Our constitution was created as a series of compromises without which there would never have been a United States. Chief among these was the Connecticut Compromise – one that blended the Virginia Plan (a legislature determined by population) with a Senate where representation would be equal for each state (2 senators per state). The smaller states – Connecticut and Rhode Island – would not have joined the United States without it, because they felt that the Virginia Plan would mean that the larger states (New York and Virginia) would have all the control. This principle is also embodied in the Electoral College – a popular vote for President and Vice President was proposed and discussed, but the Electoral College was adopted to remove a difficulty with the South (that of slavery) and a difficulty of the smaller states (the fear that the larger states would effectively always elect the President). In James Madison’s Federalist Papers (No 39) he explained that the Constitution was designed to be a mixture of State-based and population-based government. Yes, the U.S. system is unique, but so was the problem of States rights – without a solution to that problem there would never have been a United States in the first place.
So the question is, should the Presidential election always be decided by small pockets of highly populated places (i.e. the cities), and thus ignore the sentiment of the rural areas of the country? Or does the electoral college create that balance that our founding fathers actually intended it to have, created a situation where there is greater chance for everyone’s voice to be heard? It’s always easy to say it’s wrong when it’s your desire that is ignored, but it’s only happened 5 times out of 56 so what do we really gain by removing this aspect of the original compromise?
All food that is produced by humans through agriculture and farming has been genetically modified in some way, even though much of it happened in ancient times. Corn would cease to exist without humans. Almonds would all be poisonous. Cattle would not be docile. Wheat would scatter it's seeds before we could collect them. Man has been genetically modifying its food for thousands of years - even if we didn't always understand that's what we were doing. We actually understand the consequences of what we are doing far better than we ever did - because we are doing it consciously with science. This is what he discovered.
It surprises me that no one has pointed out that in the U.S. at least, there is no explicit right to privacy. You only have to pick up a copy of the Constitution - it's not a very long document (even with the amendments) - and no where does it mention any right to privacy. What legal scholars say about this is that the right to privacy is *implied* in the Constitution by the nature of the rights enumerated there - for example, the right to be free from most search and seizure implies there is a right to privacy in the home. But there is no explicit right to privacy. The *implied* right was the basis for the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion in the U.S. (simplified, a woman's implied right to privacy gives her the right to terminate a pregnancy).
This is not to say that there isn't an assault on privacy, but understanding the right is the first step to combating those trying to take it away.
All too often IT organizations spend all their effort telling the business managers what they cannot do rather than what they can - so getting a new project off the ground with in house resources becomes increasingly frustration. "We do not have enough resources to support that...", "Your project doesn't confirm to our standards...", "We'll 'agree' to support it as long as you make these changes...". Contrast this with a cloud provider that actually wants your business. True they may not be truthful about what they provide and you very well may be better off in house, but a new project in house can be very hard to start. IT managers who are flexible and 'influence' rather than 'dictate' are worth their weight...
When you get an opportunity to publicize it, try telling us what it does! Seems like that would be the best first step.
FOSS is Darwin - you have to be confident that you are solving a problem, or at least solving it better than its been solved before. If you have, you'll be able tto defend against the inevitable cynicism.
Seriously, the whole point of DNS was to provide a name that humans can remember. Ask to me remember "bob" or "elephant" or "pilsner" and I can tell you exactly where that machine is and what it does. I know you're asking about workstations, but here's a printer and its server that I actually use at work (XX denotes the company initials so that I dont get in trouble with the Man) 5C106HPCLJ4650 on XXsny195prt2. I think it would be easier to remember a dotted quad...put the info in a spreadsheet like others have suggested and give the workstations names people can remember and use. Maybe even have a little fun with.
This is misguided. H1Bs arent the problem, and it is specious to suggest that they are. The quota for h1bs at its peak was less that 200,000 per year. This is a tiny drop in the bucket given the size of the IT industry in the US, and so small as to be insignificant with respect to your salary.
In fact, had we *increased* the number of h1b's, we may have limitted the number of jobs being shipped offshore to places like India. In 2000 there was a shortage of good programmers - and a limit on h1bs, so the marketplace found a way. Although there are some exceptions, the vast majority of h1bs here stay here and become permanent residents and often American citizens, either way paying our taxes. A job that moves "offshore" has no such effect.
What causes the decline in enrollment is the hype associated with both of these effects - in large part they are small in comparison to the size of the IT marketplace. And if you are a programmer, be rest assured, good programmers are hard to find no matter what country you look in.
I feel for RMS sometimes, he's been trying to get this message out for 25 years. I think it's important to understand, even if you dont agree with him, that the freedom to make a program do what you want is more important than how well it does it. It happens that open source and free software has created quality because of the nature of the process, but I would still rather use open source even if it's more cumbersome to do so precisely because it's there for me to examine, understand, learn, or modify as I see fit. Non programmers too benefit from this freedom, since they can request features. Anyone out there ever successfully got Microsoft to include a feature they needed?
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Our constitution was created as a series of compromises without which there would never have been a United States. Chief among these was the Connecticut Compromise – one that blended the Virginia Plan (a legislature determined by population) with a Senate where representation would be equal for each state (2 senators per state). The smaller states – Connecticut and Rhode Island – would not have joined the United States without it, because they felt that the Virginia Plan would mean that the larger states (New York and Virginia) would have all the control. This principle is also embodied in the Electoral College – a popular vote for President and Vice President was proposed and discussed, but the Electoral College was adopted to remove a difficulty with the South (that of slavery) and a difficulty of the smaller states (the fear that the larger states would effectively always elect the President). In James Madison’s Federalist Papers (No 39) he explained that the Constitution was designed to be a mixture of State-based and population-based government. Yes, the U.S. system is unique, but so was the problem of States rights – without a solution to that problem there would never have been a United States in the first place. So the question is, should the Presidential election always be decided by small pockets of highly populated places (i.e. the cities), and thus ignore the sentiment of the rural areas of the country? Or does the electoral college create that balance that our founding fathers actually intended it to have, created a situation where there is greater chance for everyone’s voice to be heard? It’s always easy to say it’s wrong when it’s your desire that is ignored, but it’s only happened 5 times out of 56 so what do we really gain by removing this aspect of the original compromise?
All food that is produced by humans through agriculture and farming has been genetically modified in some way, even though much of it happened in ancient times. Corn would cease to exist without humans. Almonds would all be poisonous. Cattle would not be docile. Wheat would scatter it's seeds before we could collect them. Man has been genetically modifying its food for thousands of years - even if we didn't always understand that's what we were doing. We actually understand the consequences of what we are doing far better than we ever did - because we are doing it consciously with science. This is what he discovered.
It surprises me that no one has pointed out that in the U.S. at least, there is no explicit right to privacy. You only have to pick up a copy of the Constitution - it's not a very long document (even with the amendments) - and no where does it mention any right to privacy. What legal scholars say about this is that the right to privacy is *implied* in the Constitution by the nature of the rights enumerated there - for example, the right to be free from most search and seizure implies there is a right to privacy in the home. But there is no explicit right to privacy. The *implied* right was the basis for the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion in the U.S. (simplified, a woman's implied right to privacy gives her the right to terminate a pregnancy). This is not to say that there isn't an assault on privacy, but understanding the right is the first step to combating those trying to take it away.
All too often IT organizations spend all their effort telling the business managers what they cannot do rather than what they can - so getting a new project off the ground with in house resources becomes increasingly frustration. "We do not have enough resources to support that...", "Your project doesn't confirm to our standards...", "We'll 'agree' to support it as long as you make these changes...". Contrast this with a cloud provider that actually wants your business. True they may not be truthful about what they provide and you very well may be better off in house, but a new project in house can be very hard to start. IT managers who are flexible and 'influence' rather than 'dictate' are worth their weight...
When you get an opportunity to publicize it, try telling us what it does! Seems like that would be the best first step. FOSS is Darwin - you have to be confident that you are solving a problem, or at least solving it better than its been solved before. If you have, you'll be able tto defend against the inevitable cynicism.
Seriously, the whole point of DNS was to provide a name that humans can remember. Ask to me remember "bob" or "elephant" or "pilsner" and I can tell you exactly where that machine is and what it does. I know you're asking about workstations, but here's a printer and its server that I actually use at work (XX denotes the company initials so that I dont get in trouble with the Man) 5C106HPCLJ4650 on XXsny195prt2. I think it would be easier to remember a dotted quad...put the info in a spreadsheet like others have suggested and give the workstations names people can remember and use. Maybe even have a little fun with.
This is misguided. H1Bs arent the problem, and it is specious to suggest that they are. The quota for h1bs at its peak was less that 200,000 per year. This is a tiny drop in the bucket given the size of the IT industry in the US, and so small as to be insignificant with respect to your salary.
In fact, had we *increased* the number of h1b's, we may have limitted the number of jobs being shipped offshore to places like India. In 2000 there was a shortage of good programmers - and a limit on h1bs, so the marketplace found a way. Although there are some exceptions, the vast majority of h1bs here stay here and become permanent residents and often American citizens, either way paying our taxes. A job that moves "offshore" has no such effect.
What causes the decline in enrollment is the hype associated with both of these effects - in large part they are small in comparison to the size of the IT marketplace. And if you are a programmer, be rest assured, good programmers are hard to find no matter what country you look in.
I feel for RMS sometimes, he's been trying to get this message out for 25 years. I think it's important to understand, even if you dont agree with him, that the freedom to make a program do what you want is more important than how well it does it. It happens that open source and free software has created quality because of the nature of the process, but I would still rather use open source even if it's more cumbersome to do so precisely because it's there for me to examine, understand, learn, or modify as I see fit. Non programmers too benefit from this freedom, since they can request features. Anyone out there ever successfully got Microsoft to include a feature they needed?