Your attitude is a perfect demonstration of pretty much everything that's wrong with America today.
We don't "determine" government anymore. We pick between a few identical sock puppets every 2 or 4 years, then we get entertained by the circus (if we pay attention at all) of deciding which sock puppets we're going to choose between next time. All while they continue to destroy freedom.
We're only free as far as we act as individuals. As long as we accept being members of a collective, we are the collective's property.
The TSA isn't his company, in the sense you mean. Sure, in a sense, both the TSA and his company are organs of the federal government. But, theoretically, at least, they have a separation of concerns.
This is more along the lines of filming cops abusing suspects and then getting arrested for breaking wiretap laws.
Compare what happened after 9/11 with the burning of the Reichstag. And what happened afterward. The parallel isn't perfect, but it's about as close as repeating history ever gets.
The federal government has been systematically destroying freedom in the U.S. for the past 100 years (at least). There have been a few advances, but, even with them, the government usually manages to take away at least as much as it gives (the civil rights movement led to things like enforced political correctness, busing, and racist hiring quotas).
It probably isn't fair to call America's government "Nazi," but it's well on its way to fascism. (And, no, fascism really isn't all that different from socialism...it's just one logical step further along the road back to feudalism).
"Foaming-at-the-mouth" lunacy doesn't really do any good to promote the cause of freedom. But I can understand the GP's frustration. I can't understand your complacency/collusion at all. Then again, America's always been an uneasy alliance between people who want to be free, the ones who want everyone to be slaves, and the ones who are determined to master everyone else.
Maybe it's time to admit that that alliance has failed, split it up, and go our separate ways. While we can still do so peacefully.
The only way to get enough power to make any sort of effective change is to join one of the "two" political parties. Spend years promoting their agenda. By the time you've been involved long enough to get your voice heard, you'll have been conditioned to believe that agenda you've been promoting for so long.
As long as we let them write (and re-write) the rules at their whim, they keep getting more powerful, and we keep walking down the road to slavery.
Actually, I think the point is to condition us to get used to intrusive "security" measures. Then turn it up another notch and take away a little more freedom.
It's one thing to mention the bits and pieces in isolation. It's quite a different matter to put them all together and point out the logical conclusion. Especially if you're someone as trusted as a pilot.
It's vital that "they" get him dismissed as a crackpot or some sort of dangerous traitor, ASAP. Otherwise, he's just undermined Big Brother's tenuous position.
You're totally correct about my example. That was horrible. It was supposed to be more a matter of "everyone use the same kind of electrical outlets." I'm not having any luck finding it now, but I remember something in the Federalist Papers about how this clause is so meek and inoffensive that it was one of the only bits no one objected to.
Whether that memory's correct or not really doesn't matter much. Supreme Court Justices pretty much ignored it for around 100 years, then decided that it and the "necessary and proper" phrase were the only parts of the Constitution that had any meaning in the modern world.
Presidents have been packing the Court with Justices who love Big Government ever since John Marshall.
This mis-interpretation is pretty much exactly how that clause has made the Constitution completely meaningless.
It was a harmless little addendum that pretty much everyone considered perfectly safe. The point was to keep trade "regular" among the States. So that, for example, Virginia isn't allowed to attach extra tariffs to goods passing through from New York.
Now everyone thinks it means "Congress can do anything it wants.
I've never actually managed to get it to run (I suspect shenanigans in whichever java runtime I was using), but it looks extremely interesting.
I tend to avoid the strong static typing vs. dynamic typing debate. At this point in my life, other language features just seem to completely overshadow that particular question.
Except in languages like Haskell, where it's such a central part of the core concepts. I really do need to find the time to learn it...I expect it will be as mind-expanding as learning common lisp currently is.
I've talked to people who've been involved in successful outsourcing projects. They always involved multi-lingual managers who could fly back and forth between sites to actually keep an eye on everyone and make sure work was getting done.
In those cases, it wasn't really a case of "cheaper." I think it was almost always legal issues (environmental regulations, worries about lawsuits, copyright laws, things along those lines).
I worked for a company a while back that decided to outsource everything except our department, because it looked good on paper. We all abandoned ship, just because it seemed like the safe move. 9 months later, they brought back everyone they could (at double the salary), because the Indian team hadn't managed to get one single change into production.
Sooner or later, the accountants will realize that "the bottom line" isn't as simple as they think.
K&R's great...but it's also ancient and obsolete. There are a lot of new ideas (and obsolete old ones that have come back into play, like MVC) that have stepped onto the playing field.
I had to work with a guy who basically insisted on writing everything in K&R C. Even though we were using C#. He insisted it was "simple." To me, it was just mind-numbingly repetitive and error-prone (because there was so much copy/pasting involved).
I'm not saying that K&R's bad. It can teach one some really great programming techniques and ideas, from way-back-when, when there water was cleaner, men were men, and life wasn't so damn complicated. It can also lead you to wasting tons of time editing the same piece of code (with random minor variations) over and over and over. It can make you feel productive, if you never learned what productivity's actually like, but it also leads to an unmaintainable mess.
Go ahead and read/learn K&R. But keep reading after that. Far too many people seem to stop there and decide "Cool. Now I know it all."
As for shit coding environments and good coding environments, that is tied to creativity and that has a real impact upon performance. If someone hates M$ and.net then it will cripple the creativity and their productivity will be terrible, fact of life.
You seem to be a whole lot more certain about your "facts" than I, but...C# doesn't really seem all that different than Java. Visual Studio's an awesome IDE (especially when you add resharper), but you're still working with a mediocre programming language designed for mediocre programmers.
Sure, you can get huge productivity gains by switching to something like iron python, or (arguably) f#. But how long will those projects limp along? MS seems to have pretty much killed iron ruby.
The internet's been around for a while now. I've been in contact with a handful of libertarians scattered around various states for several years.
Before Ron Paul ran for President, and got his fans in touch with each other (which, in a big way, led to the tea parties), no one ever listened to people who wanted real reductions in government. Most I've talked to felt like there were only a scattered handful of us left.
I've spent years being immediately dismissed as a complete lunatic by people attached to both parties. The tea parties are opening people up to the possibility that there's a sizable minority who's actually serious about downsizing government.
Next to the squeaky wheels at the tea parties, my ideas sound downright reasonable. People don't always agree with all my positions...but I've been very pleased with how often they wind up agreeing with the ones I consider most important. And we can usually come up with some sort of compromise on the rest that suits us both.
Corporations are a very special kind of partnership, with all sorts of legal benefits and protections that aren't available to average people.
Since the Supreme Court recognized them as people, they've grown into something of a privileged class.
If you or I decided to cut enough corners in a business venture to kill 11 people and cause unfathomable environmental damage, we'd (at the very least) be bankrupt and looking at extremely long jail sentences. (Deep Horizon oil spill).
When I mention jack-booted thugs, I'm pointing out that any law is, ultimately, enforced by some guy with a gun and a license to kill.
I fought this one for ages. But the definitions have changed. For the past few decades, liberalist == collectivist. So has conservative. The only meaningful difference has been the flavor.
I hated it (more than I can possibly say) when I learned this lesson. There's no way to sugar-coat it. There isn't much time left to try. If you happen to be younger than me...I apologize. I'm trying to talk other people into paying attention to the mess our grandparents created.
I want the federal government to do the things it was supposed to do and quit doing the things it isn't. Once that happens, we can start discussing the details.
Or you could just punish the people who actually did wrong. "You inspected this mine shaft and it still collapsed on their heads and killed them? Say hello to your new cell-mate, Bubba the gorilla. In a few years, we'll introduce you to your last best friend, Sparky."
Make the punishment fit the crime, and the real issues go away.
Slashdot Mirror
Your attitude is a perfect demonstration of pretty much everything that's wrong with America today.
We don't "determine" government anymore. We pick between a few identical sock puppets every 2 or 4 years, then we get entertained by the circus (if we pay attention at all) of deciding which sock puppets we're going to choose between next time. All while they continue to destroy freedom.
We're only free as far as we act as individuals. As long as we accept being members of a collective, we are the collective's property.
The TSA isn't his company, in the sense you mean. Sure, in a sense, both the TSA and his company are organs of the federal government. But, theoretically, at least, they have a separation of concerns.
This is more along the lines of filming cops abusing suspects and then getting arrested for breaking wiretap laws.
Compare what happened after 9/11 with the burning of the Reichstag. And what happened afterward. The parallel isn't perfect, but it's about as close as repeating history ever gets.
The federal government has been systematically destroying freedom in the U.S. for the past 100 years (at least). There have been a few advances, but, even with them, the government usually manages to take away at least as much as it gives (the civil rights movement led to things like enforced political correctness, busing, and racist hiring quotas).
It probably isn't fair to call America's government "Nazi," but it's well on its way to fascism. (And, no, fascism really isn't all that different from socialism...it's just one logical step further along the road back to feudalism).
"Foaming-at-the-mouth" lunacy doesn't really do any good to promote the cause of freedom. But I can understand the GP's frustration. I can't understand your complacency/collusion at all. Then again, America's always been an uneasy alliance between people who want to be free, the ones who want everyone to be slaves, and the ones who are determined to master everyone else.
Maybe it's time to admit that that alliance has failed, split it up, and go our separate ways. While we can still do so peacefully.
The only way to get enough power to make any sort of effective change is to join one of the "two" political parties. Spend years promoting their agenda. By the time you've been involved long enough to get your voice heard, you'll have been conditioned to believe that agenda you've been promoting for so long.
As long as we let them write (and re-write) the rules at their whim, they keep getting more powerful, and we keep walking down the road to slavery.
Actually, I think the point is to condition us to get used to intrusive "security" measures. Then turn it up another notch and take away a little more freedom.
Rinse and repeat.
It's one thing to mention the bits and pieces in isolation. It's quite a different matter to put them all together and point out the logical conclusion. Especially if you're someone as trusted as a pilot.
It's vital that "they" get him dismissed as a crackpot or some sort of dangerous traitor, ASAP. Otherwise, he's just undermined Big Brother's tenuous position.
The TSA already knows all about this. Harassing this guy is just more proof that the TSA has absolutely nothing to do with keeping people safe.
And you should recognize that the Federalist Papers were the centerpiece of a high-stakes 18th century political advertising campaign.
Or maybe the marketing campaign for a coup d'etat.
You're totally correct about my example. That was horrible. It was supposed to be more a matter of "everyone use the same kind of electrical outlets." I'm not having any luck finding it now, but I remember something in the Federalist Papers about how this clause is so meek and inoffensive that it was one of the only bits no one objected to.
Whether that memory's correct or not really doesn't matter much. Supreme Court Justices pretty much ignored it for around 100 years, then decided that it and the "necessary and proper" phrase were the only parts of the Constitution that had any meaning in the modern world.
Presidents have been packing the Court with Justices who love Big Government ever since John Marshall.
This mis-interpretation is pretty much exactly how that clause has made the Constitution completely meaningless.
It was a harmless little addendum that pretty much everyone considered perfectly safe. The point was to keep trade "regular" among the States. So that, for example, Virginia isn't allowed to attach extra tariffs to goods passing through from New York.
Now everyone thinks it means "Congress can do anything it wants.
I've never actually managed to get it to run (I suspect shenanigans in whichever java runtime I was using), but it looks extremely interesting.
I tend to avoid the strong static typing vs. dynamic typing debate. At this point in my life, other language features just seem to completely overshadow that particular question.
Except in languages like Haskell, where it's such a central part of the core concepts. I really do need to find the time to learn it...I expect it will be as mind-expanding as learning common lisp currently is.
That sig's awesome.
I've talked to people who've been involved in successful outsourcing projects. They always involved multi-lingual managers who could fly back and forth between sites to actually keep an eye on everyone and make sure work was getting done.
In those cases, it wasn't really a case of "cheaper." I think it was almost always legal issues (environmental regulations, worries about lawsuits, copyright laws, things along those lines).
They're cheaper short-term.
I worked for a company a while back that decided to outsource everything except our department, because it looked good on paper. We all abandoned ship, just because it seemed like the safe move. 9 months later, they brought back everyone they could (at double the salary), because the Indian team hadn't managed to get one single change into production.
Sooner or later, the accountants will realize that "the bottom line" isn't as simple as they think.
Clojure's another rising star, along those same lines.
Being both a lisp *and* Ron Paul fan, I got a good laugh out of this one.
Please be careful.
K&R's great...but it's also ancient and obsolete. There are a lot of new ideas (and obsolete old ones that have come back into play, like MVC) that have stepped onto the playing field.
I had to work with a guy who basically insisted on writing everything in K&R C. Even though we were using C#. He insisted it was "simple." To me, it was just mind-numbingly repetitive and error-prone (because there was so much copy/pasting involved).
I'm not saying that K&R's bad. It can teach one some really great programming techniques and ideas, from way-back-when, when there water was cleaner, men were men, and life wasn't so damn complicated. It can also lead you to wasting tons of time editing the same piece of code (with random minor variations) over and over and over. It can make you feel productive, if you never learned what productivity's actually like, but it also leads to an unmaintainable mess.
Go ahead and read/learn K&R. But keep reading after that. Far too many people seem to stop there and decide "Cool. Now I know it all."
This is already at 5, so I couldn't mod it up, even if I hadn't already responded. Just wanted to let you know that I think it's an awesome post.
As for shit coding environments and good coding environments, that is tied to creativity and that has a real impact upon performance. If someone hates M$ and .net then it will cripple the creativity and their productivity will be terrible, fact of life.
You seem to be a whole lot more certain about your "facts" than I, but...C# doesn't really seem all that different than Java. Visual Studio's an awesome IDE (especially when you add resharper), but you're still working with a mediocre programming language designed for mediocre programmers.
Sure, you can get huge productivity gains by switching to something like iron python, or (arguably) f#. But how long will those projects limp along? MS seems to have pretty much killed iron ruby.
Yes, it matters.
The internet's been around for a while now. I've been in contact with a handful of libertarians scattered around various states for several years.
Before Ron Paul ran for President, and got his fans in touch with each other (which, in a big way, led to the tea parties), no one ever listened to people who wanted real reductions in government. Most I've talked to felt like there were only a scattered handful of us left.
I've spent years being immediately dismissed as a complete lunatic by people attached to both parties. The tea parties are opening people up to the possibility that there's a sizable minority who's actually serious about downsizing government.
Next to the squeaky wheels at the tea parties, my ideas sound downright reasonable. People don't always agree with all my positions...but I've been very pleased with how often they wind up agreeing with the ones I consider most important. And we can usually come up with some sort of compromise on the rest that suits us both.
Corporations are a very special kind of partnership, with all sorts of legal benefits and protections that aren't available to average people.
Since the Supreme Court recognized them as people, they've grown into something of a privileged class.
If you or I decided to cut enough corners in a business venture to kill 11 people and cause unfathomable environmental damage, we'd (at the very least) be bankrupt and looking at extremely long jail sentences. (Deep Horizon oil spill).
When I mention jack-booted thugs, I'm pointing out that any law is, ultimately, enforced by some guy with a gun and a license to kill.
I fought this one for ages. But the definitions have changed. For the past few decades, liberalist == collectivist. So has conservative. The only meaningful difference has been the flavor.
I hated it (more than I can possibly say) when I learned this lesson. There's no way to sugar-coat it. There isn't much time left to try. If you happen to be younger than me...I apologize. I'm trying to talk other people into paying attention to the mess our grandparents created.
I want the federal government to do the things it was supposed to do and quit doing the things it isn't. Once that happens, we can start discussing the details.
Fair enough. Agree to disagree. The world would be a boring place if we all agreed about everything.
All things considered, I fervently hope that you're right and I'm wrong.
Or you could just punish the people who actually did wrong. "You inspected this mine shaft and it still collapsed on their heads and killed them? Say hello to your new cell-mate, Bubba the gorilla. In a few years, we'll introduce you to your last best friend, Sparky."
Make the punishment fit the crime, and the real issues go away.