That's my point. I'm not suggesting that folk music totally disappears from the volume of human knowledge, but merely that it is considerably less remembered than contemporaneous classical music. You yourself point to famous composers, who you can name, that regularly inherited folk music, but from whom? Can you fathom someone saying "many very famous folk artists ([insert names here]) regularly integrated classical music [composed by unknown people] into their work to bring it to wider audiences"?
I consciously chose Elvis as the face of rock & roll, knowing that this was a horrible thing to do, as he didn't really introduce anything new to the genre except his skin color. I felt that I'd get less flak for this than talking about Leadbelly, but apparently I wrongly evaluated my audience.
Perhaps I could've written part of my post a little better.
When I spoke of folk music, I was referring to "not classical" music. The music that is largely forgotten over the years. Sure, your "Snug in a Blanket" is ancient, but you yourself say no one is certain of its origins. In contrast, everyone knows Bach composed The Well-Tempered Clavier. It seems that classical music is very well documented compared against [what I was calling] folk music.
Kudos for the recorder ownership. I personally would love to own a clavichord, but that will never happen.
I suppose cooking 1 cup of rice in 1.5 cups of water would just be unreasonable?
Moreover, how does SI make this any better. With the scenario you set forth, you'd be cooking 177.441 mL of rice in 266.1615 mL of water. Much less confusing!
Ambient air temperature doesn't frequently drop below 0 degrees Fahrenheit for a vast majority of humans. Note, water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, which means that nearly one third of the 0-100 range of the Fahrenheit scale is reserved for below-freezing temperatures. Of course, there's also the fact that Fahrenheit supports negative temperatures as well.
Your response reads as though it is supportive of using Fahrenheit for measuring ambient air temperatures. Except for the last sentence. Now I'm confused.
Its what every attempt at communism ALWAYS ends up as.
You've got that backwards. Would you consider for a minute that it's possible that it is not communism that ends up as despotism, but that communism is what every reach for despotism is disguised as? That this is likely due to the populist appeal of communism? You won't see a despot rise to power promising heavy yokes and starvation for the proles. It just doesn't have the same ring as communism. Can you think of a platform with greater populist appeal than communism? Would it not makes sense, then, that aspiring assholes would overwhelming rally around communism as their great lie?
Of course, putting this thread in context:
"Half of the existing community is vocally ignorant of most of the things they post on." -- LordLimecat
"For every truly insightful post out there, there are 5 ignorant posts that were modded insightful. Many of them are factually wrong, and some reek of idealism" -- LordLimecat
Now, here you are, arguing communism with an expat from communist Poland. Granted, coming from a communist state doesn't make me an authority on the subject. However, in the context of claimed ignorance, I'd have to ask if you have any unique qualifications regarding this subject.
Of course, the discussion has also degenerated to a subjective battle of ideologies. It doesn't seem that you are seriously considering any of the things I say, since you don't even address the points I bring up. You don't appear interested in having your opinion swayed, and isn't this the very sort of idealism that you were claiming to be offended by?
I can't help but suggest that maybe the younger crowd isn't buying into these things because of the development of new technologies.
Motorcycles and aviation catered to a certain demographic of people looking to get out there and do something interesting, something crazy. Perhaps they were the adrenaline junkies of their time. Today, if you're an adrenaline junkie, there are plenty of more accessible alternatives. You can go skydiving with little more than a couple bucks in your wallet. Hell, you can play Grand Theft Auto at your buddy's house for free. I'm not suggesting that playing a video game is the same thing as riding a motorcycle, but merely that it can be a substitute [albeit a poor one].
Libraries and newspapers are dying, well, for the same reason the buggy whip industry died. There's really no good reason for someone to print stuff out and distribute it physically when it's so much easier to distribute information digitally. Sure, some people prefer real paper [myself included], but some people prefer horses over cars. That didn't stop the automobile from taking over, leaving equestrianism as a hobby for those with a peculiar interest.
Classical music fascinates me. Its claimed death aside, I find the 'timeless' sense of classical music truly interesting. When we think of music from 200, 300, 500 years ago, we think of classical music. Of course, there must have surely been "folk" music around at the time as well, but we don't really think of that. "Folk" music seems to be largely forgotten by history. Today, we see all this pop music permeating contemporary culture. However, 200, 300, 500 years from now, will all our rock & roll, rap, and dubstep be largely forgotten along the mass of other "folk" music? Will people be talking of our "contemporary classical" composers (I can't even name one) as the benchmark for our generation while being ignorant of Elvis, Rakim, and Bassnectar?
To contradict what I just said about classical music: complaining about the death of classical music is like complaining about the death of women's shoulder pads. Culture changes, but it doesn't disappear. It's not like people have stopped listening to music, or stopped making music.
What actually needs to happen is for teachers from all schools and disciplines need to sit down, STFU and realize that outside of the classroom they have no authority, nobody gives a damn about their opinion and that even those glowing recommendations that they wrote for their favorite students mean slightly less then whether or not the applicants socks match this morning.
Anecdote: I landed an internship at NASA straight out of a [2 year] county college in large part due to recommendations from professors. All the other participants in this internship program were from ivy league [or top engineering] universities. Some people apparently do give a damn, and thankfully enough for me, some of those people work at NASA.
Yes, the world is a dangerous place. It was a dangerous place 200 years ago too. More dangerous, by any metric. Yet we still banded together in the name of freedom and not only shrugged off our cloak of protection (England) but actually engaged it in war, in the name of freedom. Yes, indeed, there was a day when we consciously gave up safety for freedom. How far we have come...
There was a time when people understood that safety wasn't the holy grail we should be chasing after. That no matter how much you give up, you can never be truly, totally safe. That some things are more important than safety. Cattle are safe. Their protectors guarantee this to a great extent. Not only are they protected from predators, they're also protected from disease and have all their routine needs for food and shelter met. Is that the type of existence we should be striving for?
I don't believe your claims, but let's forget about that. Let's say that your claims are all indisputably true. Why should I be any more scared of these monsters that threaten to take my life than I am of my own government, which is actually succeeding in taking my freedom?
Are you one of those people that believes that life in bondage is more valuable than death in the name of freedom? How do you reconcile your stance with the attitude that prevailed at the founding of this country, which Patrick Henry summarized in 1775 with the words: "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
If you had no comment to type, why did you post a comment?
Oh, wait, there it is, in the useless subject line. I'm not sure why a threaded discussion forum like slashdot supports comment subjects, as the subject is already implied. If you're posting a comment under the Sochi story, presumably your comment's subject is... Sochi.
Why you'd decide to put your comment in the subject, however, baffles me. Were the text fields on your web form not properly labeled "Comment Subject" and "Comment"? I'd suggest trying a different browser or submitting a bug report to slashdot.
Also, I find your claim of being forced to type anything to be unbelievable. Who forces someone to post to slashdot, and why?
How often do you interact with water at the extremes of its liquid phase?
How often do you interact with ambient air?
Now you see why people really like Fahrenheit so much. Most usage of temperature measurements are in the context of ambient air temperature. Nobody measures the temperature of their ice cubes or their boiling pot of water.
Can't that argument be used to support universal adoption of the US Customary system of measures instead of SI? After all, you prefer liters over cups because you are used to it, not because it is more effective.
I don't understand peoples' desire to impose a universal system of measures on everyone. It's such a tiny part of life. Wouldn't it make more sense to fight for universal adoption of Esperanto? I mean, it's sure as fuck easier to convert between SI and US Customary than it is to translate between English and Mandarin.
It really depends what you're using said units for. When cooking, I find it more convenient to speak of cups than liters. When communicating ambient air temperatures, I find it more convenient to speak of degrees Fahrenheit than Celsius. You see, that's what most people use these units of measure for.
When it comes to engineering or scientific calculations, I naturally prefer liters and Kelvin, because they make the math easier. Nobody wants to set their kitchen oven in Kelvin, though.
Minor gripe regarding consistency: The kilogram is the base unit of mass in SI. Not very consistent, as the other base units have no prefix.
You claim that Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot tried to implement communism, that they gave it a shot. What evidence do you have of this claim, other than the proclamations of these despots themselves? Did they take any actions that could inarguably be seen as efforts to provide the population with ownership of the means of production?
My claim is that no, they didn't try to implement communism. Sure, they said they were trying. But they weren't. What they were doing was trying to subdue the increasingly angry constituency with populist rhetoric. "No need to be angry with the government, proles. We're working to give you everything! Don't be angry with us, be angry with the capitalists!" And for a time, it worked. It worked in many places, for quite a while. Eventually, the people in these countries got tired of the empty promises and realized that they weren't living under communism; they were living under despotism. They realized that their patience ought to be at an end, that waiting further would do no good, as communism wasn't on its way. They weren't living under a temporary transitional system, they were experiencing the desired end goal. Not communism, but despotism.
In response to your question, I can't point out a single country that tried to be communist and succeeded. However, I can't point out a single country that tried to be communist. That's no condemnation of communism, except perhaps as an indication of its lack of appeal. That nobody has tried to implement communism in earnest only means that nobody is really interested in implementing communism. It says nothing about the efficacy of communism, only about its perceived efficacy (if that).
Additionally, I say this all as a political refugee from "communist" Poland (granted political asylum by the USA in 1984), if that means anything to you. Sure, there were some vaguely "communist" features to placate the masses (and to mitigate the effects of a failed economy), like universal government-provided housing. However, I don't remember the capital that controls the economy being in the hands of the population. To me, it seemed like everything was in the hands of a select few at the head of the Party. That's not communism, and we both know that.
I've worked for a defense contractor for about five years now. I took the job because it seemed more interesting (in a nerdy way) than other software development opportunities (mind-numbing back-end "business" shit) I saw. Of course, I could've (maybe) gotten a gig at a NASA or NSF lab, which would in theory have just as interesting of work.
However, when I interned at NASA years and years ago, the one thing that I remembered was the parking lots. They were filled exclusively with ancient, shitty, cheap cars. Either not a single person at GSFC appreciated the amazing engineering of the world's finer automobiles (I found this unlikely), or NASA doesn't pay for shit. I like nice cars (currently driving my second consecutive Honda Accord, as my priorities have changed, but I've had some fun cars before these), and it didn't look like federal science funding was going to enable a lifestyle that I could enjoy.
So here I am now, part of the machine. Part of the problem Eisenhower warned us about. How does that make me feel? Well, not too bad, honestly. Not because I'm some heartless bastard, happy to have my greed satisfied at the expense of the taxpayer and the brownskin. Not because I achieved membership in some cabal of murderous bastards. Mostly because I get to do interesting work (well, not nearly as interesting as I had hoped) and get paid a fair wage (virtually all the developers I know that work on the commercial side of the world make considerably more than me).
To be honest, I've seen some waste in my years here. However, it's not any more waste than is common in any industry. Nobody's perfect, and sometimes money goes towards something that ends up being a bit of a boondoggle. At a mom n pop restaurant, you may see a foolhardy investment in interior decor that eventually turns out to have been a waste of money. Due to issues of scale, when the DOD makes a mistake like that, it's an aircraft nobody wants that costs insane amounts of money. Fundamentally, it's the same problem. Nobody's perfect, and people make mistakes. I understand that it's frustrating to see someone making costly mistakes with your tax dollars, but that's just the nature of the beast. Do not attribute to malice that which can be sufficiently explained by incompetence.
Anyway, I've seen no evidence of any systemic problems with the military-industrial complex. Probably because I'm just a code monkey, not some head honcho cozying up to generals to land contracts. I wouldn't be surprised that this type of shit happens. But you really have to step back sometimes and realize that defense contractors are no different than any other contractors. Sure, they're looking for someone to pay them to do work. Aren't virtually all other industries as well? Is there something wrong with contractors offering various products and services to the DOD? Is there something wrong with the DOD buying into products and services that they find appealing? What benefit is it to the DOD to keep contractors fat and happy? I mean, it's a compelling narrative, for sure. I just haven't seen any evidence that it corresponds to reality.
Thanks for telling me about MyCleanPC! I went to MyCleanPC's website, ran a free scan, and the virus simply vanished from my computer this minuteness. I couldn't believe how fast my gigabits were running afterwards just from using MyCleanPC!
fixes for auto compacting/baning the mycleanpc spam
You must not be using APK's hosts file. I'm using APK's hosts file and I never have any problems with mycleanpc spam. APK's hosts file.
and gnaa trolls.
Look, if they don't scrap plans for this beta, you're going to be seeing so many complaints in the comments that you'll be longing for the gnaa trolls. When the dust settles, they'll be the only thing left.
It has failed and continues to fail everywhere its tried.
Show me one country that actually tried communism, where the means of production were owned by the people. Not a shithole under the yoke of some dictator or despot with "socialist" or "communist" in its official name. We don't use "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" or "Democratic Republic of the Congo" as examples of democratic republics because, well, there's more to it than just a name. The same holds for the SSRs, which were never even close to implementing anything that would be better described as communism than despotism.
Curiously, you bring up Vietnam, which wikipedia tells me something about: "Since 2000, Vietnam's economic growth rate has been among the highest in the world, and in 2011 it had the highest Global Growth Generators Index among 11 major economies." Hardly the bleak picture you were trying to paint. Regardless, you're talking about Vietnam, a country that adopted "communism" under Ho Chi Minh, the same guy who had countless Trotskyists purged and killed (just like Stalin, another great "communist" figure). Please, point out at which point Mr. Ho was able to ensure that the means of production in Vietnam were owned by the Vietnamese people as a whole, and explain why it looks to the rest of the world as though that never actually happened.
You'd be right to say I'm committing the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, except that my definition for communism is consistent and static. Show me one country where the means of production are owned (or were owned in the past) by the population as a whole, and then we can talk about the efficacy of communism in the real world. Until then, you're not being honest with yourself when you say that communism has failed or continues to fail. The only failure of communism is that it has failed to be implemented anywhere.
Many of them are factually wrong, and some reek of idealism (like the folks who worship communism and praise Cuba's government
By making this comment, are you not guilty of this yourself? Is there something inherently wrong with a state's population owning the means of production, or are you simply parroting a talking point from the cold war era? Are you being totally honest when you're critical of Castro's government without mentioning how it served most Cuban people better the Batista government it replaced? Or is it only idealism when "they" are the ones adhering to it?
(I don't actually have a kingdom, but fuck beta either way)
Whoever gave the go-ahead on this one needs to be fired. Immediately. No, retroactively.
Dice pushing this new interface on the community would be like Apple ripping the GUI from their OS and forcing a CLI on Mac users. Total ignorance of the target demographic is an understatement.
(Not trying to start a flamewar, I know some Mac users are hardcore nerds that like a good CLI, etc., etc.)
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it, assholes! "
The scream of Luddites everywhere.
Luddites actually did break things, and then argued against fixing these broken things.
I'm not suggesting that slashdot break its user interface. In fact, I'm arguing the opposite. I believe that in trying to fix that which isn't broken, by creating the beta site, they've actually broken slashdot. I'm not saying they should stick with the broken site, or that it shouldn't be repaired. I'm all for them fixing slashdot by returning to the fully functional classic site and shelving any ideas for redesigns until they can come up with one that is an actual improvement.
Are you suggesting that the beta site is an actual improvement, analogous to the power looms of the early 19th century? What features does the beta site implement that were lacking in the classic site? What shortfalls of the classic site does the beta site fix? In what quantifiable way is the beta site better than the classic site?
Any comment that isn't focusing on the steaming pile of shit that is being passed off as a redesigned site is off-topic.
Fuck the beta. Sure, we've all seen our share of "___ is killing slashdot, so I'm leaving" comments over the years. Video slashvertisements, other "sponsored content". However, I've never seen quite this level of outrage before.
Some of us thought that the devs were working behind the scenes on implementing UTF-8 support. Instead they were working on this?! Way to listen to your users, Dice.
Slashdot Mirror
That's my point. I'm not suggesting that folk music totally disappears from the volume of human knowledge, but merely that it is considerably less remembered than contemporaneous classical music. You yourself point to famous composers, who you can name, that regularly inherited folk music, but from whom? Can you fathom someone saying "many very famous folk artists ([insert names here]) regularly integrated classical music [composed by unknown people] into their work to bring it to wider audiences"?
I consciously chose Elvis as the face of rock & roll, knowing that this was a horrible thing to do, as he didn't really introduce anything new to the genre except his skin color. I felt that I'd get less flak for this than talking about Leadbelly, but apparently I wrongly evaluated my audience.
Perhaps I could've written part of my post a little better.
When I spoke of folk music, I was referring to "not classical" music. The music that is largely forgotten over the years. Sure, your "Snug in a Blanket" is ancient, but you yourself say no one is certain of its origins. In contrast, everyone knows Bach composed The Well-Tempered Clavier. It seems that classical music is very well documented compared against [what I was calling] folk music.
Kudos for the recorder ownership. I personally would love to own a clavichord, but that will never happen.
I suppose cooking 1 cup of rice in 1.5 cups of water would just be unreasonable?
Moreover, how does SI make this any better. With the scenario you set forth, you'd be cooking 177.441 mL of rice in 266.1615 mL of water. Much less confusing!
Ambient air temperature doesn't frequently drop below 0 degrees Fahrenheit for a vast majority of humans. Note, water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, which means that nearly one third of the 0-100 range of the Fahrenheit scale is reserved for below-freezing temperatures. Of course, there's also the fact that Fahrenheit supports negative temperatures as well.
Your response reads as though it is supportive of using Fahrenheit for measuring ambient air temperatures. Except for the last sentence. Now I'm confused.
Its what every attempt at communism ALWAYS ends up as.
You've got that backwards. Would you consider for a minute that it's possible that it is not communism that ends up as despotism, but that communism is what every reach for despotism is disguised as? That this is likely due to the populist appeal of communism? You won't see a despot rise to power promising heavy yokes and starvation for the proles. It just doesn't have the same ring as communism. Can you think of a platform with greater populist appeal than communism? Would it not makes sense, then, that aspiring assholes would overwhelming rally around communism as their great lie?
Of course, putting this thread in context:
"Half of the existing community is vocally ignorant of most of the things they post on." -- LordLimecat
"For every truly insightful post out there, there are 5 ignorant posts that were modded insightful. Many of them are factually wrong, and some reek of idealism" -- LordLimecat
Now, here you are, arguing communism with an expat from communist Poland. Granted, coming from a communist state doesn't make me an authority on the subject. However, in the context of claimed ignorance, I'd have to ask if you have any unique qualifications regarding this subject.
Of course, the discussion has also degenerated to a subjective battle of ideologies. It doesn't seem that you are seriously considering any of the things I say, since you don't even address the points I bring up. You don't appear interested in having your opinion swayed, and isn't this the very sort of idealism that you were claiming to be offended by?
I don't get it.
Waiting for what? Why are you sorry?
*whoosh*
I can't help but suggest that maybe the younger crowd isn't buying into these things because of the development of new technologies.
Motorcycles and aviation catered to a certain demographic of people looking to get out there and do something interesting, something crazy. Perhaps they were the adrenaline junkies of their time. Today, if you're an adrenaline junkie, there are plenty of more accessible alternatives. You can go skydiving with little more than a couple bucks in your wallet. Hell, you can play Grand Theft Auto at your buddy's house for free. I'm not suggesting that playing a video game is the same thing as riding a motorcycle, but merely that it can be a substitute [albeit a poor one].
Libraries and newspapers are dying, well, for the same reason the buggy whip industry died. There's really no good reason for someone to print stuff out and distribute it physically when it's so much easier to distribute information digitally. Sure, some people prefer real paper [myself included], but some people prefer horses over cars. That didn't stop the automobile from taking over, leaving equestrianism as a hobby for those with a peculiar interest.
Classical music fascinates me. Its claimed death aside, I find the 'timeless' sense of classical music truly interesting. When we think of music from 200, 300, 500 years ago, we think of classical music. Of course, there must have surely been "folk" music around at the time as well, but we don't really think of that. "Folk" music seems to be largely forgotten by history. Today, we see all this pop music permeating contemporary culture. However, 200, 300, 500 years from now, will all our rock & roll, rap, and dubstep be largely forgotten along the mass of other "folk" music? Will people be talking of our "contemporary classical" composers (I can't even name one) as the benchmark for our generation while being ignorant of Elvis, Rakim, and Bassnectar?
To contradict what I just said about classical music: complaining about the death of classical music is like complaining about the death of women's shoulder pads. Culture changes, but it doesn't disappear. It's not like people have stopped listening to music, or stopped making music.
What actually needs to happen is for teachers from all schools and disciplines need to sit down, STFU and realize that outside of the classroom they have no authority, nobody gives a damn about their opinion and that even those glowing recommendations that they wrote for their favorite students mean slightly less then whether or not the applicants socks match this morning.
Anecdote: I landed an internship at NASA straight out of a [2 year] county college in large part due to recommendations from professors. All the other participants in this internship program were from ivy league [or top engineering] universities. Some people apparently do give a damn, and thankfully enough for me, some of those people work at NASA.
Yes, the world is a dangerous place. It was a dangerous place 200 years ago too. More dangerous, by any metric. Yet we still banded together in the name of freedom and not only shrugged off our cloak of protection (England) but actually engaged it in war, in the name of freedom. Yes, indeed, there was a day when we consciously gave up safety for freedom. How far we have come...
There was a time when people understood that safety wasn't the holy grail we should be chasing after. That no matter how much you give up, you can never be truly, totally safe. That some things are more important than safety. Cattle are safe. Their protectors guarantee this to a great extent. Not only are they protected from predators, they're also protected from disease and have all their routine needs for food and shelter met. Is that the type of existence we should be striving for?
I don't believe your claims, but let's forget about that. Let's say that your claims are all indisputably true. Why should I be any more scared of these monsters that threaten to take my life than I am of my own government, which is actually succeeding in taking my freedom?
Are you one of those people that believes that life in bondage is more valuable than death in the name of freedom? How do you reconcile your stance with the attitude that prevailed at the founding of this country, which Patrick Henry summarized in 1775 with the words: "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
If you had no comment to type, why did you post a comment?
Oh, wait, there it is, in the useless subject line. I'm not sure why a threaded discussion forum like slashdot supports comment subjects, as the subject is already implied. If you're posting a comment under the Sochi story, presumably your comment's subject is... Sochi.
Why you'd decide to put your comment in the subject, however, baffles me. Were the text fields on your web form not properly labeled "Comment Subject" and "Comment"? I'd suggest trying a different browser or submitting a bug report to slashdot.
Also, I find your claim of being forced to type anything to be unbelievable. Who forces someone to post to slashdot, and why?
How often do you interact with water at the extremes of its liquid phase?
How often do you interact with ambient air?
Now you see why people really like Fahrenheit so much. Most usage of temperature measurements are in the context of ambient air temperature. Nobody measures the temperature of their ice cubes or their boiling pot of water.
Can't that argument be used to support universal adoption of the US Customary system of measures instead of SI? After all, you prefer liters over cups because you are used to it, not because it is more effective.
I don't understand peoples' desire to impose a universal system of measures on everyone. It's such a tiny part of life. Wouldn't it make more sense to fight for universal adoption of Esperanto? I mean, it's sure as fuck easier to convert between SI and US Customary than it is to translate between English and Mandarin.
It really depends what you're using said units for. When cooking, I find it more convenient to speak of cups than liters. When communicating ambient air temperatures, I find it more convenient to speak of degrees Fahrenheit than Celsius. You see, that's what most people use these units of measure for.
When it comes to engineering or scientific calculations, I naturally prefer liters and Kelvin, because they make the math easier. Nobody wants to set their kitchen oven in Kelvin, though.
Minor gripe regarding consistency: The kilogram is the base unit of mass in SI. Not very consistent, as the other base units have no prefix.
You claim that Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot tried to implement communism, that they gave it a shot. What evidence do you have of this claim, other than the proclamations of these despots themselves? Did they take any actions that could inarguably be seen as efforts to provide the population with ownership of the means of production?
My claim is that no, they didn't try to implement communism. Sure, they said they were trying. But they weren't. What they were doing was trying to subdue the increasingly angry constituency with populist rhetoric. "No need to be angry with the government, proles. We're working to give you everything! Don't be angry with us, be angry with the capitalists!" And for a time, it worked. It worked in many places, for quite a while. Eventually, the people in these countries got tired of the empty promises and realized that they weren't living under communism; they were living under despotism. They realized that their patience ought to be at an end, that waiting further would do no good, as communism wasn't on its way. They weren't living under a temporary transitional system, they were experiencing the desired end goal. Not communism, but despotism.
In response to your question, I can't point out a single country that tried to be communist and succeeded. However, I can't point out a single country that tried to be communist. That's no condemnation of communism, except perhaps as an indication of its lack of appeal. That nobody has tried to implement communism in earnest only means that nobody is really interested in implementing communism. It says nothing about the efficacy of communism, only about its perceived efficacy (if that).
Additionally, I say this all as a political refugee from "communist" Poland (granted political asylum by the USA in 1984), if that means anything to you. Sure, there were some vaguely "communist" features to placate the masses (and to mitigate the effects of a failed economy), like universal government-provided housing. However, I don't remember the capital that controls the economy being in the hands of the population. To me, it seemed like everything was in the hands of a select few at the head of the Party. That's not communism, and we both know that.
I've worked for a defense contractor for about five years now. I took the job because it seemed more interesting (in a nerdy way) than other software development opportunities (mind-numbing back-end "business" shit) I saw. Of course, I could've (maybe) gotten a gig at a NASA or NSF lab, which would in theory have just as interesting of work.
However, when I interned at NASA years and years ago, the one thing that I remembered was the parking lots. They were filled exclusively with ancient, shitty, cheap cars. Either not a single person at GSFC appreciated the amazing engineering of the world's finer automobiles (I found this unlikely), or NASA doesn't pay for shit. I like nice cars (currently driving my second consecutive Honda Accord, as my priorities have changed, but I've had some fun cars before these), and it didn't look like federal science funding was going to enable a lifestyle that I could enjoy.
So here I am now, part of the machine. Part of the problem Eisenhower warned us about. How does that make me feel? Well, not too bad, honestly. Not because I'm some heartless bastard, happy to have my greed satisfied at the expense of the taxpayer and the brownskin. Not because I achieved membership in some cabal of murderous bastards. Mostly because I get to do interesting work (well, not nearly as interesting as I had hoped) and get paid a fair wage (virtually all the developers I know that work on the commercial side of the world make considerably more than me).
To be honest, I've seen some waste in my years here. However, it's not any more waste than is common in any industry. Nobody's perfect, and sometimes money goes towards something that ends up being a bit of a boondoggle. At a mom n pop restaurant, you may see a foolhardy investment in interior decor that eventually turns out to have been a waste of money. Due to issues of scale, when the DOD makes a mistake like that, it's an aircraft nobody wants that costs insane amounts of money. Fundamentally, it's the same problem. Nobody's perfect, and people make mistakes. I understand that it's frustrating to see someone making costly mistakes with your tax dollars, but that's just the nature of the beast. Do not attribute to malice that which can be sufficiently explained by incompetence.
Anyway, I've seen no evidence of any systemic problems with the military-industrial complex. Probably because I'm just a code monkey, not some head honcho cozying up to generals to land contracts. I wouldn't be surprised that this type of shit happens. But you really have to step back sometimes and realize that defense contractors are no different than any other contractors. Sure, they're looking for someone to pay them to do work. Aren't virtually all other industries as well? Is there something wrong with contractors offering various products and services to the DOD? Is there something wrong with the DOD buying into products and services that they find appealing? What benefit is it to the DOD to keep contractors fat and happy? I mean, it's a compelling narrative, for sure. I just haven't seen any evidence that it corresponds to reality.
Also, fuck beta.
Thanks for telling me about MyCleanPC! I went to MyCleanPC's website, ran a free scan, and the virus simply vanished from my computer this minuteness. I couldn't believe how fast my gigabits were running afterwards just from using MyCleanPC!
Also, fuck beta.
That's GNU/Hurt-Mobile OS. Have you heard a single word RMS has said?!
fixes for auto compacting/baning the mycleanpc spam
You must not be using APK's hosts file. I'm using APK's hosts file and I never have any problems with mycleanpc spam. APK's hosts file.
and gnaa trolls.
Look, if they don't scrap plans for this beta, you're going to be seeing so many complaints in the comments that you'll be longing for the gnaa trolls. When the dust settles, they'll be the only thing left.
Also, fuck beta.
It has failed and continues to fail everywhere its tried.
Show me one country that actually tried communism, where the means of production were owned by the people. Not a shithole under the yoke of some dictator or despot with "socialist" or "communist" in its official name. We don't use "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" or "Democratic Republic of the Congo" as examples of democratic republics because, well, there's more to it than just a name. The same holds for the SSRs, which were never even close to implementing anything that would be better described as communism than despotism.
Curiously, you bring up Vietnam, which wikipedia tells me something about: "Since 2000, Vietnam's economic growth rate has been among the highest in the world, and in 2011 it had the highest Global Growth Generators Index among 11 major economies." Hardly the bleak picture you were trying to paint. Regardless, you're talking about Vietnam, a country that adopted "communism" under Ho Chi Minh, the same guy who had countless Trotskyists purged and killed (just like Stalin, another great "communist" figure). Please, point out at which point Mr. Ho was able to ensure that the means of production in Vietnam were owned by the Vietnamese people as a whole, and explain why it looks to the rest of the world as though that never actually happened.
You'd be right to say I'm committing the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, except that my definition for communism is consistent and static. Show me one country where the means of production are owned (or were owned in the past) by the population as a whole, and then we can talk about the efficacy of communism in the real world. Until then, you're not being honest with yourself when you say that communism has failed or continues to fail. The only failure of communism is that it has failed to be implemented anywhere.
Many of them are factually wrong, and some reek of idealism (like the folks who worship communism and praise Cuba's government
By making this comment, are you not guilty of this yourself? Is there something inherently wrong with a state's population owning the means of production, or are you simply parroting a talking point from the cold war era? Are you being totally honest when you're critical of Castro's government without mentioning how it served most Cuban people better the Batista government it replaced? Or is it only idealism when "they" are the ones adhering to it?
Oh, and fuck beta.
My kingdom for some mod points!
(I don't actually have a kingdom, but fuck beta either way)
Whoever gave the go-ahead on this one needs to be fired. Immediately. No, retroactively.
Dice pushing this new interface on the community would be like Apple ripping the GUI from their OS and forcing a CLI on Mac users. Total ignorance of the target demographic is an understatement.
(Not trying to start a flamewar, I know some Mac users are hardcore nerds that like a good CLI, etc., etc.)
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it, assholes! "
The scream of Luddites everywhere.
Luddites actually did break things, and then argued against fixing these broken things.
I'm not suggesting that slashdot break its user interface. In fact, I'm arguing the opposite. I believe that in trying to fix that which isn't broken, by creating the beta site, they've actually broken slashdot. I'm not saying they should stick with the broken site, or that it shouldn't be repaired. I'm all for them fixing slashdot by returning to the fully functional classic site and shelving any ideas for redesigns until they can come up with one that is an actual improvement.
Are you suggesting that the beta site is an actual improvement, analogous to the power looms of the early 19th century? What features does the beta site implement that were lacking in the classic site? What shortfalls of the classic site does the beta site fix? In what quantifiable way is the beta site better than the classic site?
This is ridiculous.
Any comment that isn't focusing on the steaming pile of shit that is being passed off as a redesigned site is off-topic.
Fuck the beta. Sure, we've all seen our share of "___ is killing slashdot, so I'm leaving" comments over the years. Video slashvertisements, other "sponsored content". However, I've never seen quite this level of outrage before.
Some of us thought that the devs were working behind the scenes on implementing UTF-8 support. Instead they were working on this?! Way to listen to your users, Dice.
You're not the target audience.
And it's evident that Dice sure as fuck does not get it.
Who are you, and WHY ARE YOU NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT THE BETA?!
Mod parent off-topic. Fuck beta.
Filter is complaining about me yelling, but really, how can you not yell when confronted with a site redesign this shitty.