If the state harms you, you can sue the state just as you would a private entity.
That happens not to be the case. In fact quite the reverse is true. For example, in general an individual cannot sue the federal government. And if you go back and re-read my original post, you might catch the point that the state is often specifically exempt from laws under which you could sue a private entity.
By the way, all of these comments are obviously US-centric, IANAL, Your Actual Mileage May Vary, blah blah, etc.
When will people learn that the STATE is NOT the worse thing out there? Private entities are far more dangerous to people
Bzzzt! Wrong answer! Thank you for playing!
When private entities do you harm, you may appeal to a higher power, namely the state, in the form of judicial, legislative or regulatory actions. If the state has harmed you, there is no higher power to appeal to, at least in the secular sense:-). And the state is not nearly as concerned with things like financial hardship that can be devastating to companies and individuals. Further, the state is specifically exempt from many laws under which one could sue a private entity. And finally the big clincher, the state has lots of guns and many more completely legal reasons to shoot you than you have rights to shoot back. It is still illegal for corporations to shoot you. At least, so far it is, anyway.
In this particular case, the kids can just go to school elsewhere or even home school. If this is a very expensive private school, the parents may have enough money for private tutors. Kids in public funded schools often do not have so many options. So, no this is not worse than the state (public schools) doing the same thing. It still sucks, though.
In order for kids to learn to survive on their own, they must get hurt a little.
So should I whack my four-year-old daughter in the head every other day, or drop her off at the corner crack house once a month so that she will be tough enough to "survive"? The concerns of the framers of these laws is for abnormally serious or injurious hazards, new risks that were previously not present in normal USian children's lives. And don't give me the old argument that "I could get all the porn I wanted when I was three years old." Yeah, maybe so, but not at the public library you didn't. I do not agree with the COPA "solution", but the argument that we should just drop kids into unfiltered sewage to make them "stronger" is not insightful, it's unconsidered and ill-advised.
The true issue is where and how to draw the line for restricted access for minors to certain materials. That there should be no line is not a winning argument just because too many people feel otherwise. The COPA draws the line incorrectly and in the wrong place. The actual line should contain provision for parental involvement and responsibility, local community mores, freedom of speech and a whole host of other issues. In other words, a real workable solution is going to be complicated and long in coming, involving both legislation and social custom.
...they are clearly drawn online by e-mail, other messaging systems, and especially, entertainment and related communities.
...they aren't as interested in the underlying technology, but see the Net much as they see TV
...poorer Net users are more likely to go on the Net for amusement or entertainment.
...Vast potential new markets are coming online
Note that these views cast the new numbers as consumers to be entertained and marketed to, rather than as participants in information production. And general Net trends these days seem to support this characterization.
The one thing that I will miss about the "digerati" (as Jon calls them) is that they really believed in the Net as a medium to facilitate our communications among ourselves as a group of peers, as members of communities. It appears that the rush of the masses online is drowning out that vision with the somewhat competing vision of the Net as a delivery vehicle for spoon-fed, one-direction-only, cross-tied Valuetainment (tm) marketing. The displacement of the so-called techno-elite in Net demographics has not come without its own price. But so long as the technical core can continue as niche communities on the Net, I guess we have gained much over the truly one-way media of old.
I completely agree. It was the context and wording of the original post which caused me to suspect that there might be other poor design choices that were the culprit in the poster's perception of poor Java performance.
Hell, with you reasoning, we should suppress any kind of visualisation of log files, as those are basically list of thousands of items.
Begging your pardon, but I did not say or suggest that we suppress any kind of vusualisation of log files. I did not mention log files at all. Please don't distort what I said. Since you brought it up, I will, however, suggest that visualizing a log file in a drop-down list is perhaps a less than optimal design choice.
...application that _requires_ the user to dig into list with hundred of elements is severly ill-desgined, but one that _prevent_ a power user to look at its data is plain broken.
Again, I did not suggest that one prevent users from looking at data. Actually, I was thinking of drop-down lists as an optimized form of data entry, not visualization, so maybe we are not so much disagreeing as we are misunderstanding each other.
I can use list of 100K items if the list is sorted meaningfully.
This misses the point of the sheer awkwardness of manipulating a drop-down list that large. The list viewport is so small in relation to the total list size that movement in the list is very difficult. The scroll thumb moves tens or hundreds of items with the tiniest of mouse inputs, frustrating even the most dextrous user with overcompensated mouse movements. And often the arrows are either too slow for the size of the list or too fast to read as you scroll. Please understand that I am not suggesting that this is something one should never do. I am just pointing out the tradeoffs of the awkwardness ot manipulating the user interface.
Even simple dropdown lists will not scale beyond several hundred items...
A drop-down list with (several) hundred items is sheer lunacy. Lists, drop-down, scrolling or whatever, are inappropriate GUI elements for selecting from hundreds of items. Indeed if you find the user having to select from an unfiltered set of that many items, then you probably need to reexamine the design of that portion of the application. Just going on this one clue, it appears that your more fundamental problem might be immature abilities in your designers.
"right-wing bible-thumping zealots", "reasonable people, even those who believe in some sort of creation story", "bible-belt zealots", "most schools, at least those outside of Dixie", "zealots... be they green or white-sheeted", "the thumpers introduce this counter-intuitive bullshit", "steaming load of non-scientific lies", "irrational, counter-intuitive, rabid drivelling by the religious right"
Dude(tte), you may have some good points in there somewhere, but I can't hear them through the hate. Calm down and stop attacking people. I was pleasantly surprised by the relatively genial discussion here about the topic until I read this gem.
Hoo hoo! Ha ha! Hee hee! That's a good one! That statement is incorrect in so many ways that it boggles the mind. How about:
Scientists are by definition human (on Earth anyway) and so are biased, by definition. The perfect human has not yet been invented.:-)
In practice, it is actually much worse than that, given that modern science can be very political in the quest for funding dollars and research grants.
The people who are most knowledgeable about a given scientific subject have much at stake (professional reputation, the aforementioned research dollars) in propounding or repudiating a particular view on that subject. It's possible that the most knowledgable person may be the least objective, especially in a confrontational legal setting where their own work may be called into question.
Dude, you missed the point entirely. The other side of this coin is that these "censors" were reacting to immense pressure to never offend anybody, anywhere, ever, no matter what. Otherwise they might get sued into oblivion by the offended party and come out the other side of a lawsuit ostracized as racists. It is more than a little ironic that two of the drivers of censorship in this case are institutional authoritarian conformism and (the chilling results of) politically correct hyper-activism.
Living by "rules" in the Bible doesn't require that you accept that there's a God as defined in said book; it just requires that you do unto others as you would have them do unto you...
Actually that is completely incorrect in and of itself. The "do unto others..." Golden Rule is only the second half of a quote of Jesus in the New Testament. You omitted the first half of the rule which tells you to love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and then it says to love your neighbor (do unto others) as yourself. He then goes on to explain that on this whole basic rule hinges every other rule/law, including ultimately the lust-in-the-heart topic.
You are not "Living by the "rules" in the Bible" if you take the second half of this most basic rule without the first half. Without the whole rule the rest of the Bible (including the on-topic part about lust in the heart) is just sophistry and legalism. Hence the original poster's snide comment: they don't buy the "God part" and so consider the rest to be nonsense.
Given that the average Slashdot reader is about 16-25 and firmly convinced that they are God's Gift to Computing (tm), the vast majority of replies to this topic will be along the lines of, "Yeah, man. Like I'm all 1337 and stuff and they still don't listen to me! Bunch of stinkin' geezers. Life sucks!"
I always give age at least a tiny benefit of the doubt, because I am just beginning to be old enough (mid 30's) to realize how stupid I was in my teens and 20's. Now, that benefit may fall rapidly once the individual in question speaks, but that is another issue. And anyone who has any decent amount of life experience knows that some things can only be learned over very long periods of time. Patience, judgement, wisdom, character are all functions of time. Admittedly, the time component varies among individuals, but it is still there.
Oh and everything is relative. Given roughly equivalent technical skills, I will always listen to the more experienced (usually older) person when asking for things like judgement calls, especially in long-view matters like maintainability or supportability. Note all the assumptions in the previous sentence and you get what I mean...
Well, I first read Ender's game as the original short story, when I was in high school or college, I forget which. It was perfect as a short story, very powerful and concise. It was especially powerful in its abrupt ending, very different from the angst and moralization in the novel that follows Ender's last ultimate victory against the Buggers. The story left the moral indecision and obvious rationalizations as an exercise for the reader.
Given its high quality as a short story, I was aghast the first time I saw that it was made into a full length novel. Usually, novelization of a good short story is as big a disaster as the transfer of a good novel to film. But I read it anyway, and was pleasanly surprised to find that the main flavor of the original short story was left predominantly intact. The short story was there with a lot of background and detail filled in, plus what was really another couple of stories about Ender's siblings and the Buggers.
Looking back now, I'm uncertain whether I would have liked the novel as much without first having loved the original short story. One thing is certain, though. All the rest of the Ender series, including Speaker for the Dead, is just plain drivel compared to the original story.
Exactly. And French and German governments should leave web sites outside of their own countries alone and not force them to abide by their own national (local) laws.
America has yahoo.com and ebay.com and those are the ones that America should have influence over, not France or Germany. This is the sort of thing that gets European countries accused of cultural imperialism.
There is a lot of good detail, background and opinion on this whole debacle in the discussion over on kuro5hin.org about this issue. I'm still not sure who started it all though.
There is nothing special about anti-white discrimination that justifies a special term.
No, that's not entirely correct. At least in the USA, there exists a strong sentiment that when a caucasian male is treated differently because of race or gender, he is just getting what's coming to him and any mistreatment he receives is justly deserved, or counts as "reparations for past injustice" or whatever. It's quite a different beast when the discrimination is widely viewed as socially justified and moral.
So, I would argue that reverse discrimination does warrant a special term if only to call attention to the fact that in many circles it is considered morally correct policy and behavior.
... is the problem. When I hear a criticism of my favorite tool/platform/OS/political party/religion/thing, I immediately become defensive. Why? Because I chose the thing, so any criticism of the thing becomes a criticism of my own intelligence, judgement, values or beliefs. And the more I invest in the thing, the more likely I am to identify and take offense with criticisms directed toward it.
To paraphrase and extend the article's last point, this identification is not necessarily a bad thing. The problem is that many (most?) people don't handle criticism very well, no matter how constructive. So we get defensive reactions which beget counter-offensive criticism and we devolve into useless shouting matches.
Read the book, and pay attention in the early chapters that provide history and context.
The main personal handgun or long gun of the day is a sort of laser. These lasers interact explosively (on the order of a small fusion bomb) with personal force shields that are very common. Hence the shields preclude the use of the lasers except as a form of suicide bombing.
The shields completely stop fast moving projectiles like bullets and shrapnel but allow air and slow moving solid objects to penetrate. Hence the art of knife fighting is very important as hand-to-hand combat with a sharp, pointy object is about the only way to get past the shields without significant collateral damage. One main story point about Paul is that he is trained in this knife fighting technique by the best fighters of the time, and he ends up being very, very good at it. He teaches these skills to the Fremen, making them more deadly warriors than anyone else within the strictures mentioned above.
Finally, the whole story was set in a historical context which is hyper-influenced by the "Butlerian Jihad". This was a conflict which apparently affected the whole interstellar civilization. The basic premise of the Butlerian Jihad was to overthrow and exterminate mechanization of human talents and emphasize, glorify and enhance human abilities in the humans themselves. The Prime Directive of the Butlerian Jihad was something like, Make no machine which can usurp the authority or ability of humans. Associated with the hatred of machines was a passion for extending human abilities. Hence you get the human computer "mentats" (Thufir Hawat)), the political genius of the Bene Gesserit (Reverend Gaius Helene Mohiam), and the incredible fighters (Duncan Idaho and Gurney Halek). There was strong opposition to even exploring non-human methods of accomplishing just about anything, including fighting. The overwhelming emphasis on combat was for personal, hand-to-hand fighting of humans not seperated from each other by the hated machines. Major military forces generally had two classes of weapons: mass destruction with nuclear weapons and large, highly trained fighting forces. That was it, no subs or tanks or aircraft carriers. War was conducted either with great big bombs or hand-to-hand with almost no in-between.
These plot points are absolutely necessary to support the importance of Paul's training and the fighting abilities of the Fremen in relation to the similarly trained and constrained Sardaukar. Indeed, the main reason that the Emperor helped bring down Paul's father, Duke Leto, was that the Duke had come close to raising and training his own army that was as good as the Sardaukar. Paul succeeded in the Fremen where his father's efforts with his own army were cut short. All of that knife fighting was very, very important to the story. Don't just dismiss it as silly within our own military context of today.
CmdrTaco has more documented proof of his lettuce-head-ness with his rotten grammar and poor spelling than Bush will be able to amass in a lifetime. Indeed, if George W. Bush and old Dan Quayle were melded into the one supreme dunce that they are painted to be, they would still not be able to spin more horrid prose more quickly than CmdrTaco and his ilk.
Your last paragraph tuched a raw nerve in me. I am so tired of hearing this stuff that I have to shout it down every time I hear it. So, to debunk each assertion about Gore, one by one:
well educated: false. If you assert otherwise, show us the real proof in the form of some degree or certification.
intelligent: I'll give you half a point here. He is at least bright enough to fool half of the voters in the US.
proven: now this adjective is truly laughable. He's been an average politician. That's it.
part of the most successful administration for decades: a big myth that is total bologna. The Clinton/Gore administration won in both elections with less percentage of the vote than Bush got in this one. The Clinton/Gore administration has been marked more by what it has failed to do than by what it has accomplished. For a glaring example, see the socialized medicine debacle of the first Clinton term. The misattributed success of the Clinton/Gore years is the astounding growth of the US economy, none of which had anything to do with Clinton/Gore or liberal policies. Clinton/Gore just happened to be there at the right time. For an example of a successful, popular administration with a real mandate, see the Reagan years which truly set the stage for the current robust economy that Clinton/Gore have taken credit for.
You seem to be implying that Liberals have lots more sex and generate more progeny. Although this suggestion is a nasty troll, from another angle I have been thinking about the maps shown on the news that are a sea of red (for Bush) with a few small splashes of blue (for Gore) and yet the blue equal or outweigh the red.
Just for discussion's sake, I would think that the main driver of population levels in various locations is not birthrate but rather (surprise) location. People like to be near certain types of places, things or other people, so they naturally tend to gravitate to "likeable" places, regardless of where they were birthed.
Hence the high population concentrations on the US coasts and around cultural or economic centers. And higher density urban populations tend to be more immediately benefited by Democrat populist policies, to the detriment of other more conservative population segments like the small-town (non-union) worker or the independent business owner. But since they are fewer and more spread out, they don't count as much:-)
Gripe about USA being self centered and then offer up a European-only view? How about Central and South America? Or the Middle East? Or the Pacific Rim? Or China or Africa? You should definitely start to look out of your (European) borders. The world does not end there.
I don't think the USA has a monopoly on self-centerism. Maybe a dominant market share, but not a monopoly:-)
Anyway, getting back to the topic, it does not appear that the election's effect on foreign relations is uppermost in the average American voter's mind. The main issues seem to be more internal fiscal and social problems than anything else. In a different time (e.g. the Cold War), other more external issues might be more relevant. But not now.
The New Science of Character Assassination says, "The past ten days will go down as a turning point in American history.
This is what it's like when the far right is taking over your country: the people support Al Gore's policies, but the polls are shifting toward
George W. Bush because the media is filled with false attacks on Al
Gore's character."
Um, ignoring for the moment the issues of our current candidates' character or lack thereof, I'm pretty sure the Hated Far Right (tm) did not invent character assassination. Here's an example from the Bible which documents the practice at least 2500 years ago:
(1 Kings 21)
Jezebel his wife said, "Is this how you act as king over Israel? Get up and eat! Cheer up. I'll get you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite."
So she wrote letters in Ahab's name, placed his seal on them, and sent them to the elders and nobles who lived in Naboth's city with him.
In those letters she wrote: "Proclaim a day of fasting and seat Naboth in a prominent place among the people.
But seat two scoundrels opposite him and have them testify that he has cursed both God and the king. Then take him out and stone him to death."
So the elders and nobles who lived in Naboth's city did as Jezebel directed in the letters she had written to them.
They proclaimed a fast and seated Naboth in a prominent place among the people.
Then two scoundrels came and sat opposite him and brought charges against Naboth before the people, saying, "Naboth has cursed both God and the king." So they took him outside the city and stoned him to death.
Then they sent word to Jezebel: "Naboth has been stoned and is dead."
As soon as Jezebel heard that Naboth had been stoned to death, she said to Ahab, "Get up and take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite that he refused to sell you. He is no longer alive, but dead."
When Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, he got up and went down to take possession of Naboth's vineyard.
Slashdot Mirror
* Is there any kind of text-mode visual editor on unix ?
Must resist... must resist... Ahh, to heck with it, the obvious answer is
vi, of course. :-)
FLAME ON! Ducks, runs...
If the state harms you, you can sue the state just as you would a private entity.
That happens not to be the case. In fact quite the reverse is true. For example, in general an individual cannot sue the federal government. And if you go back and re-read my original post, you might catch the point that the state is often specifically exempt from laws under which you could sue a private entity.
By the way, all of these comments are obviously US-centric, IANAL, Your Actual Mileage May Vary, blah blah, etc.
When will people learn that the STATE is NOT the worse thing out there? Private entities are far more dangerous to people
Bzzzt! Wrong answer! Thank you for playing!
When private entities do you harm, you may appeal to a higher power, namely the state, in the form of judicial, legislative or regulatory actions. If the state has harmed you, there is no higher power to appeal to, at least in the secular sense :-). And the state is not nearly as concerned with things like financial hardship that can be devastating to companies and individuals. Further, the state is specifically exempt from many laws under which one could sue a private entity. And finally the big clincher, the state has lots of guns and many more completely legal reasons to shoot you than you have rights to shoot back. It is still illegal for corporations to shoot you. At least, so far it is, anyway.
In this particular case, the kids can just go to school elsewhere or even home school. If this is a very expensive private school, the parents may have enough money for private tutors. Kids in public funded schools often do not have so many options. So, no this is not worse than the state (public schools) doing the same thing. It still sucks, though.
In order for kids to learn to survive on their own, they must get hurt a little.
So should I whack my four-year-old daughter in the head every other day, or drop her off at the corner crack house once a month so that she will be tough enough to "survive"? The concerns of the framers of these laws is for abnormally serious or injurious hazards, new risks that were previously not present in normal USian children's lives. And don't give me the old argument that "I could get all the porn I wanted when I was three years old." Yeah, maybe so, but not at the public library you didn't. I do not agree with the COPA "solution", but the argument that we should just drop kids into unfiltered sewage to make them "stronger" is not insightful, it's unconsidered and ill-advised.
The true issue is where and how to draw the line for restricted access for minors to certain materials. That there should be no line is not a winning argument just because too many people feel otherwise. The COPA draws the line incorrectly and in the wrong place. The actual line should contain provision for parental involvement and responsibility, local community mores, freedom of speech and a whole host of other issues. In other words, a real workable solution is going to be complicated and long in coming, involving both legislation and social custom.
Note that these views cast the new numbers as consumers to be entertained and marketed to, rather than as participants in information production. And general Net trends these days seem to support this characterization.
The one thing that I will miss about the "digerati" (as Jon calls them) is that they really believed in the Net as a medium to facilitate our communications among ourselves as a group of peers, as members of communities. It appears that the rush of the masses online is drowning out that vision with the somewhat competing vision of the Net as a delivery vehicle for spoon-fed, one-direction-only, cross-tied Valuetainment (tm) marketing. The displacement of the so-called techno-elite in Net demographics has not come without its own price. But so long as the technical core can continue as niche communities on the Net, I guess we have gained much over the truly one-way media of old.
This is not an excuse not to handle it properly
I completely agree. It was the context and wording of the original post which caused me to suspect that there might be other poor design choices that were the culprit in the poster's perception of poor Java performance.
Hell, with you reasoning, we should suppress any kind of visualisation of log files, as those are basically list of thousands of items.
Begging your pardon, but I did not say or suggest that we suppress any kind of vusualisation of log files. I did not mention log files at all. Please don't distort what I said. Since you brought it up, I will, however, suggest that visualizing a log file in a drop-down list is perhaps a less than optimal design choice.
Again, I did not suggest that one prevent users from looking at data. Actually, I was thinking of drop-down lists as an optimized form of data entry, not visualization, so maybe we are not so much disagreeing as we are misunderstanding each other.
I can use list of 100K items if the list is sorted meaningfully.
This misses the point of the sheer awkwardness of manipulating a drop-down list that large. The list viewport is so small in relation to the total list size that movement in the list is very difficult. The scroll thumb moves tens or hundreds of items with the tiniest of mouse inputs, frustrating even the most dextrous user with overcompensated mouse movements. And often the arrows are either too slow for the size of the list or too fast to read as you scroll. Please understand that I am not suggesting that this is something one should never do. I am just pointing out the tradeoffs of the awkwardness ot manipulating the user interface.
Even simple dropdown lists will not scale beyond several hundred items...
A drop-down list with (several) hundred items is sheer lunacy. Lists, drop-down, scrolling or whatever, are inappropriate GUI elements for selecting from hundreds of items. Indeed if you find the user having to select from an unfiltered set of that many items, then you probably need to reexamine the design of that portion of the application. Just going on this one clue, it appears that your more fundamental problem might be immature abilities in your designers.
"right-wing bible-thumping zealots", "reasonable people, even those who believe in some sort of creation story", "bible-belt zealots", "most schools, at least those outside of Dixie", "zealots ... be they green or white-sheeted", "the thumpers introduce this counter-intuitive bullshit", "steaming load of non-scientific lies", "irrational, counter-intuitive, rabid drivelling by the religious right"
Dude(tte), you may have some good points in there somewhere, but I can't hear them through the hate. Calm down and stop attacking people. I was pleasantly surprised by the relatively genial discussion here about the topic until I read this gem.
True scientists aren't biased...
Hoo hoo! Ha ha! Hee hee! That's a good one! That statement is incorrect in so many ways that it boggles the mind. How about:
Scientists are by definition human (on Earth anyway) and so are biased, by definition. The perfect human has not yet been invented. :-)
In practice, it is actually much worse than that, given that modern science can be very political in the quest for funding dollars and research grants.
The people who are most knowledgeable about a given scientific subject have much at stake (professional reputation, the aforementioned research dollars) in propounding or repudiating a particular view on that subject. It's possible that the most knowledgable person may be the least objective, especially in a confrontational legal setting where their own work may be called into question.
I could go on, but I think I've made the point...
Dude, you missed the point entirely. The other side of this coin is that these "censors" were reacting to immense pressure to never offend anybody, anywhere, ever, no matter what. Otherwise they might get sued into oblivion by the offended party and come out the other side of a lawsuit ostracized as racists. It is more than a little ironic that two of the drivers of censorship in this case are institutional authoritarian conformism and (the chilling results of) politically correct hyper-activism.
Point of order, please...
Living by "rules" in the Bible doesn't require that you accept that there's a God as defined in said book; it just requires that you do unto others as you would have them do unto you...
Actually that is completely incorrect in and of itself. The "do unto others..." Golden Rule is only the second half of a quote of Jesus in the New Testament. You omitted the first half of the rule which tells you to love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and then it says to love your neighbor (do unto others) as yourself. He then goes on to explain that on this whole basic rule hinges every other rule/law, including ultimately the lust-in-the-heart topic.
You are not "Living by the "rules" in the Bible" if you take the second half of this most basic rule without the first half. Without the whole rule the rest of the Bible (including the on-topic part about lust in the heart) is just sophistry and legalism. Hence the original poster's snide comment: they don't buy the "God part" and so consider the rest to be nonsense.
Given that the average Slashdot reader is about 16-25 and firmly convinced that they are God's Gift to Computing (tm), the vast majority of replies to this topic will be along the lines of, "Yeah, man. Like I'm all 1337 and stuff and they still don't listen to me! Bunch of stinkin' geezers. Life sucks!"
I always give age at least a tiny benefit of the doubt, because I am just beginning to be old enough (mid 30's) to realize how stupid I was in my teens and 20's. Now, that benefit may fall rapidly once the individual in question speaks, but that is another issue. And anyone who has any decent amount of life experience knows that some things can only be learned over very long periods of time. Patience, judgement, wisdom, character are all functions of time. Admittedly, the time component varies among individuals, but it is still there.
Oh and everything is relative. Given roughly equivalent technical skills, I will always listen to the more experienced (usually older) person when asking for things like judgement calls, especially in long-view matters like maintainability or supportability. Note all the assumptions in the previous sentence and you get what I mean...
they can be just as good, if not better than, a software engineer
... at writing software that sucks.
they work cheaply
... writing cheap software that sucks.
IMO, formal training often reduces the ability to think creatively
... sounds to me an awful lot like "I have no formal training".
once you are taught "the right way", it's hard to break new ground.
... so the next time I'm sick/injured I should skip the doctor with the MD (formal training) and "break new ground" with the "creative" guy?
Well, I first read Ender's game as the original short story, when I was in high school or college, I forget which. It was perfect as a short story, very powerful and concise. It was especially powerful in its abrupt ending, very different from the angst and moralization in the novel that follows Ender's last ultimate victory against the Buggers. The story left the moral indecision and obvious rationalizations as an exercise for the reader.
Given its high quality as a short story, I was aghast the first time I saw that it was made into a full length novel. Usually, novelization of a good short story is as big a disaster as the transfer of a good novel to film. But I read it anyway, and was pleasanly surprised to find that the main flavor of the original short story was left predominantly intact. The short story was there with a lot of background and detail filled in, plus what was really another couple of stories about Ender's siblings and the Buggers.
Looking back now, I'm uncertain whether I would have liked the novel as much without first having loved the original short story. One thing is certain, though. All the rest of the Ender series, including Speaker for the Dead, is just plain drivel compared to the original story.
Exactly. And French and German governments should leave web sites outside of their own countries alone and not force them to abide by their own national (local) laws.
America has yahoo.com and ebay.com and those are the ones that America should have influence over, not France or Germany. This is the sort of thing that gets European countries accused of cultural imperialism.
There is a lot of good detail, background and opinion on this whole debacle in the discussion over on kuro5hin.org about this issue. I'm still not sure who started it all though.
There is nothing special about anti-white discrimination that justifies a special term.
No, that's not entirely correct. At least in the USA, there exists a strong sentiment that when a caucasian male is treated differently because of race or gender, he is just getting what's coming to him and any mistreatment he receives is justly deserved, or counts as "reparations for past injustice" or whatever. It's quite a different beast when the discrimination is widely viewed as socially justified and moral.
So, I would argue that reverse discrimination does warrant a special term if only to call attention to the fact that in many circles it is considered morally correct policy and behavior.
... is the problem. When I hear a criticism of my favorite tool/platform/OS/political party/religion/thing, I immediately become defensive. Why? Because I chose the thing, so any criticism of the thing becomes a criticism of my own intelligence, judgement, values or beliefs. And the more I invest in the thing, the more likely I am to identify and take offense with criticisms directed toward it.
To paraphrase and extend the article's last point, this identification is not necessarily a bad thing. The problem is that many (most?) people don't handle criticism very well, no matter how constructive. So we get defensive reactions which beget counter-offensive criticism and we devolve into useless shouting matches.
Read the book, and pay attention in the early chapters that provide history and context.
The main personal handgun or long gun of the day is a sort of laser. These lasers interact explosively (on the order of a small fusion bomb) with personal force shields that are very common. Hence the shields preclude the use of the lasers except as a form of suicide bombing.
The shields completely stop fast moving projectiles like bullets and shrapnel but allow air and slow moving solid objects to penetrate. Hence the art of knife fighting is very important as hand-to-hand combat with a sharp, pointy object is about the only way to get past the shields without significant collateral damage. One main story point about Paul is that he is trained in this knife fighting technique by the best fighters of the time, and he ends up being very, very good at it. He teaches these skills to the Fremen, making them more deadly warriors than anyone else within the strictures mentioned above.
Finally, the whole story was set in a historical context which is hyper-influenced by the "Butlerian Jihad". This was a conflict which apparently affected the whole interstellar civilization. The basic premise of the Butlerian Jihad was to overthrow and exterminate mechanization of human talents and emphasize, glorify and enhance human abilities in the humans themselves. The Prime Directive of the Butlerian Jihad was something like, Make no machine which can usurp the authority or ability of humans. Associated with the hatred of machines was a passion for extending human abilities. Hence you get the human computer "mentats" (Thufir Hawat)), the political genius of the Bene Gesserit (Reverend Gaius Helene Mohiam), and the incredible fighters (Duncan Idaho and Gurney Halek). There was strong opposition to even exploring non-human methods of accomplishing just about anything, including fighting. The overwhelming emphasis on combat was for personal, hand-to-hand fighting of humans not seperated from each other by the hated machines. Major military forces generally had two classes of weapons: mass destruction with nuclear weapons and large, highly trained fighting forces. That was it, no subs or tanks or aircraft carriers. War was conducted either with great big bombs or hand-to-hand with almost no in-between.
These plot points are absolutely necessary to support the importance of Paul's training and the fighting abilities of the Fremen in relation to the similarly trained and constrained Sardaukar. Indeed, the main reason that the Emperor helped bring down Paul's father, Duke Leto, was that the Duke had come close to raising and training his own army that was as good as the Sardaukar. Paul succeeded in the Fremen where his father's efforts with his own army were cut short. All of that knife fighting was very, very important to the story. Don't just dismiss it as silly within our own military context of today.
CmdrTaco has more documented proof of his lettuce-head-ness with his rotten grammar and poor spelling than Bush will be able to amass in a lifetime. Indeed, if George W. Bush and old Dan Quayle were melded into the one supreme dunce that they are painted to be, they would still not be able to spin more horrid prose more quickly than CmdrTaco and his ilk.
Your last paragraph tuched a raw nerve in me. I am so tired of hearing this stuff that I have to shout it down every time I hear it. So, to debunk each assertion about Gore, one by one:
well educated: false. If you assert otherwise, show us the real proof in the form of some degree or certification.
intelligent: I'll give you half a point here. He is at least bright enough to fool half of the voters in the US.
proven: now this adjective is truly laughable. He's been an average politician. That's it.
part of the most successful administration for decades: a big myth that is total bologna. The Clinton/Gore administration won in both elections with less percentage of the vote than Bush got in this one. The Clinton/Gore administration has been marked more by what it has failed to do than by what it has accomplished. For a glaring example, see the socialized medicine debacle of the first Clinton term. The misattributed success of the Clinton/Gore years is the astounding growth of the US economy, none of which had anything to do with Clinton/Gore or liberal policies. Clinton/Gore just happened to be there at the right time. For an example of a successful, popular administration with a real mandate, see the Reagan years which truly set the stage for the current robust economy that Clinton/Gore have taken credit for.
You seem to be implying that Liberals have lots more sex and generate more progeny. Although this suggestion is a nasty troll, from another angle I have been thinking about the maps shown on the news that are a sea of red (for Bush) with a few small splashes of blue (for Gore) and yet the blue equal or outweigh the red.
Just for discussion's sake, I would think that the main driver of population levels in various locations is not birthrate but rather (surprise) location. People like to be near certain types of places, things or other people, so they naturally tend to gravitate to "likeable" places, regardless of where they were birthed.
Hence the high population concentrations on the US coasts and around cultural or economic centers. And higher density urban populations tend to be more immediately benefited by Democrat populist policies, to the detriment of other more conservative population segments like the small-town (non-union) worker or the independent business owner. But since they are fewer and more spread out, they don't count as much :-)
Gripe about USA being self centered and then offer up a European-only view? How about Central and South America? Or the Middle East? Or the Pacific Rim? Or China or Africa? You should definitely start to look out of your (European) borders. The world does not end there.
I don't think the USA has a monopoly on self-centerism. Maybe a dominant market share, but not a monopoly :-)
Anyway, getting back to the topic, it does not appear that the election's effect on foreign relations is uppermost in the average American voter's mind. The main issues seem to be more internal fiscal and social problems than anything else. In a different time (e.g. the Cold War), other more external issues might be more relevant. But not now.
No, no, no! The moderation itself (informative) is an even better joke. Good moderators!
P.S. Seriously, aren't these political discussions on Slashdot getting fun?!? My blood is boiling and at the same time I'm having lots of fun. :O
The New Science of Character Assassination says, "The past ten days will go down as a turning point in American history. This is what it's like when the far right is taking over your country: the people support Al Gore's policies, but the polls are shifting toward George W. Bush because the media is filled with false attacks on Al Gore's character."
Um, ignoring for the moment the issues of our current candidates' character or lack thereof, I'm pretty sure the Hated Far Right (tm) did not invent character assassination. Here's an example from the Bible which documents the practice at least 2500 years ago:
(1 Kings 21)Jezebel his wife said, "Is this how you act as king over Israel? Get up and eat! Cheer up. I'll get you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite."
So she wrote letters in Ahab's name, placed his seal on them, and sent them to the elders and nobles who lived in Naboth's city with him.
In those letters she wrote: "Proclaim a day of fasting and seat Naboth in a prominent place among the people.
But seat two scoundrels opposite him and have them testify that he has cursed both God and the king. Then take him out and stone him to death."
So the elders and nobles who lived in Naboth's city did as Jezebel directed in the letters she had written to them.
They proclaimed a fast and seated Naboth in a prominent place among the people.
Then two scoundrels came and sat opposite him and brought charges against Naboth before the people, saying, "Naboth has cursed both God and the king." So they took him outside the city and stoned him to death.
Then they sent word to Jezebel: "Naboth has been stoned and is dead."
As soon as Jezebel heard that Naboth had been stoned to death, she said to Ahab, "Get up and take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite that he refused to sell you. He is no longer alive, but dead."
When Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, he got up and went down to take possession of Naboth's vineyard.