vader's mission in life after his trade to the dark side.
You make a good point, however Columbus is far from a small town. Population in 2000 is about 700,000 people(15th largest in the US). So it 77 it may have been 500,000 or so. By comparison, the town I went to elementary school in had about 1200 people.
I'm sure the effect you describe occured where I lived, but Columbus is a very large city which should be pretty current.