I grew up in rural Colorado, and every time I'm back there and I look at the nigh-endless pastureland, I think, "what the hell else do you use this land for???"
Before the Europeans came, much of the American West was empty grassland grazed by unbelievably large herds of buffalo and a few scattered tribes of Native Americans who scratched out a living from following them. With the Europeans came irrigation and we were able to support larger populations on the land and use it to grow things like corn and wheat, but if you want to talk about environmental destruction, it's that corn and wheat that has "damaged" the land. That land, left to its own devices would have always supported huge numbers of grazing animals. Now it supports lush crops as well.
Good beef is grass-fed, and that is still a large percentage of it. Unless they want to start eating buffalo grass, vegetarians aren't missing out on any potential meals.
The vast majority of this hippie nature bullshit comes from city kids who were shocked when someone at school told them that meat wasn't just some stuff you bought at the store, and that it used to have big brown eyes. People with little experience out of the city, telling rural people how to live their lives.
Cities are unsustainable. Not farms. (Full disclosure: I'm typing this from my apartment in Tokyo, one of the biggest and most unsustainable cities in the world! --And a nice place to live.)
Ouch. Yeah, I forgot about the "Stolen Generation." But, in my defense, weren't most of the problems there associated with the poor treatment of the children? Sexual abuse, etc?
What I really want to respond to, however, is this idea that we want to impose "our rules." The point I was making was that, as Westerners (assuming you're of European descent, but if you're not, please hear this out), we, too, used to live in such a culture as Africa has now. Then the Romans came and conquered us, set up large-scale government, and imposed their rules. And you know what? We benefitted greatly.
Furthermore, it isn't that these are simply "our rules." Why can East Asia play ball with the Western countries, even though they were caught off guard by the Industrial Revolution? Because, at the heart of these societies, is the same thing we got from the Romans: the understanding that at least some degree of large-scale, non-tribal, non-familial collectivism is the key to improving conditions for all the members of a society. They had to play technological catch-up, but the base was already there. The reason the European countries can work well with the East Asian countries is that, despite the fact we blather on about differences, they are very similar where it counts: They believe in society.
Really chronically poor countries do not have this component. They look to familial or tribal groups for group identity, and that is a recipe for constant warfare. And if you're in a war zone all the time, guess what? You never develop a middle class.
Again, to return to my cautiously pro-colonialism argument, I would like to point out that sub-Saharan Africa has basically never been a nice place to live. There has always been tribal warfare, and now, as you rightly point out, they have even better weapons. The problem isn't that things have changed; it is that they have stayed the same.
Interest free loans work? You're going to have to provide some references for that. I'm no expert, but based on the anecdotal evidence I've heard from colleagues who did their turns in the Peace Corps, etc., a lot of these people don't know what a loan is. They just take the money and buy whatever, and when the group comes back a year later for the money, they're like, "What money? The money you gave me? I used it. How can I give it back?" Giving money to poor people is like pouring water in a bucket with no bottom. If they understood how it worked, they wouldn't be poor (this is also why tax cuts for the rich are stupid, because rich people are people who don't have holes in their buckets, and the size of anyone's bucket is infinite!).
And finally, why would we provide other countries with free contraception, healthcare, and shelters, when we don't have them in our own (I am American, which means this is truer for me than most, but I know it's not that rosy in other countries as well)?
I'm actually serious. I don't believe in any kind of aid that is made of physical material. If you want to help people, you send books, you send teachers. You don't send rice and garbage.
A few reasons for this:
1) When you grow food and eat it, you poop those nutrients right back into your own ground. You send that to another country, and you are impoverishing your own.
2) Sending broken computers to vicious, fell people results in exactly this kind of thing. We want to believe that everyone has a kind of collective mentality, but most people on this earth are free-market all the way. And a totally free market is a murderous hellhole with a few fabulously wealthy people and the masses in abject poverty. That's a free market. Democratic capitalism is great because it utilizes that "free market" drive (aka greed) to effect positive social change. But it requires constraints to make it move in that direction. Once people see how well a social mindset plus greed works to improve the lives of all (and create a massive middle class, which is key to a functioning society), then they nurture that. They feel a part of something. They neither need nor want to smash people's heads in for a computer monitor full of poison. Most African countries haven't figured this out, and that's their problem--both as in "the problem they have" and "not our problem." We can't fix it, but it also seems we don't recognize that.
Why are the countries that are at the top of the heap at the top of the heap? Simple. We are better. I am absolutely serious. The cultures of Europe and Asia understand the power of a group mentality. They are on different points on that continuum, and that's fine. But we all have it.
Africa is what you get when you don't have that. Everyone is working randomly because they don't care about each other because they don't see that they are the same and that cooperation is the only way to success.
They think that other countries have become rich and comfortable because of luck. But we built this from the ground up--especially for those of us whose ancestors came from the dump known as the British Isles. Our ancestors were just like this until the Romans brought literacy and we saw the awesome power of working together outside of small collectives (Roman Empire).
The Brits got it. The African countries haven't.
This isn't to say they all don't get it, but the problem is that you need a substantial majority of people buying in before it works.
3) Last, handouts are not good for the human psyche. They keep you believing that you are not capable of doing something yourself. I firmly believe that every human being is as capable as any other (at something!), and it's simply a matter of finding that and having that be nurtured by one's surroundings. This is the problem with welfare as well. You walk a very narrow line between making sure you don't have people dying on the streets and cultivating a lawless and irresponsible culture that is not tied to personal achievement and responsibility. Give a man a computer monitor, and he'll smash it open on his neighbors head to get at the copper inside. Teach him to build one, and... Okay it doesn't work, but you see where I'm going.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Africa is a fucking mess. But no matter what the hippie-type liberals say, it's not because we like coffee and chocolate. It's 100% the fault of the local societies (or lack thereof). It's the fault of governments not working for the people, which is really just a function of the people not working for the people. And we can't help that.
I don't buy into any of this Fair Trade / don't buy diamonds / hippie bullshit. If other people can't run their countries right; if they can't even get organized enough to overthrow their dictators and/or plantation owners (or, rather, when they do, they then just devolve into infighting and become the same thing), then I can't do anything about
I really don't think we were talking about traffic stops here.
Here's the problem with traffic stops and the TSA--they aren't violating your rights by stopping you and giving you the 3rd degree, because having a license and riding an airplane are priviledges, not rights. The reason the TSA can search your bags is that that is the stipulation for riding on a private plane. If you don't like it, you are well within your rights to not ride the plane and use any number of other modes of transportation.
I am absolutely not defending the TSA, because in truth, I have stopped visiting my friends and family in the US (I live in Japan now) due in large part to the hassles of the TSA. They have done thousands of dollars of damage to my possessions (pretty easy when you're carrying a vintage guitar) without so much as an apology. I don't need the hassle.
In the case of a traffic stop, my lawyer advises just being cool with the cop. You don't need to be a dick until he asks to do something he doesn't have the right to do. Usually they are just going to give you a ticket or a warning or whatever. Once that transaction is complete, however, you are free to go. The cop is not afforded "lecture" time, though. If he or she starts doing that, that's when you bust out the "am I being detained?" business. But I've never been lectured. Usually they want to finish the thing as quickly as you do.
Oh, and whenever a cop does as he/she should and is professional and polite to me in a traffic stop, I tell them so. They are individuals. They need positive reinforcement. I really hate cops, but it's not personal. Personally, I think they need a little encouragement to act the way we want them to act: polite and professional, keeping us safe and helping us out when we need it. Even if you're in a "am I being detained" situation (I've never been in one), I think being polite is key. No one likes dealing with an irrational dick, and I think you should let them know this is just business.
As much as I hate Wal-Mart, I have to say that they have been using biodegradable bags for a very long time. Good thing, too, because those loonies will try to put every single item in its own bag if you're not careful.
Personally, I'd rather just see biodegradable "plastic" bags than anything else. My wife and I reuse all shopping bags as trash bags, and although paper is a nice idea and all, it is basically useless for that or any other bag purpose, because it's not waterproof.
Over here in Japan, they not only give you a million bags, but they are non-biodegradable. You can buy "eco-bags," but to be perfectly honest, I don't like them. They're synthetic canvas, so I imagine they're much worse for the environment, and they look like crap after about 6 months. Walking around with a filthy, scruffy canvas bag is not really... my style.
That said, it would probably be fine if everyone did it, but that's not going to happen unless they start charging for bags, and then we'd have to buy trash bags anyway.
NASA's success rate is extremely high? They've lost about 1 out of every 70 Shuttle launches, and that's manned spaceflight, with people getting killed when they fail.
I take offense to the assertion in the summary that the system is "flawed and therefore always needing more money." Last I checked, no one anywhere in the chain of command of any school district I've ever seen was exactly rolling in the dough. People do it for the love of it, not the money.
And that, my friends, is one of the problems.
There are a lot of dumb teachers in it to "make a difference," rather than, say, "teach algebra." Nice people. But they are unqualified. I spent most of my early education years thinking I was bad at math, when actually, I'm just not naturally good at it. The people who really rose to the top were the people who didn't really have to study to get it. Me, I benefit from teaching. Actual teaching, like, with a teacher who teaches. Not "do the 120 similar problems on pages 115 to 120; I'm gonna take a nap." When I got into college and begrudgingly took a required math course, it was actually a step down from trig, which was the last math course I'd taken in high school, but the content was actually a lot more in-depth than I'd done before. The teacher was wonderful--an old math PhD in semi-retirement--and opened the class with "I keep hearing this nonsense about 'math phobia.' People aren't afraid of math; they've just had bad math classes." And he was right. The class was fun and engaging and I honestly enjoyed it. For the first time ever I wasn't just regurgitating and getting a so-so grade; I was really getting it and getting an A.
Now, 13 years later, I am one of the guys the other researchers pay to do their stats for them.
That guy had both the love and the skills. They aren't mutually exclusive. But they also don't come for free.
In the US education system, it's entirely possible not to get any really good teachers until you get to university. That is also where the jobs start to really pay (that's the level I work at--I've also worked in K-12, but that's a lot of work for very little money--more on that later). Coincidence? I don't think so.
Before I go into K-12, let me preface this by saying that despite the fact that we in the US were told all through the 80s that our schools were bad because we didn't have the standardized test scores of Japan, and despite the fact that I write standardized tests, test scores are a terrible way to judge an entire program. I suspect that Bush's No Child Left Behind nonsense has taken the good parts of the US education system and replaced them with the terrible parts of the Japanese education system. Seriously, walk around Japan (I live here) and just ask people really simple science questions like, for example, how does an internal combustion engine work? They will have no idea. How may planets? No idea. It's worse, I think, than the US. They just passed tests. They don't have any active knowledge at all. So what I'm saying is that I think that my education really wasn't that bad. My friends who are in K-12 now (and may or may not be dumb, let's be honest) know this, but have to lead cramming sessions for tests instead of teaching.
The K-12 system has many problems, but here's a biggie: know-it-all parents. Now, if I had kids, I know I'd be one of them. But we are in a state now where teachers are not allowed to be human--despite the fact that that is their entire job, really--people can get information from a book. They aren't allowed to get angry. They aren't allowed to hug a child. Children cannot be disciplined. When I was a kid, if you were really out of line, you got a paddling from the principal. This is a lot more like real life. But when we put the kids in this weird system where adults exist to serve the kids and mommy can have teacher fired, the teachers just kind of switch off and keep their heads down.
Teaching is an inherently social act. A classroom is a social construct. If we don't let it operate in an organic, realistic manner, we lose the benefits of having it at all. We could get the same
I am perfectly capable of making a Hackintosh. I've been building my own Windows and a couple Linux systems for 10 years. I used to have a small business as a whitebox builder.
When building for myself, I build quality. I use top-notch parts, and I don't skimp on the silent cooling or the quality of the case.
You know what? That stuff is expensive.
When I decided to switch to the Mac full-time a few months ago, I thought about building a Hackintosh, but by the time I had my parts list down, I was nearing $2000 in parts. And even that wasn't at the quality of the Mac Pro. I decided that giving Apple the extra $1000 wasn't that much, considering I was also getting support, a warranty, guaranteed software updates, and phenomenal build quality (you should get inside one of these Mac Pros sometime--just polished). I decided that all the stuff that isn't measured in speed or gigabytes was also worth money, just as I had decided with my PCs.
I would still like to build a Hackintosh for fun, but not as a main computer. In fact, that's why I'm irritated with these "clone" companies. Apple is going to have to lock things down and that is going to hurt Mac owners and the hobbyists. If you hack something together for cheap, you don't complain if it doesn't work right. But these companies are making that their business model, and it's not good for anyone.
Even though I'd be the first to agree that the Mini is overpriced for the specs, remember that it is a tiny computer. It's smaller than a laptop. It's point is to be small. I was looking at mini-ITX systems a couple weeks ago, because I kinda want to put one in my living room and replace the solution I have in there now. I was dismayed by the prices, to be honest. It would be really, really easy to hit that $600 in parts very quickly, and then you'd have to put it together and install the OS and make it work. "Hell," I thought, "for that I might as well just get a Mini and be done with it."
So, to return to the GP, yes, people do pay for the whole package. A good, quiet case is not free (on the contrary, it's quite expensive--I added it up and I had almost $1000 of silent/quiet case parts in my last PC). Support is not free. OSX is not free. Given the "whole package," the Apple deal is more expensive than some whirring piece of plastic shit from Dell that runs Vista (gag), but, in my estimation, even as a geek and system builder, it is worth the money.
If it's not worth it for some people, that's fine. They can try to hack something together that runs OSX, or they can get a Dell, or a million other options. Apple is a hardware company. In fact, let's be honest: it's a luxury hardware company. That's all they've ever wanted to be, and they do a nice job at it. It really is a "whole package" kind of thing.
All lofty philosophical aims fall apart when you enlist cops to help you pursue them. Cops are not philosophers. They're psychopaths.
I often tell my students over here in Japan that it's not the criminals you have to watch out for in most parts of the US, it's the cops. I've never had a criminal pull a gun on me, but twice I've had cops do it. Both times were traffic stops. I never figured out what I did to deserve looking down the barrel of my own demise. I'm always very polite to cops. Because they're fucking lunatics with guns.
Giving more tools to law enforcement is always a bad idea. They love tools.
Keynote is a godsend, but Pages, though nice, suffers from the same reason I couldn't go OO.o in my Windows days: Table support is abysmal. They are so hard to work with. ONLY Microsoft has gotten this right.
And Numbers?
See, a spreadsheet is a machine. It's not a document. 100% of the terrible spreadsheets I've cursed in my life have been the ones formatted to look good when printed, instead of being a machine that displays and manipulates data, mostly numbers. When I open a spreadsheet, I want to see an entire screen full of boxes. Boxes completely empty, save for the potential they are brimming over with.
Excel and Word are still must-haves, as far as I'm concerned, and actually, now that MS has stripped VB support out of Excel on the Mac, I even find that I run 2003 under Fusion. When things are good, they're good, even if the company that produces them pisses you off.
Okay, that goes at least as much for Apple as well. It'd be so much easier to hate them if OSX weren't so much better than Windows or Linux (ducking now...).
Oh, right... I made reasoned arguments against Linux in another thread and now someone's gone through and modded all my shit down... It's been awhile...
Apt-get, synaptic and the like are nice, but it's not exactly easy to find stuff in there and more importantly, separate out the meaningful stuff from the other junk.
--Or even what you're looking for. Every time there's a Linux app I want to try out, I spend a bunch of time trying to figure out what repository it's on, how to make sure Ubuntu is looking there, still not having it install right, reading some more badly-written manpages and forum-postings, then maybe getting the thing installed, only to find out that some free Windows or Mac program does more faster and better.
Installing software on Linux is a goddamned pain. Why can't I just download an installer and run it? It could check for prerequisites and pull them itself.
We all know why.
It's because the Comic Book Guys who designed the various distros don't agree with each other on how to do things, or even if they should be done, or whether they want more Linux adoption or they want to curse and vex the stupid n00bs who dare to taint their precious toy OS with their interest...
I can set up an Ubuntu box to do most of what someone wants. But once I give it to them, I have to change my phone number, because they will never, ever be able to change something on that machine. And they won't know anyone else to ask.
"fix it now" commercial software is nothing trivial and for software that
really has that sort of support available for it you will pay a kings
randsom for it.
Wow, kings must be going cheap these days because ransom for the king I was talking about is a whopping $799 a year, which includes frequent program and database updates.
Insurance adjuster at your door? There's a pretty good chance he's processing your claim with this software when he gets back. I don't have any numbers handy, but I think I heard that insurance companies sometimes even turn a profit... or maybe it was that they are some of the largest and most powerful companies on the planet... Maybe both. I can't be certain.
So yeah, I'm not talking about software for an HP server. I'm talking about applications that make non-IT industries run.
You do understand that there are other industries than IT, right? 'Cause most of your comments imply otherwise.
Those things that run Windows. Those are the real toys. Always have been.
That's why MCSEs can't find jobs, right? That's why I've never, ever, worked at a place that wasn't running a Windows Server network (this includes a huge IT company that specializes in *NIX systems!)? That's why, when you're looking for a job outside of the server room, facility with MS Office is mandatory? That's why, with the exception of SPSS, every industry-standard statistical research package I use is Windows-only?
Seriously, get off it. Linux is server software, and toy desktop software. That will not change until MS releases Office for Linux, and that isn't going to happen.
Don't misunderstand; I'm not saying Linux is bad. I'm saying that Linux, as a platform, does not meet most people's needs. It is cool, it is fun, and I wish it well. But that isn't enough to make it a viable platform for the sectors in which it hasn't already taken root. Scoff if you will, but business owners most certainly do want "someone to blame." Hell, even on my computer, I like having someone to blame (it's all Apple's fault these days!). That's business, like it or not.
I certainly hope you never have to find a job outside of your comfort zone. Your head might just asplode.
I haven't gotten into a Linux fight around here for awhile, because I've said all I have to say on the subject, but basically, this is it.
Businesses need specific software, not free hobbyist knockoffs. "It's almost as good, and it's free!" does not really impress business owners, who write off business expenses as the cost of doing business. Fiddling around with stuff they aren't 100% on is not really what they want to do. I say this from experience of setting up my parents' business. They want--they need--whatever everyone else in the business is running. And it doesn't run on Linux. It doesn't even run on the Mac. It runs on Windows.
And you just nail it with the "anyone can support it" comment. I'm a geek, and I find FOSS "support" to be a giant, frustrating time sink. Reading manpages written by people far above your level of competency with the OS or the software package, and who isn't a technical writer by trade, and who probably flunked freshman comp in college, is not what most people have in mind when they say "support."
Neither do they have in mind posting on a forum and waiting a few days to get 100 messages with a handful of people actually trying to help--but with totally different advice--a bunch of people calling you a n00b, and the rest just the helpful people and the rude people fighting. That isn't support. That's a waste of time.
No, when a business owner says "support," he/she means "someone I can call who can fix it now."
When something goes wrong with some of the enterprise software my dad uses, I call the company, talk to one of the guys who wrote it, and he tells me how to fix it. Five minutes on the phone, and the company is back to making money. Even if a FOSS equivalent existed, which it doesn't and which it won't, you wouldn't be looking at 5 minutes of downtime. You could easily be looking at 5 days. That is simply not acceptable.
Linux is a toy. Linux is a religion. Linux is a lifestyle. What it is not, however, is an OS for the vast, vast majority of computer users out there. Not by a long shot.
Mine are brand new, major-brand (Toshiba, Panasonic), and they are dim as hell when I turn them on. Whenever these things come up on Slashdot, tons of people talk about how "CFLs don't [insert complaint here] anymore." But I have begun suspecting that they do, but some people just don't notice or care.
It's like people talking about how quiet Macs are. I can hear mine, which means it's not quiet. I couldn't hear the silent PC I built. I am totally open to the idea that I'm just being picky, but for me, CFLs just plain do not satisfy.
I've also seen no drop in my electricity bill.
The only thing I'll give them is that they are a lot cooler (temperature) than incandescents, so I've taken to installing them in the summer, and switching to incandescents in the winter. I can put up with their inherent suckitude for about 4 months of the year, and that's it.
Yes, I know that this is sentencing, and there's a lot of leeway there. But my point still stands because--
Here's the thing: Jail is expensive. It costs all of us. Two years of jail for a traffic accident is excessive, even if that accident happened under the influence. Take his license away, put him on probation, whatever. But throwing him in JAIL for 24 MONTHS is a total waste of time and money. It helps no one. It just gets the judge's and the DA's and the cops' rocks off.
I grew up in an insurance adjuster's office (as in, the office is attached to the home). I have watched, in my lifetime, traffic accidents go from tragedies to crimes. I've met these "monsters" who "cause" terrible accidents. They're normal people.
We maneuver these giant hunks of glass and steel at high rates of speed through narrow corridors full of other fast hunks of glass and steel, and there are more of those hunks every day. Accidents are going to happen. Furthermore, no one is a perfect driver all the time; it is entirely possible that you will be the cause of a terrible accident. And increasingly, if someone dies in an accident, the person who fucked up will be charged with homicide. Whereas in the old days you might get your license yanked for a long time or even forever, you are now looking at hard time alongside people who actually woke up one day and decided to murder someone.
It is insane.
Of course, drunk driving is a little (but not as much as people think) different. He should have known he was impaired and he shouldn't have been driving. But you know what? He was impaired. He didn't get up that morning and think, "I'm gonna go out, get my drink on, and drive my car into some shit. I hope someone goes to the hospital, too!" It was an accident. It was his fault; he was negligent, but it was an accident.
Two years of jail on the public dime is excessive for an accident, especially one that didn't even have a fatality.
Likelihood of recidivism? Repentance? Social utility? There is nothing about going to a party and making a self-deprecating joke that comments on any of this. Is he supposed to never drink again? No. He's supposed to never drive again. Is he supposed to never have fun again? See his friends again?
I stand by every word I wrote. This is excessive. Pictures of him at a party do not communicate anything other than "hi, I'm a DA and I want to lock this kid up to fuel my male-male rape fantasies." They are moments in time. They are indicative of nothing.
It's shit like this that makes me want to become a defense lawyer. Fuck this prosecutor. The case needs to stand on what happened, not on the defendant's sense of humor.
I can totally see myself making light of something terrible like that. It's a coping strategy. It doesn't mean that I don't feel remorse, but what the hell? Am I supposed to sit around for the rest of my life feeling sorry? Whose business is it but my own how I handle things emotionally? It would be one thing if the guy then got in a car and drove drunk after that Halloween party, but that's not what he did. He went to the party, and he wore a costume the jackass DA didn't like.
DAs are vermin, along with the cops. You can't incentivize throwing people in jail and have a working society. The US has 1% of its population behind bars because of this kind of theatrical bullshit.
However, this is one of the problems with more photos being taken these days. You do anything, and someone has a picture of it. All of us are cretins; we just don't realize it until we see the pics.
Me too. Intel Mac + VMware Fusion = Everything in one box. At the same time. Actually working right.
Also, for stats, most of the tools are Windows-only. Some people will now come on and say otherwise and point to stuff I've never heard of or seen referenced in a paper, but I'll stand my ground there.
Gotcher back here. I am a bit of an anti-Linux troll 'round here (I like to think of myself as a Linux realist), but the last Ubuntu install I did was 23 minutes from unpartitioned HDD to fully-functional system. That is shit-hot.
OSX seems to take forever to install, but when it's in, it's already usable.
Windows is just the absolute worst for install/set-up time. Just the worst.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you thank you thank you.
I grew up in rural Colorado, and every time I'm back there and I look at the nigh-endless pastureland, I think, "what the hell else do you use this land for???"
Before the Europeans came, much of the American West was empty grassland grazed by unbelievably large herds of buffalo and a few scattered tribes of Native Americans who scratched out a living from following them. With the Europeans came irrigation and we were able to support larger populations on the land and use it to grow things like corn and wheat, but if you want to talk about environmental destruction, it's that corn and wheat that has "damaged" the land. That land, left to its own devices would have always supported huge numbers of grazing animals. Now it supports lush crops as well.
Good beef is grass-fed, and that is still a large percentage of it. Unless they want to start eating buffalo grass, vegetarians aren't missing out on any potential meals.
The vast majority of this hippie nature bullshit comes from city kids who were shocked when someone at school told them that meat wasn't just some stuff you bought at the store, and that it used to have big brown eyes. People with little experience out of the city, telling rural people how to live their lives.
Cities are unsustainable. Not farms. (Full disclosure: I'm typing this from my apartment in Tokyo, one of the biggest and most unsustainable cities in the world! --And a nice place to live.)
Ouch. Yeah, I forgot about the "Stolen Generation." But, in my defense, weren't most of the problems there associated with the poor treatment of the children? Sexual abuse, etc?
What I really want to respond to, however, is this idea that we want to impose "our rules." The point I was making was that, as Westerners (assuming you're of European descent, but if you're not, please hear this out), we, too, used to live in such a culture as Africa has now. Then the Romans came and conquered us, set up large-scale government, and imposed their rules. And you know what? We benefitted greatly.
Furthermore, it isn't that these are simply "our rules." Why can East Asia play ball with the Western countries, even though they were caught off guard by the Industrial Revolution? Because, at the heart of these societies, is the same thing we got from the Romans: the understanding that at least some degree of large-scale, non-tribal, non-familial collectivism is the key to improving conditions for all the members of a society. They had to play technological catch-up, but the base was already there. The reason the European countries can work well with the East Asian countries is that, despite the fact we blather on about differences, they are very similar where it counts: They believe in society.
Really chronically poor countries do not have this component. They look to familial or tribal groups for group identity, and that is a recipe for constant warfare. And if you're in a war zone all the time, guess what? You never develop a middle class.
Again, to return to my cautiously pro-colonialism argument, I would like to point out that sub-Saharan Africa has basically never been a nice place to live. There has always been tribal warfare, and now, as you rightly point out, they have even better weapons. The problem isn't that things have changed; it is that they have stayed the same.
Interest free loans work? You're going to have to provide some references for that. I'm no expert, but based on the anecdotal evidence I've heard from colleagues who did their turns in the Peace Corps, etc., a lot of these people don't know what a loan is. They just take the money and buy whatever, and when the group comes back a year later for the money, they're like, "What money? The money you gave me? I used it. How can I give it back?" Giving money to poor people is like pouring water in a bucket with no bottom. If they understood how it worked, they wouldn't be poor (this is also why tax cuts for the rich are stupid, because rich people are people who don't have holes in their buckets, and the size of anyone's bucket is infinite!).
And finally, why would we provide other countries with free contraception, healthcare, and shelters, when we don't have them in our own (I am American, which means this is truer for me than most, but I know it's not that rosy in other countries as well)?
I'm actually serious. I don't believe in any kind of aid that is made of physical material. If you want to help people, you send books, you send teachers. You don't send rice and garbage.
A few reasons for this:
1) When you grow food and eat it, you poop those nutrients right back into your own ground. You send that to another country, and you are impoverishing your own.
2) Sending broken computers to vicious, fell people results in exactly this kind of thing. We want to believe that everyone has a kind of collective mentality, but most people on this earth are free-market all the way. And a totally free market is a murderous hellhole with a few fabulously wealthy people and the masses in abject poverty. That's a free market. Democratic capitalism is great because it utilizes that "free market" drive (aka greed) to effect positive social change. But it requires constraints to make it move in that direction. Once people see how well a social mindset plus greed works to improve the lives of all (and create a massive middle class, which is key to a functioning society), then they nurture that. They feel a part of something. They neither need nor want to smash people's heads in for a computer monitor full of poison. Most African countries haven't figured this out, and that's their problem--both as in "the problem they have" and "not our problem." We can't fix it, but it also seems we don't recognize that.
Why are the countries that are at the top of the heap at the top of the heap? Simple. We are better. I am absolutely serious. The cultures of Europe and Asia understand the power of a group mentality. They are on different points on that continuum, and that's fine. But we all have it.
Africa is what you get when you don't have that. Everyone is working randomly because they don't care about each other because they don't see that they are the same and that cooperation is the only way to success.
They think that other countries have become rich and comfortable because of luck. But we built this from the ground up--especially for those of us whose ancestors came from the dump known as the British Isles. Our ancestors were just like this until the Romans brought literacy and we saw the awesome power of working together outside of small collectives (Roman Empire).
The Brits got it. The African countries haven't.
This isn't to say they all don't get it, but the problem is that you need a substantial majority of people buying in before it works.
3) Last, handouts are not good for the human psyche. They keep you believing that you are not capable of doing something yourself. I firmly believe that every human being is as capable as any other (at something!), and it's simply a matter of finding that and having that be nurtured by one's surroundings. This is the problem with welfare as well. You walk a very narrow line between making sure you don't have people dying on the streets and cultivating a lawless and irresponsible culture that is not tied to personal achievement and responsibility. Give a man a computer monitor, and he'll smash it open on his neighbors head to get at the copper inside. Teach him to build one, and... Okay it doesn't work, but you see where I'm going.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Africa is a fucking mess. But no matter what the hippie-type liberals say, it's not because we like coffee and chocolate. It's 100% the fault of the local societies (or lack thereof). It's the fault of governments not working for the people, which is really just a function of the people not working for the people. And we can't help that.
I don't buy into any of this Fair Trade / don't buy diamonds / hippie bullshit. If other people can't run their countries right; if they can't even get organized enough to overthrow their dictators and/or plantation owners (or, rather, when they do, they then just devolve into infighting and become the same thing), then I can't do anything about
I really don't think we were talking about traffic stops here.
Here's the problem with traffic stops and the TSA--they aren't violating your rights by stopping you and giving you the 3rd degree, because having a license and riding an airplane are priviledges, not rights. The reason the TSA can search your bags is that that is the stipulation for riding on a private plane. If you don't like it, you are well within your rights to not ride the plane and use any number of other modes of transportation.
I am absolutely not defending the TSA, because in truth, I have stopped visiting my friends and family in the US (I live in Japan now) due in large part to the hassles of the TSA. They have done thousands of dollars of damage to my possessions (pretty easy when you're carrying a vintage guitar) without so much as an apology. I don't need the hassle.
In the case of a traffic stop, my lawyer advises just being cool with the cop. You don't need to be a dick until he asks to do something he doesn't have the right to do. Usually they are just going to give you a ticket or a warning or whatever. Once that transaction is complete, however, you are free to go. The cop is not afforded "lecture" time, though. If he or she starts doing that, that's when you bust out the "am I being detained?" business. But I've never been lectured. Usually they want to finish the thing as quickly as you do.
Oh, and whenever a cop does as he/she should and is professional and polite to me in a traffic stop, I tell them so. They are individuals. They need positive reinforcement. I really hate cops, but it's not personal. Personally, I think they need a little encouragement to act the way we want them to act: polite and professional, keeping us safe and helping us out when we need it. Even if you're in a "am I being detained" situation (I've never been in one), I think being polite is key. No one likes dealing with an irrational dick, and I think you should let them know this is just business.
100 years isn't a long time. Hell, they just pulled some over-100-year-old Levi's out of a mine, which appear to be totally wearable.
As much as I hate Wal-Mart, I have to say that they have been using biodegradable bags for a very long time. Good thing, too, because those loonies will try to put every single item in its own bag if you're not careful.
Personally, I'd rather just see biodegradable "plastic" bags than anything else. My wife and I reuse all shopping bags as trash bags, and although paper is a nice idea and all, it is basically useless for that or any other bag purpose, because it's not waterproof.
Over here in Japan, they not only give you a million bags, but they are non-biodegradable. You can buy "eco-bags," but to be perfectly honest, I don't like them. They're synthetic canvas, so I imagine they're much worse for the environment, and they look like crap after about 6 months. Walking around with a filthy, scruffy canvas bag is not really... my style.
That said, it would probably be fine if everyone did it, but that's not going to happen unless they start charging for bags, and then we'd have to buy trash bags anyway.
Biodegradable shopping bags, please!
Yeah, I know, comparing the US national space agency to the only other major one on the planet was kinda out of left field. Apologies.
NASA's success rate is extremely high? They've lost about 1 out of every 70 Shuttle launches, and that's manned spaceflight, with people getting killed when they fail.
... in comparison to the success rate of the Soviet program ...
#3 - Find a local swimming pool, strap on a pair of rollerblades, get a bicycle.
I don't know what sport you're describing there, but it sounds pretty sweet.
I take offense to the assertion in the summary that the system is "flawed and therefore always needing more money." Last I checked, no one anywhere in the chain of command of any school district I've ever seen was exactly rolling in the dough. People do it for the love of it, not the money.
And that, my friends, is one of the problems.
There are a lot of dumb teachers in it to "make a difference," rather than, say, "teach algebra." Nice people. But they are unqualified. I spent most of my early education years thinking I was bad at math, when actually, I'm just not naturally good at it. The people who really rose to the top were the people who didn't really have to study to get it. Me, I benefit from teaching. Actual teaching, like, with a teacher who teaches. Not "do the 120 similar problems on pages 115 to 120; I'm gonna take a nap." When I got into college and begrudgingly took a required math course, it was actually a step down from trig, which was the last math course I'd taken in high school, but the content was actually a lot more in-depth than I'd done before. The teacher was wonderful--an old math PhD in semi-retirement--and opened the class with "I keep hearing this nonsense about 'math phobia.' People aren't afraid of math; they've just had bad math classes." And he was right. The class was fun and engaging and I honestly enjoyed it. For the first time ever I wasn't just regurgitating and getting a so-so grade; I was really getting it and getting an A.
Now, 13 years later, I am one of the guys the other researchers pay to do their stats for them.
That guy had both the love and the skills. They aren't mutually exclusive. But they also don't come for free.
In the US education system, it's entirely possible not to get any really good teachers until you get to university. That is also where the jobs start to really pay (that's the level I work at--I've also worked in K-12, but that's a lot of work for very little money--more on that later). Coincidence? I don't think so.
Before I go into K-12, let me preface this by saying that despite the fact that we in the US were told all through the 80s that our schools were bad because we didn't have the standardized test scores of Japan, and despite the fact that I write standardized tests, test scores are a terrible way to judge an entire program. I suspect that Bush's No Child Left Behind nonsense has taken the good parts of the US education system and replaced them with the terrible parts of the Japanese education system. Seriously, walk around Japan (I live here) and just ask people really simple science questions like, for example, how does an internal combustion engine work? They will have no idea. How may planets? No idea. It's worse, I think, than the US. They just passed tests. They don't have any active knowledge at all. So what I'm saying is that I think that my education really wasn't that bad. My friends who are in K-12 now (and may or may not be dumb, let's be honest) know this, but have to lead cramming sessions for tests instead of teaching.
The K-12 system has many problems, but here's a biggie: know-it-all parents. Now, if I had kids, I know I'd be one of them. But we are in a state now where teachers are not allowed to be human--despite the fact that that is their entire job, really--people can get information from a book. They aren't allowed to get angry. They aren't allowed to hug a child. Children cannot be disciplined. When I was a kid, if you were really out of line, you got a paddling from the principal. This is a lot more like real life. But when we put the kids in this weird system where adults exist to serve the kids and mommy can have teacher fired, the teachers just kind of switch off and keep their heads down.
Teaching is an inherently social act. A classroom is a social construct. If we don't let it operate in an organic, realistic manner, we lose the benefits of having it at all. We could get the same
I'm pretty sure I've read this exact same comment before. You must have written it, I think.
Jobs introduces all the engineers that made X, Y, or Z happen at the end of every talk.
That's the reply you got from someone else last time, too.
I just kinda want to reply to this sentiment.
I am perfectly capable of making a Hackintosh. I've been building my own Windows and a couple Linux systems for 10 years. I used to have a small business as a whitebox builder.
When building for myself, I build quality. I use top-notch parts, and I don't skimp on the silent cooling or the quality of the case.
You know what? That stuff is expensive.
When I decided to switch to the Mac full-time a few months ago, I thought about building a Hackintosh, but by the time I had my parts list down, I was nearing $2000 in parts. And even that wasn't at the quality of the Mac Pro. I decided that giving Apple the extra $1000 wasn't that much, considering I was also getting support, a warranty, guaranteed software updates, and phenomenal build quality (you should get inside one of these Mac Pros sometime--just polished). I decided that all the stuff that isn't measured in speed or gigabytes was also worth money, just as I had decided with my PCs.
I would still like to build a Hackintosh for fun, but not as a main computer. In fact, that's why I'm irritated with these "clone" companies. Apple is going to have to lock things down and that is going to hurt Mac owners and the hobbyists. If you hack something together for cheap, you don't complain if it doesn't work right. But these companies are making that their business model, and it's not good for anyone.
Even though I'd be the first to agree that the Mini is overpriced for the specs, remember that it is a tiny computer. It's smaller than a laptop. It's point is to be small. I was looking at mini-ITX systems a couple weeks ago, because I kinda want to put one in my living room and replace the solution I have in there now. I was dismayed by the prices, to be honest. It would be really, really easy to hit that $600 in parts very quickly, and then you'd have to put it together and install the OS and make it work. "Hell," I thought, "for that I might as well just get a Mini and be done with it."
So, to return to the GP, yes, people do pay for the whole package. A good, quiet case is not free (on the contrary, it's quite expensive--I added it up and I had almost $1000 of silent/quiet case parts in my last PC). Support is not free. OSX is not free. Given the "whole package," the Apple deal is more expensive than some whirring piece of plastic shit from Dell that runs Vista (gag), but, in my estimation, even as a geek and system builder, it is worth the money.
If it's not worth it for some people, that's fine. They can try to hack something together that runs OSX, or they can get a Dell, or a million other options. Apple is a hardware company. In fact, let's be honest: it's a luxury hardware company. That's all they've ever wanted to be, and they do a nice job at it. It really is a "whole package" kind of thing.
All lofty philosophical aims fall apart when you enlist cops to help you pursue them. Cops are not philosophers. They're psychopaths.
I often tell my students over here in Japan that it's not the criminals you have to watch out for in most parts of the US, it's the cops. I've never had a criminal pull a gun on me, but twice I've had cops do it. Both times were traffic stops. I never figured out what I did to deserve looking down the barrel of my own demise. I'm always very polite to cops. Because they're fucking lunatics with guns.
Giving more tools to law enforcement is always a bad idea. They love tools.
Keynote is a godsend, but Pages, though nice, suffers from the same reason I couldn't go OO.o in my Windows days: Table support is abysmal. They are so hard to work with. ONLY Microsoft has gotten this right.
And Numbers?
See, a spreadsheet is a machine. It's not a document. 100% of the terrible spreadsheets I've cursed in my life have been the ones formatted to look good when printed, instead of being a machine that displays and manipulates data, mostly numbers. When I open a spreadsheet, I want to see an entire screen full of boxes. Boxes completely empty, save for the potential they are brimming over with.
Excel and Word are still must-haves, as far as I'm concerned, and actually, now that MS has stripped VB support out of Excel on the Mac, I even find that I run 2003 under Fusion. When things are good, they're good, even if the company that produces them pisses you off.
Okay, that goes at least as much for Apple as well. It'd be so much easier to hate them if OSX weren't so much better than Windows or Linux (ducking now...).
Yeah, but who needs flash video with sound when you have conf files to edit?
How is this a troll???
Oh, right... I made reasoned arguments against Linux in another thread and now someone's gone through and modded all my shit down... It's been awhile...
Apt-get, synaptic and the like are nice, but it's not exactly easy to find stuff in there and more importantly, separate out the meaningful stuff from the other junk.
--Or even what you're looking for. Every time there's a Linux app I want to try out, I spend a bunch of time trying to figure out what repository it's on, how to make sure Ubuntu is looking there, still not having it install right, reading some more badly-written manpages and forum-postings, then maybe getting the thing installed, only to find out that some free Windows or Mac program does more faster and better.
Installing software on Linux is a goddamned pain. Why can't I just download an installer and run it? It could check for prerequisites and pull them itself.
We all know why.
It's because the Comic Book Guys who designed the various distros don't agree with each other on how to do things, or even if they should be done, or whether they want more Linux adoption or they want to curse and vex the stupid n00bs who dare to taint their precious toy OS with their interest...
I can set up an Ubuntu box to do most of what someone wants. But once I give it to them, I have to change my phone number, because they will never, ever be able to change something on that machine. And they won't know anyone else to ask.
Network effects are a bitch, but there you go.
"fix it now" commercial software is nothing trivial and for software that really has that sort of support available for it you will pay a kings randsom for it.
Wow, kings must be going cheap these days because ransom for the king I was talking about is a whopping $799 a year, which includes frequent program and database updates.
Insurance adjuster at your door? There's a pretty good chance he's processing your claim with this software when he gets back. I don't have any numbers handy, but I think I heard that insurance companies sometimes even turn a profit... or maybe it was that they are some of the largest and most powerful companies on the planet... Maybe both. I can't be certain.
So yeah, I'm not talking about software for an HP server. I'm talking about applications that make non-IT industries run.
You do understand that there are other industries than IT, right? 'Cause most of your comments imply otherwise.
Those things that run Windows. Those are the real toys. Always have been.
That's why MCSEs can't find jobs, right? That's why I've never, ever, worked at a place that wasn't running a Windows Server network (this includes a huge IT company that specializes in *NIX systems!)? That's why, when you're looking for a job outside of the server room, facility with MS Office is mandatory? That's why, with the exception of SPSS, every industry-standard statistical research package I use is Windows-only?
Seriously, get off it. Linux is server software, and toy desktop software. That will not change until MS releases Office for Linux, and that isn't going to happen.
Don't misunderstand; I'm not saying Linux is bad. I'm saying that Linux, as a platform, does not meet most people's needs. It is cool, it is fun, and I wish it well. But that isn't enough to make it a viable platform for the sectors in which it hasn't already taken root. Scoff if you will, but business owners most certainly do want "someone to blame." Hell, even on my computer, I like having someone to blame (it's all Apple's fault these days!). That's business, like it or not.
I certainly hope you never have to find a job outside of your comfort zone. Your head might just asplode.
Yes.
I haven't gotten into a Linux fight around here for awhile, because I've said all I have to say on the subject, but basically, this is it.
Businesses need specific software, not free hobbyist knockoffs. "It's almost as good, and it's free!" does not really impress business owners, who write off business expenses as the cost of doing business. Fiddling around with stuff they aren't 100% on is not really what they want to do. I say this from experience of setting up my parents' business. They want--they need--whatever everyone else in the business is running. And it doesn't run on Linux. It doesn't even run on the Mac. It runs on Windows.
And you just nail it with the "anyone can support it" comment. I'm a geek, and I find FOSS "support" to be a giant, frustrating time sink. Reading manpages written by people far above your level of competency with the OS or the software package, and who isn't a technical writer by trade, and who probably flunked freshman comp in college, is not what most people have in mind when they say "support."
Neither do they have in mind posting on a forum and waiting a few days to get 100 messages with a handful of people actually trying to help--but with totally different advice--a bunch of people calling you a n00b, and the rest just the helpful people and the rude people fighting. That isn't support. That's a waste of time.
No, when a business owner says "support," he/she means "someone I can call who can fix it now."
When something goes wrong with some of the enterprise software my dad uses, I call the company, talk to one of the guys who wrote it, and he tells me how to fix it. Five minutes on the phone, and the company is back to making money. Even if a FOSS equivalent existed, which it doesn't and which it won't, you wouldn't be looking at 5 minutes of downtime. You could easily be looking at 5 days. That is simply not acceptable.
Linux is a toy. Linux is a religion. Linux is a lifestyle. What it is not, however, is an OS for the vast, vast majority of computer users out there. Not by a long shot.
God bless you. Proof positive that CFLs do, in fact, look like shit. I ought to put that second one in my sig.
Mine are brand new, major-brand (Toshiba, Panasonic), and they are dim as hell when I turn them on. Whenever these things come up on Slashdot, tons of people talk about how "CFLs don't [insert complaint here] anymore." But I have begun suspecting that they do, but some people just don't notice or care.
It's like people talking about how quiet Macs are. I can hear mine, which means it's not quiet. I couldn't hear the silent PC I built. I am totally open to the idea that I'm just being picky, but for me, CFLs just plain do not satisfy.
I've also seen no drop in my electricity bill.
The only thing I'll give them is that they are a lot cooler (temperature) than incandescents, so I've taken to installing them in the summer, and switching to incandescents in the winter. I can put up with their inherent suckitude for about 4 months of the year, and that's it.
Yes, I know that this is sentencing, and there's a lot of leeway there. But my point still stands because--
Here's the thing: Jail is expensive. It costs all of us. Two years of jail for a traffic accident is excessive, even if that accident happened under the influence. Take his license away, put him on probation, whatever. But throwing him in JAIL for 24 MONTHS is a total waste of time and money. It helps no one. It just gets the judge's and the DA's and the cops' rocks off.
I grew up in an insurance adjuster's office (as in, the office is attached to the home). I have watched, in my lifetime, traffic accidents go from tragedies to crimes. I've met these "monsters" who "cause" terrible accidents. They're normal people.
We maneuver these giant hunks of glass and steel at high rates of speed through narrow corridors full of other fast hunks of glass and steel, and there are more of those hunks every day. Accidents are going to happen. Furthermore, no one is a perfect driver all the time; it is entirely possible that you will be the cause of a terrible accident. And increasingly, if someone dies in an accident, the person who fucked up will be charged with homicide. Whereas in the old days you might get your license yanked for a long time or even forever, you are now looking at hard time alongside people who actually woke up one day and decided to murder someone.
It is insane.
Of course, drunk driving is a little (but not as much as people think) different. He should have known he was impaired and he shouldn't have been driving. But you know what? He was impaired. He didn't get up that morning and think, "I'm gonna go out, get my drink on, and drive my car into some shit. I hope someone goes to the hospital, too!" It was an accident. It was his fault; he was negligent, but it was an accident.
Two years of jail on the public dime is excessive for an accident, especially one that didn't even have a fatality.
Likelihood of recidivism? Repentance? Social utility? There is nothing about going to a party and making a self-deprecating joke that comments on any of this. Is he supposed to never drink again? No. He's supposed to never drive again. Is he supposed to never have fun again? See his friends again?
I stand by every word I wrote. This is excessive. Pictures of him at a party do not communicate anything other than "hi, I'm a DA and I want to lock this kid up to fuel my male-male rape fantasies." They are moments in time. They are indicative of nothing.
It's shit like this that makes me want to become a defense lawyer. Fuck this prosecutor. The case needs to stand on what happened, not on the defendant's sense of humor.
I can totally see myself making light of something terrible like that. It's a coping strategy. It doesn't mean that I don't feel remorse, but what the hell? Am I supposed to sit around for the rest of my life feeling sorry? Whose business is it but my own how I handle things emotionally? It would be one thing if the guy then got in a car and drove drunk after that Halloween party, but that's not what he did. He went to the party, and he wore a costume the jackass DA didn't like.
DAs are vermin, along with the cops. You can't incentivize throwing people in jail and have a working society. The US has 1% of its population behind bars because of this kind of theatrical bullshit.
However, this is one of the problems with more photos being taken these days. You do anything, and someone has a picture of it. All of us are cretins; we just don't realize it until we see the pics.
Me too. Intel Mac + VMware Fusion = Everything in one box. At the same time. Actually working right.
Also, for stats, most of the tools are Windows-only. Some people will now come on and say otherwise and point to stuff I've never heard of or seen referenced in a paper, but I'll stand my ground there.
Gotcher back here. I am a bit of an anti-Linux troll 'round here (I like to think of myself as a Linux realist), but the last Ubuntu install I did was 23 minutes from unpartitioned HDD to fully-functional system. That is shit-hot.
OSX seems to take forever to install, but when it's in, it's already usable.
Windows is just the absolute worst for install/set-up time. Just the worst.