I used to be guilty of that -- I coded for years on a TI-83 and never thought why I would need functions or any of that. Then I used C for years without discovering the importance of certain things in functional programming. Today, thankfully, I've outgrown that mental conservatism.
I should add that this also goes for people using GUI editors, or IDEs. IDEs have nice features, but they usually suck as editors and it's typically hard to embed a decent editor in them. But this changes every so often. Not to mention that if you really need IDE-like features, there are third-party extensions for both vim and emacs to provide them, although I don't use them myself, preferring to just use the shell (yes, even for Java work).
Trust me, nano programmers, just take a deep breath and a few days of getting used to it, and just learn vim or emacs. You'll be grateful you did; and you'll wonder how you ever used the prison of editors like pico or nano.
I know because I used to use pico (I didn't like some of the changes nano made; pico was more stable for me) for years and got reasonably productive. What it took was for someone to loudly laugh at me when he asked me about what text editor I used. I learned vim within the week and it's a different world; I am five times more productive for general programming and text editing, and now I use my editor for a million tasks that I would previously have used scripts for.
And yet a rabble of Taleban militants with cheap Russian weapons could wipe out a Roman legion of similar size quite easily. They would engage them with guns before the Romans could use any weapon at all. Weapons are the most important thing to winning a way; training can compensate for poor weapons to an extent, and enhance good weapons, but it's really about the weapons, and hence technology, although note that I did not say communication technology!
The reason this isn't working in Iraq is that Iraq is not a war zone, it is an occupation zone. The conflict is an occupation, not a war. And there, neither training nor weapons will help; it's a battle for hearts and minds.
I know, but it can sound nationalistic. I'm not American but I live in America, so I come across a lot of xenophobia. It often expresses itself as "We speak English here", or "We do things this way here". Your post could be read in the same way.
Apropos, why not use the same term if they started it? Nationalism and competition is why. In the East and West blocks, the names of chemicals, discoverers of scientific advances, quite a lot of things are given different names. Because whoever invented it first, the other side internally claims they did it first.:)
That's as may be; but the fact of the matter is that the way the country is run is how the US Constitution is interpreted by the US judidicial system, typically the Supreme Court. Thus, unless they peruse private letters and use them in their interpretations, they have no legal standing. As things stand, I see no evidence that there is any legal impediment to the government competing in any markets it chooses, not just mail.
Furthermore, I would be hesitant to run my country slavishly on the model of its founders several hundred years ago. Governance is a dynamic thing, and times change, often rapidly. To stick with this issue, I doubt the founders envisaged private mail services, or they would likely not have mentioned them directly in the Constitution. Nor could they foresee power grids, telephones, the internet, and all the other basic utilities of life today that are in the same standing to today's citizens as mail was back then.
I can understand following the general spirit of their desires if they align with your own, but I can't understand following their intentions beyond that. To be brief, I would rather that government govern on the merits of an issue rather than with diligent regard to the possible opinions of the US founders. And for myself, I see government competition in a field as a good thing.
I'm not French, as you guessed, but Hungarian. I've not read The Rights of Man, as I don't think much of Paine (from what I've read of him, he seems more like a lazy and bitter malcontent than a real revolutionary), but I've read Locke's Second Treatise of Civil Government, which expresses much the same ideas from all I've heard, together with the basics of social contract theory.
I myself do not like the French Revolution, because I see it as a class struggle of the lower class usurped by the middle class to lord over society again, with a tremendous amount of bloodshed and upheaval which affected all layers of society badly. I prefer the British model of the evolution of liberal democracy by slow stages (or the American model of just setting up shop in a new country on a blank slate, but this is practical for very few peoples). This is incidentally what I like about the EU: the embracing of Eastern Europe by holding it to standards and then aiding it is causing a great change for the good there, by slow means and without violent upheaval. Though Turkey may not ultimately be allowed to join, it undoubtedly has a good effect there too.
This is a bit longer than I intended, but oh well, at least I had my say.
Did you RTFA? (Obviously not; why do I even ask? All you post is a strawman.) Berners-Lee in no way advocates a centralised body or anything of the sort. He merely wants a system so that different groups can assign their own labels or ratings to websites; and a place where you could see the ratings of all the organisations that had bothered to label a particular website.
If anyone had bothered to RTFA -- and to everyone's credit Berners-Lee is pretty poor at explaining this idea -- he does not advocate creating absolute truth labels by a certain body. He merely wants a system so that different organisations can rate websites and all these ratings should be easily available. It's a question of seeing how different factions with known biases view some websites. For instance, the Creationists might label a lot of scientific websites as 'untruthful', whilst labelling Biblical websites as 'truthful'. When browsing a site, you could see how the Creationists, the Scientologists, the Royal Society, the AMA, the Republicans, the Democrats, the Ku Klux Klan, the 9/11 Truth people, the anarchists, or whoever, rated a website. You could then get a feel for what sort of biases you might encounter on the site.
Please don't cite private letters, but actual documents with legal standing; thank you.
I am not American and did not learn about the USA's system of government from an external source. I have thus happily avoided the usual associated biases.
So? What does that have to do with it? Is there any law that forbids the government from competing in any business or industry? Given how many times it's happened in the US's past, I don't think so.
The other thing is that it's complete and utter BS. The government directly competes in the mail market with USPS. In fact, as a social democrat, I think the government ought to compete in *all* markets, to keep them honest; but at least in the markets involving the means of production and living.
To you and to a fellow poster, who both wrote about the right tool for the job...
That's exactly the point. To some, the ideals matter more than the right tool for the right job. It was certainly so for all the early Linux developers who constrained themselves to using inferior tools for the choice of software freedom, sort of how gNewSense users use a less functional distro today than Ubuntu users, because of the ideals.
Many people, past the Romantic age, read less poetry or science fiction, become more pragmatic, moderate their political beliefs, work on their social conformity, etc. This is perfectly natural.
That some people don't is also natural. It's no slur on either. But I think that those that single-mindedly pursue their ideals are those that move the world forward rather than keep it running. And I wish to make no judgement here, or reveal which camp I fall in. Both fill an important role. I just want to clarify these positions, because they are clear, they are in opposition, and they will never go away because they are bound up in human nature (witness political two-party systems...).
I just write them down clearly because it's up to everyone who has grown out of youth to choose.
And that's what I'm saying. It's pretty arbitrary. In 30 years the situation will be likely reversed. It's no real union where the parties leave the moment they are on the up a bit. I don't know what your take on Scottish independence is, but if Scotland wants to leave the Union, it ought to consider not just the immediate future (I know, hopeless with today's politicians) but the future as a whole. And for that, a view of the past is useful.
I'm sorry, I just woke up, so I'm less coherent than I would like. But perhaps you get my point.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to be guilty of that -- I coded for years on a TI-83 and never thought why I would need functions or any of that. Then I used C for years without discovering the importance of certain things in functional programming. Today, thankfully, I've outgrown that mental conservatism.
I should add that this also goes for people using GUI editors, or IDEs. IDEs have nice features, but they usually suck as editors and it's typically hard to embed a decent editor in them. But this changes every so often. Not to mention that if you really need IDE-like features, there are third-party extensions for both vim and emacs to provide them, although I don't use them myself, preferring to just use the shell (yes, even for Java work).
Trust me, nano programmers, just take a deep breath and a few days of getting used to it, and just learn vim or emacs. You'll be grateful you did; and you'll wonder how you ever used the prison of editors like pico or nano.
I know because I used to use pico (I didn't like some of the changes nano made; pico was more stable for me) for years and got reasonably productive. What it took was for someone to loudly laugh at me when he asked me about what text editor I used. I learned vim within the week and it's a different world; I am five times more productive for general programming and text editing, and now I use my editor for a million tasks that I would previously have used scripts for.
And yet a rabble of Taleban militants with cheap Russian weapons could wipe out a Roman legion of similar size quite easily. They would engage them with guns before the Romans could use any weapon at all. Weapons are the most important thing to winning a way; training can compensate for poor weapons to an extent, and enhance good weapons, but it's really about the weapons, and hence technology, although note that I did not say communication technology!
The reason this isn't working in Iraq is that Iraq is not a war zone, it is an occupation zone. The conflict is an occupation, not a war. And there, neither training nor weapons will help; it's a battle for hearts and minds.
Opensuse has, for quite a while, although the gui is more involved than wicd. I use wicd on Debian.
I know, but it can sound nationalistic. I'm not American but I live in America, so I come across a lot of xenophobia. It often expresses itself as "We speak English here", or "We do things this way here". Your post could be read in the same way.
:)
Apropos, why not use the same term if they started it? Nationalism and competition is why. In the East and West blocks, the names of chemicals, discoverers of scientific advances, quite a lot of things are given different names. Because whoever invented it first, the other side internally claims they did it first.
Well, you say something slightly different; and of course, a thought briefly but carelessly expressed can sound like (and hence be) flamebait.
Personally, I would have tagged it flamebait if I had bothered to moderate this thread...
Ironically you've been tagged Flamebait since then.
Someone without any grasp of history modded me flamebait... I'd appreciate it if any mod who has studied any history would correct this.
My sincere apologies. I hit reply to your post as it interested me more than the idiot's that I meant to reply to in the first place.
That's as may be; but the fact of the matter is that the way the country is run is how the US Constitution is interpreted by the US judidicial system, typically the Supreme Court. Thus, unless they peruse private letters and use them in their interpretations, they have no legal standing. As things stand, I see no evidence that there is any legal impediment to the government competing in any markets it chooses, not just mail.
Furthermore, I would be hesitant to run my country slavishly on the model of its founders several hundred years ago. Governance is a dynamic thing, and times change, often rapidly. To stick with this issue, I doubt the founders envisaged private mail services, or they would likely not have mentioned them directly in the Constitution. Nor could they foresee power grids, telephones, the internet, and all the other basic utilities of life today that are in the same standing to today's citizens as mail was back then.
I can understand following the general spirit of their desires if they align with your own, but I can't understand following their intentions beyond that. To be brief, I would rather that government govern on the merits of an issue rather than with diligent regard to the possible opinions of the US founders. And for myself, I see government competition in a field as a good thing.
I'm not French, as you guessed, but Hungarian. I've not read The Rights of Man, as I don't think much of Paine (from what I've read of him, he seems more like a lazy and bitter malcontent than a real revolutionary), but I've read Locke's Second Treatise of Civil Government, which expresses much the same ideas from all I've heard, together with the basics of social contract theory.
I myself do not like the French Revolution, because I see it as a class struggle of the lower class usurped by the middle class to lord over society again, with a tremendous amount of bloodshed and upheaval which affected all layers of society badly. I prefer the British model of the evolution of liberal democracy by slow stages (or the American model of just setting up shop in a new country on a blank slate, but this is practical for very few peoples). This is incidentally what I like about the EU: the embracing of Eastern Europe by holding it to standards and then aiding it is causing a great change for the good there, by slow means and without violent upheaval. Though Turkey may not ultimately be allowed to join, it undoubtedly has a good effect there too.
This is a bit longer than I intended, but oh well, at least I had my say.
Cheerio,
laddiebuck
I see I'll have to post the same thing about a dozen times in this thread. RTFA. Berners-Lee does not advocate one central org.
Did you RTFA? (Obviously not; why do I even ask? All you post is a strawman.) Berners-Lee in no way advocates a centralised body or anything of the sort. He merely wants a system so that different groups can assign their own labels or ratings to websites; and a place where you could see the ratings of all the organisations that had bothered to label a particular website.
If anyone had bothered to RTFA -- and to everyone's credit Berners-Lee is pretty poor at explaining this idea -- he does not advocate creating absolute truth labels by a certain body. He merely wants a system so that different organisations can rate websites and all these ratings should be easily available. It's a question of seeing how different factions with known biases view some websites. For instance, the Creationists might label a lot of scientific websites as 'untruthful', whilst labelling Biblical websites as 'truthful'. When browsing a site, you could see how the Creationists, the Scientologists, the Royal Society, the AMA, the Republicans, the Democrats, the Ku Klux Klan, the 9/11 Truth people, the anarchists, or whoever, rated a website. You could then get a feel for what sort of biases you might encounter on the site.
You've probably studied the topic a bit though. Just in a cursory fashion enough to deter you.
It wasn't even in the 19th century. Remember the famines of India and Ireland? Failures of the free market.
Please don't cite private letters, but actual documents with legal standing; thank you.
I am not American and did not learn about the USA's system of government from an external source. I have thus happily avoided the usual associated biases.
"if it says nothing about something the feds don't have the power, it limits the feds"
This is a popular myth. There is nothing to this effect in the constitution or in the ratifications.
So? What does that have to do with it? Is there any law that forbids the government from competing in any business or industry? Given how many times it's happened in the US's past, I don't think so.
Vista *was* a big bang for a lot of users...
Or services. Given that's the main component of today's economies you can't ignore it. And the studios still sell many services.
The other thing is that it's complete and utter BS. The government directly competes in the mail market with USPS. In fact, as a social democrat, I think the government ought to compete in *all* markets, to keep them honest; but at least in the markets involving the means of production and living.
To you and to a fellow poster, who both wrote about the right tool for the job...
That's exactly the point. To some, the ideals matter more than the right tool for the right job. It was certainly so for all the early Linux developers who constrained themselves to using inferior tools for the choice of software freedom, sort of how gNewSense users use a less functional distro today than Ubuntu users, because of the ideals.
Many people, past the Romantic age, read less poetry or science fiction, become more pragmatic, moderate their political beliefs, work on their social conformity, etc. This is perfectly natural.
That some people don't is also natural. It's no slur on either. But I think that those that single-mindedly pursue their ideals are those that move the world forward rather than keep it running. And I wish to make no judgement here, or reveal which camp I fall in. Both fill an important role. I just want to clarify these positions, because they are clear, they are in opposition, and they will never go away because they are bound up in human nature (witness political two-party systems...).
I just write them down clearly because it's up to everyone who has grown out of youth to choose.
And that's what I'm saying. It's pretty arbitrary. In 30 years the situation will be likely reversed. It's no real union where the parties leave the moment they are on the up a bit. I don't know what your take on Scottish independence is, but if Scotland wants to leave the Union, it ought to consider not just the immediate future (I know, hopeless with today's politicians) but the future as a whole. And for that, a view of the past is useful.
I'm sorry, I just woke up, so I'm less coherent than I would like. But perhaps you get my point.