I worked a union job doing Perl, Ruby and Linux sysadmin stuff for a state university. The benefits were pretty good (overtime pay or comp time if my work week exceeded 35/hours, no layoffs on short notice ie 1 month notice for every year of employment to a max of 12 months). I was considering working for a startup, but the "owner" really wasn't giving a fair deal ('at will' employment, long hours, no relocation bonus, no telecommuting and tremendous egos). As it would have cost me a bundle to move, I asked for a contract guaranteeing at least a years worth of salary under any circumstances. When the owner (who was a multimillionaire) balked, so did I.
I'd second this. Since becoming vegan my menu has expanded dramatically. Technically the set of veg foods is a subset of (meat + veg foods). That's simple math, but the set of all things veg-people eat is quite large larger than the typical non-veg people. For instance at this time on any week I usually eat many servings of at least15 different kinds of fruit, and so on with pulses and vegetables and roots and seaweeds and greens and things.
I duno the Maker movement is going on strong . RS could welcome makers, host "hobby nights", let people share designs for 3D printers and then sell parts to build them.
That being said, I don't do hardware only software, but I know plenty of hardware hackers!
I went to radio shack to buy an inverter so I could drive 500 miles while listening to audiobooks on my laptop. Online they appear to have some reasonable options http://www.radioshack.com/fami...
But in their store there was nothing for less than $60, and that would be for something on the lower end. I knew I could get something better online for cheaper, but I needed something that Sunday afternoon. So I drove 20 minutes to Advance Auto parts and got something better for half the price. It's the same thing with basically *any item* that Radio Shack carries. You can always find it cheaper online or in a different (non RS) brick and mortar shop.
IMHO, RS prices are borderline extortion, and for now, I will go to significant effort to avoid spending money there. I'm not happy they are going out of business. I wish they had a better business model and I'd be happy to do my part to support them.
An understated point (at least I've never heard anyone state it.. just thought of it). Some religions might be fore same sex marriage. Indigineous people had the berdache, could Arizona be violating people's right to freedom of religion. If your religion says you have to be gay,then Arizona is no just discriminating against gay people, but they are practicing religious discrimination. Putting a sign outside the store saying "no (insert name of religious faith here) allowed" would be more obviously illegal.
Different question: is it okay for the state to tell someone who they must do business with?
Indeed this is something that I and many others believe should be regulated (and it is regulated).
It was only the government telling private businesses that they had to treat customers equally or forcing them to treat customers of different races equally (in a famous case letting them eat at lunch counters) that ended Jim Crow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws)
This has been known for a while. I didn't even know about the risk of cancer (which we now believe isn't there), but the risk of brain tumors is a concern for me. My phone switches to wifi when I am at home or work, and I increase the distance of the phone from my head by using bluetooth, or car stereo, and also limit time spent on the phone to try to decrease my risk.
Bear in mind, Obama cannot run for a 3rd term. Also bear in mind that the NSA spying began under a Republican (GW Bush) administration which fast-tracked the Patriot act through and created numerous other unpleasant changes in the name of fighting terrorism.
Ah I see you are saying that because the Federal government effectively solved problems in the past (like Jim Crow), it *no longer* benefits anyone. And I do not think it is offensive to talk about race and history as long as it's done respectfully. If we don't acknowledge the past, we cannot possibly have any meaningful discussion about the present.
But I take your meaning to be that I have demonstrated to you that a powerful Federal government has been of benefit in the past, but you no longer believe that in this current day, the Federal government benefits anyone. If this is your stance, than no exhaustive list of past accomplishments could satisfy you. I would ask you to wait 5 years, but during those 5 years carefully track all of the innovation that will result from current NSF, NIH and DOE sponsored research (and new college graduates who recieve aid). Just think of how much our lives have been changed in a few short years thanks to federal advancement of GPS technologies.
It didn't harm me any when I rode my bicycle through the south and ate in restaurants and drank from water fountains too. Also I attended racially intergrated schools!
Either you have to admit that you are against these things or you have to concede that the Federal government has done a fair amount of good for "most people".
Race baiting in contemporary political discourse also means that you use irrelevant racial issues to advance a political agenda. For example, the persistent claims by Democrats linking criticism of Obama to racism are race baiting. It's offensive. Civil rights enforcement has next to nothing to do with the size of the federal government, other than that it is one excuse progressives use to justify pork spending in unrelated areas, so you had no cause or justification for bringing it up in this context.
So if I mention the fact that the Federal government (which supposedly never did anything good for anyone) ended state and local government and private libertarian enterprise run aparthied in the south as an major issue where the Federal government helped people, how is that race baiting?
Perhaps you are race-baiting-baiting. Basically where any opposition to racism (and this was in fact documented historical evidence of institutional racism) is labelled "race baiting".
As far as your criticisms of the federal government are concerned. A lot of them are apt. I don't think deregulating private interests will solve anything though. Getting the money out of politics through campaign finance reform would IMHO.
I had to look up race baiting: "The act of using racially derisive language, actions, or other forms of communication in order to anger or intimidate or coerce a person or group of people." Ok so the racism of many state governments is a matter of historical fact. The problem of racial inequality was only ever seriously addressed by the Federal government. Do you dispute history? I'm not sure how this is race baiting. Perhaps you could clarify.
Your original claim was that very little of what the federal government does benefits "you or most people". That is the claim that I disputed. I believe that it is utterly false. Do I agree with you that there is corruption in the government and it is a real problem (especially with regards to pork in various agencies spending)? Yes I do. But at the risk of "baby baiting", I do not think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I for one feel like the Federal Government benefit me by me being able to vote and eat in formerly "whites only" restaurants without being beaten due to Jim Crow. Also I went to public schools received financial aid, have driven on and received goods that travelled along interstate highways, did not get assaulted and robbed by old people because they have social security to keep them out of desperate poverty. O yeah I didn't get poisoned from food I bought at the grocery store because FDA said it was illegal to sell. I didn't get cancer because my drinking water was poisoned thanks to EPA regulations. I've taken trains, realized the moon was not impossible, used the Internet, benefitted from countless federally funded research projects.
Honestly saying that very little of the money the federal government spends benefits most people (presumably citizens of the US) is utterly ludicrous.
Indeed, I too do not trust this libertarian trend at all.
In addition to private businesses running just about everything, Libertarians would "deregulate" private business. So if you wanted to start a restaurant that didn't server people of a certain race or religion, it falls under sacred property rights (which libertarians do hold as more important than peoples' rights). Indeed two major Libertarianish figureheads (Rand and Ron Paul) catch a lot of flack because they opposed the Civil Rights act forcing integration of lunch counters.
I fear the real money funding these libertarian politicians is all about deregulating the biggest polluters. Although they talk the talk, it has nothing to do with property rights, just dismantling government enforcement mechanisms.
Bear in mind I'm not against law-abiding hunters, but in fact irresponsible hunters do endanger local populations. My neighbors (who have a horse farm) were basically living in fear when a group of hunters illegally parked on their property and started a hunt without permission.
I live in the woods of northeastern CT and have had friends and neighbors who have had trespassers arbitrarily decide to start hunting on their private wooded property. Shooting can be a threat to people, horses, dogs (people don't know and shouldn't be expected to wear flourescent orange on their own property) and snares and leghold traps if used can create a threat for years to come. (If the people are trespassing and hunting illegally, they probably don't care about regulations against setting traps). Sometimes criminals also employ these tactics to hunt protected species.
In these situations I can see how a drone to take a video of the perpetrators (from a safe place) can be used to give to the police rather than confronting armed criminals directly or to provide police with supplemental information (they are presently at this location) rather than have the police have to track a bunch of armed camoflauged lawbreakers over a large wooded property.
I bought a Samsung Chromebook ($150 refurb at bestbuy). It's nice, light, and has a tremendous battery life (RISC processor). My MacbookAIR returned to work when I changed jobs and my only other laptop is a thinkpad x60t (still a powerhouse).
But for using a bunch of xterms, ssh and running a web browser, the Chromebook is awesome. I am using the stock Chrome/Gentoo install, but use crouton to get more functionality. I'm considering a full reinstall for full disk encryption. At this point the only thing I miss (as I don't have an x86/x86_64 processor) is a Skype. Skype does release binaries for ARM/Android. I'm wondering how hard it will be to get one of those to run in ARM/GNU Linux.
I know other who have gotten other Chromebooks for the excellent cheap hardware. The Intel Acer Chromebook line is very compelling and will take a 2.5 inch SATA drive and a RAM upgrade. Additionally it can use standard binaries (like Skype or VMware)
You can write procedural code in Ruby, but I think even a beginner benefits from *using* objects. Beginners might not create their own classes. TFS gives the example of Mark showing kids
facebook_user.each do |user|
which is clean code. So my one point that you agree with (syntax is easier), does piggyback a bit off the OO. I agree that 3 can be done for any language, but using what's available has obvious advantages to rolling something new.
Again I'm not sure I know the one-true-language for kids to learn, but Ruby has some advantages (and of course some disadvantages too). I do like Ruby.
Ruby is a beautiful language, much easier to learn (syntactically) than javascript. I don't know that Ruby is a better choice than Javascript, Python, BASIC, LOGO, or (Something else), but it does have some advantages for a young mind.
1. it's pure OO
2. control structures are intuitive. I prefer "for (;;) {" style, but "1.upto 100 do |counter|" style is more intuitive.
3. Cartoon characters can teach you Ruby lessons in a collaborative environment. This is mostly due to the work of one WhyTheLuckyStiff, but the work is done. Why not use it? http://hackety.com/
4. there is a great ruby community
I do think that children preference should be given for open source technologies rather than proprietary ones (or at least the option should be given). Children should be able to take what they learn in school and run it on their own equipment without spending a fortune on a particular company's product. All of that aside, teaching your kids Javascript would certainly be worthwhile too!
Indeed it seems like Java was the holy grail and Chrome is trying to reinvent Java applets (on a different VM). At least for this feature, it seems like addressing issues with Java applet security might be more productive.
I have a Chromebook with Ubuntu chroot, and I do find I spend a lot of time in ChromeOS-mode.
Uncounted costs include the cost of disaster relief from oil spills and accidents which isn't an official subsidy, but this happens frequently enough that it can be counted as a yearly expenditure, and imho these companies (like BP) have not been held fully accountable for these incidents.
Thank you, Luckyo, for injecting a little sanity into this discussion.
Most people from western cultures would recognize that making generalizations about *all christians*, based on the actions of a few (say self-proclaimed KKK members who consider themselves Christians) is not an intelligent way to talk about the world. Certainly "Christians" that are for war have very little if any common ground with modern day Quakers.
I don't really consider myself a follower of any faith but I realize that there are all kinds of people in the world. I don't believe that you can really tell a whole lot about a person from a general term like Christian or Muslim or Asian or black or white. Even within a particular religious-cultural-context, the scope of what different people actually believe tends to be pretty broad. A safe generalization to make is that all groups of people have differing opinions and disagreement on a large number of things.
I think it's better to judge individuals by their actions than what religion or country they were born into.
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I worked a union job doing Perl, Ruby and Linux sysadmin stuff for a state university. The benefits were pretty good (overtime pay or comp time if my work week exceeded 35/hours, no layoffs on short notice ie 1 month notice for every year of employment to a max of 12 months). I was considering working for a startup, but the "owner" really wasn't giving a fair deal ('at will' employment, long hours, no relocation bonus, no telecommuting and tremendous egos). As it would have cost me a bundle to move, I asked for a contract guaranteeing at least a years worth of salary under any circumstances. When the owner (who was a multimillionaire) balked, so did I.
I'd second this. Since becoming vegan my menu has expanded dramatically. Technically the set of veg foods is a subset of (meat + veg foods). That's simple math, but the set of all things veg-people eat is quite large larger than the typical non-veg people. For instance at this time on any week I usually eat many servings of at least15 different kinds of fruit, and so on with pulses and vegetables and roots and seaweeds and greens and things.
I duno the Maker movement is going on strong . RS could welcome makers, host "hobby nights", let people share designs for 3D printers and then sell parts to build them.
That being said, I don't do hardware only software, but I know plenty of hardware hackers!
I went to radio shack to buy an inverter so I could drive 500 miles while listening to audiobooks on my laptop.
Online they appear to have some reasonable options http://www.radioshack.com/fami...
But in their store there was nothing for less than $60, and that would be for something on the lower end. I knew I could get something better online for cheaper, but I needed something that Sunday afternoon. So I drove 20 minutes to Advance Auto parts and got something better for half the price. It's the same thing with basically *any item* that Radio Shack carries. You can always find it cheaper online or in a different (non RS) brick and mortar shop.
IMHO, RS prices are borderline extortion, and for now, I will go to significant effort to avoid spending money there. I'm not happy they are going out of business. I wish they had a better business model and I'd be happy to do my part to support them.
An understated point (at least I've never heard anyone state it.. just thought of it). Some religions might be fore same sex marriage. Indigineous people had the berdache, could Arizona be violating people's right to freedom of religion. If your religion says you have to be gay,then Arizona is no just discriminating against gay people, but they are practicing religious discrimination. Putting a sign outside the store saying "no (insert name of religious faith here) allowed" would be more obviously illegal.
Different question: is it okay for the state to tell someone who they must do business with?
Indeed this is something that I and many others believe should be regulated (and it is regulated).
It was only the government telling private businesses that they had to treat customers equally or forcing them to treat customers of different races equally (in a famous case letting them eat at lunch counters) that ended Jim Crow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws)
There may indeed be an increased risk of brain tumors from cellphone use though http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
This has been known for a while. I didn't even know about the risk of cancer (which we now believe isn't there), but the risk of brain tumors is a concern for me. My phone switches to wifi when I am at home or work, and I increase the distance of the phone from my head by using bluetooth, or car stereo, and also limit time spent on the phone to try to decrease my risk.
Bear in mind, Obama cannot run for a 3rd term. Also bear in mind that the NSA spying began under a Republican (GW Bush) administration which fast-tracked the Patriot act through and created numerous other unpleasant changes in the name of fighting terrorism.
https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying...
Ah I see you are saying that because the Federal government effectively solved problems in the past (like Jim Crow), it *no longer* benefits anyone. And I do not think it is offensive to talk about race and history as long as it's done respectfully. If we don't acknowledge the past, we cannot possibly have any meaningful discussion about the present.
But I take your meaning to be that I have demonstrated to you that a powerful Federal government has been of benefit in the past, but you no longer believe that in this current day, the Federal government benefits anyone. If this is your stance, than no exhaustive list of past accomplishments could satisfy you. I would ask you to wait 5 years, but during those 5 years carefully track all of the innovation that will result from current NSF, NIH and DOE sponsored research (and new college graduates who recieve aid). Just think of how much our lives have been changed in a few short years thanks to federal advancement of GPS technologies.
It didn't harm me any when I rode my bicycle through the south and ate in restaurants and drank from water fountains too. Also I attended racially intergrated schools!
Either you have to admit that you are against these things or you have to concede that the Federal government has done a fair amount of good for "most people".
So if I mention the fact that the Federal government (which supposedly never did anything good for anyone) ended state and local government and private libertarian enterprise run aparthied in the south as an major issue where the Federal government helped people, how is that race baiting?
Perhaps you are race-baiting-baiting. Basically where any opposition to racism (and this was in fact documented historical evidence of institutional racism) is labelled "race baiting".
As far as your criticisms of the federal government are concerned. A lot of them are apt. I don't think deregulating private interests will solve anything though. Getting the money out of politics through campaign finance reform would IMHO.
I had to look up race baiting: "The act of using racially derisive language, actions, or other forms of communication in order to anger or intimidate or coerce a person or group of people." Ok so the racism of many state governments is a matter of historical fact. The problem of racial inequality was only ever seriously addressed by the Federal government. Do you dispute history? I'm not sure how this is race baiting. Perhaps you could clarify.
Your original claim was that very little of what the federal government does benefits "you or most people". That is the claim that I disputed. I believe that it is utterly false. Do I agree with you that there is corruption in the government and it is a real problem (especially with regards to pork in various agencies spending)? Yes I do. But at the risk of "baby baiting", I do not think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I for one feel like the Federal Government benefit me by me being able to vote and eat in formerly "whites only" restaurants without being beaten due to Jim Crow. Also I went to public schools received financial aid, have driven on and received goods that travelled along interstate highways, did not get assaulted and robbed by old people because they have social security to keep them out of desperate poverty. O yeah I didn't get poisoned from food I bought at the grocery store because FDA said it was illegal to sell. I didn't get cancer because my drinking water was poisoned thanks to EPA regulations.
I've taken trains, realized the moon was not impossible, used the Internet, benefitted from countless federally funded research projects.
Honestly saying that very little of the money the federal government spends benefits most people (presumably citizens of the US) is utterly ludicrous.
Indeed, I too do not trust this libertarian trend at all.
In addition to private businesses running just about everything, Libertarians would "deregulate" private business. So if you wanted to start a restaurant that didn't server people of a certain race or religion, it falls under sacred property rights (which libertarians do hold as more important than peoples' rights). Indeed two major Libertarianish figureheads (Rand and Ron Paul) catch a lot of flack because they opposed the Civil Rights act forcing integration of lunch counters.
I fear the real money funding these libertarian politicians is all about deregulating the biggest polluters. Although they talk the talk, it has nothing to do with property rights, just dismantling government enforcement mechanisms.
PETA is not deploying the drones or harassing anyone. TFS is misleading.
PETA is selling the drones for people to be able to use to expose illegal hunting (like if someone sneaks onto your property)
http://www.petacatalog.com/homepersonalbeauty/airangelsdrone/
PETA is not deploying drones. TFS is misleading. PETA is selling drones so people can enforce their own private property rights.
Bear in mind I'm not against law-abiding hunters, but in fact irresponsible hunters do endanger local populations. My neighbors (who have a horse farm) were basically living in fear when a group of hunters illegally parked on their property and started a hunt without permission.
A quick google search finds similar stories
http://missoulian.com/news/local/libby-hunter-charged-with-shooting-man-while-pursuing-wounded-deer/article_6e1ae68a-5cf6-11e3-912c-001a4bcf887a.html
http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/20100726_Landowners_fight_hunter_trespassing.html?id=99220354
I live in the woods of northeastern CT and have had friends and neighbors who have had trespassers arbitrarily decide to start hunting on their private wooded property. Shooting can be a threat to people, horses, dogs (people don't know and shouldn't be expected to wear flourescent orange on their own property) and snares and leghold traps if used can create a threat for years to come. (If the people are trespassing and hunting illegally, they probably don't care about regulations against setting traps). Sometimes criminals also employ these tactics to hunt protected species.
In these situations I can see how a drone to take a video of the perpetrators (from a safe place) can be used to give to the police rather than confronting armed criminals directly or to provide police with supplemental information (they are presently at this location) rather than have the police have to track a bunch of armed camoflauged lawbreakers over a large wooded property.
I bought a Samsung Chromebook ($150 refurb at bestbuy). It's nice, light, and has a tremendous battery life (RISC processor). My MacbookAIR returned to work when I changed jobs and my only other laptop is a thinkpad x60t (still a powerhouse).
But for using a bunch of xterms, ssh and running a web browser, the Chromebook is awesome. I am using the stock Chrome/Gentoo install, but use crouton to get more functionality. I'm considering a full reinstall for full disk encryption. At this point the only thing I miss (as I don't have an x86/x86_64 processor) is a Skype. Skype does release binaries for ARM/Android. I'm wondering how hard it will be to get one of those to run in ARM/GNU Linux.
I know other who have gotten other Chromebooks for the excellent cheap hardware. The Intel Acer Chromebook line is very compelling and will take a 2.5 inch SATA drive and a RAM upgrade. Additionally it can use standard binaries (like Skype or VMware)
You can write procedural code in Ruby, but I think even a beginner benefits from *using* objects. Beginners might not create their own classes. TFS gives the example of Mark showing kids
facebook_user.each do |user|
which is clean code. So my one point that you agree with (syntax is easier), does piggyback a bit off the OO. I agree that 3 can be done for any language, but using what's available has obvious advantages to rolling something new.
Again I'm not sure I know the one-true-language for kids to learn, but Ruby has some advantages (and of course some disadvantages too). I do like Ruby.
Ruby is a beautiful language, much easier to learn (syntactically) than javascript. I don't know that Ruby is a better choice than Javascript, Python, BASIC, LOGO, or (Something else), but it does have some advantages for a young mind.
I do think that children preference should be given for open source technologies rather than proprietary ones (or at least the option should be given). Children should be able to take what they learn in school and run it on their own equipment without spending a fortune on a particular company's product. All of that aside, teaching your kids Javascript would certainly be worthwhile too!
Indeed it seems like Java was the holy grail and Chrome is trying to reinvent Java applets (on a different VM). At least for this feature, it seems like addressing issues with Java applet security might be more productive.
I have a Chromebook with Ubuntu chroot, and I do find I spend a lot of time in ChromeOS-mode.
Oil came into its own without a ton of federal help, so why can't alternative forms of energy?
The USG already heavily subsidizes fossil fuel energy: http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/
Uncounted costs include the cost of disaster relief from oil spills and accidents which isn't an official subsidy, but this happens frequently enough that it can be counted as a yearly expenditure, and imho these companies (like BP) have not been held fully accountable for these incidents.
Lierre Kieth wasn't actually vegan (although she claimed to be) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJVGOvpvkXc
Good critique of her book: http://vegetarianmythmyth.wordpress.com/category/the-vegetarian-myth-chapter-1/
Thank you, Luckyo, for injecting a little sanity into this discussion.
Most people from western cultures would recognize that making generalizations about *all christians*, based on the actions of a few (say self-proclaimed KKK members who consider themselves Christians) is not an intelligent way to talk about the world. Certainly "Christians" that are for war have very little if any common ground with modern day Quakers.
Where I still see a lot of ignorance (and I am an ignorant westerner too) is in failing to recognize the diversity of Muslim populations. For crying out loud it's something like 18% of the worlds population: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(number+of+muslims+)+%2F+(number+of+humans)
I don't really consider myself a follower of any faith but I realize that there are all kinds of people in the world. I don't believe that you can really tell a whole lot about a person from a general term like Christian or Muslim or Asian or black or white. Even within a particular religious-cultural-context, the scope of what different people actually believe tends to be pretty broad. A safe generalization to make is that all groups of people have differing opinions and disagreement on a large number of things.
I think it's better to judge individuals by their actions than what religion or country they were born into.