Yep, I say "more government", you read "any government - down with the police! down with the fire department! bring on the anarchy!". Like I said, never ceases to amaze me.
The biggest mistake you can make as a libertarian is to assume you represent the people.
Sigh... not sure if you're trolling there or just making a bitter point - but a point you have, there. It never ceases to amaze me how many people believe, after centuries and centuries of contrary evidence, that more government will make their lives better. It's the same on both sides (and there really are only two sides, since we libertarians seem to represent a statistically insignificant sliver of the population) - the only reason we have any freedom at all is because both sides can't seem to agree on what the government should control. Fortunately (from the perspective of the anti-libertarians) they finally seem to have put aside their differences and agreed to just control everything.
Wow... my cybernanny work filter won't even let me pull up that link (how unreasonable is that?). I guess I'll have to take a look when I get home. For another example, google "Paul Little" (I think he was sentenced to like 10 years or something). Your government hard at work, making the world no safer than it was before.
On one side, people don't want to be offended by someone telling them they are wrong to do this or that; on the other hand, they have no problem offending people that don't want to see, for example, obscenity.
Huh? I think you're getting mixed up here... everybody I've ever heard from (except you, evidently) is either all for outlawing obscenity and hate speech, or opposed to obscenity and hate speech laws. At the very least, I think we're consistent when it comes to this.
Tell that to Christopher Handley, who was recently sentenced to 15 years for possession of animated Japanese (underage) porn. Dude, obscenity is whatever the hell somebody else doesn't like.
"Well, it was hard for us, and we had to figure it out on our own
Wow... I hate to break this to you, but it wasn't really that hard for us... I certainly didn't need or want any mentoring, beside the odd technical book or code samples (you know, like the ones that are freely available as open source).
What I did, when I first started learning C and later when I first started learning Java, was to follow the newsgroup (comp.lang.c or comp.lang.java), and solve as many of the problems that were asked as I could (although in many cases, if it was obvious that this was somebody's homework assignment, I didn't necessarily post my solution back to the newsgroup). The "rentacoder" problems tend to be quite a bit more involved and poorly specified IMO.
that should rightfully result in you being imprisoned such as shouting fire in a crowded theatre
Is that really the only thing you anti-free-speech people can come up with? I mean, really... if I wanted to cause chaos and yelled "fire" in a crowded theater - assuming that people really did trample each other and get hurt, rather than just filing out in an orderly fashion or looking around, saying, "I don't see a fire. Where? What fire?" and then going back to their movie - I could always claim that I saw a fire, sorry about all that, don't know what happened to the fire...
That's interesting... I've been putting together simple 2D games for fun since I was a little kid and - the pixelart has always been by far the biggest problem I've had. The programming was always relatively straightforward. What do you use for pixel art? I've tried jdraw, inkscape, gimp (shudder...)... are there any actually good tools for this sort of thing?
Not that I have any desire to pursue this as a career - the horror stories on Slashdot talked me out of that years ago...
Well, I sure wish I could figure out which service provider the people not using Usenet are not using, because the ones I've been not using sure don't have anything worth not downloading to not download these days.
No, they should give you small, non-lethal assignments that force you to learn (the rudiments of) those things on your own. That's why I say four years of college probably = one (maybe two, depending on the student) years of "real" experience, because you're cutting your teeth on spoon-fed, "toy", didactic projects. College is not, and should not be, vocational training. That's what vocational training is for.
"I hear, and I forget. I see, and I remember. I do, and I understand" - ancient Chinese proverb.
On the contrary. Good CS programs don't - and should not - cover things like, for example, use of a debugger. Instead, you are (or should be) given mentally challenging assignments - learning, on your own, how to use a debugger, is (your) part of completing that assignment.
Well, in college's defense - college doesn't even try to teach you the things that you need to learn by experience (although four years of college under a computer science major does equate to probably one or two years of real-world experience), but instead teach you all the things that you might never come across in "real life" but that are actually useful (such as NP completeness, Turing's halting problem, push-down automata, queuing theory, red-black trees, binary searches, "big O" notation, etc. - plus, you know, calculus, linear algebra, statistics and maybe even a smattering of history, literature, sociology, hard science, and so on) The things you need to learn by experience can only be learned by experience - I've never heard anybody suggest that a college education is a substitute for experience. I'm not familiar with any college curriculum that covers things like source control, makefiles, modularization, making sense of a program that was written ten years ago, reverse-engineering code that you no longer have source for, effective use of a debugger etc. etc. - the idea is that you're supposed to go to college and then get experience and then finally become a well-rounded programmer.
If you know how to code, you're a self-taught coder... college is too busy teaching all the other stuff to waste it's time teaching you how to actually code.
Actually, I read recently about a case where a guy (Christopher Handley, I think his name was), was sentenced to 15 years for simply possessing a japanese cartoon depiction of such. I don't think it has to be real anything... if it oogs somebody out, you're going to jail.
Little by little, the corridors of power see public servants and statesmen replaced by people who just want power. It's inevitable.
Actually, it's worse than this. I'd love to have power, for example, just to be able to wield it reasonably and stop this sort of garbage. Believe me, if I were supreme overlord and dictator of the world, for example, 90% of Slashdot readers would be way happier. I don't have the patience or motivation to acquire power, though. However, there are people who do. There are people who undertake the considerable cost and effort involved in pursuing power just so that they can be reasonable with it. Ron Paul, for instance.
Those people lose, big. Ron Paul didn't become president of the United States - he's not even a
senator. He's a lowly congressman. He captured, what, 5% of the Republican primary? He was barely
even in the running. I think that, out of the contenders, he was dead last.
So not only do people that seek power for power's sake end up in the positions of power, only the people who explicitly wield in the most evil way achieve their goals. I have my theories about why
this happens - the most cycnical is that the general populace would rather live under tyranny than
liberty as long as the groups that they hate are even more miserable than they are.
One could have been obtained legally, and even if they weren't having them doesn't hurt anybody.
Whew! For a second there, I was afraid that somebody other than you was in charge of deciding whether a court's decision in one case could be applied to another court's decision in another case.
almost every single comment I've read has knotted my stomach to the point of violent rage this morning
That's funny, the only comments I've felt that way about on this thread were yours. (even though your posting anonymously every time I can tell it's the same person). Funny how that works, isn't it?
However, I must admit that your usage of all caps in a sentence has caused me to lend greater credence to your argument.
this topic has put me over the limit of people I can put on my foe list.
So, you're saying that > MAXINT people disagree with your point of view? That really ought to tell you something about the validity of your point of view and make you start questioning your value system, but somehow I think you'll illogically do the exact opposite.
Plus, now I know I can say whatever I want to you and you can't put me on your foe list, so - you're a doodoohead!
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, I say "more government", you read "any government - down with the police! down with the fire department! bring on the anarchy!". Like I said, never ceases to amaze me.
And when he says "we", he means "you", not "him". He's the one that needs taken care of.
Er... "almost like"? I can't speak for the OP, but that's exactly what I'm saying. Seeing as how it's true and all.
Sigh... not sure if you're trolling there or just making a bitter point - but a point you have, there. It never ceases to amaze me how many people believe, after centuries and centuries of contrary evidence, that more government will make their lives better. It's the same on both sides (and there really are only two sides, since we libertarians seem to represent a statistically insignificant sliver of the population) - the only reason we have any freedom at all is because both sides can't seem to agree on what the government should control. Fortunately (from the perspective of the anti-libertarians) they finally seem to have put aside their differences and agreed to just control everything.
Wow... my cybernanny work filter won't even let me pull up that link (how unreasonable is that?). I guess I'll have to take a look when I get home. For another example, google "Paul Little" (I think he was sentenced to like 10 years or something). Your government hard at work, making the world no safer than it was before.
Huh? I think you're getting mixed up here... everybody I've ever heard from (except you, evidently) is either all for outlawing obscenity and hate speech, or opposed to obscenity and hate speech laws. At the very least, I think we're consistent when it comes to this.
Tell that to Christopher Handley, who was recently sentenced to 15 years for possession of animated Japanese (underage) porn. Dude, obscenity is whatever the hell somebody else doesn't like.
As you can see from the above post, it's not just the AARP people, unfortunately.
Wow... I hate to break this to you, but it wasn't really that hard for us... I certainly didn't need or want any mentoring, beside the odd technical book or code samples (you know, like the ones that are freely available as open source).
What I did, when I first started learning C and later when I first started learning Java, was to follow the newsgroup (comp.lang.c or comp.lang.java), and solve as many of the problems that were asked as I could (although in many cases, if it was obvious that this was somebody's homework assignment, I didn't necessarily post my solution back to the newsgroup). The "rentacoder" problems tend to be quite a bit more involved and poorly specified IMO.
Careful, there... there's a free-speech-advocating mob here on slashdot who you'd hate to have your address if "mob justice" comes back into fashion.
Is that really the only thing you anti-free-speech people can come up with? I mean, really... if I wanted to cause chaos and yelled "fire" in a crowded theater - assuming that people really did trample each other and get hurt, rather than just filing out in an orderly fashion or looking around, saying, "I don't see a fire. Where? What fire?" and then going back to their movie - I could always claim that I saw a fire, sorry about all that, don't know what happened to the fire...
That's interesting... I've been putting together simple 2D games for fun since I was a little kid and - the pixelart has always been by far the biggest problem I've had. The programming was always relatively straightforward. What do you use for pixel art? I've tried jdraw, inkscape, gimp (shudder...)... are there any actually good tools for this sort of thing?
Not that I have any desire to pursue this as a career - the horror stories on Slashdot talked me out of that years ago...
Well, I sure wish I could figure out which service provider the people not using Usenet are not using, because the ones I've been not using sure don't have anything worth not downloading to not download these days.
No, they should give you small, non-lethal assignments that force you to learn (the rudiments of) those things on your own. That's why I say four years of college probably = one (maybe two, depending on the student) years of "real" experience, because you're cutting your teeth on spoon-fed, "toy", didactic projects. College is not, and should not be, vocational training. That's what vocational training is for.
"I hear, and I forget. I see, and I remember. I do, and I understand" - ancient Chinese proverb.
On the contrary. Good CS programs don't - and should not - cover things like, for example, use of a debugger. Instead, you are (or should be) given mentally challenging assignments - learning, on your own, how to use a debugger, is (your) part of completing that assignment.
Well, in college's defense - college doesn't even try to teach you the things that you need to learn by experience (although four years of college under a computer science major does equate to probably one or two years of real-world experience), but instead teach you all the things that you might never come across in "real life" but that are actually useful (such as NP completeness, Turing's halting problem, push-down automata, queuing theory, red-black trees, binary searches, "big O" notation, etc. - plus, you know, calculus, linear algebra, statistics and maybe even a smattering of history, literature, sociology, hard science, and so on) The things you need to learn by experience can only be learned by experience - I've never heard anybody suggest that a college education is a substitute for experience. I'm not familiar with any college curriculum that covers things like source control, makefiles, modularization, making sense of a program that was written ten years ago, reverse-engineering code that you no longer have source for, effective use of a debugger etc. etc. - the idea is that you're supposed to go to college and then get experience and then finally become a well-rounded programmer.
If you know how to code, you're a self-taught coder... college is too busy teaching all the other stuff to waste it's time teaching you how to actually code.
Actually, I read recently about a case where a guy (Christopher Handley, I think his name was), was sentenced to 15 years for simply possessing a japanese cartoon depiction of such. I don't think it has to be real anything... if it oogs somebody out, you're going to jail.
Actually, it's worse than this. I'd love to have power, for example, just to be able to wield it reasonably and stop this sort of garbage. Believe me, if I were supreme overlord and dictator of the world, for example, 90% of Slashdot readers would be way happier. I don't have the patience or motivation to acquire power, though. However, there are people who do. There are people who undertake the considerable cost and effort involved in pursuing power just so that they can be reasonable with it. Ron Paul, for instance.
Those people lose, big. Ron Paul didn't become president of the United States - he's not even a senator. He's a lowly congressman. He captured, what, 5% of the Republican primary? He was barely even in the running. I think that, out of the contenders, he was dead last.
So not only do people that seek power for power's sake end up in the positions of power, only the people who explicitly wield in the most evil way achieve their goals. I have my theories about why this happens - the most cycnical is that the general populace would rather live under tyranny than liberty as long as the groups that they hate are even more miserable than they are.
You seemed to have been modded "-1, accurate"
Whew! For a second there, I was afraid that somebody other than you was in charge of deciding whether a court's decision in one case could be applied to another court's decision in another case.
And here's an example of the tragic results...
Fortunately, that would never work here on Slashdot.
That's funny, the only comments I've felt that way about on this thread were yours. (even though your posting anonymously every time I can tell it's the same person). Funny how that works, isn't it?
However, I must admit that your usage of all caps in a sentence has caused me to lend greater credence to your argument.
So, you're saying that > MAXINT people disagree with your point of view? That really ought to tell you something about the validity of your point of view and make you start questioning your value system, but somehow I think you'll illogically do the exact opposite.
Plus, now I know I can say whatever I want to you and you can't put me on your foe list, so - you're a doodoohead!