Smart man, that Plato. But either he isn't coming across correctly, or he's not completely there yet.
Education is the one and only defense against tyranny. It doesn't matter what system of government is in place, be it democracy, dictatorship, aristocracy, corportism, even anarchary. Education is the one power of the self that individuals can exert onto society. Thus an educated populace will always have power over the existing government, governments being a condition of society.
But education is only half of the equation. Education produces strength of the mind. There also needs to be strength of the body. And that's where most societies fail. Some value the mind, and some value the body, but none value both equally. Not even the bipolar populace of the United States averages out to an equality. The US mindset is inherently skewed towards the body (military might) over the mind (diplomacy). Even having an educated person such as Obama in the top seat acts at best a buffer against further going towards the military end of the spectrum, rather than as an equalizer.
The thing about the world is that it is really big. There are a lot of people in it. And if there's a top, everybody wants to be on top.
A strong world government wouldn't last. All it'll take is one regional leader to revolt, and a lot of other regions will want to do the same.
The UN is almost ideal as a global governing body insomuch as it doesn't govern but instead suggests and advises. Any stronger world government would result in an eventual rebellion and overthrow of the system. And it would continue until it reaches and equillibrium, which is more or less where we are at.
The only time a strong world government is remotely possible is in light of foreign invaders. And by foreign, I mean extraterrestrial. The need to survive will be the only catalyst for such a governing body. And once the invaders have been expelled, things will fall apart again. It's only under constant threat will it be possible for any world government to grow stronger.
A lot of blood lies on a lot of battle fields to defend democracy
You can say that about any ideology. It doesn't really have any meaning other than to say that a lot of people died fighting for what they believe in. Democracy is merely another system of government that just so happens to be the most popular. But to say that it is better than other systems and more worthy of protection or consideration than other systems would be a stretch. After all, while it has its benefits, it also has drawbacks. How one determines what tradeoffs are acceptable is all about values.
Actually, your analogy would be asking everybody who used a browser to know how to code.
On the other hand, it's a good for people idea to learn about the technology behind websites before browsing them. For example, knowing what javascript is, what flash is, what cookies are, what xml is and how it relates to web pages, etc. And they may want to know how to block or clear cookies and block javascript and clear cache.
And that's asking people to know the laws of driving, how to read the street signs, to know what happens when roads get wet or are covered in snow, to know about dirt versus gravel versus asphalt versus cement, and how to react appropriately under each circumstance. And it's asking them to know how to use the e-brake or the tramsmission. And that's certainly not too much to ask.
Slot machines don't move at 50 MPH over cobblestones.
Electronics are terrible for crucial components in a vehicle that takes as much pounding as a car. Electronics adds two more points of failure over a mechanical system. Mechanical systems are simple and predictable anywhere above the subatomic level. You pull on something, and the effect is almost always the opposite of what happens when you push on the same thing. Electronic systems are not nearly as predictable. Pushing twice may have the opposite effect of pushing once. Pulling and pushing may result in completely unrelated behaviors under completely different contexts.
So in addition to mechanical failure (physical failure of the electronic components and the connections between thereof), electronic systems introduce software bugs and transmission errors.
While computers may be fine for systems with enough built-in redundancy and take relatively little or predictable abuse, they're nowhere near solid enough to control a car, especially the most crucial aspects, which is braking, steering, and acceleration in that order.
MS did the same during the transition to 32-bit. They included a 16-bit DOS emulator and had it run transparently. They did the same for the transition to 64-bit. It was so successful and so transparent a lot of IT professionals didn't even know it was even happening in the background.
Unlike Apple though, they never removed it. Sure, it resulted in a major security hole, but it also let legacy custom business apps run far longer than they otherwise would have been able to.
I suspect if they were ever to make another large transition, they'd do the same thing they've been doing for years.
insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare
Healthcare is arguably a part of all three.
Domestic tranquility is only possible if the populace is healthy and stays that way. Epidemics can cause riots. Well, the populace can be fat and lazy for there to be domestic tranquility too, which may be where things are headed.
A working health care system is required to provide for the common defense. The obvious biological weapons aside, a malfunctioning health care system would be disatrous for morale and recruitment in times of war. Defense can also be construed to be against anything that causes death, which easily includes sickness and any maladies as a result of old age.
I don't think I need to elaborate about how health care relates to promoting of the general welfare.
But where are they going to go? Liberals and socialists can go to most of the rest of the civilized world and live comfortably. Hell, just hop across the border to Canada. Where can the neo-cons and facists go? Mexico? Would Mexico take them?
Actually, if you go to a hospital, they're required to treat you even if you're uninsured. So you're still shifting the burden to somebody else.
You can't even choose not to go to the hospital. If you get injured to the point of being unresponsive and somebody else calls 911, you're going whether you'd like to or not.
It's possible that you won't see a cost decrease. But you'll probably see a speed increase in general (though rollout may be so slow you won't really notice it). You may end up maxing out your cap more often though.
It's almost like you guys are a subsubculture of programmer, to the point where many of you guys come off with the general attitude of being superior, when in fact, neither approach is superior, just different based on the situation.
To be fair, you have to be really damn good to write software for embedded systems, while you just have to be OK to write normal software. Hell, you don't even have to be OK; just read some of the crap in The Daily WTF.
Which does, in fact, put them a cut above most, but not all, programmers that develop in a higher-level language. And I say most because there probably are programmers that are even better developing in a high level language than embedded systems programmers, simply because the complexity actually increases with the increase in expectation that comes with coding in a high-level language. It's one thing to employ tricks to make something small and fast. It's quite another thing to employ the right tricks towards the same goal, but keep everything organized, readable, and maintainable.
Would you pay $10 more for a Google Motherboard built in Iowa or Idaho over an Asus built in China if it was the same quality?
No.
First, ASUS is a Taiwanese company. I'm not sure if 100% of their fabs are in Taiwan, but at least most of their products are made in Taiwan. The parts probably do come out of China though, but it wouldn't be different from anything that came out of a US fab.
Second, your assumption that the price would increase by $10 is incorrect. If the motherboard was merely assembled in the US, you'd probably see a marginal increase in price, i.e. $20-$50. If the motherboard was completely made in the US (with raw materials mined in the US), you're looking more along the lines of 5-10x the price.
And would any non-government entity be willing to pay that much for a motherboard, period? No.
One of the biggest problems with rail is the very poor last-mile infrastructure to move people. Freight is not a problem, as they're well built out privately, but public transportation is crap in most places, and a taxi or cab would negate the economics of taking a train over driving. Hell, the NYC subway is one of the two major systems that even runs 24 hours a day.
The issue partly is due to the size, and population density of most places, especially major metropolitian areas. Metro areas are simply too large, and populaton density in all but the most tightly-packed cities are too low. It makes it both economically infeasible and inefficient to provide a decent mass transportation system.
The other issue is due to the American fixation on cars. Everything is designed with driving in mind. In fact, suburbia itself is a direct result of this mentality. I'm not sure if it's because the car is an American invention, or if people are just too lazy to walk, but this has resulted in prioritizing vehicles when engineering transportation.
If they ripped up the middle 2 lanes of every highway and replaced it with rail with a station at every exit, I'll bet that'll solve the congestion problem in many places. But such a project would take years to complete, and nobody'd want to take the inevitable traffic hit during construction of the rail system.
Multitasking has never been a huge security problem, so long as inter-process communication is disabled. Sure, it introduces file and device access control issues, but the OS should be handling that properly, multitasking or not.
For the record, the iPhone does have the ability for apps to save their state, which is a poor man's multitasking. But true multitasking isn't really necessary in a form factor like the iPhone. A desktop PC, sure, a laptop, maybe, but it's rare to ever be doing multiple things at once on a device as small as the iPhone.
At most, you're listening to music while reading an electronic document (because most other apps come with sound already), but it's possible to avoid multitasking by putting the music playback calls into libraries behind an API and let the individual apps use it if/when they want to.
The iPad, which falls closer to the iPhone than the laptop in terms of capability, has a better case for multitasking beyond state-saves. It is possibly a technical limitation, that there'd be enough programs running of a sufficient size in a typical usage scenario that the background processes wouldn't all fit into RAM or swap. I suspect the enabling of multitasking is for that more than anything else, as to be honest, I'm not sure why the iPad, with its closed environment, would need multitasking otherwise. It's not like somebody's going to be encoding their MP3's while running a FTP daemon while compiling code while reading a document. And while a regular tablet could be rendering a scene in the background, the iPad's closed environment makes that use case likewise highly unlikely.
As the iPhone already has multi-threading, even IM's and chatting can be handled without multitasking. They can be processed the same way as text messages (but perhaps without the preempting that happens). It's a matter of the OS being able to properly handle the incoming packets, and the application being able to smartly handle the incoming messages.
It is now. All of the "no" votes were from the UK and the Netherlands.
Several abstains from the UK, but mostly from Italy, with two from Greece and France each.
Various members from various countries (including those listed above) didn't vote.
Now we know where the copyright money is going. To be honest, I wasn't surprised by the strong support of ACTA from the UK. But I am a little surprised by the "no" votes from the Netherlands.
It's a matter of convenience. Things would be harder, and progress would be a little slower. A very small minority of people would feel the adverse impact in any significant way and they'll have to learn to live with it, but most people will go back to their televisions and newspapers and radios.
But it isn't as if everybody's going to go hungry all of a sudden, or if man-made structures are going to collapse.
Slashdot Mirror
Smart man, that Plato. But either he isn't coming across correctly, or he's not completely there yet.
Education is the one and only defense against tyranny. It doesn't matter what system of government is in place, be it democracy, dictatorship, aristocracy, corportism, even anarchary. Education is the one power of the self that individuals can exert onto society. Thus an educated populace will always have power over the existing government, governments being a condition of society.
But education is only half of the equation. Education produces strength of the mind. There also needs to be strength of the body. And that's where most societies fail. Some value the mind, and some value the body, but none value both equally. Not even the bipolar populace of the United States averages out to an equality. The US mindset is inherently skewed towards the body (military might) over the mind (diplomacy). Even having an educated person such as Obama in the top seat acts at best a buffer against further going towards the military end of the spectrum, rather than as an equalizer.
The thing about the world is that it is really big. There are a lot of people in it. And if there's a top, everybody wants to be on top.
A strong world government wouldn't last. All it'll take is one regional leader to revolt, and a lot of other regions will want to do the same.
The UN is almost ideal as a global governing body insomuch as it doesn't govern but instead suggests and advises. Any stronger world government would result in an eventual rebellion and overthrow of the system. And it would continue until it reaches and equillibrium, which is more or less where we are at.
The only time a strong world government is remotely possible is in light of foreign invaders. And by foreign, I mean extraterrestrial. The need to survive will be the only catalyst for such a governing body. And once the invaders have been expelled, things will fall apart again. It's only under constant threat will it be possible for any world government to grow stronger.
A lot of blood lies on a lot of battle fields to defend democracy
You can say that about any ideology. It doesn't really have any meaning other than to say that a lot of people died fighting for what they believe in. Democracy is merely another system of government that just so happens to be the most popular. But to say that it is better than other systems and more worthy of protection or consideration than other systems would be a stretch. After all, while it has its benefits, it also has drawbacks. How one determines what tradeoffs are acceptable is all about values.
Actually, your analogy would be asking everybody who used a browser to know how to code.
On the other hand, it's a good for people idea to learn about the technology behind websites before browsing them. For example, knowing what javascript is, what flash is, what cookies are, what xml is and how it relates to web pages, etc. And they may want to know how to block or clear cookies and block javascript and clear cache.
And that's asking people to know the laws of driving, how to read the street signs, to know what happens when roads get wet or are covered in snow, to know about dirt versus gravel versus asphalt versus cement, and how to react appropriately under each circumstance. And it's asking them to know how to use the e-brake or the tramsmission. And that's certainly not too much to ask.
Slot machines don't move at 50 MPH over cobblestones.
Electronics are terrible for crucial components in a vehicle that takes as much pounding as a car. Electronics adds two more points of failure over a mechanical system. Mechanical systems are simple and predictable anywhere above the subatomic level. You pull on something, and the effect is almost always the opposite of what happens when you push on the same thing. Electronic systems are not nearly as predictable. Pushing twice may have the opposite effect of pushing once. Pulling and pushing may result in completely unrelated behaviors under completely different contexts.
So in addition to mechanical failure (physical failure of the electronic components and the connections between thereof), electronic systems introduce software bugs and transmission errors.
While computers may be fine for systems with enough built-in redundancy and take relatively little or predictable abuse, they're nowhere near solid enough to control a car, especially the most crucial aspects, which is braking, steering, and acceleration in that order.
Hangs up his orange suit and crowbar.
And in prison?
MS did the same during the transition to 32-bit. They included a 16-bit DOS emulator and had it run transparently. They did the same for the transition to 64-bit. It was so successful and so transparent a lot of IT professionals didn't even know it was even happening in the background.
Unlike Apple though, they never removed it. Sure, it resulted in a major security hole, but it also let legacy custom business apps run far longer than they otherwise would have been able to.
I suspect if they were ever to make another large transition, they'd do the same thing they've been doing for years.
insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare
Healthcare is arguably a part of all three.
Domestic tranquility is only possible if the populace is healthy and stays that way. Epidemics can cause riots. Well, the populace can be fat and lazy for there to be domestic tranquility too, which may be where things are headed.
A working health care system is required to provide for the common defense. The obvious biological weapons aside, a malfunctioning health care system would be disatrous for morale and recruitment in times of war. Defense can also be construed to be against anything that causes death, which easily includes sickness and any maladies as a result of old age.
I don't think I need to elaborate about how health care relates to promoting of the general welfare.
But where are they going to go? Liberals and socialists can go to most of the rest of the civilized world and live comfortably. Hell, just hop across the border to Canada. Where can the neo-cons and facists go? Mexico? Would Mexico take them?
Actually, if you go to a hospital, they're required to treat you even if you're uninsured. So you're still shifting the burden to somebody else.
You can't even choose not to go to the hospital. If you get injured to the point of being unresponsive and somebody else calls 911, you're going whether you'd like to or not.
It's engineering.
It's possible that you won't see a cost decrease. But you'll probably see a speed increase in general (though rollout may be so slow you won't really notice it). You may end up maxing out your cap more often though.
It's almost like you guys are a subsubculture of programmer, to the point where many of you guys come off with the general attitude of being superior, when in fact, neither approach is superior, just different based on the situation.
To be fair, you have to be really damn good to write software for embedded systems, while you just have to be OK to write normal software. Hell, you don't even have to be OK; just read some of the crap in The Daily WTF.
Which does, in fact, put them a cut above most, but not all, programmers that develop in a higher-level language. And I say most because there probably are programmers that are even better developing in a high level language than embedded systems programmers, simply because the complexity actually increases with the increase in expectation that comes with coding in a high-level language. It's one thing to employ tricks to make something small and fast. It's quite another thing to employ the right tricks towards the same goal, but keep everything organized, readable, and maintainable.
So don't feel too jilted.
But complaining that we unnecessary library code is sometimes included does not really solve any problems.
Yeah, those insensitive clods!
I see nothing wrong with putting Jedi on even footing with the others.
Would you pay $10 more for a Google Motherboard built in Iowa or Idaho over an Asus built in China if it was the same quality?
No.
First, ASUS is a Taiwanese company. I'm not sure if 100% of their fabs are in Taiwan, but at least most of their products are made in Taiwan. The parts probably do come out of China though, but it wouldn't be different from anything that came out of a US fab.
Second, your assumption that the price would increase by $10 is incorrect. If the motherboard was merely assembled in the US, you'd probably see a marginal increase in price, i.e. $20-$50. If the motherboard was completely made in the US (with raw materials mined in the US), you're looking more along the lines of 5-10x the price.
And would any non-government entity be willing to pay that much for a motherboard, period? No.
One of the biggest problems with rail is the very poor last-mile infrastructure to move people. Freight is not a problem, as they're well built out privately, but public transportation is crap in most places, and a taxi or cab would negate the economics of taking a train over driving. Hell, the NYC subway is one of the two major systems that even runs 24 hours a day.
The issue partly is due to the size, and population density of most places, especially major metropolitian areas. Metro areas are simply too large, and populaton density in all but the most tightly-packed cities are too low. It makes it both economically infeasible and inefficient to provide a decent mass transportation system.
The other issue is due to the American fixation on cars. Everything is designed with driving in mind. In fact, suburbia itself is a direct result of this mentality. I'm not sure if it's because the car is an American invention, or if people are just too lazy to walk, but this has resulted in prioritizing vehicles when engineering transportation.
If they ripped up the middle 2 lanes of every highway and replaced it with rail with a station at every exit, I'll bet that'll solve the congestion problem in many places. But such a project would take years to complete, and nobody'd want to take the inevitable traffic hit during construction of the rail system.
Multitasking has never been a huge security problem, so long as inter-process communication is disabled. Sure, it introduces file and device access control issues, but the OS should be handling that properly, multitasking or not.
For the record, the iPhone does have the ability for apps to save their state, which is a poor man's multitasking. But true multitasking isn't really necessary in a form factor like the iPhone. A desktop PC, sure, a laptop, maybe, but it's rare to ever be doing multiple things at once on a device as small as the iPhone.
At most, you're listening to music while reading an electronic document (because most other apps come with sound already), but it's possible to avoid multitasking by putting the music playback calls into libraries behind an API and let the individual apps use it if/when they want to.
The iPad, which falls closer to the iPhone than the laptop in terms of capability, has a better case for multitasking beyond state-saves. It is possibly a technical limitation, that there'd be enough programs running of a sufficient size in a typical usage scenario that the background processes wouldn't all fit into RAM or swap. I suspect the enabling of multitasking is for that more than anything else, as to be honest, I'm not sure why the iPad, with its closed environment, would need multitasking otherwise. It's not like somebody's going to be encoding their MP3's while running a FTP daemon while compiling code while reading a document. And while a regular tablet could be rendering a scene in the background, the iPad's closed environment makes that use case likewise highly unlikely.
As the iPhone already has multi-threading, even IM's and chatting can be handled without multitasking. They can be processed the same way as text messages (but perhaps without the preempting that happens). It's a matter of the OS being able to properly handle the incoming packets, and the application being able to smartly handle the incoming messages.
It is now. All of the "no" votes were from the UK and the Netherlands.
Several abstains from the UK, but mostly from Italy, with two from Greece and France each.
Various members from various countries (including those listed above) didn't vote.
Now we know where the copyright money is going. To be honest, I wasn't surprised by the strong support of ACTA from the UK. But I am a little surprised by the "no" votes from the Netherlands.
Just pick an easy-to-remember line from a book you like. Add extra punctuation and mix up the characters a bit to make things interesting.
There's probably natural selection at play here too. The useful proteins continue to replicate, while the useless or harmful ones die out.
Or perhaps one can say, all proteins are useful until they become unuseful.
Now that's one Bag of Crap I don't want from Woot.
It's a matter of convenience. Things would be harder, and progress would be a little slower. A very small minority of people would feel the adverse impact in any significant way and they'll have to learn to live with it, but most people will go back to their televisions and newspapers and radios.
But it isn't as if everybody's going to go hungry all of a sudden, or if man-made structures are going to collapse.
even though computers have made the total amount of labor output greater, we don't have a 4-hour workday.
Judging from the amount of people on Slashdot in the middle of the day, I would say that you are wrong.
Proving that internet search made the internet useful.
Google made the internet useful.