I disagree with your opinions and I have various reasons and some personal beliefs blah blah blah so blah blah. O edifying rational exchanges in the bosom of the interweb how I cherish thee, laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalaalala.
I once knew this guy who went to this one sight on the interscope or whatever its called and what do you know but a big fat dwarf came out of his cdrom drive and kicked him in the nuts! Theres another sight where an elf drives to his chateau and slaps you with shoes its really something you should see it some time. (BTW elf has hideous crooked nose you know I saw his face for real.)
Anyway you have to be careful when you surf the intrawebs now so serious. latezzz
Most people are simply not intellectual---to see this for yourself, watch a television for a while---and are therefore not able to discuss subtle questions of ethics and social policy. Instead, they turn to others for help and guidance, just as I hire a mechanic to fix my car because I lack that skill.
Have any recommendations in particular? Does the left have its own version of The Economist---that is, does it have a serious intellectual newspaper that aspires to articulate a consistent political platform? I would so love that.
I won't bother trying to properly integrate my applications into a system model (ie, try to achieve "user interface consistency") because thinking about that stuff pains my feeble mind.
If this sort of "pragmatism" were to prevail, every application would soon have its own idiosyncratic user interface.
You really need more heads; fourteen terminals is nothing. Their marginal cost---the cost of a 19" monitor, keyboard, mouse, and vga port---is about $130, so buy a few dozen. They'll probably last five years, so the cost per student per year would be less than four bucks: is that so high? There's no serious educational use for a computer except web-based research (read: firefox) and programming (read: ocaml, ruby) so Linux is as good as anything else.
The value of a computer system model lies not in how well it does specific thing X today, but in how naturally you can program it to do as-yet-unknown thing Y tomorrow; it's easy to write software that meets only your present needs. A set of "virtual appliances," each of which serves some narrow purpose, is just about as bad as one can get.
intelligent people who can't understand consequences of loony ideas but are very good at pushing out enough frak that noone understands they're really loony people---eg, Americans.
I can easily conceive of one potential design: suppose someone found that, by subjecting some kind of matter to a new process, it could be made, from then on, to accelerate itself according to new physical principles. Such lumps of flying matter could then be put to use in various mechanical ways.
If their natural force of self-acceleration is less than that imposed upon them by gravity, stray bits of the stuff would skip around harmlessly on the ground; otherwise, they would fly away into outer space at high and dangerous speeds.
...there is certainly a ghetto some place near where house prices are much lower. One advantage of an expensive neighborhood is that your next-door neighbor is far more likely to be called Dr Cohen than Doctor Dre. If prices there were not so dear, people other than prosperous, well-socialized professionals would eat your children for breakfast, more or less.
Since the state would simply ban any potential technology of circumvention---ie, the police would arrest you for illicit wireless networking. Though, on the bright side, there are probably some authoritarian states that are now institutionally incapable of carrying out such a policy.
Much of what goes by the name of pleasure is simply an effort to destroy consciousness. If one started by asking, what is man? what are his needs? how can he best express himself? one would discover that merely having the power to avoid work and live one's life from birth to death in electric light and to the tune of tinned music is not a reason for doing so. Man needs warmth, society, leisure, comfort and security: he also needs solitude, creative work and the sense of wonder. If he recognised this he could use the products of science and industrialism eclectically, applying always the same test: does this make me more human or less human? He would then learn that the highest happiness does not lie in relaxing, resting, playing poker, drinking and making love simultaneously. And the instinctive horror which all sensitive people feel at the progressive mechanisation of life would be seen not to be a mere sentimental archaism, but to be fully justified. For man only stays human by preserving large patches of simplicity in his life, while the tendency of many modern inventions---in particular the film, the radio and the aeroplane---is to weaken his consciousness, dull his curiosity, and, in general, drive him nearer to the animals.
In fact, technology is only one small part of business. American firms do well mostly because they have access to capital and freedom to use it----whereas, in many other places, capital is scarce and regulation abounds.
Your problem is with slavery, not the slave market; slavery would be abhorrent even if no slave were ever traded.
To choose a less depressing example: stealing candy from babies is certainly a crime and ought to be forbidden in a decent society, but to make such a law would not naturally be understood as a bid to regulate trade in lollipops.
Do you think practical self interest is capable of driving people towards professional greatness? I mean, certainly the promise of profit motivates many people to do their jobs and even to do them well, but the pursuit of excellence, on the other hand, seems to demand a deeper, more personal justification.
In any case, I agree that the situation of today's youth is very saddening. It is not their fault that the idolatrous values that contemporary western society imposes upon them will inevitably lead them to misery and confusion.
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree with your opinions and I have various reasons and some personal beliefs blah blah blah so blah blah. O edifying rational exchanges in the bosom of the interweb how I cherish thee, laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalaalala.
(a) Hire hot Indian women to dote on my rich ass
(b) [redacted]
(c) profit
Anyway you have to be careful when you surf the intrawebs now so serious. latezzz
Most people are simply not intellectual---to see this for yourself, watch a television for a while---and are therefore not able to discuss subtle questions of ethics and social policy. Instead, they turn to others for help and guidance, just as I hire a mechanic to fix my car because I lack that skill.
Italy, the home of the Pope, has one of the world's lowest birth rates.
Have any recommendations in particular? Does the left have its own version of The Economist---that is, does it have a serious intellectual newspaper that aspires to articulate a consistent political platform? I would so love that.
If this sort of "pragmatism" were to prevail, every application would soon have its own idiosyncratic user interface.
You really need more heads; fourteen terminals is nothing. Their marginal cost---the cost of a 19" monitor, keyboard, mouse, and vga port---is about $130, so buy a few dozen. They'll probably last five years, so the cost per student per year would be less than four bucks: is that so high? There's no serious educational use for a computer except web-based research (read: firefox) and programming (read: ocaml, ruby) so Linux is as good as anything else.
The value of a computer system model lies not in how well it does specific thing X today, but in how naturally you can program it to do as-yet-unknown thing Y tomorrow; it's easy to write software that meets only your present needs. A set of "virtual appliances," each of which serves some narrow purpose, is just about as bad as one can get.
Anyway, the very same controversy is playing out today as the US and the EU dispute the permissibility of GM-crops bans.
Marx thought of all that way back in the age of the steam engine.
intelligent people who can't understand consequences of loony ideas but are very good at pushing out enough frak that noone understands they're really loony people---eg, Americans.
If their natural force of self-acceleration is less than that imposed upon them by gravity, stray bits of the stuff would skip around harmlessly on the ground; otherwise, they would fly away into outer space at high and dangerous speeds.
Various people consider human rights important (or not) for various personal reasons.
How much have you paid a peasant lately? Let me guess---nothing.
...they actually have such a system in Britain.
...there is certainly a ghetto some place near where house prices are much lower. One advantage of an expensive neighborhood is that your next-door neighbor is far more likely to be called Dr Cohen than Doctor Dre. If prices there were not so dear, people other than prosperous, well-socialized professionals would eat your children for breakfast, more or less.
Since the state would simply ban any potential technology of circumvention---ie, the police would arrest you for illicit wireless networking. Though, on the bright side, there are probably some authoritarian states that are now institutionally incapable of carrying out such a policy.
...that stops degenerate American cultural products from infecting your computer.
Really, I was just soapboxing for a minute there.
In fact, technology is only one small part of business. American firms do well mostly because they have access to capital and freedom to use it----whereas, in many other places, capital is scarce and regulation abounds.
To choose a less depressing example: stealing candy from babies is certainly a crime and ought to be forbidden in a decent society, but to make such a law would not naturally be understood as a bid to regulate trade in lollipops.
Design a language well suited to implementing your system, then write an interpreter or compiler for it in C++.
In any case, I agree that the situation of today's youth is very saddening. It is not their fault that the idolatrous values that contemporary western society imposes upon them will inevitably lead them to misery and confusion.