As long as there is wealth and safety one can remain fairly ignorant of a lot of things.
I see that as blaming the victim.
"Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights." -- Albert Einstein http://www.monthlyreview.org/598einst.htm
"Altruism was rarely the motivating factor in establishing the large independent foundations - ones like Pew, Ford, MacArthur, Robert Wood Johnson that every NPR listener can name. The Ford Foundation was established to help keep the company in the family without paying estate taxes. John D. MacArthur, founder of Bankers Life and Casualty Company, never made any significant charitable contributions during his lifetime, but left his estate of nearly $1 billion to a foundation rather than to his estranged children. One of the trusts founded by the Sun Oil heirs, the J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust, was established to "acquaint the American people with the evils of bureaucracy... and with the values of a free market...to point out the false promises of Socialism...." In one cozy office the staff of the Pew Charitable Trusts now give out $21 million a year of the J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust both to right-wing groups like the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, and the National Right to Work gang - and to crunchy groups like the Tides Foundation and the Pesticide Action Network, under terms of a different Pew heir's will."
But at least Bill has the money to send where he sees fit, and criticize the government for empty pockets. He certainly has the cojones needed to be so increasingly wealthy while the rest of the US citizenry sinks deeper into debt and poverty.
As someone typing right now on a Mac, there's some truth to what you say -- it's marketed for conspicuous consumption. But honestly, much of computing has been pushed in similar ways; understandably, computer companies try to market tech fetishism.
Anyway, is Gnu/Linux badly-supported on your iBook?
Or at least, ensuring that wages for new hires don't go up is always a useful thing. As long as Microsoft gets a fairly high amount of top programmers from schools Bill visits, it appears that increasing these schools' coder output is a general win.
This means that if you can find a macro that reduces the amount of syntax I need to use to do something by a large factor, or by an order of magnitude, you win. If you can't, macros are unnecessary.
This is tiresome and unprofessional. What kind of computer "science" is this where technical matters win/lose based on slashdot discussions?
I like dinking around in Lisp, PostScript or Forth from time to time but you quickly realize that without type checking any major program in those languages would be pretty much unmaintainable.
Incidentally, within Common Lisp, someone wrote a sublanguage that "has the most powerful type system of any existing functional language, including ML and Haskell." Qi. Now, that's "power" in a formal sense, as he explains here to curious critics.
For a toy program where you can easily keep track of all your functions in your head, having to declare types isn't that useful. On a production system with thousands of functions, it'd be impossible to maintain the application without typing. Even the level of flexibility Java gives you leads to run time errors more often than not.
Are people aware that this is the archetypal static-typing troll?;)
The US is at the bottom of social mobility and rags-to-riches stories in wealthy nations, Wall St. Journal points out.
"The U.S. and Britain appear to stand out as the least mobile societies among the rich countries studied," he finds. France and Germany are somewhat more mobile than the U.S.; Canada and the Nordic countries are much more so.
Andy Grove pointed out that "aggressive" government intervention was required to save the US's semiconductor and steel industries.
Also, take the recent big articles in New York Times and Fortune, calling out for MORE subsidizing of fundamental technology, because corporations can't develop it themselves. It's so costly and unprofitable, the public must subsidize the costs and risk, so private companies can privatize the profit.
Normally it's not widely admitted, except when politicians like Bush start shifting the subsidies around, making enemies.
Protectionism is just a tool. Whether it's useful (and for whom) depends on the situation.
Our system of state-capitalism the best system known by the mainstream, just as Kerry might be thought of as the best alternative to Bush. Here's a kind of technical sketch on various systems.
The humorous thing is, you're actually a real "conservative." Serious conservatives, who aren't defined by the slick politicians of the day, wish to conserve resources and not be careless enough to drop reasonable traditions.
Nowdays, the term conservative refers (at best) to conserving money, rather than your surroundings. The environment you find yourself in. This is why disenfrancised conservatives look to Nader and Mr. Least Worst.
In fact, ever notice all those articles in the New York Times and Fortune, where corporations scream out for more tech subsidies? It turns out that the US taxpayer subsidizes pretty much every basic technology, until it's at a state where it's fairly profitable on the free market, at which point it's sold back to us by corporations for private profit.
The taxpayer picks up the costs and risk, while corporations profit.
Careful of falling into the trap that state-capitalism and state-communism are the only two choices. Those of us in the US have a nanny-state centralized government which interferes deeply in the economy, in favor of the wealthy. But that doesn't mean a centralized communist economy is the logical alternative.
Having known people who've taught budding teachers, I'd say the serious problem is they hire obvious incompetents. People willing to teach the curriculum straight from the broken books the school buys.
If they're willing to hire them in the first place, I seriously doubt they're out to fire them. Just think of large corporations which often prefer the compliant over the competent.
The person I responded to argued, "Yes, and did you see the recent thread on c.l.functional where its author attempted to justify that claim and was comprehensively and conclusively demolished by all the other academics?"
When you read that thread, you'll see that "All the other academics" out to demolish his claim consist of Matthias Blume.;) In only TWO of his paragraphs.
Yes, and did you see the recent thread on c.l.functional where its author attempted to justify that claim and was comprehensively and conclusively demolished by all the other academics?
Qi's type system is interesting, but it is very disputable whether it offers anything over Haskell's.
This? If so, it doesn't fit my definition of "demolished." More like a couple guys disagreeing in the typical academic's handwavy way. Like pre-makeover Lambda the Ultimate.
They might be absolutely right, of course, but their arguments weren't compelling to me.
Mark announced v6.1 recently. I'd heard of it once in an old post by Carl Shapiro, but didn't explore it until this announcement. I was impressed since it put a number of senseless flamewars to rest, and announced it on LtU.
While LISP is a cool language, I really like what I've seen of the strongly static-typed functional languages like the ML family (especially OCaml.) I love the pattern matching features for example. The only thing I miss in them is the macro mechanism from LISP
Qi (which is built on Common Lisp) is touted as having "the most powerful type system of any existing functional language, including ML and Haskell." Perhaps you may wish to try it out and see.
Slashdot Mirror
I see that as blaming the victim.
"Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights."
-- Albert Einstein
http://www.monthlyreview.org/598einst.htm
http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Foundations.h
Now, I don't know the particulars of this situation. However, we should keep in mind that Microsoft is a notorious tax abuser -- apparently it even paid no federal taxes in 1999, and lectures Washington state about its poor education funding while using a Nevada tax shelter to avoid Washington taxes.
http://www.idealog.us/2004/10/follow_up_to_ci.htm
But at least Bill has the money to send where he sees fit, and criticize the government for empty pockets. He certainly has the cojones needed to be so increasingly wealthy while the rest of the US citizenry sinks deeper into debt and poverty.
As someone typing right now on a Mac, there's some truth to what you say -- it's marketed for conspicuous consumption. But honestly, much of computing has been pushed in similar ways; understandably, computer companies try to market tech fetishism. Anyway, is Gnu/Linux badly-supported on your iBook?
Or at least, ensuring that wages for new hires don't go up is always a useful thing. As long as Microsoft gets a fairly high amount of top programmers from schools Bill visits, it appears that increasing these schools' coder output is a general win.
The real issue appears to be that increasing the supply of programmers will lower wages.
Since Microsoft is having a harder time growing its markets, further profit growth likely comes from lowering costs like wages.
"Historical baggage" is lessons learned by others. Ignore them as you wish.
Obviously, people have their preferences, and I'm not going to opine which is the better tool for individuals, as people vary.
A very good recent book explains Lisp macros in readable detail. http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/
Also, many find this a great intro to Common Lisp. With examples of building .mp3 servers and unit test frameworks.
http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/
Actually, some easily readable stuff by Alan Kay:l es/31422.html
http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/learn/12
http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/review/reviewArtic
David Noble on the automation of education. (Realaudio lecture.)
Talk by John Taylor Gatto on why today's education is so bad.
"The U.S. and Britain appear to stand out as the least mobile societies among the rich countries studied," he finds. France and Germany are somewhat more mobile than the U.S.; Canada and the Nordic countries are much more so.
Also, take the recent big articles in New York Times and Fortune, calling out for MORE subsidizing of fundamental technology, because corporations can't develop it themselves. It's so costly and unprofitable, the public must subsidize the costs and risk, so private companies can privatize the profit.
Normally it's not widely admitted, except when politicians like Bush start shifting the subsidies around, making enemies.
Protectionism is just a tool. Whether it's useful (and for whom) depends on the situation.
India's poorest-of-the-poor who would've been "dirt farmers" were trained en masse as programmers?
Our system of state-capitalism the best system known by the mainstream, just as Kerry might be thought of as the best alternative to Bush. Here's a kind of technical sketch on various systems.
State communism and state capitalism are indeed problems.
However, there exist forms without the state. http://zpedia.org/Government_in_the_Future
Nowdays, the term conservative refers (at best) to conserving money, rather than your surroundings. The environment you find yourself in. This is why disenfrancised conservatives look to Nader and Mr. Least Worst.
The taxpayer picks up the costs and risk, while corporations profit.
Check out the old "anarchists" at ZNet, who logically talk about the various traps when you wish to counterreact to state-capitalism. Here's some audio talks, and a discussion of the various economic systems.
Having known people who've taught budding teachers, I'd say the serious problem is they hire obvious incompetents. People willing to teach the curriculum straight from the broken books the school buys.
If they're willing to hire them in the first place, I seriously doubt they're out to fire them. Just think of large corporations which often prefer the compliant over the competent.
Read the usenet thread again.
;) In only TWO of his paragraphs.
The person I responded to argued, "Yes, and did you see the recent thread on c.l.functional where its author attempted to justify that claim and was comprehensively and conclusively demolished by all the other academics?"
When you read that thread, you'll see that "All the other academics" out to demolish his claim consist of Matthias Blume.
They might be absolutely right, of course, but their arguments weren't compelling to me.
Mark announced v6.1 recently. I'd heard of it once in an old post by Carl Shapiro, but didn't explore it until this announcement. I was impressed since it put a number of senseless flamewars to rest, and announced it on LtU.