If a company is "Too Big To Fail(TM)" they probably got to that point by exploiting existing regulation and/or politicians. I would rather see failing companies fail so the resources they have can be reallocated to more worthwhile uses. If you try to regulate away the natural consequences for stupid and risky behavior, you encourage more stupid and risky behavior, and it's necessary descendant, failure. "Failure" is not a bad word. Failure is life. Failure is necessary. Without some means of saying "this is bad", we will waste limited resources on endless streams of bad ideas.
And remember, your and my idea of "Good" and "Bad" may not be shared with the rest of the market in general. Put your ideas out there, let the market decide. If the market says bad, move on.
Then how am I supposed to make a rational decision about my line of work? All compensation for all positions for all companies should be freely available, so I know that if I sign on as a developer with shop A I'm getting a worse deal than if I signed on with shop B.
Companies advertise how much they want to pay for particular jobs all the time. Just go look at any job hunting website or newspaper. You can also reference industry surveys that may give you a suggestion as to the value of a particular skill set. But in the end, you earn what you earn, I earn what I earn, presumably based on merit.
If we have the same job and you do better than me, you should earn more than me. If I do better than you, I should earn more than you. If one company values your work more than another company and wants to pay you more, go work for that company. If no one is paying you what you want to earn, maybe your need to re-evaluate what your skills are worth. And if you can convince someone to pay you a million dollars to push some papers around on your desk while your surf the internet and do nothing, good for you. It's none of my business and I congratulate you on your accomplishment.
So what does your compensation have to do with mine or anyone else's? And what does that have to do with your career decisions? If you want to choose a job simply based on pay scale, that's fine, go ahead. But when you lose that job because you suck at it, please don't come whining to the rest of us. Perhaps instead you should choose a job that both fits your skills *and* pays something reasonable. And if you can't find such a job, tough luck. Improve your skills, get new skills, find a new job market, become an entrepreneur, whatever. Just because someone is good at checkers and wants to make $150k a year, doesn't mean such a job has to exist to satisfy them. And if someone does find a job paying $150k for playing checkers, great, let them. Why should anyone stop them? Someone apparently thinks that's worth $150k. The fact that anyone other than their employer may not agree amounts to jack squat.
Frankly, you just need to worry about yourself and how much you're getting paid. Worrying about how much other people get paid is a waste of time and leads to immature whining on the Internet.
All compensation for all positions for all companies should be freely available, so I know that if I sign on as a developer with shop A I'm getting a worse deal than if I signed on with shop B.
Quit being lazy. If you're not going to do the work to find the best jobs, why should you get the best jobs?
I should also be able to see exactly how many zeroes there are in every executive's paycheck, bonuses and stock options so I can make an informed decision about whether or not to invest in a given company.
You already can. Publicly traded companies publish such things publicly. Privately held companies have no obligation to do so, but money is a great motivator. If you want to see and they don't want to show you, don't give them your money. If such a private company really wants your investment, just ask, maybe they'll show you to get your money.
No real loss, except for the opportunity cost of all that extra money going into improving the CEO's bankroll instead of into improving the company.
And what's the opportunity cost of losing said CEO to your competitor?
We need to talk, discuss, and use diplomacy instead of force.
Not "instead of force", rather before force. When diplomacy fails, use force. Which has been the policy of the Bush Administration whether you are willing to accept it or not. Force can never be taken off the table, as unpleasant as it is. If you can't back up your words with anything meaningful, your words are meaningless. Economic sanctions and other means of non-violent coercion only go so far with irrational people.
U.S. laws are not applicable outside our borders (and vice versa, the rest of the world's law has no bearing in the U.S.), so there's absolutely no U.S. law that they could have broken.
Along those same lines, U.S. military personnel are not law enforcement agents, they are warriors. Likewise, the detainees are not criminals, they are combatants, and do not deserve access to the U.S. criminal court system.
Oh, and I'd personally like to thank the genius who decided to go with a beta version of Firefox for a long-term support version of an OS... now THAT is how to FAIL. Remember that this is a desktop distro. It doesn't necessarily feature the same version number stability you might see in an enterprise server distribution. Once the final version of Firefox 3 is out, I'm sure we'll see an update available.
And they aren't the first distro to use a pre-release version for a package, RHEL4 uses a release candidate for CUPS 1.1.22.
Then you have people that have minimal skills and live off of minimum wage. They can't afford a fuel-efficient car so are stuck with whatever used piece of junk they can get. If fuel goes up in price they have no choice but to drive less or make cuts elsewhere. Or they can make more money so they can buy a more fuel-efficient car or more fuel for their current car.
Improve yourself, improve your circumstances. Work hard and reap the benefits.
I'm glad that Microsoft finally listened to years of customers complaining they didn't have enough windows to blindly click "OK" on and implemented the UAC. And DRM? I was waiting for that one for years!
And menu bars that are separate from the windows they're associated with? Single button mice? Thank you, Apple!
It's not just a Linux/OSS phenomenon. Even multi-billion dollar companies with large UI-development budgets can make changes that drive users away.
I don't know the Pidgin developers technical reasons for the change, but I do think the option should at least be available. I didn't even know about the change until I saw the story on slashdot, so I guess I have a similar take on IM as Sean and the other developers (even though I'm not a developer). I hate to see such an excellent product tarnished by silly squabbling.
As for this big KDE vs GNOME controversy, what a red herring! Of the hundreds of engineers I support on RedHat Enterprise Linux, none get caught up in GNOME vs. KDE. Most don't even know KDE exists. GNOME is the default and they expect that to work for them. Very few have asked about or even know to ask about KDE. Some use because they use it at home. Others got adventurous and discovered it on their own.
But if your typical Windows/Mac user installs Linux on their home PC, they aren't going to spend hours agonizing over whether they should use KDE or GNOME. They're going to use the distro default and expect that to work. If you asked them, they probably couldn't tell you which desktop environment they used.
1. Allow the victim to easily establish a date of first victim hood and change his name. Oh yeah, that is much easier. Or not. Why does the victim deserve to be punished more? Maybe we could just poke them in the eye with a stick or something?
I kinda like my name. I've spent my entire life building a good name for myself. I'd rather not just throw that away because some jerk decided to steal my identity.
If they had money most would not be stealing Right, because only poor people steal. And certainly once a previously poor thief has attained a reasonable level of stolen wealth, they stop. I mean, that's how it works, right? It's basically like Robin Hood, except they steal from both rich and poor alike and only give to themselves. Very noble.
I wonder if this means people can start recovering losses from illegal aliens who perpetrate identity theft as well or if they are conveniently excluded from this bill. Just from reading the summary and the article (and not the actual bill) this seems very heavily weighted against cyber crimes only.
Your OSS idealism is just silly. For starters, users are very rarely developers and developers do not always agree with users. Please stop pretending that users are actually deciding the direction a project takes while developers just blindly implement the users' requests. I can file RFEs until my fingers fall off, but if my RFEs are not technically feasible, go against the goals of the project, are stupid, or are just plain unwanted, the developers aren't going to implement them just because I asked. A project needs leadership, and unfortunately, democratic voting among the users is not necessarily the best way to get that leadership. Two, one size still does not fit all.
If a fork isn't competition, then you must be living in Bizarro world. A fork is essentially saying "I'm going to take your code and go do it my way because my way is better." And then that fork has to compete to get developers and users to use it. A fork (or project) that can't attract developers or users loses, plain and simple. You call it a waste of time, I call it a loser. How is that any different? Please don't turn OSS into "everybody gets a ribbon just for trying because we're special. We don't want to hurt anybody's precious little feelings".
Better yet, what happens when a fork produces two separate, successful projects? Is the fork still a waste of time? Should all the BSDs merge so the developers can make a one-size-fits-all BSD? Yeah, good luck on that. Just like that one-size-fits-all web browser, the one-size-fits-all desktop environment, and the one-size-fits-all OS.
But the project itself would continue, due to the nature of OSS. Sometimes they just stop because they're bad. It's crazy to think that all OSS projects continue on just because that's how OSS is. It would be a waste of time and effort to continue developing a failed project. This isn't to say a failed project is wholly bad. A failed project can lead to excellent experience and still be a failure. There's nothing wrong with saying that somebody lost. Frankly, somebody has to lose or else the losers are going to keep doing what they're bad at and wasting time.
I realize you posted as AC so you probably won't see this, but I couldn't pass biting on such ignorance.
The concept of competition does not apply to free software because competition implies a winner and a loser. In OSS, there is no winner, nor is there a loser. OSS projects progress by the input and enthusiasm of the users.
And if a project has no input or enthusiasm? It loses. Just look at the plethora of dead projects on SourceForge.
There is no reason that a single "monopoly" project would necessarily lead to lower innovation. Since the project itself is not in any competition to lure users away from a competitor, there is no incentive either way to innovate except for the "itch" to keep making the project better.
One word: Forks. Monopolies in OSS are just as bad for the consumers as monopolies in economic markets and are just as capable of stifling innovation as non-OSS monopolies. Some projects are not concerned with pushing the technological envelope and thus won't accept some changes. Or should everyone still be using lynx? Sometimes, in order to innovate, you have to compete with the original project.
A monopoly-style OSS project would lead to more innovation, in fact, because with more users wanting more features, the project will have both a larger pool of ideas to choose from as well as a larger pool of developers to implement and grow the project. Growth encourages growth, at least as far as OSS is concerned.
More cooks does not a better soup make. Growth for the sake of growth is called bloat. Just because a project receives lots of ideas doesn't mean they can or should implement them all. A project that does has no focus and is doomed to fail.
Competition, OTOH, draws finite resources away from the developer pool. While ideas may be freely shared, developer time cannot be, so a project that gets X number of hours of work will have monopolized that time for that project. Sometimes this work can be easily shared among other projects, but most of the time it cannot be shared without significant porting and adaptation. Competition fragments the development effort of all OSS projects.
Your statement that competition fragments the developer pool is correct, it's called scarcity and its a fact of life. How you deal with scarcity is what really matters. Better to have half the time spent on two good projects then the whole time spent on one bad one.
The only competition that truly exists in OSS is the competition of ideas. The actual implementation of code is where this is fought. If idea A has more support than idea B, it will be idea A that gets implemented. In this way, in democratic fashion, the best ideas (alternatively, the most popular ideas) get turned into reality.
And the actual implementation of code is the product. The same idea can be implemented multiple times. Some implementations may be good, some may be bad. Are you going to use a bad implementation when better ones exist? And the notion that only one idea will be implemented is ludicrous. Who decides which idea is implemented? I've seen my fair share of bad ideas implemented.
When the small group of idea B supporters break away from the main project to proceed with implementing their idea, only time will be able to tell whether idea A or idea B was the right way to go. But it is an unnecessary competition and draws resources away from the improvement of the platform.
You contradict the first point you tried to make about winners and losers. What if idea B was the better way? Was it still unnecessary?
Competition against Microsoft or Sun is not the reason Linux improves over time. Rather, it is because users who want to use Linux implement the features that they want so that the platform grows to fit them.
Most OSS users do not implement any features. They may contribute other resources, but all OSS are not OSS developers.
Compare the GPL with the other major licenses and it's the one that puts the most restrictions on people who would incorporate the code into their deliverables. It puts responsibilities, not restrictions, on those who would use GPL'd code. It doesn't say you can't do X (a restriction), it says that in addition to doing X, you also have to do Y (a responsibility).
Should read "Former Surgeon Generals describe pressures from Bush, Clinton, and Reagan Administrations"
As much as you leftist loonies would love to slant this, it's not just Emperor Bush at fault here. Now this certainly doesn't absolve the current administration, but at least be honest.
I can say that my side is built on the side of reason and science, simply because it is. But it is not pure science. You reach a point where science simply cannot explain how something happened, so you fill in the gaps with guesses and assumptions. I fill it in with a supernatural explanation. Which is why I will agree with you that Intelligent Design doesn't belong in the science lab. How would you do experiments on "God spoke and it was"? But a privately funded museum? Come on now. Not every museum has to be about science. Ever been to a Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not museum? There are plenty of other museums showing (only) the other side of the argument as well.
so long as it is done in a properly academic and honest context You can start by being honest about evolution as the origin of Man. It's just as much a guess as Intelligent Design yet you and your kind gladly dismiss Intelligent Design as fairy tales and wishes while propping Evolution up as the only "logical, reasonable, and scientific" choice. Teaching Intelligent Design is really nothing more than teaching about the gaps in Evolution Theory and leaving them to a supernatural power. Frankly I'd be glad just to see the gaps in Evolution Theory being taught without the reference to the supernatural, but unfortunately that's not what we're seeing in many places. The faults in Evolution Theory are glossed over and the supernatural explanation is attacked and degraded. In the end, it is just a platform for anti-religious ramblings, which I think we can agree have no place in classroom.
It's not an excuse, it's an explanation. Please try to pay attention.
First, I didn't say God's communication with humans was unreliable. In fact, I said it worked quite well. Obviously better than Slashdot since you missed that point in my post despite the fact that it was written in simple English. Sorry if your native language isn't English, but you obviously thought yourself skilled enough to read and reply, so you're fair game to me.
Second, as for using the Bible as a source for scientific knowledge, I don't think that should be done and never proposed such. The Bible is supernatural in nature. While it contains some information not discovered by science until many centuries later and has undoubtedly prompted research in other areas, overall it is not a scientific book. Creation, and much of what is recorded in the Bible, is impossible to explain fully with natural sciences. Evolutionists and atheists will fill in the gaps with guesses and their own limited understanding, I fill in the gaps with the supernatural. It's beyond me and I'm afraid or ashamed to say that. I'm not arrogant enough to say I know how it all happened.
The whole point of my previous post was this: I was simply explaining why applying American thought to an English translation of an ancient Hebrew text written by an ancient Hebrew author doesn't always make sense to the reader. To properly understand the text, it must be read with an understanding of the cultural and linguistic context in which it was written. The same principle applies to the works of Shakespeare. It's a little easier since there isn't the need to translate the language first, but to fully understand what he's writing about, you have to understand the culture he was writing in and to and the linguistic styles he was using.
If you weren't so ignorant of what you are trying to argue against, perhaps you could have made a coherent statement.
First, as far as Genesis goes, it was written by one person, Moses. Two, it was not a first hand account of creation. How it was conveyed to Moses is not said, personally I suspect a vision of some sort. That worked well for other authors of the Bible. That being said, there probably wasn't a time stamp in the corner of the vision telling him how much time passed between the "days" as you see on many camcorders and cameras these days. Three, Jewish historians, not being all that concerned with the passage of time, commonly used figurative (rather than literal) language when expressing time. And being Jewish, Moses obviously didn't write this in English, "day" is a translation, perhaps the best word, but not the best idea.
I have yet to find any reference to a "young earth Jew." Those that can read the original language and study the culture it came from don't seem to believe this seemingly American English Christian young earth view of the world.
In response to the quoted text, if you believe parts of the bible, specifically the first couple of chapters, are fallable what make the rest of it infallible. If creation and the fall didn't happen then the rest of what is written in the bible is unnecessary. If God isn't powerful enough to create the earth then he's not powerful enough to save you either. I didn't say it was wrong/fallable, I said it wasn't literal. There's a big difference.
This museum represents a direct attack on science. Attacks on religion, religious thought, and religious people are, of course, perfectly acceptable. It doesn't matter if we offend Christians as long as no atheist feelings are hurt.
I am a Christian, although honestly I think exhibits of dinosaurs and humans living together are just as laughable as you. Do I think the Earth and everything on it was created in a literal 7 revolutions of our planet? Not even close. 4.5 billion years sounds good to me. Does that mean I need to go protest/attack those who think otherwise? Nope! They can believe what they want to on this subject because I don't think this is an issue of salvation.
Do I think that evolution is fact? Yes I do. And notice, I said fact, not theory, that's intentional. And having just read at least four different definitions of "macroevolution", I'm not going to argue micro vs. macro because we'd probably end up using different definitions for each and then of course neither of us would be wrong in our own mind. We can both agree that evolution occurs and is a natural part of life. We disagree on the scale.
Do I think humans and monkeys share a common ancestor? Once again, no. Can I prove that I'm right? No. Can you prove that I'm wrong? No. We each have our own belief in this case. You can try to build your side up as the side of reason and science, but it's based on just as much assumption as you say mine is. Neither of us has proof, so we fill in the blanks with what we've each reasoned as the most logical answer.
So just listen: This museum is not an attack on your beliefs in science any more than it's an attack on my beliefs. It's a presentation, albeit rather extravagant and fancy, of their beliefs. Your beliefs still get plenty of attention, whether in schools, TV, movies, magazines, etc. Get over yourself, you arrogant jerk. You and I both disagree with them, yet somehow I can continue to live my daily life without the need to feel offended that someone somewhere may disagree with me. And lay off this crap about wanting to save the children. If it were up to you, they would be spoon-fed evolution from day 1, nothing else. How's that any different or better? At least with religion in the home and evolution in school they get more than just one viewpoint.
I think evolution and science in general have their limits. Science can't explain everything. But guess what, neither does the Bible.
There are a lot of subjects not discussed in the Bible where we need science to shed some light.
There are even some subjects in the Bible that science complements rather nicely.
There are areas where science is lacking that the Bible (and religion in general) helps to enlighten.
(note to those who refer to the USA as America. America is not a country) Quit being a dumbass. Unless you're also wanting to say that China, Sweden, Germany, Zimbabwe, and Brazil aren't countries either.
America = United States of America
China = People's Republic of China
Sweden = Kingdom of Sweden
Germany = Federal Republic of Germany
Zimbabwe = Republic of Zimbabwe
Brazil = Federative Republic of Brazil
Do we need to start using every country's official title so your dumb ass can understand us? Get a clue. And just in case you were confused, the common usage of "Americans" refers to citizens of the United States of America, not the entire population of North and South America.
Slashdot Mirror
If a company is "Too Big To Fail(TM)" they probably got to that point by exploiting existing regulation and/or politicians. I would rather see failing companies fail so the resources they have can be reallocated to more worthwhile uses. If you try to regulate away the natural consequences for stupid and risky behavior, you encourage more stupid and risky behavior, and it's necessary descendant, failure. "Failure" is not a bad word. Failure is life. Failure is necessary. Without some means of saying "this is bad", we will waste limited resources on endless streams of bad ideas.
And remember, your and my idea of "Good" and "Bad" may not be shared with the rest of the market in general. Put your ideas out there, let the market decide. If the market says bad, move on.
Then how am I supposed to make a rational decision about my line of work? All compensation for all positions for all companies should be freely available, so I know that if I sign on as a developer with shop A I'm getting a worse deal than if I signed on with shop B.
Companies advertise how much they want to pay for particular jobs all the time. Just go look at any job hunting website or newspaper. You can also reference industry surveys that may give you a suggestion as to the value of a particular skill set. But in the end, you earn what you earn, I earn what I earn, presumably based on merit.
If we have the same job and you do better than me, you should earn more than me. If I do better than you, I should earn more than you. If one company values your work more than another company and wants to pay you more, go work for that company. If no one is paying you what you want to earn, maybe your need to re-evaluate what your skills are worth. And if you can convince someone to pay you a million dollars to push some papers around on your desk while your surf the internet and do nothing, good for you. It's none of my business and I congratulate you on your accomplishment.
So what does your compensation have to do with mine or anyone else's? And what does that have to do with your career decisions? If you want to choose a job simply based on pay scale, that's fine, go ahead. But when you lose that job because you suck at it, please don't come whining to the rest of us. Perhaps instead you should choose a job that both fits your skills *and* pays something reasonable. And if you can't find such a job, tough luck. Improve your skills, get new skills, find a new job market, become an entrepreneur, whatever. Just because someone is good at checkers and wants to make $150k a year, doesn't mean such a job has to exist to satisfy them. And if someone does find a job paying $150k for playing checkers, great, let them. Why should anyone stop them? Someone apparently thinks that's worth $150k. The fact that anyone other than their employer may not agree amounts to jack squat.
Frankly, you just need to worry about yourself and how much you're getting paid. Worrying about how much other people get paid is a waste of time and leads to immature whining on the Internet.
All compensation for all positions for all companies should be freely available, so I know that if I sign on as a developer with shop A I'm getting a worse deal than if I signed on with shop B.
Quit being lazy. If you're not going to do the work to find the best jobs, why should you get the best jobs?
I should also be able to see exactly how many zeroes there are in every executive's paycheck, bonuses and stock options so I can make an informed decision about whether or not to invest in a given company.
You already can. Publicly traded companies publish such things publicly. Privately held companies have no obligation to do so, but money is a great motivator. If you want to see and they don't want to show you, don't give them your money. If such a private company really wants your investment, just ask, maybe they'll show you to get your money.
No real loss, except for the opportunity cost of all that extra money going into improving the CEO's bankroll instead of into improving the company.
And what's the opportunity cost of losing said CEO to your competitor?
We need to talk, discuss, and use diplomacy instead of force.
Not "instead of force", rather before force. When diplomacy fails, use force. Which has been the policy of the Bush Administration whether you are willing to accept it or not.
Force can never be taken off the table, as unpleasant as it is. If you can't back up your words with anything meaningful, your words are meaningless. Economic sanctions and other means of non-violent coercion only go so far with irrational people.
What other kind of loss is there?
What measurement do you propose?
I got my feelings hurt so I should sue?
What exactly would you charge them with?
U.S. laws are not applicable outside our borders (and vice versa, the rest of the world's law has no bearing in the U.S.), so there's absolutely no U.S. law that they could have broken.
Along those same lines, U.S. military personnel are not law enforcement agents, they are warriors. Likewise, the detainees are not criminals, they are combatants, and do not deserve access to the U.S. criminal court system.
Microsoft can kindly keep it's hands off my blender ... and my toaster for that matter ... they run NetBSD just fine.
And they aren't the first distro to use a pre-release version for a package, RHEL4 uses a release candidate for CUPS 1.1.22.
1) Los Angeles.
2) Cost varies.
3) Why? You're not dating them.
Cash in hand probably helps.
Improve yourself, improve your circumstances. Work hard and reap the benefits.
I'm glad that Microsoft finally listened to years of customers complaining they didn't have enough windows to blindly click "OK" on and implemented the UAC. And DRM? I was waiting for that one for years!
And menu bars that are separate from the windows they're associated with? Single button mice? Thank you, Apple!
It's not just a Linux/OSS phenomenon. Even multi-billion dollar companies with large UI-development budgets can make changes that drive users away.
I don't know the Pidgin developers technical reasons for the change, but I do think the option should at least be available. I didn't even know about the change until I saw the story on slashdot, so I guess I have a similar take on IM as Sean and the other developers (even though I'm not a developer). I hate to see such an excellent product tarnished by silly squabbling.
As for this big KDE vs GNOME controversy, what a red herring! Of the hundreds of engineers I support on RedHat Enterprise Linux, none get caught up in GNOME vs. KDE. Most don't even know KDE exists. GNOME is the default and they expect that to work for them. Very few have asked about or even know to ask about KDE. Some use because they use it at home. Others got adventurous and discovered it on their own.
But if your typical Windows/Mac user installs Linux on their home PC, they aren't going to spend hours agonizing over whether they should use KDE or GNOME. They're going to use the distro default and expect that to work. If you asked them, they probably couldn't tell you which desktop environment they used.
Got any supporting evidence?
I kinda like my name. I've spent my entire life building a good name for myself. I'd rather not just throw that away because some jerk decided to steal my identity.
If they had money most would not be stealing Right, because only poor people steal. And certainly once a previously poor thief has attained a reasonable level of stolen wealth, they stop. I mean, that's how it works, right? It's basically like Robin Hood, except they steal from both rich and poor alike and only give to themselves. Very noble.
I wonder if this means people can start recovering losses from illegal aliens who perpetrate identity theft as well or if they are conveniently excluded from this bill. Just from reading the summary and the article (and not the actual bill) this seems very heavily weighted against cyber crimes only.
If a fork isn't competition, then you must be living in Bizarro world. A fork is essentially saying "I'm going to take your code and go do it my way because my way is better." And then that fork has to compete to get developers and users to use it. A fork (or project) that can't attract developers or users loses, plain and simple. You call it a waste of time, I call it a loser. How is that any different? Please don't turn OSS into "everybody gets a ribbon just for trying because we're special. We don't want to hurt anybody's precious little feelings".
Better yet, what happens when a fork produces two separate, successful projects? Is the fork still a waste of time? Should all the BSDs merge so the developers can make a one-size-fits-all BSD? Yeah, good luck on that. Just like that one-size-fits-all web browser, the one-size-fits-all desktop environment, and the one-size-fits-all OS.
But the project itself would continue, due to the nature of OSS. Sometimes they just stop because they're bad. It's crazy to think that all OSS projects continue on just because that's how OSS is. It would be a waste of time and effort to continue developing a failed project. This isn't to say a failed project is wholly bad. A failed project can lead to excellent experience and still be a failure. There's nothing wrong with saying that somebody lost. Frankly, somebody has to lose or else the losers are going to keep doing what they're bad at and wasting time.
The concept of competition does not apply to free software because competition implies a winner and a loser. In OSS, there is no winner, nor is there a loser. OSS projects progress by the input and enthusiasm of the users.
And if a project has no input or enthusiasm? It loses. Just look at the plethora of dead projects on SourceForge.
There is no reason that a single "monopoly" project would necessarily lead to lower innovation. Since the project itself is not in any competition to lure users away from a competitor, there is no incentive either way to innovate except for the "itch" to keep making the project better.
One word: Forks. Monopolies in OSS are just as bad for the consumers as monopolies in economic markets and are just as capable of stifling innovation as non-OSS monopolies. Some projects are not concerned with pushing the technological envelope and thus won't accept some changes. Or should everyone still be using lynx? Sometimes, in order to innovate, you have to compete with the original project.
A monopoly-style OSS project would lead to more innovation, in fact, because with more users wanting more features, the project will have both a larger pool of ideas to choose from as well as a larger pool of developers to implement and grow the project. Growth encourages growth, at least as far as OSS is concerned.
More cooks does not a better soup make. Growth for the sake of growth is called bloat. Just because a project receives lots of ideas doesn't mean they can or should implement them all. A project that does has no focus and is doomed to fail.
Competition, OTOH, draws finite resources away from the developer pool. While ideas may be freely shared, developer time cannot be, so a project that gets X number of hours of work will have monopolized that time for that project. Sometimes this work can be easily shared among other projects, but most of the time it cannot be shared without significant porting and adaptation. Competition fragments the development effort of all OSS projects.
Your statement that competition fragments the developer pool is correct, it's called scarcity and its a fact of life. How you deal with scarcity is what really matters. Better to have half the time spent on two good projects then the whole time spent on one bad one.
The only competition that truly exists in OSS is the competition of ideas. The actual implementation of code is where this is fought. If idea A has more support than idea B, it will be idea A that gets implemented. In this way, in democratic fashion, the best ideas (alternatively, the most popular ideas) get turned into reality.
And the actual implementation of code is the product. The same idea can be implemented multiple times. Some implementations may be good, some may be bad. Are you going to use a bad implementation when better ones exist? And the notion that only one idea will be implemented is ludicrous. Who decides which idea is implemented? I've seen my fair share of bad ideas implemented.
When the small group of idea B supporters break away from the main project to proceed with implementing their idea, only time will be able to tell whether idea A or idea B was the right way to go. But it is an unnecessary competition and draws resources away from the improvement of the platform.
You contradict the first point you tried to make about winners and losers. What if idea B was the better way? Was it still unnecessary?
Competition against Microsoft or Sun is not the reason Linux improves over time. Rather, it is because users who want to use Linux implement the features that they want so that the platform grows to fit them.
Most OSS users do not implement any features. They may contribute other resources, but all OSS are not OSS developers.
Should read "Former Surgeon Generals describe pressures from Bush, Clinton, and Reagan Administrations"
As much as you leftist loonies would love to slant this, it's not just Emperor Bush at fault here. Now this certainly doesn't absolve the current administration, but at least be honest.
so long as it is done in a properly academic and honest context You can start by being honest about evolution as the origin of Man. It's just as much a guess as Intelligent Design yet you and your kind gladly dismiss Intelligent Design as fairy tales and wishes while propping Evolution up as the only "logical, reasonable, and scientific" choice. Teaching Intelligent Design is really nothing more than teaching about the gaps in Evolution Theory and leaving them to a supernatural power. Frankly I'd be glad just to see the gaps in Evolution Theory being taught without the reference to the supernatural, but unfortunately that's not what we're seeing in many places. The faults in Evolution Theory are glossed over and the supernatural explanation is attacked and degraded. In the end, it is just a platform for anti-religious ramblings, which I think we can agree have no place in classroom.
No, which is why I don't advocate adding the words and works of George Bush to the Canon of Scripture. Any other stupid questions?
It's not an excuse, it's an explanation. Please try to pay attention.
First, I didn't say God's communication with humans was unreliable. In fact, I said it worked quite well. Obviously better than Slashdot since you missed that point in my post despite the fact that it was written in simple English. Sorry if your native language isn't English, but you obviously thought yourself skilled enough to read and reply, so you're fair game to me.
Second, as for using the Bible as a source for scientific knowledge, I don't think that should be done and never proposed such. The Bible is supernatural in nature. While it contains some information not discovered by science until many centuries later and has undoubtedly prompted research in other areas, overall it is not a scientific book. Creation, and much of what is recorded in the Bible, is impossible to explain fully with natural sciences. Evolutionists and atheists will fill in the gaps with guesses and their own limited understanding, I fill in the gaps with the supernatural. It's beyond me and I'm afraid or ashamed to say that. I'm not arrogant enough to say I know how it all happened.
The whole point of my previous post was this: I was simply explaining why applying American thought to an English translation of an ancient Hebrew text written by an ancient Hebrew author doesn't always make sense to the reader. To properly understand the text, it must be read with an understanding of the cultural and linguistic context in which it was written. The same principle applies to the works of Shakespeare. It's a little easier since there isn't the need to translate the language first, but to fully understand what he's writing about, you have to understand the culture he was writing in and to and the linguistic styles he was using.
If you weren't so ignorant of what you are trying to argue against, perhaps you could have made a coherent statement.
First, as far as Genesis goes, it was written by one person, Moses. Two, it was not a first hand account of creation. How it was conveyed to Moses is not said, personally I suspect a vision of some sort. That worked well for other authors of the Bible. That being said, there probably wasn't a time stamp in the corner of the vision telling him how much time passed between the "days" as you see on many camcorders and cameras these days. Three, Jewish historians, not being all that concerned with the passage of time, commonly used figurative (rather than literal) language when expressing time. And being Jewish, Moses obviously didn't write this in English, "day" is a translation, perhaps the best word, but not the best idea.
I have yet to find any reference to a "young earth Jew." Those that can read the original language and study the culture it came from don't seem to believe this seemingly American English Christian young earth view of the world.
I am a Christian, although honestly I think exhibits of dinosaurs and humans living together are just as laughable as you. Do I think the Earth and everything on it was created in a literal 7 revolutions of our planet? Not even close. 4.5 billion years sounds good to me. Does that mean I need to go protest/attack those who think otherwise? Nope! They can believe what they want to on this subject because I don't think this is an issue of salvation.
Do I think that evolution is fact? Yes I do. And notice, I said fact, not theory, that's intentional. And having just read at least four different definitions of "macroevolution", I'm not going to argue micro vs. macro because we'd probably end up using different definitions for each and then of course neither of us would be wrong in our own mind. We can both agree that evolution occurs and is a natural part of life. We disagree on the scale.
Do I think humans and monkeys share a common ancestor? Once again, no. Can I prove that I'm right? No. Can you prove that I'm wrong? No. We each have our own belief in this case. You can try to build your side up as the side of reason and science, but it's based on just as much assumption as you say mine is. Neither of us has proof, so we fill in the blanks with what we've each reasoned as the most logical answer.
So just listen: This museum is not an attack on your beliefs in science any more than it's an attack on my beliefs. It's a presentation, albeit rather extravagant and fancy, of their beliefs. Your beliefs still get plenty of attention, whether in schools, TV, movies, magazines, etc. Get over yourself, you arrogant jerk. You and I both disagree with them, yet somehow I can continue to live my daily life without the need to feel offended that someone somewhere may disagree with me. And lay off this crap about wanting to save the children. If it were up to you, they would be spoon-fed evolution from day 1, nothing else. How's that any different or better? At least with religion in the home and evolution in school they get more than just one viewpoint.
I think evolution and science in general have their limits. Science can't explain everything. But guess what, neither does the Bible.
- There are a lot of subjects not discussed in the Bible where we need science to shed some light.
- There are even some subjects in the Bible that science complements rather nicely.
- There are areas where science is lacking that the Bible (and religion in general) helps to enlighten.
It doesn't have to be "There can be only one!"America = United States of America
China = People's Republic of China
Sweden = Kingdom of Sweden
Germany = Federal Republic of Germany
Zimbabwe = Republic of Zimbabwe
Brazil = Federative Republic of Brazil
Do we need to start using every country's official title so your dumb ass can understand us? Get a clue. And just in case you were confused, the common usage of "Americans" refers to citizens of the United States of America, not the entire population of North and South America.
Is Scobby Doo writing the posts these days? What's "Februrary?" The month after "Janrurary?" Right before "Marrrrrch?"