those 5 steps are right on, and in my small company we do exactly this - i (QA - god help the poor soul who typed Q&A above) deliver all software and deployment instructions to IT.
we also have IT write out a deployment plan for any major release (containing all the environment specifics and QA instructions modified if need be) and we all (IT, QA, DEV) review the plan at least twice. that way we ALL own it since we all have input and we can spot instructions that were missed tween dev-QA-IT.
this seems to common sense to me, i'm having a hard time believing people would do it any other way...
i think if you use phrases like "The founding fathers were visionaries to whom you and I owe the very freedom we have to engage in this discussion. Please don't ever forget it" you most certainly do worship them in one form or another. freedom exists in many parts of this world, and even under countries with scary words like "socialist" in them, people have these discussions. you'd have a VERY hard time convincing people in Denmark, say, that they are less free than here and rightly so.
and i grant your point that the times slavery was simply part of the mindset - i don't argue this point like you say. and i certainly don't want to bog down in a discussion about an example rather than the actual issue at hand.
but, since we're here, this speaks to my point - a visionary would have the ability to look forward. Dickinson fought for keeping slavery and yet he wrote the Article of the Confederation, the precurser to the Constitution. so he's very integral to the creation of this nation, and yet it's hard to call him a visionary
so as you say, some did have that vision, but others did not. i guess i would say you should avoid terms like the "founding fathers" as though it's referring to a group of great minds who had a vision nobody else ever had. the country they wanted to create was the product and combination of other countries attempts to establish themselves - it was not done from scracth through strokes of brilliance. far from being visionaries, they were a group of people sorting through the best they'd seen and putting it together as best they could.
and don't misunderstand me, i'm not proposing they failed or that our experiment should fail or that they were incompetent. that's a different argument for a different time.
but we simply can't make progress in this country to fix the ills that exist and DO threaten to bring us down unless and until we are willing to stop looking back at a group of men with beady eyes, prayerfull hands and gaping maw. The question orignally proposed here, to which you replied, is a VERY good question (regardless of how it was asked).
would the founding fathers show up today and smile or throw up their hands and wish hadn't even tried? have we maintained the ideas about government they presented? were those ideas manageable in the first place? how does our economy enable or prevent those ideals from being attainable by everybody?
so rather than talk about "freedom of speech" and the highly debatable "freedom to own arms" (not taking position, just saying it's debatable), and expressing a fear of socialism and Marx (who has shaped the american/capitalist experience more than you know), you would do well to avoid unsupported lines that already assume a concludsion like "i'd say they did one hell of a lot better than Marx and Lenin, eh?" stop asking people to "please don't forget...." and actually participate in the discussion with meaningful ideas with meaningful support.
traded cliches do nobody any good and simply spouting opinion is fun, but brings no progress.
The founding fathers were not visionaries. they were just people doing their best to set up something new that didn't make the same mistakes as the british government of the times. the founding fathers are not deities and you'd do well to recognize that - then pass it along to the rest of the conservatives who do themselves real damage with this misconception. visionaries would not have slaves, nor trade them for rum money. visionaries would not have originally written "life, liberty and property" instead of "puruit of happiness."
And please please please people, this noble experiment is not the only place in the world that is "free." freedom is not an american product and we are not the only practioners. it's high-time people, particularly conservatives, accept this.
The original comment was actually trying to argue a deeper point than you give credit for - this freedom everyone yaps about these days, does it really exist? and i think no matter where someone falls on the political spectrum, this is a question that we need to answer. if anything can answer with an abrupt "yes" or "no" then they haven't thought it through much. our economic system has arguably created it's own kind of oppression and class warfare - that's not hard to see if you keep your head up and catch some news. and i mean news - not fox,msnbc,cnn. try the bbc or itn.
so no more worshipping regular people not worthy OR WANTING of deification and no more delusions about america's place in the world. our place at the top will not last forever, and it would do us well to be graceful while we own the spot.
Slashdot Mirror
preach on brother.
those 5 steps are right on, and in my small company we do exactly this - i (QA - god help the poor soul who typed Q&A above) deliver all software and deployment instructions to IT.
we also have IT write out a deployment plan for any major release (containing all the environment specifics and QA instructions modified if need be) and we all (IT, QA, DEV) review the plan at least twice. that way we ALL own it since we all have input and we can spot instructions that were missed tween dev-QA-IT.
this seems to common sense to me, i'm having a hard time believing people would do it any other way...
i think if you use phrases like "The founding fathers were visionaries to whom you and I owe the very freedom we have to engage in this discussion. Please don't ever forget it" you most certainly do worship them in one form or another. freedom exists in many parts of this world, and even under countries with scary words like "socialist" in them, people have these discussions. you'd have a VERY hard time convincing people in Denmark, say, that they are less free than here and rightly so.
and i grant your point that the times slavery was simply part of the mindset - i don't argue this point like you say. and i certainly don't want to bog down in a discussion about an example rather than the actual issue at hand.
but, since we're here, this speaks to my point - a visionary would have the ability to look forward. Dickinson fought for keeping slavery and yet he wrote the Article of the Confederation, the precurser to the Constitution. so he's very integral to the creation of this nation, and yet it's hard to call him a visionary
so as you say, some did have that vision, but others did not. i guess i would say you should avoid terms like the "founding fathers" as though it's referring to a group of great minds who had a vision nobody else ever had. the country they wanted to create was the product and combination of other countries attempts to establish themselves - it was not done from scracth through strokes of brilliance. far from being visionaries, they were a group of people sorting through the best they'd seen and putting it together as best they could.
and don't misunderstand me, i'm not proposing they failed or that our experiment should fail or that they were incompetent. that's a different argument for a different time.
but we simply can't make progress in this country to fix the ills that exist and DO threaten to bring us down unless and until we are willing to stop looking back at a group of men with beady eyes, prayerfull hands and gaping maw. The question orignally proposed here, to which you replied, is a VERY good question (regardless of how it was asked).
would the founding fathers show up today and smile or throw up their hands and wish hadn't even tried? have we maintained the ideas about government they presented? were those ideas manageable in the first place? how does our economy enable or prevent those ideals from being attainable by everybody?
so rather than talk about "freedom of speech" and the highly debatable "freedom to own arms" (not taking position, just saying it's debatable), and expressing a fear of socialism and Marx (who has shaped the american/capitalist experience more than you know), you would do well to avoid unsupported lines that already assume a concludsion like "i'd say they did one hell of a lot better than Marx and Lenin, eh?" stop asking people to "please don't forget...." and actually participate in the discussion with meaningful ideas with meaningful support.
traded cliches do nobody any good and simply spouting opinion is fun, but brings no progress.
The founding fathers were not visionaries. they were just people doing their best to set up something new that didn't make the same mistakes as the british government of the times. the founding fathers are not deities and you'd do well to recognize that - then pass it along to the rest of the conservatives who do themselves real damage with this misconception. visionaries would not have slaves, nor trade them for rum money. visionaries would not have originally written "life, liberty and property" instead of "puruit of happiness."
And please please please people, this noble experiment is not the only place in the world that is "free." freedom is not an american product and we are not the only practioners. it's high-time people, particularly conservatives, accept this.
The original comment was actually trying to argue a deeper point than you give credit for - this freedom everyone yaps about these days, does it really exist? and i think no matter where someone falls on the political spectrum, this is a question that we need to answer. if anything can answer with an abrupt "yes" or "no" then they haven't thought it through much. our economic system has arguably created it's own kind of oppression and class warfare - that's not hard to see if you keep your head up and catch some news. and i mean news - not fox,msnbc,cnn. try the bbc or itn.
so no more worshipping regular people not worthy OR WANTING of deification and no more delusions about america's place in the world. our place at the top will not last forever, and it would do us well to be graceful while we own the spot.