"You need to design it so when used within specs it reliably works, but when used outside specs (by some margin X) it fails."
That's only half of it. You need to design it so when used outside specs (by some margin X) it fails... without killing too much people (graceful failure). It takes an engineer to do that.
"As in earlier posts, I get the idea that managers want a certificate stating that at some point in time, all the locks were locked"
Then you are wrong.
Managers want a piece of paper that happens to increase their bussiness value. That's all.
"I insist that such a certification is meaningless."
That's because you started off the wrong premises. My quality is shit, I know it's shit and I want it that way. But I want my ISO-9001 certification because that means I can go after big government contracts. I got my ISO-9001 piece of paper; my quality is still shit but now I get big government contracts. Who the hell are you to say that my certification is meaningless? What would be meaningless would be to expend even a penny more than needed to achieve my goals which are to get the damn paper and nothing more.
"security is indeed 24/7. For any manager to pretend otherwise is an indication that he may be otherwise incompetent."
Welcome to the Real World Where Most Managers Are Indeed Incompetent (TM), marine.
"You are essentially suggesting that audit quality does not current affect an auditor's demand"
Probably not: conflict of interests is really obvious.
Usually a company won't contract an auditor to check anything but to produce a certification. That's what you pay them to. Once this is understood then it follows that the auditor that makes for you easier and cheaper to get the paper is the one you want the most. If that easiness and cheapness is achieved by better audit quality, so be it; if it's achieved by other means, so be it too, and I can imagine quite a lot of ways to easy the certificate producing process totally unrelated to audit quality, and you?
"The big difference, its not hard to test concrete, that is one aspect of bridge building... In IT, its completely different, its not tangible"
Well, I'd say the auditor is an adult able to measure the risk. An auditor's job is clear and their responsibilities are clear too. If money vs risk is not enough, don't work as an auditor: there's aplenty of less risky jobs over there.
"an inspector or auditor could have done his job perfectly fine, and things still went wrong"
That's not the auditor problem, that's not the case discussed here, and nobody on his sane mind would ask him retaliation for that.
"In reality, the auditor typically has minimal technical competency"
His problem.
"and is running a canned set of tools that throw out so many false positives that the reports are practically worthless"
His problem again.
"or if followed to the letter would make a system fail to even perform it's function."
The problem of the certification authority and those that accepted such a certification to be valid at some realm.
"They even may not have the a canned set of tools for the right OS in the first place, making the reports even more useless."
The auditor's problem again.
So we have an auditor without technical competence, without proper tools and being there to certificate over a shitty standard. But still he will ask for real money, not fake one, at the end of the transaction, won't he? Oh, how sorry I feel for that poor boy when shit hits the fan!
"This is a very important disctinction that some peoples fail to grasp."
But it is one that it's very easy to spell responsibilites against.
"An auditor basically compare a situation vs a checklist of auditable issues."
So if he didn't check it properly, its obvious it should be held responsible for that.
"Standards such as PCI, SOX, NERC CIPs etc. aren't designed to protect you against all known threats"
No. But they are there to offer confidence both at the certified entity and the user of such entity, and they don't ask for peanuts to grant the certification but real money. If the certification is bollocks or the certification process as presented by the certification authority is a joke, then the certification authority should be held responsible.
"A company can pass an audit and still be very insecure."
If a company can pass a security audit and still be very insecure then the security certificate is a joke and the certification authority should be held liable.
"Data ceter they have in Addison, that is WAY to big for the power and data lines they have, blew a breaker [...] Thing was that they had on UPS and two power circuits [...] but really, who the heck do you blame for a faulty main?"
I'd say the engineer that designed and allowed a critical system going overcapacity and specially the engineer that designed a critical system with such a big and obvious single point of failure are quite safe bets.
"In regards to your third point: What the fuck do civilian casualties have to do with veterans?"
Since he is a veteran he is not in active service anymore. Thus, he is a civilian. Unless, of course, you want now to redraw your definitions *again* to tell that, well, you was saying veteran in the sense of "experienced soldier" not ex-soldier, now retired.
"Back in the day, if you got injured during a war"
Back in the day it was much more difficult to be injured during a war since much less (percent of) people got involved. You can ask Bagdad civilians if you don't believe me.
"If you're going to participate in a conversation, try to understand what people are talking about."
Like in... reading what they write down instead of what I want to imagine the wanted to say?
"but you don't seem to grasp the conversation that's going on here. Do you really think the modern world is inferior to the world hundreds of years ago?"
I think on average it's not so much better, yes. And that was exactly the point of the article: We *could* live in the Supersonics world (jetpacks, flying cars, concentrated food... all that do exist) but somehow, while those things do exist they are not widespread; sometimes it's because Supersonics world didn't make so much sense after all; sometimes because the way capitalism works (or doesn't work).
And exactly the same is what happens with everything else. I'd bet that both Toonol and you had a neat image on your mind about "an average person" and that such image was of somebody quite similar to you. Wrong! You are quite quite quite above average. Sadly an "average person" is more or less an analphabet countryman on deep rural China, and if you think such a person is better now that 300 years ago but on very liminal manners, you really should take some general culture courses. We *could* have antibiotics, advanced sanitary systems, enough food and clean water and a decent home for every person in the whole world (and that's not exactly "Supersonics technology") but we don't have it -by a very gross margin, as much as we don't live the Supersonics utopy. We all, first world inhabitants should be deeply ashamed for that.
The question is whether 1709 Bostonian would prefer 2009 Boston, or 1709 Somali would prefer 2009 "Mogadishu."
Sorry but no: that was *not* the question. The question was, literally, "Go back a few centuries and show today's world to an average person".
"That modern technology has not taken root in Somalia rather makes the comparison irrelevant. "
And that was exactly my point. Somalia is what it is today *exactly* for the reasons New York is New York. Third World famine is completly entangled to First World richness and please remember that on average, current world is a world of famine and wars, not that of the american dream.
"As for war zones, I have no doubt that a veteran of a colonial war in 1709 would vastly prefer his odds of survival in a modern war zone"
And he would be utterly wrong. You must go post WWI to find war zones where the vast majority of casualties are civilians. Do you really think the odds for a Dresden citizen by 1945 were better than those of a Breda civilian under its siege on 1624?
"So, now it's impacting my memory and performance."
I'll give you that point.
"Not just his, but the choice of the toolkit developer"
Not at all. The fact that Gtk+ exists doesn't force any developer to use it.
"who decided that they didn't like the way the others did it"
Even given that, maybe they did it for a reason. Are you in the position of validating their reasons better than them?
"GTK, Qt...they all do exactly the same thing: put widgets on the screen. There's no reason to have so many aside from a false sense of "choice". "
So yes, you think your knowledge and position are better than that of those that effectively made the choice. Can you please show examples of your work so I can make my mind too?
"Or else they'll say "it works on Debian Stable -full stop" and be done with it.
And, have just excluded the Fedora crowd"
Not anymore than when somebody says "this will work on Windows -full stop" but still they do it all the time and feel no problem with that. Their choice.
"Well, then, I'll explain it to you: I don't want or need "choice" when it comes to toolkits."
Still you do it.
"I don't want or need "choice" when it comes to desktop environments."
Still you do it. Not only you do it but you even choose a minoritary desktop environment. Certainly you'll have your reasons that I won't dare to challenge but then be aware of your own contradiction: you don't want to choose but still lengthilly go into an uncomfortable choice. Make your mind.
"I'm not a developer"
But still you feel knowledgeable enough to challenge the choice of developing tools from real developers. Feel free to do and say as you please but don't wonder if others find you a bit dumb.
"Go back a few centuries and show today's world to an average person. They'll beg to come back to the 21st century with you."
Are you sure? Let's say three centuries which put us in 1709. Are you sure your average Bostonian from 1709 would prefer Mogadishu's or Bagdad's 2009 to his home?
"You forgot to include what followed immediately: esp. as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth."
Which does nothing but state my point: wealth, not property. Of course the contrast private propery/state propery is a main point of capitalism but that was one I didn't go into. The point I went into is that property is not the same as capital nor the other way around or else, i.e. you wouldn't see economic differences between capitalism and feudalism (the last one being in fact about property -land property mainly).
"Capital is not just another word for money, property is not just another word for land."
Point taken, but then...
"The 6th definition [for capital] on the linked page is "any form of wealth employed or capable of being employed in the production of more wealth." So the computer I'm typing this on is capital. The machinery and tools I own are capital. They are my property"
As it is your intelligence and the roads you use to go to work which are *not* your property. Again, capital is not propery; property is not capital.
"Communist/socialist countries have money, land and means of production too. The key differentiation is who owns and controls those things, in capitalism they are owned by private interests"
Of course: and you see, you mention money, land and means of production which all of them are capital while not all of them being properties. The point of capitalism is not that you own your house but that money is the universal tool for wealth measure and exchange and that such power is held in private hands. It might come as a surprise, since it's not directly obvious from the "pure" town market from Adam Smith (which can be sustained out of direct exchange of goods), but there can't be a capitalist environment without money. Again, it is not propietorship which makes the difference (other economic models can go with or without it) but capital and its fate held on private hands.
"Capital includes much more than money, the words are not interchangeable."
And capital includes much more than property, the words are not interchangeable. Hence, capital is not property; property is not capital.
"I'd argue that the "Communism says" comment made by thtrgremlin could be taken to include the observable actions of communist countries, not just the words of Marx."
You are right... up to a point. But then, we are way beyond that point when "communism" is understood as the "cartoon for average americans" thtrgremlin made of it. Probably had he talked about "stalinism" instead of "communism" I'd have nothing to comment.
"No communist country I'm aware of has dissolved it's dictatorship except to return to a more capitalist system, such as Russia and China. It is said that actions speak louder than words."
Which at most may demonstrate communism to be unviable, not that communism is this or that.
""The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State" - The Communist Manifesto."
Which then becomes the socialist step from the scientific communism. From the very same source: "When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character [...] then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."
Which becomes the communist society and directly contradicts thtrgremlin's assertion that "Communism claims that individuals are wasteful and inefficient" since it is focused on "the f
"I, for example, prefer using Awesome WM for my window manager. However, if I want to run the majority of useful software out there, I need to install a good portion of Gnome and/or KDE."
So what? That's nothing more than cheap disk space.
"You can tell me to settle on one, but then I'm giving up functionality I want or need. I need to have at least three in order for the OS to be useful. "
So what? Using some toolkit, WM, etc. was not your choice but that of the developer. Maybe he chose what he chose for a reason. Given time, if there's an overwhelmingly better choice they'll take it and your problem will be over. In the meantime what you ask for is a false sense of satisfaction: you will think everything is OK just because you won't see as lost all that functionallity you are using now just because it won't exist no more.
"commercial vendors don't want to write to it (RTFA, for example) because in order for them to say "It works on Linux" it really has to say "It works on Fedora and Gentoo and Ubuntu and ArchLinux and Linux from Scratch and Puppy Linux and...so on and so on and so on.""
Or else they'll say "it works on Debian Stable -full stop" and be done with it. After all they don't say "it works on computers" because that would mean "it works on Fedora and Gentoo and Ubuntu and ArchLinux and Linux from Scratch and Puppy Linux and Mac OS/X and this and that Windows and...so on and so on and so on" but it doesn't seem to be a problem with them.
"I pick neither...now I can't run much in the way of commercial software. Thanks for making the choice for me... "
So on one hand you see choice as being a bad thing and on the other you put yourself out of the "main circus" because of your very choice ability. Seems quite funny.
"Please, please, please stop with this stingy attitude towards distributing libraries. We have megabits of bandwidth and terabytes of disk space and yet there is an almost herculean effort made to economize a few GB by using dynamic linking where it's not strictly needed."
For the most part you don't "reuse" libraries because of storage space but in order to reuse the code.
"I will gladly sacrifice any amount of diskspace not to deal with my package manager and insane requirements."
But would you gladly sacrifice having a security hole and instead of correcting at one place and then have corrected all apps that use it having to upgrade each and every program that happens to use it and then not knowing if per chance there's still another copy hidden overthere?
"No, actually, the exact opposite of your point. thtrgremlin said "Capitalism is about the right for individuals to own property" which you disputed but my reference to the dictionary confirmed."
Sorry but not. The very definition stated "an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations". Capitalism is not about property but about investment, production, distribution, exchange of wealth *and* property. Capitalism is about property no more than astronomy is about telescopes. And then I also stated that capital is not property (land is not money) and that property is not capital (money is not land). And then my point arises naturally: given you can exchange money for lands as well as means of production or distribution, money (aka capital) as the very means of wealth exchange *is* the soul of capitalism, not property.
"Using your own pet definition during conversation is inadvisable if the goal is to have an intelligent discussion"
Like saying that capital is not the central issue of Capitalism, despite its very name?
"Doesn't really matter that he said it, since there is no evidence that he had any intention of carrying it out."
Since the very issue was what Marx stated or not, not if he was right or wrong, or if he tried to carry it on or not, well, I'd bet that, yes, it *does* matter.
"Communism is about state control, and people would be better to not forget it."
Who is the one pushing their own pet definitions now? Socialism is about state control, not Comunism. Unless, of course, you want to challenge the definition from its very creator.
"And the CEO/IT manager definitely have a right to know these passwords at all times, so changing them if they look them up sounds wholly inappropriate..."
It is not. On one hand, all you know is that passwords have been sneaked. It might be true that only CEO/CTO/whatever have seen them... or they forgot the paper to be seen by somebody else, or while they indeed opened the envelope to get to the password they passed it to a lower technician to effectively do the needed job... On the other hand, once you change the password and write it down on the safe again, CEO/CTO/whatever still retain their privilege to go to the envelope and rip it off for the next time the need arises so they lose no control at all.
And that's something the leader of any market niche never wants. Amazon seems to be the leader of this market niche, so the only reason they would do over the open path is if they really feel that the lessen parties can menace their position by grouping together around the same standard against them.
Quite an interesting question, but I don't think it's relevant here. While I see and understand your point the fact remains that USA government is entitled to do the kind of things one expect from a national government like defense or money control; EU not only has not such a power but there are perfectly recognizable subsets within EU that do it by themselves. It might happen that in the future that kind of powers will be transferred from current countries to EU and that this conversation in two centuries will have no sense and EU will indeed be a country by then (it is not that current European countries had not their own national construction processes -usually violent) but EU is not certainly a country by now and given the very different History paths between Europe (the land) and USA I wouldn't hold my breath on that to happen.
Still you avoided the central points of this discussion: I won't take off merit of USA Constitution fathers, it's only that under this discussion I don't give a damn about them. History is full of phylosophers telling us how the world should be and so many of them make sense; the real point is what has been effectively appointed. Plato's republic holds the merit of a desirable society as Bakunin's, Fourier, Rousseau or your Constitution fathers; it's only that real societies doesn't seem to reach such desirable goals. And then, my point was that effective societies achieve better stability when based upon the Hobbesian principle that man is wolf for man than under the Volterian one that we are naturally good and it's only a matter of allowing all that goodness to arise.
"You really going to say that the poor lower class were better off in the dark ages?"
No, but they were not so much better either, and the real differences were much more based on scientific advancement that on real social embetterment. And given then, what's your point again? Are you really going to say that poor lower classes were better off in the France of 1750 than in Castro's Cuba either?
"Maybe it never really worked, but I think it was the system of government intended, drafted, and ratified by the founders of the United States Constitution, at VERY least Thomas Jefferson."
Yes. And USSR was to be a Socialist Union of Republics where people would be power enacted and would have covered their necesities as needed while everybody was to support their countrie's development as their own conditions allowed. So what?
On the other hand, the envisioned Republic from USA founders was that: a Republic. That means to all practical effects a representative democracy with separation of powers. So in fact, that's a form of elected tiranny, quite far away from anarchist ideals with power quite far from everybody's hands. And it is that way by design.
"As far as "no system sucks less", there really are no example of direct democracy that have ever worked"
Ancient Greece, unless under war threat.
"because under direct democracy, who makes things happen?"
People.
"It is indistinguishable from pure anarchy."
Almost. On pure anarchy even ballots are uneeded since everybody is enlighted enough to know what's needed and responsible enough to do it. But well, given the tremendous "if", if that really worked, what's the problem? Ideallistically anarchy is the best social organization one can dream of. There's indeed only three pure kinds of social organization I can think of. In order of desirability: anarchy->tiranny->democracy; all the real forms are a mix and match of those three. Prior to jump saying how can tiranny be better than democracy, I'm talking about idealistic tiranny more or less as expressed on Plato's Republic where the tyrant is only there to assure that anarchy ideals are acomplished. There're no ugly tyrants in topos noethos-land.
"The Republic is really the form of National Government that has stood the test of time, of which the United States is NOT."
So, again, can you provide real examples or is it just wishful thinking?
"Of course, the EU and US are as different as any country is from another."
Much more than that. USA is a country; EU is not.
"People democratically elect national / state representatives that in turn elect representatives to the federal government to represent their interests as members of the federation."
But then, how realistic is to expect real people's interest to be on government's focus instead of those of the federal government officials or state level ones that directly elect them? Each indirection step takes away power from the people and puts it on the hands of the representatives.
"But people don't have any direct influence on policy any more than a mob of pesant versus a King."
Please remember it is this way by design. That's the way USA constitution fathers wanted it to be.
"Our "democracy" gives us the right to elect different representatives and run for public office."
Which was the temporal solution from Ancient Greek days for war times.
"An example of great human progress where democratic will was not imposed (or was unable to stop it) was the Enlightenment Age"
I think you have too a romantic vision of such times. Were you blessed with the advantage of being born upper class, everything was OK but for everybody else...
"The free market isn't the way things should work, it is the way things DO work, and government isn't much of any special exception. Of course, like any salesman, they love to try to tell you otherwise."
"Only if you were a freeman, but at the bottom of most feudal societies were serfs. While serfs (in theory) had some rights, unlike actual slaves, they couldn't own land and were had to get their lords permission to do many things"
Which part of "part of your working power" and "minor properties to stay with you" didn't you understand? Even serfs, while not owning land (I already said "Feudalism was strongly based on land") were technically owners of their labour; that's why landlords got taxes (I don't know the exact English world): they didn't *give* a part to the serfs as it would be expected if they owned all the labor, but they did *take* their share as owners and protectors of the land. Working for a corp is not that you work for the company 8 to 12 and then 12 to 17 for yourself or that you work for yourself but then your manager comes monthly and gets 40% of your labour: all your labour is owned by your company. And then, the serf didn't own the land but he owned his plow and his hoe; the corporate worker doesn't own the company but he doesn't own the PC, nor the desk or the chair either (while some trades still traditionally let the worker use his own tools: jewelers, cookers and the like).
"Corporations are more like Feudalism than Communism."
It's more like them both (well, not Comunism but Socialist Dictatorship) are quite the same. No wonder Russian people adapted so easily to the change, as no wonder you could find so many of the old Boyard families getting power on the Soviet apparatus.
But even considering the similitudes corporations are still more Communist than Feudal: they are more about money than about power within (although obviously both things are quite entrenched); Feudalism made use of the environment while Communist dictatorships planned the production as do corps. Feudalism allowed for part of your working power and minor properties to stay with you; while on the corporation all your working power and all your assets belong to the corp; Feudalism was strongly based on land and manpower ownership while communism goes after control of capital and ownership of production, etc.
"Capital is not property; property is not capital. Capitalism is about giving almighty power to capital disregarding everything else. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/capitalism
capitalism
-noun
an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, esp. as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth."
So exactly my point. Property is not capital and capital is not property. And then, your dictionary definition is terribly lacky: Capitalism is not only an economic system but a social system too and it's from this fact that my definition derives.
"Heh! To think that millions of people where actually stupid enough to believe that a dictatorship would dismantle itself through the goodwill of the dictator. If it wasn't so horribly, murderously tragic, that would be funny. "
So what? Does that make false that Marx stated what I pointed out?
"You getting informative mod for that post is about on a par with a Branch Davidian getting informative for posting that David Koresh is the incarnation of god."
I see you lack understandment so I'll follow your comparation: I'm as informative as someone that states that for Christians Jesus Christ is the incarnation of god... which is quite diferent than saying that Jesus Christ *is* the incarnation of god.
Slashdot Mirror
"You need to design it so when used within specs it reliably works, but when used outside specs (by some margin X) it fails."
That's only half of it. You need to design it so when used outside specs (by some margin X) it fails... without killing too much people (graceful failure). It takes an engineer to do that.
"As in earlier posts, I get the idea that managers want a certificate stating that at some point in time, all the locks were locked"
Then you are wrong.
Managers want a piece of paper that happens to increase their bussiness value. That's all.
"I insist that such a certification is meaningless."
That's because you started off the wrong premises. My quality is shit, I know it's shit and I want it that way. But I want my ISO-9001 certification because that means I can go after big government contracts. I got my ISO-9001 piece of paper; my quality is still shit but now I get big government contracts. Who the hell are you to say that my certification is meaningless? What would be meaningless would be to expend even a penny more than needed to achieve my goals which are to get the damn paper and nothing more.
"security is indeed 24/7. For any manager to pretend otherwise is an indication that he may be otherwise incompetent."
Welcome to the Real World Where Most Managers Are Indeed Incompetent (TM), marine.
"You are essentially suggesting that audit quality does not current affect an auditor's demand"
Probably not: conflict of interests is really obvious.
Usually a company won't contract an auditor to check anything but to produce a certification. That's what you pay them to. Once this is understood then it follows that the auditor that makes for you easier and cheaper to get the paper is the one you want the most. If that easiness and cheapness is achieved by better audit quality, so be it; if it's achieved by other means, so be it too, and I can imagine quite a lot of ways to easy the certificate producing process totally unrelated to audit quality, and you?
"The big difference, its not hard to test concrete, that is one aspect of bridge building... In IT, its completely different, its not tangible"
Well, I'd say the auditor is an adult able to measure the risk. An auditor's job is clear and their responsibilities are clear too. If money vs risk is not enough, don't work as an auditor: there's aplenty of less risky jobs over there.
"an inspector or auditor could have done his job perfectly fine, and things still went wrong"
That's not the auditor problem, that's not the case discussed here, and nobody on his sane mind would ask him retaliation for that.
"In reality, the auditor typically has minimal technical competency"
His problem.
"and is running a canned set of tools that throw out so many false positives that the reports are practically worthless"
His problem again.
"or if followed to the letter would make a system fail to even perform it's function."
The problem of the certification authority and those that accepted such a certification to be valid at some realm.
"They even may not have the a canned set of tools for the right OS in the first place, making the reports even more useless."
The auditor's problem again.
So we have an auditor without technical competence, without proper tools and being there to certificate over a shitty standard. But still he will ask for real money, not fake one, at the end of the transaction, won't he? Oh, how sorry I feel for that poor boy when shit hits the fan!
"This is a very important disctinction that some peoples fail to grasp."
But it is one that it's very easy to spell responsibilites against.
"An auditor basically compare a situation vs a checklist of auditable issues."
So if he didn't check it properly, its obvious it should be held responsible for that.
"Standards such as PCI, SOX, NERC CIPs etc. aren't designed to protect you against all known threats"
No. But they are there to offer confidence both at the certified entity and the user of such entity, and they don't ask for peanuts to grant the certification but real money. If the certification is bollocks or the certification process as presented by the certification authority is a joke, then the certification authority should be held responsible.
"A company can pass an audit and still be very insecure."
If a company can pass a security audit and still be very insecure then the security certificate is a joke and the certification authority should be held liable.
Is not that hard, really.
"Data ceter they have in Addison, that is WAY to big for the power and data lines they have, blew a breaker [...] Thing was that they had on UPS and two power circuits [...] but really, who the heck do you blame for a faulty main?"
I'd say the engineer that designed and allowed a critical system going overcapacity and specially the engineer that designed a critical system with such a big and obvious single point of failure are quite safe bets.
"In regards to your third point: What the fuck do civilian casualties have to do with veterans?"
Since he is a veteran he is not in active service anymore. Thus, he is a civilian. Unless, of course, you want now to redraw your definitions *again* to tell that, well, you was saying veteran in the sense of "experienced soldier" not ex-soldier, now retired.
"Back in the day, if you got injured during a war"
Back in the day it was much more difficult to be injured during a war since much less (percent of) people got involved. You can ask Bagdad civilians if you don't believe me.
"If you're going to participate in a conversation, try to understand what people are talking about."
Like in... reading what they write down instead of what I want to imagine the wanted to say?
"but you don't seem to grasp the conversation that's going on here. Do you really think the modern world is inferior to the world hundreds of years ago?"
I think on average it's not so much better, yes. And that was exactly the point of the article: We *could* live in the Supersonics world (jetpacks, flying cars, concentrated food... all that do exist) but somehow, while those things do exist they are not widespread; sometimes it's because Supersonics world didn't make so much sense after all; sometimes because the way capitalism works (or doesn't work).
And exactly the same is what happens with everything else. I'd bet that both Toonol and you had a neat image on your mind about "an average person" and that such image was of somebody quite similar to you. Wrong! You are quite quite quite above average. Sadly an "average person" is more or less an analphabet countryman on deep rural China, and if you think such a person is better now that 300 years ago but on very liminal manners, you really should take some general culture courses. We *could* have antibiotics, advanced sanitary systems, enough food and clean water and a decent home for every person in the whole world (and that's not exactly "Supersonics technology") but we don't have it -by a very gross margin, as much as we don't live the Supersonics utopy. We all, first world inhabitants should be deeply ashamed for that.
The question is whether 1709 Bostonian would prefer 2009 Boston, or 1709 Somali would prefer 2009 "Mogadishu."
Sorry but no: that was *not* the question. The question was, literally, "Go back a few centuries and show today's world to an average person".
"That modern technology has not taken root in Somalia rather makes the comparison irrelevant. "
And that was exactly my point. Somalia is what it is today *exactly* for the reasons New York is New York. Third World famine is completly entangled to First World richness and please remember that on average, current world is a world of famine and wars, not that of the american dream.
"As for war zones, I have no doubt that a veteran of a colonial war in 1709 would vastly prefer his odds of survival in a modern war zone"
And he would be utterly wrong. You must go post WWI to find war zones where the vast majority of casualties are civilians. Do you really think the odds for a Dresden citizen by 1945 were better than those of a Breda civilian under its siege on 1624?
"So, now it's impacting my memory and performance."
I'll give you that point.
"Not just his, but the choice of the toolkit developer"
Not at all. The fact that Gtk+ exists doesn't force any developer to use it.
"who decided that they didn't like the way the others did it"
Even given that, maybe they did it for a reason. Are you in the position of validating their reasons better than them?
"GTK, Qt...they all do exactly the same thing: put widgets on the screen. There's no reason to have so many aside from a false sense of "choice". "
So yes, you think your knowledge and position are better than that of those that effectively made the choice. Can you please show examples of your work so I can make my mind too?
"Or else they'll say "it works on Debian Stable -full stop" and be done with it.
And, have just excluded the Fedora crowd"
Not anymore than when somebody says "this will work on Windows -full stop" but still they do it all the time and feel no problem with that. Their choice.
"Well, then, I'll explain it to you: I don't want or need "choice" when it comes to toolkits."
Still you do it.
"I don't want or need "choice" when it comes to desktop environments."
Still you do it. Not only you do it but you even choose a minoritary desktop environment. Certainly you'll have your reasons that I won't dare to challenge but then be aware of your own contradiction: you don't want to choose but still lengthilly go into an uncomfortable choice. Make your mind.
"I'm not a developer"
But still you feel knowledgeable enough to challenge the choice of developing tools from real developers. Feel free to do and say as you please but don't wonder if others find you a bit dumb.
"Go back a few centuries and show today's world to an average person. They'll beg to come back to the 21st century with you."
Are you sure? Let's say three centuries which put us in 1709. Are you sure your average Bostonian from 1709 would prefer Mogadishu's or Bagdad's 2009 to his home?
"You forgot to include what followed immediately: esp. as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth."
Which does nothing but state my point: wealth, not property. Of course the contrast private propery/state propery is a main point of capitalism but that was one I didn't go into. The point I went into is that property is not the same as capital nor the other way around or else, i.e. you wouldn't see economic differences between capitalism and feudalism (the last one being in fact about property -land property mainly).
"Capital is not just another word for money, property is not just another word for land."
Point taken, but then...
"The 6th definition [for capital] on the linked page is "any form of wealth employed or capable of being employed in the production of more wealth." So the computer I'm typing this on is capital. The machinery and tools I own are capital. They are my property"
As it is your intelligence and the roads you use to go to work which are *not* your property. Again, capital is not propery; property is not capital.
"Communist/socialist countries have money, land and means of production too. The key differentiation is who owns and controls those things, in capitalism they are owned by private interests"
Of course: and you see, you mention money, land and means of production which all of them are capital while not all of them being properties. The point of capitalism is not that you own your house but that money is the universal tool for wealth measure and exchange and that such power is held in private hands. It might come as a surprise, since it's not directly obvious from the "pure" town market from Adam Smith (which can be sustained out of direct exchange of goods), but there can't be a capitalist environment without money. Again, it is not propietorship which makes the difference (other economic models can go with or without it) but capital and its fate held on private hands.
"Capital includes much more than money, the words are not interchangeable."
And capital includes much more than property, the words are not interchangeable. Hence, capital is not property; property is not capital.
"I'd argue that the "Communism says" comment made by thtrgremlin could be taken to include the observable actions of communist countries, not just the words of Marx."
You are right... up to a point. But then, we are way beyond that point when "communism" is understood as the "cartoon for average americans" thtrgremlin made of it. Probably had he talked about "stalinism" instead of "communism" I'd have nothing to comment.
"No communist country I'm aware of has dissolved it's dictatorship except to return to a more capitalist system, such as Russia and China. It is said that actions speak louder than words."
Which at most may demonstrate communism to be unviable, not that communism is this or that.
""The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State" - The Communist Manifesto."
Which then becomes the socialist step from the scientific communism. From the very same source:
"When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character [...] then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.
In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."
Which becomes the communist society and directly contradicts thtrgremlin's assertion that "Communism claims that individuals are wasteful and inefficient" since it is focused on "the f
"I, for example, prefer using Awesome WM for my window manager. However, if I want to run the majority of useful software out there, I need to install a good portion of Gnome and/or KDE."
So what? That's nothing more than cheap disk space.
"You can tell me to settle on one, but then I'm giving up functionality I want or need. I need to have at least three in order for the OS to be useful. "
So what? Using some toolkit, WM, etc. was not your choice but that of the developer. Maybe he chose what he chose for a reason. Given time, if there's an overwhelmingly better choice they'll take it and your problem will be over. In the meantime what you ask for is a false sense of satisfaction: you will think everything is OK just because you won't see as lost all that functionallity you are using now just because it won't exist no more.
"commercial vendors don't want to write to it (RTFA, for example) because in order for them to say "It works on Linux" it really has to say "It works on Fedora and Gentoo and Ubuntu and ArchLinux and Linux from Scratch and Puppy Linux and...so on and so on and so on.""
Or else they'll say "it works on Debian Stable -full stop" and be done with it. After all they don't say "it works on computers" because that would mean "it works on Fedora and Gentoo and Ubuntu and ArchLinux and Linux from Scratch and Puppy Linux and Mac OS/X and this and that Windows and...so on and so on and so on" but it doesn't seem to be a problem with them.
"I pick neither...now I can't run much in the way of commercial software. Thanks for making the choice for me... "
So on one hand you see choice as being a bad thing and on the other you put yourself out of the "main circus" because of your very choice ability. Seems quite funny.
"Please, please, please stop with this stingy attitude towards distributing libraries. We have megabits of bandwidth and terabytes of disk space and yet there is an almost herculean effort made to economize a few GB by using dynamic linking where it's not strictly needed."
For the most part you don't "reuse" libraries because of storage space but in order to reuse the code.
"I will gladly sacrifice any amount of diskspace not to deal with my package manager and insane requirements."
But would you gladly sacrifice having a security hole and instead of correcting at one place and then have corrected all apps that use it having to upgrade each and every program that happens to use it and then not knowing if per chance there's still another copy hidden overthere?
"No, actually, the exact opposite of your point. thtrgremlin said "Capitalism is about the right for individuals to own property" which you disputed but my reference to the dictionary confirmed."
Sorry but not. The very definition stated "an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations". Capitalism is not about property but about investment, production, distribution, exchange of wealth *and* property. Capitalism is about property no more than astronomy is about telescopes. And then I also stated that capital is not property (land is not money) and that property is not capital (money is not land). And then my point arises naturally: given you can exchange money for lands as well as means of production or distribution, money (aka capital) as the very means of wealth exchange *is* the soul of capitalism, not property.
"Using your own pet definition during conversation is inadvisable if the goal is to have an intelligent discussion"
Like saying that capital is not the central issue of Capitalism, despite its very name?
"Doesn't really matter that he said it, since there is no evidence that he had any intention of carrying it out."
Since the very issue was what Marx stated or not, not if he was right or wrong, or if he tried to carry it on or not, well, I'd bet that, yes, it *does* matter.
"Communism is about state control, and people would be better to not forget it."
Who is the one pushing their own pet definitions now? Socialism is about state control, not Comunism. Unless, of course, you want to challenge the definition from its very creator.
"And the CEO/IT manager definitely have a right to know these passwords at all times, so changing them if they look them up sounds wholly inappropriate..."
It is not. On one hand, all you know is that passwords have been sneaked. It might be true that only CEO/CTO/whatever have seen them... or they forgot the paper to be seen by somebody else, or while they indeed opened the envelope to get to the password they passed it to a lower technician to effectively do the needed job... On the other hand, once you change the password and write it down on the safe again, CEO/CTO/whatever still retain their privilege to go to the envelope and rip it off for the next time the need arises so they lose no control at all.
"If the predecessor does write the passwords down, he deserves to be fired."
On the other hand, if the predecessor does not write the passwords down, he deserves to be fired.
"Suddenly, I can compare the cost"
And that's something the leader of any market niche never wants. Amazon seems to be the leader of this market niche, so the only reason they would do over the open path is if they really feel that the lessen parties can menace their position by grouping together around the same standard against them.
"What makes something a country?"
Quite an interesting question, but I don't think it's relevant here. While I see and understand your point the fact remains that USA government is entitled to do the kind of things one expect from a national government like defense or money control; EU not only has not such a power but there are perfectly recognizable subsets within EU that do it by themselves. It might happen that in the future that kind of powers will be transferred from current countries to EU and that this conversation in two centuries will have no sense and EU will indeed be a country by then (it is not that current European countries had not their own national construction processes -usually violent) but EU is not certainly a country by now and given the very different History paths between Europe (the land) and USA I wouldn't hold my breath on that to happen.
Still you avoided the central points of this discussion: I won't take off merit of USA Constitution fathers, it's only that under this discussion I don't give a damn about them. History is full of phylosophers telling us how the world should be and so many of them make sense; the real point is what has been effectively appointed. Plato's republic holds the merit of a desirable society as Bakunin's, Fourier, Rousseau or your Constitution fathers; it's only that real societies doesn't seem to reach such desirable goals. And then, my point was that effective societies achieve better stability when based upon the Hobbesian principle that man is wolf for man than under the Volterian one that we are naturally good and it's only a matter of allowing all that goodness to arise.
"You really going to say that the poor lower class were better off in the dark ages?"
No, but they were not so much better either, and the real differences were much more based on scientific advancement that on real social embetterment. And given then, what's your point again? Are you really going to say that poor lower classes were better off in the France of 1750 than in Castro's Cuba either?
"Maybe it never really worked, but I think it was the system of government intended, drafted, and ratified by the founders of the United States Constitution, at VERY least Thomas Jefferson."
Yes. And USSR was to be a Socialist Union of Republics where people would be power enacted and would have covered their necesities as needed while everybody was to support their countrie's development as their own conditions allowed. So what?
On the other hand, the envisioned Republic from USA founders was that: a Republic. That means to all practical effects a representative democracy with separation of powers. So in fact, that's a form of elected tiranny, quite far away from anarchist ideals with power quite far from everybody's hands. And it is that way by design.
"As far as "no system sucks less", there really are no example of direct democracy that have ever worked"
Ancient Greece, unless under war threat.
"because under direct democracy, who makes things happen?"
People.
"It is indistinguishable from pure anarchy."
Almost. On pure anarchy even ballots are uneeded since everybody is enlighted enough to know what's needed and responsible enough to do it. But well, given the tremendous "if", if that really worked, what's the problem? Ideallistically anarchy is the best social organization one can dream of. There's indeed only three pure kinds of social organization I can think of. In order of desirability: anarchy->tiranny->democracy; all the real forms are a mix and match of those three. Prior to jump saying how can tiranny be better than democracy, I'm talking about idealistic tiranny more or less as expressed on Plato's Republic where the tyrant is only there to assure that anarchy ideals are acomplished. There're no ugly tyrants in topos noethos-land.
"The Republic is really the form of National Government that has stood the test of time, of which the United States is NOT."
So, again, can you provide real examples or is it just wishful thinking?
"Of course, the EU and US are as different as any country is from another."
Much more than that. USA is a country; EU is not.
"People democratically elect national / state representatives that in turn elect representatives to the federal government to represent their interests as members of the federation."
But then, how realistic is to expect real people's interest to be on government's focus instead of those of the federal government officials or state level ones that directly elect them? Each indirection step takes away power from the people and puts it on the hands of the representatives.
"But people don't have any direct influence on policy any more than a mob of pesant versus a King."
Please remember it is this way by design. That's the way USA constitution fathers wanted it to be.
"Our "democracy" gives us the right to elect different representatives and run for public office."
Which was the temporal solution from Ancient Greek days for war times.
"An example of great human progress where democratic will was not imposed (or was unable to stop it) was the Enlightenment Age"
I think you have too a romantic vision of such times. Were you blessed with the advantage of being born upper class, everything was OK but for everybody else...
"The free market isn't the way things should work, it is the way things DO work, and government isn't much of any special exception. Of course, like any salesman, they love to try to tell you otherwise."
That's quite to the point.
"Only if you were a freeman, but at the bottom of most feudal societies were serfs. While serfs (in theory) had some rights, unlike actual slaves, they couldn't own land and were had to get their lords permission to do many things"
Which part of "part of your working power" and "minor properties to stay with you" didn't you understand? Even serfs, while not owning land (I already said "Feudalism was strongly based on land") were technically owners of their labour; that's why landlords got taxes (I don't know the exact English world): they didn't *give* a part to the serfs as it would be expected if they owned all the labor, but they did *take* their share as owners and protectors of the land. Working for a corp is not that you work for the company 8 to 12 and then 12 to 17 for yourself or that you work for yourself but then your manager comes monthly and gets 40% of your labour: all your labour is owned by your company. And then, the serf didn't own the land but he owned his plow and his hoe; the corporate worker doesn't own the company but he doesn't own the PC, nor the desk or the chair either (while some trades still traditionally let the worker use his own tools: jewelers, cookers and the like).
"On that note he was never in bed with Microsoft either, much to the chagrin of many Slashdot readers..."
IBM, on the other hand...
"Corporations are more like Feudalism than Communism."
It's more like them both (well, not Comunism but Socialist Dictatorship) are quite the same. No wonder Russian people adapted so easily to the change, as no wonder you could find so many of the old Boyard families getting power on the Soviet apparatus.
But even considering the similitudes corporations are still more Communist than Feudal: they are more about money than about power within (although obviously both things are quite entrenched); Feudalism made use of the environment while Communist dictatorships planned the production as do corps. Feudalism allowed for part of your working power and minor properties to stay with you; while on the corporation all your working power and all your assets belong to the corp; Feudalism was strongly based on land and manpower ownership while communism goes after control of capital and ownership of production, etc.
"Capital is not property; property is not capital. Capitalism is about giving almighty power to capital disregarding everything else.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/capitalism
capitalism
-noun
an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, esp. as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth."
So exactly my point. Property is not capital and capital is not property. And then, your dictionary definition is terribly lacky: Capitalism is not only an economic system but a social system too and it's from this fact that my definition derives.
"Heh! To think that millions of people where actually stupid enough to believe that a dictatorship would dismantle itself through the goodwill of the dictator. If it wasn't so horribly, murderously tragic, that would be funny. "
So what? Does that make false that Marx stated what I pointed out?
"You getting informative mod for that post is about on a par with a Branch Davidian getting informative for posting that David Koresh is the incarnation of god."
I see you lack understandment so I'll follow your comparation: I'm as informative as someone that states that for Christians Jesus Christ is the incarnation of god... which is quite diferent than saying that Jesus Christ *is* the incarnation of god.