Okay. But you did respond, and smugly told the GP that he'd understand when he "grew up". Taking out your personal frustrations on others through an avenue like condescension is a clear sign of immaturity. I'm sorry that you've suffered because of what's happened, and I'm even more sorry for the guy's kids. But it's not immature to make jokes about serious topics. If you think otherwise, you might want to consider going in for an ass-stick-ectomy. Lighten up, you'll live longer that way.
Let me start by pointing out that my initial assertion about systemic oppression doesn't really hinge on people being white. It's just that they're the dominant ethnic group in America today. I'm sure there are plenty of Asians who have racist tendencies as well. As I mentioned earlier, there are even blacks with anti-black racial prejudices.
I find it unacceptable that people should be oppressed, whether because of skin color or any other reason, and I want to know what I, as a white person, might be doing unknowingly to oppress black people.
Probably nothing beyond your participation and support of a slanted social structure. Hell, maybe your contribution is positive, I don't really know anything about you.
Actually, it is not obvious to me why slavery, which ended 6.5 generations ago should have any lingering effects.
To quote the most annoying part of the bible: begat, begat, begat, begat, begat, begat. Millionaires tend to raise millionaires. Wife-beaters tend to raise wife-beaters. The dispirited fragments of a society tend to raise dispirited fragments. The "mechanism" you're looking for and failing to see is simple causality and persistence. I'm not sure how else to phrase it.
Fortunately, we have Affirmative Action to compensate for this bias.
Exactly. IMO, Affirmative Action is a necessary evil as long as these obviously social-scale problems exist.
Now this is an interesting one. Any suggestions on how to cure this? I mean, it's been generations since the abuse happened, as well.
Well, since modern day poverty is essentially the end result of all of this, my suggestion is Big Scary Government Social Programs. They don't even need to be race-sensitive, as long as they're addressing the issue adequately. Of course, I could cite instances of them working phenomenally, and you could no doubt cite instances of them failing miserably, so I think that one just basically comes down to ideological priorities.
If it is the case that white people cause black people to suffer in 2006, I believe that we must put a stop to it.
Well I'll do one better. I'll say that if black people suffer disproportionately in 2006, we must put a stop to it. Ditto for any other group that doesn't choose their membership.
But we can't put a stop to it if we don't first identify the problem.
Many problems have been identified. Poverty is a fairly obvious one, and it's relatively straightforward to address. Deep-seated cultural biases (such as the aforementioned test score disparity) are so difficult to address that sometimes an ugly hack like Affirmative Action is necessary.
I want to know how group B represses group A
Well since you seem to want exactly two sides in this, how about group A is blacks, group B is everyone else. Or group A is hispanics, group B is everyone else. It's really not as clear-cut as you're trying to see it, and whites are certainly not the only responsible party.
Well, now this is interesting. It's also unattributed, so I have no reason to believe it to be true, but for the sake of discussion, let's assume that it is true.
In this scenario, we have two groups of convicted criminals: white and black. White people, for reasons of a) using cocaine instead of crack cocaine, b) having access to better legal counsel, c) simply being white, or d) some other unidentified reason, are receiving shorter sentences than black people, convicted of a similar offense.
Well, what I am specifically talking about here is a difference, codified in law, as to what sentences should be meted out for the two forms of the drug. So b), c), and d) are irreleva
My kids are exactly the same age and it causes me physical distress thinking what the Reiser children are going through right now.
Right, so that explains why you can't take a fucking joke. You're the one that needs to grow up and learn there's a difference between words and actions. No one's telling jokes to the guy's kids, get over yourself.
Compare that to several waves of immigrants in the last few decades here, most notably the Vietnamese.
These people came here with only their lives if they made it at all. They were sneered at and rejected for all but the most menial jobs.
One thing they had was WORK ETHIC.
And the reason train comes grinding to a halt right at this point. Conservatives love to talk about work ethic like it's some kind of "free will" magic, and assert that people lacking it are just somehow intrinsically shit, end of discussion. It's downright ignorant to treat it as some kind of axiom, with no deeper causal relationships. Do I think your anecdote describes people with an inflated sense of entitlement who are leeching from the rest of us "hard-working Americans"? Of course, I'd be a fool not to. But there are other factors to consider:
1) The obvious one, how representative is that? Anecdotes don't carry much weight at the scale I was discussing.
2) Does the negative impact of the existence of leeches outweigh the positive impact of, well, the actual social welfare? One could take the (ultra-Libertarian) argument that since those people are abusing tax dollars, government should be dismantled. That's just the far end of the continuum that points at those people as an argument against social programs. This also comes around to corporate handouts. If more money is being wasted on an arguably more corrupt cause, what is the real motivation behind going after welfare? It's like justifying Iraq by saying Saddam runs a brutal regime, or outlawing marijuana because it has some negative health effects.
3) Most importantly, are there any root causes to this observed lack of work ethic, why do they exist, and what can be done about them? This is huge. Those Vietnamese came to America looking for a land of opportunity and freedom. The difference between that and the history of most blacks in this country is pretty vast. Do you think the freed slaves saw America in a similar light? Do you really think that they had any desire, incentive, or ability to pass on to their subsequent generations the necessary foundations of a stable subculture? These things matter, not just then, but now, because they describe a process that's still in motion. Telling the descendants of a broken people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps en masse, and comparing them to some other culture with a completely different history, accomplishes nothing except spreading divisive attitudes.
Could you please tell me how blacks are systemically oppressed in the US today? I've heard many people make that claim, but I have never been told the actual mechanism by which white people systemically oppress black people in 2006.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the feeling you also haven't pursued the topic much. Besides the fairly obvious (IMO) factors arising from their social history, many American standardized tests (including the SAT) have shown a consistent bias towards white, middle- or upper-class Americans. That's just one example pulled the from the hat; I don't study this much any more, so I'd have to dig back for more. A little independent research will turn up plenty, though.
if white people are causing it at all
Well, define "white people". We could end racism at the individual level tomorrow, and we'd still have a significant problem. So from one point of view, "white people" aren't necessarily the issue (although there's still plenty of clear-cut "regular" racism, more on that in a moment). It was definitely "white people" that established the overall structure of our society as it stands today, and guided it here. A lot of it really is just the echoes of the past. Promises made to the newly freed slaves weren't kept, and they had to start out, not only at the bottom of society, but working against:
a) Incredible prejudice, violence, etc.
b) Their own animosity toward our society built up by generations of abuse.
So the argument is something like, "given the there was obvious systemic racism when the slaves were freed, can you demonstrate the mechanism by which that racism has been eradicated?" The gist is that if you can't, you have something of a smoking gun to back up all those statistics that you earlier dismissed. So I see your argument as backwards: we know there was a problem, the only question is has it been solved? That's why inequality statistics are cited so much in this context.
Now, as for more individual-level racism (which of course ultimately affects things on a systemic level), one obvious place is law enforcement. I remember seeing a study years ago showing that even black police officers often tended to have racist (in the anti-black sense) tendencies. Last set of statistics I saw, roughly half of the people in prison for marijuana offenses were hispanic. So that implies something causal unless you believe that roughly half of the marijuana users in this country are hispanic. Another (probably better) example is the sentencing disparity between convictions for possession of cocaine in powder form vs. crack form. Crack sentences were much harsher, for what was essentially the same drug... the difference being rich white folk generally used good ole' coke, whilst the poorer black folk tended to smoke crack.
Ok, go try to stand outside the ACLU's home office with a bible and cross talking about sinners, hell, and damnation. See how long you get to stay there
Thank you for proving my point. I could do just that, and if I wasn't there on a government paycheck they couldn't (and wouldn't) do anything about it. You're obviously another unfortunate victim of lunatic Christian anti-ACLU propaganda. Sorry bout that.
I've never heard people who are poor say they need to be taxed more, so why should someone who has money get taxed more? Just because they can?
I may answer this later in the thread (because it's also very wrong), but for now I'm just going to point out that you said the wealthy are oppressed in this country. Progressive taxation is not oppression (even the silly bracketed system currently in use), so the onus is on you to explain your laughable comment.
Get this. The slaves were promised 40 acres and a mule. That's because it's obvious that you can't a "free" a people into absolute poverty. That's not freedom.
Now, you've shown that you clearly don't believe in justice on a social level, only on an individual level. So fuck you. The slaves never got their 40 acres and a mule. You take the alienated sons and daughters of a culture they're forcibly removed from, who've either been recently abducted or shit on for generations, and tell them "oh, you're free to go now", what do you fucking think is going to happen? A magical embrace of the Great American Dream? "Pull yourself up by your boostraps" is not a credible phrase to use when talking on a social level, and that's the level that's relevant in this discussion. Any systemic oppression of an entire people, such as that which still exists in America today against blacks needs to be addressed. The solution isn't always pretty, but neglecting it is simply immoral. We've inherited our forefathers' civilization and society, and all the benefits that entails, yet you act like that comes with no responsibility whatsoever for those it's trampled along the way. You're wrong.
But you know what really pisses me off about you Republicans whining about welfare leeches? It's the fact that you support a party that actively participates in vast amounts of corporate welfare, but I see very little criticism of that use of your tax dollars. No, you'd much rather bemoan the loss of your money to the poor, or to minorities. That's why you're called racist. You'd demonize the poor and dispossessed, and claim the brutal history of their culture's treatment is irrelevant. You'd offer up token examples of systemic abuse as an excuse to unconditionally strip welfare from everyone who really does need it, instead of protesting the same kind of abuse by the ultra-rich. You're looked down upon because your head is up your ass.
There is. One of the lesser known features of.Net is that you can ngen your code, which will take the IL binary and convert it into an actual native binary.
That doesn't necessarily solve the problem: a bottleneck in.NET might well stay that way when ngen'd.
Largely though you don't really need native apps anyway.
No argument here, although I'd like to make the distinction between "native apps" and "apps with some native code". The latter is much more likely to be necessary than the former.
But that doesn't help you get your application to RedHat, Mandriva, etc. This actually highlights my points I think; even if you package your application, you can't be sure to reach most of the distributions on the platform.
Actually, I think your response here highlights what was said earlier by others: Linux isn't a platform. LSB is a platform. Red Hat is a platform. Debian is a platform. I think it's easily conceded that targeting every Linux distribution is a lot of work, unless you're prepared to bundle your dependencies (which is sometimes not a bad way to go, then it's trivial to set up a binary installer). Personally, although it goes against "the Linux way" in some respects, I'd love to see Ubuntu or some other Debian-derivative become the de facto standard Linux distribution, just to quell this "targeting Linux is so hard!" meme. Anyway, distributing the source and a good binary installer is a great way to encourage both end-user installation and package-writing by the various distribution maintainers.
MS' goal in replacing the current API is to cut down on common programming mistakes, like memory leaks and buffer overflows. I don't think that's a bad goal personally.
Certainly isn't! Coming from the Win32 API and MFC, I was shocked at how well-designed the.NET framework is by comparison. Microsoft has come a long way from those nightmarish systems. Moving the OS interface proper away from lower-level languages is less of a concern to me, as higher-level languages usually provide a clean wrapper on top of it.
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not.
Definitely not. I border on a Java anti-zealot, probably because of how overrated I feel it is. Although I wish C# were less Java-esque, it's at least step in the right direction if you are going to blatantly copy it. And the advent of IronPython means being "stuck" developing in a.NET environment is infinitely preferable to its Java counterpart.
This is not true. You can install 64 bit Windows and run applications compliled for 32 bit Windows. It does this via the WoW (Windows on Windows) compatability layer.
Fair enough.
My point was that Windows comes with the.Net framework, which makes it irrelevent how many bits the underlying hardware is.
That's a weird point to make, unless you're claiming there's no need for native code any more.
This was to counter the claim that I had to recompile my app for 64 bit.
That was not the claim. The claim was that Windows' binary compatibility advantages were lessened by foreign architectures. You then explained that your app runs on 64-bit systems no problem, which was not related to the binary distribution vs source distribution discussion.
I would say no, but because Python may or may not be included standard with RedHat, Ubutana (whatever), Slack, etc.
Well, if I package my program for Debian, it really doesn't matter whether or not Python comes standard with the distribution, it'll get picked up as a dependency automatically.
The difference though is that.Net isn't just a VM, its end goal is to replace the Win32 API completely. I don't know of anything in the Linux world that has a similar goal.
This would be more accurately phrased "Microsoft's goal is to replace the Win32 API with.NET" (btw, good for them!). Of course nothing in the Linux world has a similar goal, any more than Microsoft has any goal to replace the Linux kernel API: both are ridiculous non-goals. Or did you mean something else? Technically Java isn't just a VM either, if you're counting things like cross-platform compatibility layers on top of the various OS services (sockets, threads, etc) as separates-the-men-from-the-VMs kind of features.
Java apps even break across the same version but different platforms, let alone across version changes.
I was merely using Java as historical precedent, I would never assert its superiority to.NET.
Users don't want to worry about compling at all, so unless developers make their installers do it behind the scenes with 90% reliablity (which as you say is very hard) they're not going to come to linux.
This is a false dilemma. You're asserting the advantages of Windows and.NET simultaneously to make a point about Windows applications, but anyone who's developed a.NET application doesn't need to recompile it for Linux.
Nope. because he specifically said moving from 32 bit to 64 bit
That's a much bigger difference than 286 -> 386. It's just that AMD64 also happens to support the old 32-bit applications. At any rate, the point here is that Windows doesn't "support" the architecture difference, it's done at the hardware level.
Actually no. See, my app is built on the.Net framework, so an int is always 32 bits, no matter what platform I'm on.
So wait, as a point in Windows' favor you claim that your app runs "on 64-bit" without issue, then admit that it's actually running on the CLR? That's all well and good... for the CLR..NET isn't exclusive to Windows; I could say the same thing about my Python application, but that wouldn't be a point in Debian's favor. Java programmers have been enjoying this luxury for years, but clearly the discussion is only relevant to native applications, not those built on explicitly cross-platform VMs.
Yup, just like how it was broken moving from 16 bit to 32. Opps, Windows provided backward compatability so this didn't happen.
That's because the 286 -> 386 change was within the same architecture. Parent is talking about nontrivial architecture changes (such as from x86 to PPC or the like).
My application in particular will also run just fine on 64 bit, without any effort on my part.
Erm... "on 64-bit?" Meaning, your 32-bit application runs on a 64-bit chip with 32-bit emulation/native support? Gee gosh!
Fair enough. I was mostly responding to the implication that I'm part of the lot that wouldn't consider practicing what they preach on this issue. I can certainly understand that the decision is far from yours to make alone, and that it would involve effort leagues beyond what my relocation would require. Your guess about me is basically spot on: early 20s, single, no plan to settle down in the near future, full of the ire that's born of fresh discoveries of the world's perceived inadequacies. I apologize if I came off as holier than thou, but I do think it's good to have the "get out of the country" message reiterated by those who take it seriously, as opposed to the flippant "get the hell out" sense. I do feel very strongly that the U.S. military is rarely up to any good, and encourage tax protest in all its forms in light of this.
Other than the CO2 emmissions produced at auto factories, auto producers don't produce any significant amounts of CO2. They are not externalizing costs.
The government of California mandated certain emission standards. The auto manufacturers blocked the implementation of those standards through legal action. This saves them money at everyone else's expense (pollution produced in excess of what the public deems acceptable). How are they not externalizing?
Enough! I can't believe how many times I've read that already! Address the faults of the action as they exist right now, not some as compared to hypothetical scenario you concocted in the last 10 minutes of your completely-disjoint-from-the-actual-situation life (I'm taking the liberty of assuming you're not particularly more savvy to the details of political maneuvering within the California government than the average Californian). This lawsuit is a means to an end, and it's pretty obvious that it's being undertaken as a measure of some desperation. No one is being unfairly victimized here, the auto industry has made a killing externalizing its pollution costs. Did you consider the obstacles the Californian government has faced in this arena? This is real life politics, not a game of who has the best one-liner plan for an ideal world. If it takes a seemingly ridiculous lawsuit to get these companies to comply with the law, or at least contribute to the solution, then more power to CA.
The intent of the lawsuit is to create PR that you are "protecting the enviornment" ahead of an election, while not actually passing a law that will piss off SUV-loving voters.
Well, the fact that the intent of the lawsuit is relatively unrelated to its merit aside, that's American two-party politics for you. Is your "better way" just a script for a utopian society to follow? Hell, why not just suggest a simple meritocracy? Seems that would solve a lot of problems.
Apologies if I came off as "slamming" your post. I very much identify with your position on the matter, and I was just sharing the conclusion that I've drawn.
Do you know what's involved in immigrating to another country? Have you ever looked into it? People who say "if you don't like it, leave" have obviously never looked into actually getting a work visa to move to another country and try to earn a living.
Hogwash. I'm saying that, and I've looked into it quite a bit. In fact, I could enumerate the bullets of my emigration plan to you, but that'd be getting a bit too personal.
My job has no offices overseas, so I would basically have to get a job in the other country before I could even apply for a visa. In addition, my wife's line of work involves national and local certifications, so she would have to go to school a minimum of two years to obtain said certifications, and again, we would have to live in that country first.
Okay, now it's post-slamming time. The above all amounts to "waaa, waaa, it's a lot of work!". I never said you could snap your fingers and be magically transported to another land. Yes, it can be a big deal, a huge deal, to move yourself and your family to another country. It might take years of planning and saving. I'm sorry that I can't phrase this in a non-condescending way, but I suppose it really just depends on how seriously you take your large-scale moral responsibilities.
for helping to secure yet another Nazi victory. Every time I hear some Sozi whining about the Reichstag getting burned down, it makes me want to vote Nazi no matter who the candidate is because at least the Nazi will have clear values and have a high chance of doing something about them.
Here's a crazy idea. Stop bitching about what Hitler is alledgedly doing wrong and start promoting what the Sozi are going to do right. What are the Sozi doing to help ensure an accurate vote?
Considering "Hitler is purposefully destabilizing our nation" failed to secure a victory twice, it might be a good idea to switch gears and try a new approach. Why not try talking about what the Sozi are doing right?
Let's assume for a second that a Sozi gets into office. What are they going to do? If their entire message was just to get rid of Hitler then they've completed the objective of their entire term in a single day and are now I have no idea what they're going to try to do.
At least with Hitler we know what he's going to do.
Stop paying taxes (legally or illegally), or leave the country. It's the same way you fight a business... you boycott them. If the ballot presents you with two untenable choices and essentially no alternative, it's not a democracy. We don't have proportional representation, and that one flaw has been exploited beyond the point of no return. If you want a comfortable life (seemingly the predicate of your entire position), then the only viable form of tax protest is to renounce your American citizenship. Money is the only real power, and if you're paying the U.S. military to bomb and invade countries left and right (half of the discretionary budget goes the military, btw), then you're partially responsible for their actions.
Personally, I feel the United States' political system is far beyond repair. This would be less of an issue if the decisions made on my behalf with the money I give to the federal government weren't consistently... well, evil. But we're a global aggressor, we've been one for decades, and we'll continue to be. I hate to be the guy saying "if you don't like it, leave", but sometimes a lifeboat is preferable to a vain attempt to patch a cannon-hole with duct tape.
Oh look, some neo-nazi just voted for Bush. I wanted to do the right thing, but that Bush supporter is just so crazy! I guess I can't vote for Republicans now... sigh.
Google around for this (I did a few days ago), some statistician tore through Freeman's methodology, but ended up arriving at the same conclusion... that the discrepancies are enough to warrant further investigation. Where's the harm in that?
Your unfounded arrogance aside, you act as though these groups are cohesive wholes. Some of the CIA-trained mujahideen were swayed to an anti-western philosophy by bin Laden. Some of them were already foreign jihadists. I'm sorry I spoke of training and equipping al Qaida, since the term is near-meaningless to begin with; the point that the Reagan and Bush administrations' foreign policy decisions worked wonders for "those guys" stands.
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Okay. But you did respond, and smugly told the GP that he'd understand when he "grew up". Taking out your personal frustrations on others through an avenue like condescension is a clear sign of immaturity. I'm sorry that you've suffered because of what's happened, and I'm even more sorry for the guy's kids. But it's not immature to make jokes about serious topics. If you think otherwise, you might want to consider going in for an ass-stick-ectomy. Lighten up, you'll live longer that way.
Let me start by pointing out that my initial assertion about systemic oppression doesn't really hinge on people being white. It's just that they're the dominant ethnic group in America today. I'm sure there are plenty of Asians who have racist tendencies as well. As I mentioned earlier, there are even blacks with anti-black racial prejudices.
I find it unacceptable that people should be oppressed, whether because of skin color or any other reason, and I want to know what I, as a white person, might be doing unknowingly to oppress black people.
Probably nothing beyond your participation and support of a slanted social structure. Hell, maybe your contribution is positive, I don't really know anything about you.
Actually, it is not obvious to me why slavery, which ended 6.5 generations ago should have any lingering effects.
To quote the most annoying part of the bible: begat, begat, begat, begat, begat, begat. Millionaires tend to raise millionaires. Wife-beaters tend to raise wife-beaters. The dispirited fragments of a society tend to raise dispirited fragments. The "mechanism" you're looking for and failing to see is simple causality and persistence. I'm not sure how else to phrase it.
Fortunately, we have Affirmative Action to compensate for this bias.
Exactly. IMO, Affirmative Action is a necessary evil as long as these obviously social-scale problems exist.
Now this is an interesting one. Any suggestions on how to cure this? I mean, it's been generations since the abuse happened, as well.
Well, since modern day poverty is essentially the end result of all of this, my suggestion is Big Scary Government Social Programs. They don't even need to be race-sensitive, as long as they're addressing the issue adequately. Of course, I could cite instances of them working phenomenally, and you could no doubt cite instances of them failing miserably, so I think that one just basically comes down to ideological priorities.
If it is the case that white people cause black people to suffer in 2006, I believe that we must put a stop to it.
Well I'll do one better. I'll say that if black people suffer disproportionately in 2006, we must put a stop to it. Ditto for any other group that doesn't choose their membership.
But we can't put a stop to it if we don't first identify the problem.
Many problems have been identified. Poverty is a fairly obvious one, and it's relatively straightforward to address. Deep-seated cultural biases (such as the aforementioned test score disparity) are so difficult to address that sometimes an ugly hack like Affirmative Action is necessary.
I want to know how group B represses group A
Well since you seem to want exactly two sides in this, how about group A is blacks, group B is everyone else. Or group A is hispanics, group B is everyone else. It's really not as clear-cut as you're trying to see it, and whites are certainly not the only responsible party.
Well, now this is interesting. It's also unattributed, so I have no reason to believe it to be true, but for the sake of discussion, let's assume that it is true.
In about the time it took you to write that, you could have run this query:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cocaine+%22sentenci ng+disparity%22
In this scenario, we have two groups of convicted criminals: white and black. White people, for reasons of a) using cocaine instead of crack cocaine, b) having access to better legal counsel, c) simply being white, or d) some other unidentified reason, are receiving shorter sentences than black people, convicted of a similar offense.
Well, what I am specifically talking about here is a difference, codified in law, as to what sentences should be meted out for the two forms of the drug. So b), c), and d) are irreleva
My kids are exactly the same age and it causes me physical distress thinking what the Reiser children are going through right now.
Right, so that explains why you can't take a fucking joke. You're the one that needs to grow up and learn there's a difference between words and actions. No one's telling jokes to the guy's kids, get over yourself.
Kids aside, the jokes sure are funny!
Compare that to several waves of immigrants in the last few decades here, most notably the Vietnamese. These people came here with only their lives if they made it at all. They were sneered at and rejected for all but the most menial jobs. One thing they had was WORK ETHIC.
And the reason train comes grinding to a halt right at this point. Conservatives love to talk about work ethic like it's some kind of "free will" magic, and assert that people lacking it are just somehow intrinsically shit, end of discussion. It's downright ignorant to treat it as some kind of axiom, with no deeper causal relationships. Do I think your anecdote describes people with an inflated sense of entitlement who are leeching from the rest of us "hard-working Americans"? Of course, I'd be a fool not to. But there are other factors to consider:
1) The obvious one, how representative is that? Anecdotes don't carry much weight at the scale I was discussing.
2) Does the negative impact of the existence of leeches outweigh the positive impact of, well, the actual social welfare? One could take the (ultra-Libertarian) argument that since those people are abusing tax dollars, government should be dismantled. That's just the far end of the continuum that points at those people as an argument against social programs. This also comes around to corporate handouts. If more money is being wasted on an arguably more corrupt cause, what is the real motivation behind going after welfare? It's like justifying Iraq by saying Saddam runs a brutal regime, or outlawing marijuana because it has some negative health effects.
3) Most importantly, are there any root causes to this observed lack of work ethic, why do they exist, and what can be done about them? This is huge. Those Vietnamese came to America looking for a land of opportunity and freedom. The difference between that and the history of most blacks in this country is pretty vast. Do you think the freed slaves saw America in a similar light? Do you really think that they had any desire, incentive, or ability to pass on to their subsequent generations the necessary foundations of a stable subculture? These things matter, not just then, but now, because they describe a process that's still in motion. Telling the descendants of a broken people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps en masse, and comparing them to some other culture with a completely different history, accomplishes nothing except spreading divisive attitudes.
Could you please tell me how blacks are systemically oppressed in the US today? I've heard many people make that claim, but I have never been told the actual mechanism by which white people systemically oppress black people in 2006.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the feeling you also haven't pursued the topic much. Besides the fairly obvious (IMO) factors arising from their social history, many American standardized tests (including the SAT) have shown a consistent bias towards white, middle- or upper-class Americans. That's just one example pulled the from the hat; I don't study this much any more, so I'd have to dig back for more. A little independent research will turn up plenty, though.
if white people are causing it at all
Well, define "white people". We could end racism at the individual level tomorrow, and we'd still have a significant problem. So from one point of view, "white people" aren't necessarily the issue (although there's still plenty of clear-cut "regular" racism, more on that in a moment). It was definitely "white people" that established the overall structure of our society as it stands today, and guided it here. A lot of it really is just the echoes of the past. Promises made to the newly freed slaves weren't kept, and they had to start out, not only at the bottom of society, but working against:
a) Incredible prejudice, violence, etc.
b) Their own animosity toward our society built up by generations of abuse.
So the argument is something like, "given the there was obvious systemic racism when the slaves were freed, can you demonstrate the mechanism by which that racism has been eradicated?" The gist is that if you can't, you have something of a smoking gun to back up all those statistics that you earlier dismissed. So I see your argument as backwards: we know there was a problem, the only question is has it been solved? That's why inequality statistics are cited so much in this context.
Now, as for more individual-level racism (which of course ultimately affects things on a systemic level), one obvious place is law enforcement. I remember seeing a study years ago showing that even black police officers often tended to have racist (in the anti-black sense) tendencies. Last set of statistics I saw, roughly half of the people in prison for marijuana offenses were hispanic. So that implies something causal unless you believe that roughly half of the marijuana users in this country are hispanic. Another (probably better) example is the sentencing disparity between convictions for possession of cocaine in powder form vs. crack form. Crack sentences were much harsher, for what was essentially the same drug... the difference being rich white folk generally used good ole' coke, whilst the poorer black folk tended to smoke crack.
Ok, go try to stand outside the ACLU's home office with a bible and cross talking about sinners, hell, and damnation. See how long you get to stay there
Thank you for proving my point. I could do just that, and if I wasn't there on a government paycheck they couldn't (and wouldn't) do anything about it. You're obviously another unfortunate victim of lunatic Christian anti-ACLU propaganda. Sorry bout that.
I've never heard people who are poor say they need to be taxed more, so why should someone who has money get taxed more? Just because they can?
I may answer this later in the thread (because it's also very wrong), but for now I'm just going to point out that you said the wealthy are oppressed in this country. Progressive taxation is not oppression (even the silly bracketed system currently in use), so the onus is on you to explain your laughable comment.
The oppression of Religious Expression
Myth.
the oppression of wealthy by taxing their income more than someone who "works for a living"
Ahahahaha. Hahahahahahaha.
Seriously. You're too much.
Get this. The slaves were promised 40 acres and a mule. That's because it's obvious that you can't a "free" a people into absolute poverty. That's not freedom.
Now, you've shown that you clearly don't believe in justice on a social level, only on an individual level. So fuck you. The slaves never got their 40 acres and a mule. You take the alienated sons and daughters of a culture they're forcibly removed from, who've either been recently abducted or shit on for generations, and tell them "oh, you're free to go now", what do you fucking think is going to happen? A magical embrace of the Great American Dream? "Pull yourself up by your boostraps" is not a credible phrase to use when talking on a social level, and that's the level that's relevant in this discussion. Any systemic oppression of an entire people, such as that which still exists in America today against blacks needs to be addressed. The solution isn't always pretty, but neglecting it is simply immoral. We've inherited our forefathers' civilization and society, and all the benefits that entails, yet you act like that comes with no responsibility whatsoever for those it's trampled along the way. You're wrong.
But you know what really pisses me off about you Republicans whining about welfare leeches? It's the fact that you support a party that actively participates in vast amounts of corporate welfare, but I see very little criticism of that use of your tax dollars. No, you'd much rather bemoan the loss of your money to the poor, or to minorities. That's why you're called racist. You'd demonize the poor and dispossessed, and claim the brutal history of their culture's treatment is irrelevant. You'd offer up token examples of systemic abuse as an excuse to unconditionally strip welfare from everyone who really does need it, instead of protesting the same kind of abuse by the ultra-rich. You're looked down upon because your head is up your ass.
There is. One of the lesser known features of .Net is that you can ngen your code, which will take the IL binary and convert it into an actual native binary.
.NET might well stay that way when ngen'd.
.NET framework is by comparison. Microsoft has come a long way from those nightmarish systems. Moving the OS interface proper away from lower-level languages is less of a concern to me, as higher-level languages usually provide a clean wrapper on top of it.
.NET environment is infinitely preferable to its Java counterpart.
:)
That doesn't necessarily solve the problem: a bottleneck in
Largely though you don't really need native apps anyway.
No argument here, although I'd like to make the distinction between "native apps" and "apps with some native code". The latter is much more likely to be necessary than the former.
But that doesn't help you get your application to RedHat, Mandriva, etc. This actually highlights my points I think; even if you package your application, you can't be sure to reach most of the distributions on the platform.
Actually, I think your response here highlights what was said earlier by others: Linux isn't a platform. LSB is a platform. Red Hat is a platform. Debian is a platform. I think it's easily conceded that targeting every Linux distribution is a lot of work, unless you're prepared to bundle your dependencies (which is sometimes not a bad way to go, then it's trivial to set up a binary installer). Personally, although it goes against "the Linux way" in some respects, I'd love to see Ubuntu or some other Debian-derivative become the de facto standard Linux distribution, just to quell this "targeting Linux is so hard!" meme. Anyway, distributing the source and a good binary installer is a great way to encourage both end-user installation and package-writing by the various distribution maintainers.
MS' goal in replacing the current API is to cut down on common programming mistakes, like memory leaks and buffer overflows. I don't think that's a bad goal personally.
Certainly isn't! Coming from the Win32 API and MFC, I was shocked at how well-designed the
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not.
Definitely not. I border on a Java anti-zealot, probably because of how overrated I feel it is. Although I wish C# were less Java-esque, it's at least step in the right direction if you are going to blatantly copy it. And the advent of IronPython means being "stuck" developing in a
But Linux still rocks
This is not true. You can install 64 bit Windows and run applications compliled for 32 bit Windows. It does this via the WoW (Windows on Windows) compatability layer.
.Net framework, which makes it irrelevent how many bits the underlying hardware is.
.Net isn't just a VM, its end goal is to replace the Win32 API completely. I don't know of anything in the Linux world that has a similar goal.
.NET" (btw, good for them!). Of course nothing in the Linux world has a similar goal, any more than Microsoft has any goal to replace the Linux kernel API: both are ridiculous non-goals. Or did you mean something else? Technically Java isn't just a VM either, if you're counting things like cross-platform compatibility layers on top of the various OS services (sockets, threads, etc) as separates-the-men-from-the-VMs kind of features.
.NET.
Fair enough.
My point was that Windows comes with the
That's a weird point to make, unless you're claiming there's no need for native code any more.
This was to counter the claim that I had to recompile my app for 64 bit.
That was not the claim. The claim was that Windows' binary compatibility advantages were lessened by foreign architectures. You then explained that your app runs on 64-bit systems no problem, which was not related to the binary distribution vs source distribution discussion.
I would say no, but because Python may or may not be included standard with RedHat, Ubutana (whatever), Slack, etc.
Well, if I package my program for Debian, it really doesn't matter whether or not Python comes standard with the distribution, it'll get picked up as a dependency automatically.
The difference though is that
This would be more accurately phrased "Microsoft's goal is to replace the Win32 API with
Java apps even break across the same version but different platforms, let alone across version changes.
I was merely using Java as historical precedent, I would never assert its superiority to
Users don't want to worry about compling at all, so unless developers make their installers do it behind the scenes with 90% reliablity (which as you say is very hard) they're not going to come to linux.
.NET simultaneously to make a point about Windows applications, but anyone who's developed a .NET application doesn't need to recompile it for Linux.
This is a false dilemma. You're asserting the advantages of Windows and
Nope. because he specifically said moving from 32 bit to 64 bit
.Net framework, so an int is always 32 bits, no matter what platform I'm on.
.NET isn't exclusive to Windows; I could say the same thing about my Python application, but that wouldn't be a point in Debian's favor. Java programmers have been enjoying this luxury for years, but clearly the discussion is only relevant to native applications, not those built on explicitly cross-platform VMs.
That's a much bigger difference than 286 -> 386. It's just that AMD64 also happens to support the old 32-bit applications. At any rate, the point here is that Windows doesn't "support" the architecture difference, it's done at the hardware level.
Actually no. See, my app is built on the
So wait, as a point in Windows' favor you claim that your app runs "on 64-bit" without issue, then admit that it's actually running on the CLR? That's all well and good... for the CLR.
So then... what happens when you have a match?
Yup, just like how it was broken moving from 16 bit to 32. Opps, Windows provided backward compatability so this didn't happen.
That's because the 286 -> 386 change was within the same architecture. Parent is talking about nontrivial architecture changes (such as from x86 to PPC or the like).
My application in particular will also run just fine on 64 bit, without any effort on my part.
Erm... "on 64-bit?" Meaning, your 32-bit application runs on a 64-bit chip with 32-bit emulation/native support? Gee gosh!
Fair enough. I was mostly responding to the implication that I'm part of the lot that wouldn't consider practicing what they preach on this issue. I can certainly understand that the decision is far from yours to make alone, and that it would involve effort leagues beyond what my relocation would require. Your guess about me is basically spot on: early 20s, single, no plan to settle down in the near future, full of the ire that's born of fresh discoveries of the world's perceived inadequacies. I apologize if I came off as holier than thou, but I do think it's good to have the "get out of the country" message reiterated by those who take it seriously, as opposed to the flippant "get the hell out" sense. I do feel very strongly that the U.S. military is rarely up to any good, and encourage tax protest in all its forms in light of this.
Anyway, keep inciting the good incite!
Other than the CO2 emmissions produced at auto factories, auto producers don't produce any significant amounts of CO2. They are not externalizing costs.
The government of California mandated certain emission standards. The auto manufacturers blocked the implementation of those standards through legal action. This saves them money at everyone else's expense (pollution produced in excess of what the public deems acceptable). How are they not externalizing?
Enough! I can't believe how many times I've read that already! Address the faults of the action as they exist right now, not some as compared to hypothetical scenario you concocted in the last 10 minutes of your completely-disjoint-from-the-actual-situation life (I'm taking the liberty of assuming you're not particularly more savvy to the details of political maneuvering within the California government than the average Californian). This lawsuit is a means to an end, and it's pretty obvious that it's being undertaken as a measure of some desperation. No one is being unfairly victimized here, the auto industry has made a killing externalizing its pollution costs. Did you consider the obstacles the Californian government has faced in this arena? This is real life politics, not a game of who has the best one-liner plan for an ideal world. If it takes a seemingly ridiculous lawsuit to get these companies to comply with the law, or at least contribute to the solution, then more power to CA.
The intent of the lawsuit is to create PR that you are "protecting the enviornment" ahead of an election, while not actually passing a law that will piss off SUV-loving voters.
Well, the fact that the intent of the lawsuit is relatively unrelated to its merit aside, that's American two-party politics for you. Is your "better way" just a script for a utopian society to follow? Hell, why not just suggest a simple meritocracy? Seems that would solve a lot of problems.
OK, people seem to be slamming my post
Apologies if I came off as "slamming" your post. I very much identify with your position on the matter, and I was just sharing the conclusion that I've drawn.
Do you know what's involved in immigrating to another country? Have you ever looked into it? People who say "if you don't like it, leave" have obviously never looked into actually getting a work visa to move to another country and try to earn a living.
Hogwash. I'm saying that, and I've looked into it quite a bit. In fact, I could enumerate the bullets of my emigration plan to you, but that'd be getting a bit too personal.
My job has no offices overseas, so I would basically have to get a job in the other country before I could even apply for a visa. In addition, my wife's line of work involves national and local certifications, so she would have to go to school a minimum of two years to obtain said certifications, and again, we would have to live in that country first.
Okay, now it's post-slamming time. The above all amounts to "waaa, waaa, it's a lot of work!". I never said you could snap your fingers and be magically transported to another land. Yes, it can be a big deal, a huge deal, to move yourself and your family to another country. It might take years of planning and saving. I'm sorry that I can't phrase this in a non-condescending way, but I suppose it really just depends on how seriously you take your large-scale moral responsibilities.
Thank you Slashdot
for helping to secure yet another Nazi victory. Every time I hear some Sozi whining about the Reichstag getting burned down, it makes me want to vote Nazi no matter who the candidate is because at least the Nazi will have clear values and have a high chance of doing something about them.
Here's a crazy idea. Stop bitching about what Hitler is alledgedly doing wrong and start promoting what the Sozi are going to do right. What are the Sozi doing to help ensure an accurate vote?
Considering "Hitler is purposefully destabilizing our nation" failed to secure a victory twice, it might be a good idea to switch gears and try a new approach. Why not try talking about what the Sozi are doing right?
Let's assume for a second that a Sozi gets into office. What are they going to do? If their entire message was just to get rid of Hitler then they've completed the objective of their entire term in a single day and are now I have no idea what they're going to try to do.
At least with Hitler we know what he's going to do.
Stop paying taxes (legally or illegally), or leave the country. It's the same way you fight a business... you boycott them. If the ballot presents you with two untenable choices and essentially no alternative, it's not a democracy. We don't have proportional representation, and that one flaw has been exploited beyond the point of no return. If you want a comfortable life (seemingly the predicate of your entire position), then the only viable form of tax protest is to renounce your American citizenship. Money is the only real power, and if you're paying the U.S. military to bomb and invade countries left and right (half of the discretionary budget goes the military, btw), then you're partially responsible for their actions.
Personally, I feel the United States' political system is far beyond repair. This would be less of an issue if the decisions made on my behalf with the money I give to the federal government weren't consistently... well, evil. But we're a global aggressor, we've been one for decades, and we'll continue to be. I hate to be the guy saying "if you don't like it, leave", but sometimes a lifeboat is preferable to a vain attempt to patch a cannon-hole with duct tape.
See an earlier comment on this very page about incompetence in this very election. "Black and white" my ass.
Oh look, some neo-nazi just voted for Bush. I wanted to do the right thing, but that Bush supporter is just so crazy! I guess I can't vote for Republicans now... sigh.
Google around for this (I did a few days ago), some statistician tore through Freeman's methodology, but ended up arriving at the same conclusion... that the discrepancies are enough to warrant further investigation. Where's the harm in that?
Your unfounded arrogance aside, you act as though these groups are cohesive wholes. Some of the CIA-trained mujahideen were swayed to an anti-western philosophy by bin Laden. Some of them were already foreign jihadists. I'm sorry I spoke of training and equipping al Qaida, since the term is near-meaningless to begin with; the point that the Reagan and Bush administrations' foreign policy decisions worked wonders for "those guys" stands.