I have no idea when these "traditional" GOP values you are speaking of were the norm - during what era do you think the GOP actually followed them?
I was born in 1971. In all my life the GOP has never stood for less government intrusion into private lives. They've been in bed with the lets-make-religion-mandatory crowd for as long as I can remember, and that has kept them firmly on the side of wanting to intrude into private citizen's lives. (The Democrats do it too, but over different issues).
And let's not forget that the very first GOP president was *very much* in favor of centralized, federal control.
The problem with using the public to find "waste" is that "waste" is a subjective thing that depends on what you consider important. It's bad enough when you have to defend your actions to a PHB who doesn't understand how to do what you do. Now imagine having to defend them to the pointy-haired public who understand even less. "Hey! what's with all this time spent on administrating the legislature's website?? I mean come on - I run a 'blog - it's not that hard - what are these people doing???"
Your comment is based on the assumption that the editor didn't see the humour angle and thought it was serious. What makes you think the editor thought it was serious? It would get posted either way - whether it was because it was real or because it was funny.
It doesn't have to be a perfect analogy to illustrate the point at hand.
When trying to make a point that it is unethical to discriminate against a certain thing, it's extremely relevant whether that thing is a choice a person made freely or not.
People have real world experience moving files into folders and into cabinets.
I don't. I never used the damn things. Calling a list of things a "directory" is more sensible to me than calling it a "folder", since the metaphor holds together better for what is happening when you move things around. You can't fit a paper folder in a folder in a folder in a folder - they tear apart. But it makes perfect sense to have a directory that has entries for other directories that have entries for other directories. Plus, the notion that the same item can be accessed through two different directories is intuitive. It happens all the time that a phone's phone number is listed in two different directories, and either one is just as valid a way to let a person get to your phone number. This concept doesn't work so well in the folder metaphor, where you are picturing that the files actually reside INSIDE the folder, when they really don't. It messes up the ability to have a good metaphor for multiple filenames pointing to the same linked file.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Modern guis are trying to make them simpler than possible - providing an extra barrier for those that do want to learn more - they have to unlearn so much first.
If ease of learning was always more important than ease of use (no, they are not the same thing), then we'd all be steering our cars with reins instead of steering wheels. At the time cars were first being introduced, that would have been the more intuitive interface for people to learn.
"X is worse than Y" does not have to imply "Y is good". They could both be bad. This is precisely what is happening here with your comparasin of how Polish and English handle the situation of unknown gender.
The use of "they" as a singular does not qualify as a "good" way to avoid gender in pronouns. It's just done that way because there is no good singular "it" pronoun that works for people.
Notice that I have no idea what gender you are, yet I successfully have not made any references to your gender. It's not hard - just requires thinking.
Your post was stiff and uncomfortable to read. Now I know why. While being genderless in speech is possible, it does not lead to pleasant sounding speech. Hence my claim (that I still stand by) that there is no *good* way to do it.
Yes, I have been trolled - by an asshole who keeps repeating the same crap over and over who doesn't know the difference between a female impersonator and a person going through the process of getting a sex change.
I see the same thing from women listening to men. *Exactly* the same thing. I think it's nothing more than a case of it being hard to pay attention to that which is not interesting to you. Women and men are often interested in completely different things, and bored by the things that each other find interesting. So a woman is likely to spend time talking about an aspect of a thing that a man doesn't care about, and a man is likely to spend time talking about an aspect of a thing that a woman doesn't care about.
People often think they are seeing "the interface is becoming more intuative" when what they are really seeing is "the population is becoming more familiar with the interface". The grandparent poster's example of tape-deck symbols is appropriate here. There is nothing about a triangle pointed right that intuitively means "play". There is nothing about a pair of vertical stripes that intuitively means "pause". There is nothing about a pair of left-pointing triangles that intuitively means "rewind" as oppposed to "fast forward" unless you have learned a prevelent left-to-right direction as the "norm". And yet those symbols appear everywhere, and have migrated to CD players, and even computerized mp3 players, and everyone understands them - not because the symbols are inherently intuitive, but because the population has adapted to them and caused them to become culturaly intuitive *after* their introduction.
The familiarity with windows is very much the same thing. I was at an internet kiosk the other day that was run based on a Sun (It was easy to tell), using a window like MwM, with a menu on the left of the titlebar for closing down the window, and a pair of buttons on the right - one for minimize and one for maximize. Users were repeatedly confused about how to shut down a browser window, because they expected the upper-right button to be a windows 'X' for 'close', and anything that deviated from that was confusing - regardless of it's intuitiveness.
The only intuitive interface is the nipple. After that it's all learned.
Chosing an OS just because you want to beat Windows is rather stupid, but no more stupid than choosing one based on the attitude of some of it's users.
Why do you care what the attitude is of some other Linux users? What difference does it make?
By that logic, someone who sets up a business to maintain and service 18-wheeler trucks is an "elitist" since he's not dealing with the kinds of vehicles the majority are using.
The reason the majority aren't using Linux is that the majority don't need to program. But just like truck driving is a major backbone of our economy and things would fall apart without it, so too is programming. It is no more elitist to favor working with servers over desktops than it is to favor working with semi-trucks over cars.
You don't need to be a plumber to use a toilet, why should you need to be a unix guru to use a computer?
Would you like to have a toilet that was built under the false assumption it would never need a plumber, and therefore has no user-servicable parts inside, and thus when it backs up you are stuck with no recourse?
Just like all toilets should be capable of being plumber-servicable even if you personally don't want to be that plumber, all computers should be capable of being programmer-servicable even if you personally don't want to be that programmer.
(validation, etc.) can be handled by the client and I no longer have to worry as much about logistics. This depends on clients not being stupid, however.
You want to make extra sure none of that validation that you are offloading onto the client will be security-related. Otherwise someone can just write their own client to spit the form data at you without the validation, and bang - there goes your security.
One of the things I find most frustrating about online games is how they consider it cheating to use anything but the approved client - why is this the case? Because they put too much functionality in the client such that using a different client makes it possible to cheat. Of course the fact that using a different client has other benefits besides cheating is irrelevant to them - once they put their risky validations in the client where they don't belong, they had to lock down the client.
In theory that might work, but only if you could come up with a ball made of material that has very little mass. The problem is that if the ball has any signifigant mass (Remember, it would have to be made from something sturdy enough for a person to walk inside), then it will have an immense amount of rotational inertia. It would feel nothing like walking on actual ground. On actual ground when you stop walking, the ground doesn't try to keep sliding under you. It would only be useful for simulating drunken walking - "I stopped walking, but the ground kept moving so I fell over."
It is a trade group representing the interests of US record companies.
Which is perfectly compatable with it being a cartel.
I would also like to point out that you are apparently ignorant of the fact that the topic had drifted by then so it was no longer about just the British program.
your claim that this needs to be on the internet to work?
Sorry about that - that was never a claim you made - it was just implied by the fact your post was arguing against a parent post that made the counterclaim - but it could be that you misunderstood the parent post when you did that.
WTF does your comment have to do with your claim that this needs to be on the internet to work? To send the data to a nurse's station like you are speaking of does not require external access. To be using a TCP/IP network on a LAN for the machinery is a good thing. The complaint was that remote internet exploits, of the sort addressed by a security patch of the OS, shouldn't be an issue because there is no need to be connecting that machine to the public internet anyway.
Which is why, for example, getting the latest browser security patch to plug a remotely exploitable hole shouldn't even be an issue. If it's possible to even traceroute to the life support machine's IP address from out on the internet in the first place, then that's a badly set up system.
Your claim was not that I was ignorant of the fact that the RIAA is a cartel of companies, but that I was ignorant of the fact that it was a USA thing. But either way, both such claims are wrong. "Company" has several definitions, and a cartel of companies can itself also be referred to as a company.
Many people live by a standard "you did more wrong than me, so you're to blame".
Yes, and they work for auto insurance companies. You've just described the actual percentage of fault system in use already - especially with your example of two drivers in an accident, both speeding, but one speeding more than the other.
The distance travelled in a contiguous block of time could be a clue to the type of traffic being driven in. Knowing you drove 200 miles last week tells you a little bit. But knowing you drove on twenty seperate occasions, for ten miles each time, tells you that you were driving in stop-and-go urban traffic, as opposed to say, driving twice, for 100 miles each time, tells even more.
It is *possible* that this information could be used for just that sort of thing, and not to determine if you are speeding.
If I said, "You are a woman, and therefore statistically less likely to have gotten a computer science degree than a man, so I won't hire you" I would get my ass sued for bigoted hiring practices, and I'd deserve it.
If I said, "You are black, and therefore statistically more likely to end up in jail than a white guy, so I won't trust you to be a responsible customer at my store - get out", then I would get my ass sued for bigoted business practices, and I'd deserve it.
But if I was an insurance company, then I'd thrive on exactly that sort of bigotry, and I'd be off scott free. The practice of assuming you are just as much of a risk as others in a similar demographic is bigotry, even when it is actually true. (Becuase it ignores the fact that exceptions exist, and treating the whole group as if they are all exactly like the average ends up mistreating the individuals who are not like that average, even if you have done your homework such that your perception of the average is actually accurate.)
You are correct on one thing - charging a different amount for people who upload the data than for people who don't is definately very much in line with what insurance companies tend to do anyway, and nothing new and special. It's just that the old way they operated was already bigoted to begin with, and this is just another example of more of the same.
And if that is actually true, then the accident record should reflect it, and there is no need to place additional penalties beyond just checking the accident record (which, incidentally, already DOES assign a greater percentage of guilt to the driver that was speeding, if all other factors are equal.)
After all, a computer programmer is much more likely to be a computer cracker than a computer illiterate person, therefore if we can find evidence that you are a computer programmer, it is justified to discriminate against you as a high security risk for being someone who will crack into our systems and cause trouble. Sound fair?
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I have no idea when these "traditional" GOP values you are speaking of were the norm - during what era do you think the GOP actually followed them?
I was born in 1971. In all my life the GOP has never stood for less government intrusion into private lives. They've been in bed with the lets-make-religion-mandatory crowd for as long as I can remember, and that has kept them firmly on the side of wanting to intrude into private citizen's lives. (The Democrats do it too, but over different issues).
And let's not forget that the very first GOP president was *very much* in favor of centralized, federal control.
The problem with using the public to find "waste" is that "waste" is a subjective thing that depends on what you consider important. It's bad enough when you have to defend your actions to a PHB who doesn't understand how to do what you do. Now imagine having to defend them to the pointy-haired public who understand even less. "Hey! what's with all this time spent on administrating the legislature's website?? I mean come on - I run a 'blog - it's not that hard - what are these people doing???"
Your comment is based on the assumption that the editor didn't see the humour angle and thought it was serious. What makes you think the editor thought it was serious? It would get posted either way - whether it was because it was real or because it was funny.
It doesn't have to be a perfect analogy to illustrate the point at hand.
When trying to make a point that it is unethical to discriminate against a certain thing, it's extremely relevant whether that thing is a choice a person made freely or not.
People have real world experience moving files into folders and into cabinets.
I don't. I never used the damn things. Calling a list of things a "directory" is more sensible to me than calling it a "folder", since the metaphor holds together better for what is happening when you move things around. You can't fit a paper folder in a folder in a folder in a folder - they tear apart. But it makes perfect sense to have a directory that has entries for other directories that have entries for other directories. Plus, the notion that the same item can be accessed through two different directories is intuitive. It happens all the time that a phone's phone number is listed in two different directories, and either one is just as valid a way to let a person get to your phone number. This concept doesn't work so well in the folder metaphor, where you are picturing that the files actually reside INSIDE the folder, when they really don't. It messes up the ability to have a good metaphor for multiple filenames pointing to the same linked file.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Modern guis are trying to make them simpler than possible - providing an extra barrier for those that do want to learn more - they have to unlearn so much first.
If ease of learning was always more important than ease of use (no, they are not the same thing), then we'd all be steering our cars with reins instead of steering wheels. At the time cars were first being introduced, that would have been the more intuitive interface for people to learn.
"X is worse than Y" does not have to imply "Y is good". They could both be bad. This is precisely what is happening here with your comparasin of how Polish and English handle the situation of unknown gender.
The use of "they" as a singular does not qualify as a "good" way to avoid gender in pronouns. It's just done that way because there is no good singular "it" pronoun that works for people.
Notice that I have no idea what gender you are, yet I successfully have not made any references to your gender. It's not hard - just requires thinking.
Your post was stiff and uncomfortable to read. Now I know why. While being genderless in speech is possible, it does not lead to pleasant sounding speech. Hence my claim (that I still stand by) that there is no *good* way to do it.
Yes, I have been trolled - by an asshole who keeps repeating the same crap over and over who doesn't know the difference between a female impersonator and a person going through the process of getting a sex change.
Guys automatically assume I am male (my name is a very common female name) and address me as Mr./Sir in emails.
Blame the broken English language for that one. There is no good way to speak to a person in a fashion that doesn't specify gender.
I see the same thing from women listening to men. *Exactly* the same thing. I think it's nothing more than a case of it being hard to pay attention to that which is not interesting to you. Women and men are often interested in completely different things, and bored by the things that each other find interesting. So a woman is likely to spend time talking about an aspect of a thing that a man doesn't care about, and a man is likely to spend time talking about an aspect of a thing that a woman doesn't care about.
Handedness is not a choice. Business practices are. That ruins your analogy right there.
People often think they are seeing "the interface is becoming more intuative" when what they are really seeing is "the population is becoming more familiar with the interface". The grandparent poster's example of tape-deck symbols is appropriate here. There is nothing about a triangle pointed right that intuitively means "play". There is nothing about a pair of vertical stripes that intuitively means "pause". There is nothing about a pair of left-pointing triangles that intuitively means "rewind" as oppposed to "fast forward" unless you have learned a prevelent left-to-right direction as the "norm". And yet those symbols appear everywhere, and have migrated to CD players, and even computerized mp3 players, and everyone understands them - not because the symbols are inherently intuitive, but because the population has adapted to them and caused them to become culturaly intuitive *after* their introduction.
The familiarity with windows is very much the same thing. I was at an internet kiosk the other day that was run based on a Sun (It was easy to tell), using a window like MwM, with a menu on the left of the titlebar for closing down the window, and a pair of buttons on the right - one for minimize and one for maximize. Users were repeatedly confused about how to shut down a browser window, because they expected the upper-right button to be a windows 'X' for 'close', and anything that deviated from that was confusing - regardless of it's intuitiveness.
The only intuitive interface is the nipple. After that it's all learned.
Chosing an OS just because you want to beat Windows is rather stupid, but no more stupid than choosing one based on the attitude of some of it's users.
Why do you care what the attitude is of some other Linux users? What difference does it make?
By that logic, someone who sets up a business to maintain and service 18-wheeler trucks is an "elitist" since he's not dealing with the kinds of vehicles the majority are using.
The reason the majority aren't using Linux is that the majority don't need to program. But just like truck driving is a major backbone of our economy and things would fall apart without it, so too is programming. It is no more elitist to favor working with servers over desktops than it is to favor working with semi-trucks over cars.
Your disdain for them is
not in evidence.
You don't need to be a plumber to use a toilet, why should you need to be a unix guru to use a computer?
Would you like to have a toilet that was built under the false assumption it would never need a plumber, and therefore has no user-servicable parts inside, and thus when it backs up you are stuck with no recourse?
Just like all toilets should be capable of being plumber-servicable even if you personally don't want to be that plumber, all computers should be capable of being programmer-servicable even if you personally don't want to be that programmer.
(validation, etc.) can be handled by the client and I no longer have to worry as much about logistics. This depends on clients not being stupid, however.
You want to make extra sure none of that validation that you are offloading onto the client will be security-related. Otherwise someone can just write their own client to spit the form data at you without the validation, and bang - there goes your security.
One of the things I find most frustrating about online games is how they consider it cheating to use anything but the approved client - why is this the case? Because they put too much functionality in the client such that using a different client makes it possible to cheat.
Of course the fact that using a different client has other benefits besides cheating is irrelevant to them - once they put their risky validations in the client where they don't belong, they had to lock down the client.
In theory that might work, but only if you could come up with a ball made of material that has very little mass. The problem is that if the ball has any signifigant mass (Remember, it would have to be made from something sturdy enough for a person to walk inside), then it will have an immense amount of rotational inertia. It would feel nothing like walking on actual ground. On actual ground when you stop walking, the ground doesn't try to keep sliding under you. It would only be useful for simulating drunken walking - "I stopped walking, but the ground kept moving so I fell over."
It is a trade group representing the interests of US record companies.
Which is perfectly compatable with it being a cartel.
I would also like to point out that you are apparently ignorant of the fact that the topic had drifted by then so it was no longer about just the British program.
your claim that this needs to be on the internet to work?
Sorry about that - that was never a claim you made - it was just implied by the fact your post was arguing against a parent post that made the counterclaim - but it could be that you misunderstood the parent post when you did that.
WTF does your comment have to do with your claim that this needs to be on the internet to work? To send the data to a nurse's station like you are speaking of does not require external access. To be using a TCP/IP network on a LAN for the machinery is a good thing. The complaint was that remote internet exploits, of the sort addressed by a security patch of the OS, shouldn't be an issue because there is no need to be connecting that machine to the public internet anyway.
Which is why, for example, getting the latest browser security patch to plug a remotely exploitable hole shouldn't even be an issue. If it's possible to even traceroute to the life support machine's IP address from out on the internet in the first place, then that's a badly set up system.
Your claim was not that I was ignorant of the fact that the RIAA is a cartel of companies, but that I was ignorant of the fact that it was a USA thing. But either way, both such claims are wrong. "Company" has several definitions, and a cartel of companies can itself also be referred to as a company.
Many people live by a standard "you did more wrong than me, so you're to blame".
Yes, and they work for auto insurance companies. You've just described the actual percentage of fault system in use already - especially with your example of two drivers in an accident, both speeding, but one speeding more than the other.
The distance travelled in a contiguous block of time could be a clue to the type of traffic being driven in. Knowing you drove 200 miles last week tells you a little bit. But knowing you drove on twenty seperate occasions, for ten miles each time, tells you that you were driving in stop-and-go urban traffic, as opposed to say, driving twice, for 100 miles each time, tells even more.
It is *possible* that this information could be used for just that sort of thing, and not to determine if you are speeding.
But I doubt it.
If I said, "You are a woman, and therefore statistically less likely to have gotten a computer science degree than a man, so I won't hire you" I would get my ass sued for bigoted hiring practices, and I'd deserve it.
If I said, "You are black, and therefore statistically more likely to end up in jail than a white guy, so I won't trust you to be a responsible customer at my store - get out", then I would get my ass sued for bigoted business practices, and I'd deserve it.
But if I was an insurance company, then I'd thrive on exactly that sort of bigotry, and I'd be off scott free. The practice of assuming you are just as much of a risk as others in a similar demographic is bigotry, even when it is actually true. (Becuase it ignores the fact that exceptions exist, and treating the whole group as if they are all exactly like the average ends up mistreating the individuals who are not like that average, even if you have done your homework such that your perception of the average is actually accurate.)
You are correct on one thing - charging a different amount for people who upload the data than for people who don't is definately very much in line with what insurance companies tend to do anyway, and nothing new and special. It's just that the old way they operated was already bigoted to begin with, and this is just another example of more of the same.
And if that is actually true, then the accident record should reflect it, and there is no need to place additional penalties beyond just checking the accident record (which, incidentally, already DOES assign a greater percentage of guilt to the driver that was speeding, if all other factors are equal.)
After all, a computer programmer is much more likely to be a computer cracker than a computer illiterate person, therefore if we can find evidence that you are a computer programmer, it is justified to discriminate against you as a high security risk for being someone who will crack into our systems and cause trouble. Sound fair?