I deal with below average computer users daily (far below what everyone else here seems to deal with). I get MS Office attachments that do not format correct in OpenOffice, I get to visit webpages that do not format correctly in Firefox (at least not without some discomfort)
You must have a flavor of linux that doesn't deuglify the fonts for you. This was my experience before I fixed my fonts, now no problems with either program.
Right and when you get new hardware, plug it in, and restart, what does XP do? Hey, holy shit user, you have new hardware, we need drivers! Oh wait, we have them right here, no recompiles or modules need to be loaded. It's a digital camera you say? Wow, would you like to open the files on the camera and work with Photoshop or some random preloaded Windows software or would you like to save them to a directory on your HD?
You're damned lucky if that happened. Usually you need to actually install the software that comes with that camera, or you are relegated to the crappy XP program. Which isn't any better than the one that comes with Gnome, or whatever.
This conclusion is bogus. Basically all hardware works just fine with Windows. It's not the same for Linux. Give me a break.
As of when, the 2.0 kernel? Even slackware treated my sound card fine.
(I don't have time to figure out why my network cards aren't working under 2.6.x - odd that I have been running Linux for 10 years and I can't seem to get my configuration to work w/o thinking).
Yeah, that's odd. You using Caldera? I have to say, getting a computer on the network is the one place where Linux is so much more easy than XP it isn't funny. I have literally spent hours trying to get windows boxes to see each other on a network to no avail, and I've never had to trouble myself in Linux.
Your missing the point, I'm talking about freeipods.com which I believe the OP was refering to. (I can't be sure since he removed the link.) This is not the same type of thing that you are refering to in your links to Wired's article about Ebay auctions. You need to be very clear in your thinking and know the difference between a matrix scheme and a referral company. They are 2 different thing. One is illegal, one is not. Freeipods.com does not sell you the opportunity to get into the deal. . Instead the are a referal service. Companies partner with them to get people to try their products.
From freeipods.com:
1) Participate in one (1) online offer.
2) Refer some friends to do the same.
3) We'll ship out your order for FREE!
First, if it was just a referral service, it wouldn't require YOU to take part in the same deal you're getting my friends in. Second, it wouldn't necessarily require me to find more than one friend to get paid. By definition, anything that requires me to sell the same deal I bought to more than one person is a pyramid scheme.
This is easy to pick apart. First, deals can't work without either 1) an ever-expanding base of participants or 2) the deal itself, between one person and the company, being profitable for the company. Clearly it's not profitable - I take part in one "offer," and that's not worth hundreds of dollars to the company.
Since the deal itself - for one person - doesn't make sense the company, then this has to be in the first category - it depends on a widening base to work. And inevitably, you run out of suckers, and the exponential growth stops. Put another way, there has to be a bottom of the pyramid. Eventually, everyone who will ever sign up for this thing will do so, and then the bottom rung will be unable to find enough friends to get their free stuff.
That's where the problem comes in. They don't have to guarantee you that you'll find enough friends to get your ipod. But they do have to give you the ipod when you get enough friends. And that's the catch - they give you an ipod (worth $250) for basically 5 "deals" - which are NOT worth $50 each to the company. At this point, there are only two ways this works. Either they make their profit out of whatever fraction of people can't get 5 friends to sign up, or the pyramid eventually collapses and they can't send out ipods to all the people who have them coming.
If it's the first case, like they claim, they're ok but shady. If it's the second, they're illegal. Personally, I doubt it'll work, because if it were me, I'd sign up 5 fake names for that BMG crap, and do the deal myself. Since that's so easy, I can't believe people won't be smart enough to bankrup their asses, crashing the pyramid.
The free ipod deal is not a matrix scam. It simply say's you have to complete a purchase and have five qualifying friends also complete a purchase to receive a ipod. This is no different then the car dealer down the street offering you 100 bucks for each friend you refer to him that buys. Companies do this legally all the time. Free ipods is a kickback from companies for doing business with them and referring friends. It is quite different then a buyers club.
The difference is that your "friends," in this case, actually get the car they buy in your example. Selling your friends the opportunity to get $100 if they sell the same opportunity to other people is a pyramid scheme.
The fact that people technically are making a purchase (a $40 CD, for example, that never actually ships) does not make this legal. That's the only difference between the ipod scam and a classic, naked pyramid scheme. No one is buying the $40 CD to get the CD (or whatever), it's to get the pyramid ipod.
This is in fact a pyramid scheme as defined by US law, as the FTC has declared. You might not like that, but it's the case nonetheless
Conversely, there is a lower limit to stock price for shorting a stock, $0, but that doesn't mean your gain is limited. If I decided to risk big and short SCO for a million dollars, confident that SCO will be out of business real soon now and then they do go bankrupt, I just made a million dollars. It doesn't matter if they were trading at $0.01 or $1,000,000 per share when I bought them, I still made a million dollars.
That's exactly what it means. Your potential gain is limited to $1,000,000. Shares of a pubically traded company can't go below zero, so that's the mathematical limit of your gain. On the other hand, if SCO wins their lawsuit and the price skyrockets (unlikely I admit), your potential liability is limitless. Obviously, when we're talking about gain/loss, we're talking fractional, like your investment went up 10%. Of course you could make more by simply investing more, but when people talk about limited gain, we're not talking about investing a different amount of principal.
To sum up: Normal stock = loss limited to principal, unlimited potential, as stock can only go to zero but can go up arbitrarily. Shorting = exact opposite. If the stock goes up a ton, you have to buy enough shares to cover your position.
the fact that he was able to run down the gazelle, was not to do with how much energy the gazelle was using, rather it was to do with the differences in heat dissipation between humans and.. all other mammals.
I imagine the fact that jogging is more efficient than alternatively sprinting and stopping helps too.
Can we stop with the "cyberspace" crap? Somehow we convinced your average idiot that saying "information superhighway" made him sound like a 'tard - what's it going to take this time?
For instance, You'd go from source, to the eyeTV, to your VHS recorder, to your projector, then to your regular TV, were you to have all those things.
This guy's doing HDTV and you want him to put it through his damned *VCR* first? Ugh! If you put the TV last, you ensure that you see the worst signal possible all the time. I'll take the possibility that my VCR gets a crappy signal - after all, how often do I use it now?
The way to daisychain this is to go through things that'll preserve the digital signal first, then the TV, then export the TV's signal to whatever legacy recording devices you have that have intermittent need of a signal. Either that or use a good splitter to divide the video signal upstream. But don't put a hi-def video signal through your VCR and it's shitty aluminum coax connector - think of the children!
4) Profit, or How Mozilla Pays M$ Back for The Whole Killing of Netscape Thing
It's so great to see Mozilla rising from the smoldering ashes that MS left Netscape in, only to come back and bite MS in the ass. It's so symbolic, they should change Mozilla's name to "Phoenix" or something.
Huh? Oh. (Gilda Radner on SNL voice....) Nevermind.
That's the misconception. They're not doing it for free. We are paying them to do it. We are paying taxes on money earned, we are paying taxes on money spent, we are paying taxes on living in a state. We are paying for these government offices to exist. Without taxpayers money, the DoJ wouldn't even exist.
Yep, and I think all the rest of us taxpayers would rather have something better done with our money than have the gov offices reply to ridiculous requests. If you want some records, fine. But I see nothing wrong with a numerical limit, or a fee for excess.
Were it confidential information, I would completely accept this response. But electronic data doesn't cost anything.
The labor does, if it's in a system not designed for rapid recovery of reams of data. And this being the government, I bet this system isn't. If this request would take a few days to fulfill, then they should have to pay for the privilege. Remember, they want a copy of the ENTIRE DATABASE. And the article didn't say in what form. If they'll use whatever format the gov uses, maybe it isn't as bad.
I do. Let me tell you - it's trivial to take a dump of an IBM database. DB2, IMS/DB, FOCUS... or any other DBMS that'll run under MVS, VM/CMS, or AS/400. It's all rather trivial, and, in fact, standard operating procedures in IBM mainframe shops mean that there is already a tape that can be grabbed right of a shelf.
Really? 1) Would you provide a copy of that to any moron who called you and 2) would you format it for me to comply with the FOIA instead of whatever custom-made from-the-60's program was used to generate it?
...who sees a FOIA resquest like "Give us an entire copy of that massive freaking database running on a clunky old IBM 360 with a tape drive" as a bit unreasonable. One need not invoke evil or anything else to find an explanation of why this was a bad idea. And don't overexamine the reason - very likely, they may not want to wast such a strenuous task on the machine until the ultimate upgrade, which is PLANNED. Remember you're getting a technical explanation from a technical person, who repeated as best they could what the sysadmin told them.
What next? Can I send a request that says "I would like a copy of every piece of paper ever produced by the US?" Do I then have the right to moral outrage when they refuse?
Seriously, this is freaking ridiculous. There's plenty of reason to go after Ashcroft without resorting to silly crap like this.
I would see nothing wrong with a $.01/page fee for FOIA request. Pay up if it amounts to more than $10.
In your paragraph about the nutty kid blowing up SUVs, you basically said "The Left has more crazies than the Right, if you don't count most of the crazies on the Right."
A fair nit. My response would be that people rightfully ignore the religious nuts, but the press (read:NPR) treats the leftist assholes with a lot more respect than that. Perhaps not SUV-blower-uppers, but I digress.
So I guess my complaint is that not all nuts are treated equally.
You do realize that it's current, not voltage that kills? Higher voltage merely makes it easier to deliver the current. Scissors in the socket are very low resistance, so the voltage doesn't matter. There's a reason many outlets have GFCI protectors on them.
Yes, I understand Ohm's law. I also understand that, to first order, little Johnny has a reasonably constant resistance, and that IR drop at a constant power is higher for lower voltages. Ultimately, little Johnny is fine if he bridges a 6V junction and toast if he bridges a 6000V junction.
But if you want to test it, you grab the downed power line and I'll stick my tounge to the 9V battery.
Which causes a voltage drop along the wires. Obviously you should either be using thicker wires or a higher voltage. I can't believe it's the generator being overloaded.
Yes, it is the grid ccapacity that's at fault. Brownouts have nothing to do with the wires from the box. And even if it did, why would it only happen at peak capacity, during the summer? Are you seriously contending it's because of inreased resistance of copper over a 30C temperature difference? I assure you otherwise.
More like half a mile in a 240volt system....Th UK electrical system has fewer step down transformers than the US.
You'll only get a factor of 2 difference, and even then, you'll still have a junction. What, you thought you in the UK have wires coming directly from the power company to your house? Please!
Ultimately, power is transmitted at MANY THOUSANDS of V. It's a big stepdown to either 120V or 240V. The difference is effectively negligible. Either way, the IR drop from the box to your house is less than a few V, I'd guess.
Again, come to a place that has "Summer" - which is when all brownouts occur. It's because the grid is strained.
All in all, our system has been designed for 120V. It works fine most of the time. It's not like the designers forgot about Ohm's law, for chrissakes.
Moral of this story - a little E&M knowledge is a bad thing.
Nice of you to group all those on the left as having "self-righteous holier-,smarter-,and generally better-than-thou attitude". Your claim to be somewhat objective by separating yourself from "the right" by stating your libertarianism doesn't work here. You trash one side and then talk aobut how the other side is more tolerable.
First, I'm not equating current Dems with the leftists I refer to. As you say, the Dems aren't left anymore, and to me they represent soccer moms, labor unions, isolationists/protectionists, and deadbeats. When I say left, I'm talking mainly about social leftists (ie, welfare state), so if that changes things I apologize.
Second, I wouldn't dream of making that all-inclusive, but as far as generalities go, it isn't all that off. I'm talking about two camps whose ideas I disagree with substantially. Also, when I say libertarian I mean it with a little "l." I'm generally strict-interpretation and small-government, but also pro-free-speech and pro-gun-control. I voted for Bush II thinking I was getting Bush I, got a fascist, retarded version of Reagan, and am very disappointed. I would have happily voted for any of the Dems other than Kerry this time around. Just for some background.
As far as the "trashing," I say this as a generality, but it seems that Repubs - outside of the religious right - are far more tolerant of the views of people with whom they disagree than are the liberals - meaning well left-of-Dem - that I know and whom I see on TV. That's what I mean by intellectual arrogance. There's a difference between "This is what I believe" and "I'm right/you're wrong. As an example, let's look at privatization of social security. I'm for it because I'm willing to take responsibility for my money and my future. My friend - someone I love dearly but whom I would describe as an intellectually-arrogant liberal - doesn't trust people with their money and is against it. That issue (at least as it applies in principle) is one of my favorite litmus tests.
To try to express what I've seen the best I can, it seems that leftists tend to be more likely to be self-described intellectuals who think they know how to solve the world's problems (note that intellectual doesn't follow or imply intelligent). And in a way - broad strokes, again - this makes sense, as *one* reason some people are small government (me, for instance) is the realization that they're not omnipotent nor omniscient, and that no on really cares about all the good ideas they have to save the world. To me, if you're going to wast money and resources being big government, you better be damned sure your idea will WORK. An example is Universal Health Care as it's been suggested in the US. I don't think it'll work, I don't want to pay for it.
Note that this has been historically true, for what it's worth - universities (ie, intellectual and also intelligent) are always very left - both the students and the faculty. The school I'm at had some angry young liberal (an example only, I realize) get picked up by the FBI for blowing up SUVs. With the "right" - if you avoid the religious nuts - you don't tend to find that sort of anger, or arrogance. By arrogant I mean that you have to be so sure of yourself that you're willing to commit crimes, implying that one has put his entire belief structure above the law.
Again, I have no proof, but the empirical evidence has shown me that, while I agree with neither side in total, that the right (outside the religious) is a bit more tolerant of ideas than the leftists I've known. Could be because they don't care what you think, and maybe that's a form of arrogance too. But if I have to be around an arrogant person - which I don't mine - I would prefer the one who isn't an intellectual proselyte, who can instead tolerate a difference of opinion.
I hope you don't find this post flammable.
Good Lord no. Quite well-reasoned actually. If you'd describe yourself as leftist, you might yet provide me with a counterexample. Giv
I can't see any reason for buildings to talk to each other. Brownouts are unheard of here in the UK, you get the full voltage or very ocasionally nothing. I suspect it is due to the use of 240volts, less current is needed for the same power so less voltage drop due to the resistance of the wires.
Actually, it's because you guys don't have this condition we in the states call "Summer," which is when the temperature gets up to 40C and everybody's running their air conditioners constantly.
Voltage drop is irrelevant because all power lines are high voltage in both countries until it comes to the last, say, hundred feet. Really, you didn't think anyone transmitted long-distance at 120V (or even 240V) did you? Good God!
That's what the transformer on every block is for - stepping the V from thousands of volts to something that won't kill little Johnny when he sticks his scissors in the socket.
That's because the majority of the right's beliefs have no basis in actual fact. The left however, while not flawless, is more based in fact than the right.
Uh...huh. That's comic. I don't suppose I can guess your personal leanings?
You know, it's the self-righteous holier-,smarter-,and generally better-than-thou attitude of most leftists that generally nauseates me. As a libertarian (generally), I don't fit in really well with left or right, but at least those on the right are a bit more tolerable to be around.
I was talking once to an associate of mine, and he was complaining about the left leanings of CNN and other news outlets, which is why he preferred Fox News Channel.
...
Needless to say, he's not my friend anymore./True story.
I don't generally flame, but what a sad little insular world you live in. I very much enjoy working and socializing with people with extremely diverse viewpoints. I learned long ago that if I always hang around people like me, I will never learn anything. As it turns out, I like learning things more than I like the ego gratification of hearing others parrot my ideas. Try being open-minded, it's amazing. Even if someone says something you consider "wrong," it may give you an idea or generally broaden your viewpoints.
Also thank you for helping to substantiate my general thesis that liberal stopped meaning open-minded long ago.
I know a formally trained marine biologist who finished advanced calculus, differential equations, and grad courses and is now employed in the software industry as a programmer.
Undeniably. But posting it on slashdot will just generate the usual "this judge is a m0r0n" idiocies. (see posts passim, and *all* the ones before mine.)
Biologists, who you'd think would be on the cutting edge of technology, want their manuals in dead tree form. So viva the printing industry.
Please tell me you're joking. As far as technical competence goes, bioligists are just above the pre-med morons in my book. I know biologists - at a top school - who use tables to figure out buffer pH's because using a simple equation from freshman chemistry was too hard.
I try to avoid gross oversimplifications, but generally chemists do a LOT better in bio classes than the other way around. (I'll let the physicists make similar comments about chemistry, and the mathematicians do the same for physics).
Slashdot Mirror
You must have a flavor of linux that doesn't deuglify the fonts for you. This was my experience before I fixed my fonts, now no problems with either program.
Right and when you get new hardware, plug it in, and restart, what does XP do? Hey, holy shit user, you have new hardware, we need drivers! Oh wait, we have them right here, no recompiles or modules need to be loaded. It's a digital camera you say? Wow, would you like to open the files on the camera and work with Photoshop or some random preloaded Windows software or would you like to save them to a directory on your HD?
You're damned lucky if that happened. Usually you need to actually install the software that comes with that camera, or you are relegated to the crappy XP program. Which isn't any better than the one that comes with Gnome, or whatever.
This conclusion is bogus. Basically all hardware works just fine with Windows. It's not the same for Linux. Give me a break.
As of when, the 2.0 kernel? Even slackware treated my sound card fine.
(I don't have time to figure out why my network cards aren't working under 2.6.x - odd that I have been running Linux for 10 years and I can't seem to get my configuration to work w/o thinking).
Yeah, that's odd. You using Caldera? I have to say, getting a computer on the network is the one place where Linux is so much more easy than XP it isn't funny. I have literally spent hours trying to get windows boxes to see each other on a network to no avail, and I've never had to trouble myself in Linux.
That's exactly what the original complaint was (ie, misuse of SCO code into AIX), so they're well withing their rights.
SCO has really screwed the pooch here. Darl is going to be found in contempt.
Bet?
You mean Gnu Zealotland?
From freeipods.com:
First, if it was just a referral service, it wouldn't require YOU to take part in the same deal you're getting my friends in. Second, it wouldn't necessarily require me to find more than one friend to get paid. By definition, anything that requires me to sell the same deal I bought to more than one person is a pyramid scheme.
This is easy to pick apart. First, deals can't work without either 1) an ever-expanding base of participants or 2) the deal itself, between one person and the company, being profitable for the company. Clearly it's not profitable - I take part in one "offer," and that's not worth hundreds of dollars to the company.
Since the deal itself - for one person - doesn't make sense the company, then this has to be in the first category - it depends on a widening base to work. And inevitably, you run out of suckers, and the exponential growth stops. Put another way, there has to be a bottom of the pyramid. Eventually, everyone who will ever sign up for this thing will do so, and then the bottom rung will be unable to find enough friends to get their free stuff.
That's where the problem comes in. They don't have to guarantee you that you'll find enough friends to get your ipod. But they do have to give you the ipod when you get enough friends. And that's the catch - they give you an ipod (worth $250) for basically 5 "deals" - which are NOT worth $50 each to the company. At this point, there are only two ways this works. Either they make their profit out of whatever fraction of people can't get 5 friends to sign up, or the pyramid eventually collapses and they can't send out ipods to all the people who have them coming.
If it's the first case, like they claim, they're ok but shady. If it's the second, they're illegal. Personally, I doubt it'll work, because if it were me, I'd sign up 5 fake names for that BMG crap, and do the deal myself. Since that's so easy, I can't believe people won't be smart enough to bankrup their asses, crashing the pyramid.
The difference is that your "friends," in this case, actually get the car they buy in your example. Selling your friends the opportunity to get $100 if they sell the same opportunity to other people is a pyramid scheme.
The fact that people technically are making a purchase (a $40 CD, for example, that never actually ships) does not make this legal. That's the only difference between the ipod scam and a classic, naked pyramid scheme. No one is buying the $40 CD to get the CD (or whatever), it's to get the pyramid ipod.
This is in fact a pyramid scheme as defined by US law, as the FTC has declared. You might not like that, but it's the case nonetheless
That's exactly what it means. Your potential gain is limited to $1,000,000. Shares of a pubically traded company can't go below zero, so that's the mathematical limit of your gain. On the other hand, if SCO wins their lawsuit and the price skyrockets (unlikely I admit), your potential liability is limitless. Obviously, when we're talking about gain/loss, we're talking fractional, like your investment went up 10%. Of course you could make more by simply investing more, but when people talk about limited gain, we're not talking about investing a different amount of principal.
To sum up: Normal stock = loss limited to principal, unlimited potential, as stock can only go to zero but can go up arbitrarily. Shorting = exact opposite. If the stock goes up a ton, you have to buy enough shares to cover your position.
I imagine the fact that jogging is more efficient than alternatively sprinting and stopping helps too.
Think of the children, people.
This guy's doing HDTV and you want him to put it through his damned *VCR* first? Ugh! If you put the TV last, you ensure that you see the worst signal possible all the time. I'll take the possibility that my VCR gets a crappy signal - after all, how often do I use it now?
The way to daisychain this is to go through things that'll preserve the digital signal first, then the TV, then export the TV's signal to whatever legacy recording devices you have that have intermittent need of a signal. Either that or use a good splitter to divide the video signal upstream. But don't put a hi-def video signal through your VCR and it's shitty aluminum coax connector - think of the children!
I need your root password and IP address for it to install correctly.
It's so great to see Mozilla rising from the smoldering ashes that MS left Netscape in, only to come back and bite MS in the ass. It's so symbolic, they should change Mozilla's name to "Phoenix" or something.
Huh? Oh. (Gilda Radner on SNL voice....) Nevermind.
Yep, and I think all the rest of us taxpayers would rather have something better done with our money than have the gov offices reply to ridiculous requests. If you want some records, fine. But I see nothing wrong with a numerical limit, or a fee for excess.
Were it confidential information, I would completely accept this response. But electronic data doesn't cost anything.
The labor does, if it's in a system not designed for rapid recovery of reams of data. And this being the government, I bet this system isn't. If this request would take a few days to fulfill, then they should have to pay for the privilege. Remember, they want a copy of the ENTIRE DATABASE. And the article didn't say in what form. If they'll use whatever format the gov uses, maybe it isn't as bad.
Really? 1) Would you provide a copy of that to any moron who called you and 2) would you format it for me to comply with the FOIA instead of whatever custom-made from-the-60's program was used to generate it?
Doubt it.
And I assume you worked for a company that did all this for free like our government is expected to?
What next? Can I send a request that says "I would like a copy of every piece of paper ever produced by the US?" Do I then have the right to moral outrage when they refuse?
Seriously, this is freaking ridiculous. There's plenty of reason to go after Ashcroft without resorting to silly crap like this.
I would see nothing wrong with a $.01/page fee for FOIA request. Pay up if it amounts to more than $10.
A fair nit. My response would be that people rightfully ignore the religious nuts, but the press (read:NPR) treats the leftist assholes with a lot more respect than that. Perhaps not SUV-blower-uppers, but I digress.
So I guess my complaint is that not all nuts are treated equally.
Yes, I understand Ohm's law. I also understand that, to first order, little Johnny has a reasonably constant resistance, and that IR drop at a constant power is higher for lower voltages. Ultimately, little Johnny is fine if he bridges a 6V junction and toast if he bridges a 6000V junction.
But if you want to test it, you grab the downed power line and I'll stick my tounge to the 9V battery.
Yes, it is the grid ccapacity that's at fault. Brownouts have nothing to do with the wires from the box. And even if it did, why would it only happen at peak capacity, during the summer? Are you seriously contending it's because of inreased resistance of copper over a 30C temperature difference? I assure you otherwise.
More like half a mile in a 240volt system....Th UK electrical system has fewer step down transformers than the US.
You'll only get a factor of 2 difference, and even then, you'll still have a junction. What, you thought you in the UK have wires coming directly from the power company to your house? Please!
Ultimately, power is transmitted at MANY THOUSANDS of V. It's a big stepdown to either 120V or 240V. The difference is effectively negligible. Either way, the IR drop from the box to your house is less than a few V, I'd guess.
Again, come to a place that has "Summer" - which is when all brownouts occur. It's because the grid is strained.
All in all, our system has been designed for 120V. It works fine most of the time. It's not like the designers forgot about Ohm's law, for chrissakes.
Moral of this story - a little E&M knowledge is a bad thing.
First, I'm not equating current Dems with the leftists I refer to. As you say, the Dems aren't left anymore, and to me they represent soccer moms, labor unions, isolationists/protectionists, and deadbeats. When I say left, I'm talking mainly about social leftists (ie, welfare state), so if that changes things I apologize.
Second, I wouldn't dream of making that all-inclusive, but as far as generalities go, it isn't all that off. I'm talking about two camps whose ideas I disagree with substantially. Also, when I say libertarian I mean it with a little "l." I'm generally strict-interpretation and small-government, but also pro-free-speech and pro-gun-control. I voted for Bush II thinking I was getting Bush I, got a fascist, retarded version of Reagan, and am very disappointed. I would have happily voted for any of the Dems other than Kerry this time around. Just for some background.
As far as the "trashing," I say this as a generality, but it seems that Repubs - outside of the religious right - are far more tolerant of the views of people with whom they disagree than are the liberals - meaning well left-of-Dem - that I know and whom I see on TV. That's what I mean by intellectual arrogance. There's a difference between "This is what I believe" and "I'm right/you're wrong. As an example, let's look at privatization of social security. I'm for it because I'm willing to take responsibility for my money and my future. My friend - someone I love dearly but whom I would describe as an intellectually-arrogant liberal - doesn't trust people with their money and is against it. That issue (at least as it applies in principle) is one of my favorite litmus tests.
To try to express what I've seen the best I can, it seems that leftists tend to be more likely to be self-described intellectuals who think they know how to solve the world's problems (note that intellectual doesn't follow or imply intelligent). And in a way - broad strokes, again - this makes sense, as *one* reason some people are small government (me, for instance) is the realization that they're not omnipotent nor omniscient, and that no on really cares about all the good ideas they have to save the world. To me, if you're going to wast money and resources being big government, you better be damned sure your idea will WORK. An example is Universal Health Care as it's been suggested in the US. I don't think it'll work, I don't want to pay for it.
Note that this has been historically true, for what it's worth - universities (ie, intellectual and also intelligent) are always very left - both the students and the faculty. The school I'm at had some angry young liberal (an example only, I realize) get picked up by the FBI for blowing up SUVs. With the "right" - if you avoid the religious nuts - you don't tend to find that sort of anger, or arrogance. By arrogant I mean that you have to be so sure of yourself that you're willing to commit crimes, implying that one has put his entire belief structure above the law.
Again, I have no proof, but the empirical evidence has shown me that, while I agree with neither side in total, that the right (outside the religious) is a bit more tolerant of ideas than the leftists I've known. Could be because they don't care what you think, and maybe that's a form of arrogance too. But if I have to be around an arrogant person - which I don't mine - I would prefer the one who isn't an intellectual proselyte, who can instead tolerate a difference of opinion.
I hope you don't find this post flammable.
Good Lord no. Quite well-reasoned actually. If you'd describe yourself as leftist, you might yet provide me with a counterexample. Giv
Actually, it's because you guys don't have this condition we in the states call "Summer," which is when the temperature gets up to 40C and everybody's running their air conditioners constantly.
Voltage drop is irrelevant because all power lines are high voltage in both countries until it comes to the last, say, hundred feet. Really, you didn't think anyone transmitted long-distance at 120V (or even 240V) did you? Good God!
That's what the transformer on every block is for - stepping the V from thousands of volts to something that won't kill little Johnny when he sticks his scissors in the socket.
Uh...huh. That's comic. I don't suppose I can guess your personal leanings?
You know, it's the self-righteous holier-,smarter-,and generally better-than-thou attitude of most leftists that generally nauseates me. As a libertarian (generally), I don't fit in really well with left or right, but at least those on the right are a bit more tolerable to be around.
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Needless to say, he's not my friend anymore. /True story.
I don't generally flame, but what a sad little insular world you live in. I very much enjoy working and socializing with people with extremely diverse viewpoints. I learned long ago that if I always hang around people like me, I will never learn anything. As it turns out, I like learning things more than I like the ego gratification of hearing others parrot my ideas. Try being open-minded, it's amazing. Even if someone says something you consider "wrong," it may give you an idea or generally broaden your viewpoints.
Also thank you for helping to substantiate my general thesis that liberal stopped meaning open-minded long ago.
Exception, meet Rule.
...they're not wrong...
Please tell me you're joking. As far as technical competence goes, bioligists are just above the pre-med morons in my book. I know biologists - at a top school - who use tables to figure out buffer pH's because using a simple equation from freshman chemistry was too hard.
I try to avoid gross oversimplifications, but generally chemists do a LOT better in bio classes than the other way around. (I'll let the physicists make similar comments about chemistry, and the mathematicians do the same for physics).