Your arguments fail the common sense test. The DMCA forbids me from playing my legally-aquired DVD, for private screening, using DeCSS -- an action which harms nobody, including myself. This is similar to saying that I can only read a publisher's books using a certain kind of glasses, under penalty to law. It's a specious legal argument intended to save the MPAA from admitting that they bought into a flimsy standard.
Some peope would rather listen to marketroids than read the actual fricking license, that's why. Chalk it up to basic laziness, or to ignorant prejudice, whichever.
The second line is good advice. Get a job. Any job. Don't matter how shitty. Hang on to it for dear life. Go to school. Hope that the next bubble will take advantage of your new skills.
Me, I'm working on mainframes and going to school to learn as much about AI as I can. I'm praying that my experience won't overshadow my eductation once my thesis is done. But, if it is, at least I can program on mainframes.
This should be interesting. Mesa3D is licensed under the MIT license; this is one of the open source licenses that Microsoft claims to love. Let's see how much they love it now, eh?
I fully agree. Whenever I go into a gun store or read a gun magazine, the pro-gun propaganda always seems to be infused with racism, homophobia, ultra-right-wing religious extremism, etc. That alienates me, even though I am a 2nd amendment defender.
Amen. This is one of the many reasons why I don't bother with gun mags. Other reasons: I got sick of the T&A adverts (not that I'm not looking, but come on, if you need a blonde wearing next to nothing to get my attention, your product must not be that exciting); Massad Ayoob has gotten boring; I can usually get better information on what's coming down the pipe from gossip at the range.
The best gun mag I've seen is American Rifleman. It caters to me as a shooter, period. It doesn't make stupid assumptions about my other political opinions. Hell, sometimes I think Charleton Heston is doing a better job of attacking the Police State than the so-called liberals in Congress. Just the fact that I get this mag once a month is worth the price of NRA membership.
See, this is one of the things that I hate about the gun-rights crowd: it sabotages itself with this kind of crap.
I'm a liberal Democrat. Hell, I'm probably on the left wing of what most people consider liberal Democrats. I support abortion rights, gay rights, gay marriage, Head Start, massive health care reform, stricter environmental regulations, getting "Under God" out of the Pledge, etc.
I'm also an NRA and JPFO member. I own several firearms, have a CCW, and am trying to decide whether to purchase an SSR or an AR-15 next (I ain't touching the Mini-14, no matter how much I like Ruger's handguns).
It doesn't do any good to pigeonhole people in the gun rights game. The NRA may have 5+ million members, but we can still use all the allies we can get.
Also, I don't beleive there needs to be any sort of extra laws passed for the "special case" of when a gun is used.
The NRA actually disagrees with you here; it is their opinion that a crime committed with a gun should carry a stiff additional penalty.
I do, however, believe that you should need a license use a gun (in the same way that you need a license to drive a car).
I pretty much agree with this sentiment, as long as (1) the barrier to obtaining such a license isn't set too high and (2) such a license also functions as a concealed carry permit and has nationwide reciprocity (just like a driver's license).
I also beleive that guns should be registered for the purposes of tracking ownership (in the same way you have to register a car).
This creates a problem. The old saw that registration leads to confiscation is an old saw for a reason: it's happened too many times before in the real world. And registration does zip, zero, nothing, to prevent firearms from being stolen and winding up in the hands of a gangbanger or convicted felon; all it does is create fertile grounds for another lawsuit.
I also beleive that some guns, such as fully automatic weapons and rocket launchers, should not be in the hands of the general public... at least, not without special permits (much like you need a special class of license to drive a semi - you can't drive one with the same type of license you get to drive your car).
You'll be glad to know that this restriction is in place and is vigorously enforced. One needs a Class III permit to legally own an automatic weapon or a destructive device; these permits are a real bitch to get your hands on, as they require an extensive background check, approval from local law enforcement, and $200 for the tax stamp. This allows you to own a $5000+ fully automatic weapon -- as much good as the damn thing will do you. Unless it's an M-60 or something more substantial, it's a waste of time; and, arguably, it's a waste of ammo anyway. If the BATF even thinks you own an automatic weapon or a similar Class III device without the proper stamp, they go in with guns blazing, often with disasterous results (Waco, Ruby Ridge).
I respectfully submit that your analogy to a car is fundamentally flawed. It is a privalege to drive an automobile. It is a right to keep and bear arms, even if the government has a legitimate interest in regulating that right. This is something I wish more liberal Democrats (esp. Jan Schakowski, because I like her) would grasp.
Answer: Because it's embarassing to have the President and Vice President locked up on Death Row.
The death penalty in the United States is usually reserved for murderers and traitors. And even if you could get a murder conviction, there's still the question of whether Bush is mentally retarded or not.
Man shaving: Gilette Small children: Bayer aspirin Car on a sunny road: Honda or GM Car being destroyed: Ford Computer in cheesy series like V.I.P.: Red Hat, IBM, Sun or Mandrake Computer geek with personality problems: Slashdot Computer being broken into: Microsoft Bob Dole: Viagra Sarah Michelle Gellar: Trojans Powerful, cynical villain: RIAA George W. Bush: Hooked on Phonics Dick Cheney: Arthur Anderson
Unfortunate, but true. I really wish the Pentagon would be more up-front about that kind of thing.
If you ask me, the American government needs to rebuild that village, as a way of apologizing for our actions and ensuring, one hopes, future prosperity for its people.
Chances of our doing this? I'd be pretty surprised if anyone in the White House even remotely considered this.
Assuming for a sec that this isnt' meant as humor, trolling, or flame-baiting:
The kind of AI that you're going to get in these AVs is a few orders of magnatude below what people seem to expect. These aren't intelligent beings per se; they're robots that are capable of responding to chaotic conditions. That means that they can avoid rocks and possibly dodge incoming mortar fire. This is simple, moth-brain stuff, nothing even remotely like Skynet and the Terminator.
Let's assume that these 'bots demonstrate emerging anti-human behavior; the next step is to insert a couple of schema into their architechture, one that says obey commands from recognized superior officers and another that says don't fire upon friendly forces under any circumstances.
Some of us like wasting processor cycles that way.
I think this should be optional, btw. Linux is Linux whether it's running on an 8MHz 386 with four megs of RAM or a 3Ghz Pentium 4 with four gigs of RAM.
This is a software agent that determines what kind of task you're trying to do, pops up, and provides "helpful" advice. Like the MS Office Paperclip agent, the advice isn't that great, and it's a HUGE burden on resources. Unlike the MS Office Paperclip agent, it provides "helpful" advice for the ENTIRE KDE project.
Mandrake users will love it; Debian users will want to destroy the author on sight. The author will show up to LUG meetings with a fake beard and sunglasses.
This isn't as far off as you might think. Look: a lot of stuff is going to disappear as it gets older. That's just a matter of attrition. On the other hand, anything you post to a newsgroup, mailing list, or web page, is likely to stay there forever, whether you like it or not.
So, here's my contrarian outlook: I think hundreds of years from now, historians are going to have an enormous amount of information about contemporary society, and it will all be neatly catalogued and classified. I wouldn't be surprised if this was Google's real objective. Corolary to this: I think the Digital Dark Age is mostly hype. It could occur, but only if the technology behind modern archiving fails catastrophicly.
UML and other modelling fads. My former employer required the use of 65-page UML diagrams for the simplest command-line utilities. Why? Because it was popular, and the investors liked to make sure we were buzzword-compliant. UML is designed for non-technical audiences, and as such it flies in the face of the engineering goals it is designed to solve.
I've found UML, or at least quasi-UML, useful; any time I design a system I draw a quick UML sketch just to help me think about what's invovled. Unless, that is, it's something really dead simple.. something equivalent to a homework assignment. Sometimes most of the really hard work goes into a good UML diagram, and the rest becomes easy.
But despite this, I can't help but reflect on your statement in utter horror. What the hell kind of UML diagram does one put together for, say, ls? Or cd? Or a numerical calculation?
Code review. Code review is a power trip and best, and a drain on morale at worst. If a programmer cannot be trusted to develop excellent code, he should be replaced with somebody who can. It's a tight labor market on the developers' side, so incompetent programmers should be spending their time reading O'Reilley books instead of playing games and looking at porn in their parents' basement.
I disagree with you on two fronts. One, I've always found code review beneficial for a project. Weaker coders learn good habits; stonger coders teach good habits; bugs not visible to some become visible to others; the general quality of code improves. People who can't deal with constructive criticism of their code make for bad team-mates.
Secondly, I've never met anyone who became a good programmer by reading books, even books as high quality as O'Reilly's. I learned to code by writing code and reading others' code. The books make handy references, but sticking to books is akin to trying to learn to write well by reading the dictionary.
Large, geographically concentrated development teams. The best work is emphatically not done by 1400 people in the Redmond campus. The best work is done by culling experts of individual niche areas from around the globe. Not surprisingly, this is the model that Linux and most Open Source software uses, and that is why OSS is phenominally successful compared with any of its proprietary competition.
Most of Microsoft's problems can probably be directly attributed to the size of its development team. MS project designers might do well to re-read The Mythical Man-Month (if they never read it, they have no business being project designers, IMO).
Amen. It's not useful to tell someone to RTFM (even if you assume that you're "forcing them to think"); it's pure Brazil-style idiocy to tell someone to RTFM when there's no manual, an incomplete manual, or when the manual bites.
If Linux has one big, intrinsic, cultural problem, it's the lack of well-written documentation. HOWTOs don't cut it.
Good point, but having a record of violent crime is a pretty good indicator that that person will commit another violent crime. Until that point, I'd rather give the benefit of the doubt.
Similar but unrelated fact: about 90% of all conviced murderers ate bread 24 hours before they committed murder.
Obviously we should ban bread. It's far more dangerous than guns could ever be.
Besides, it's handy to have along if you lose your job/girlfriend/motorcycle, go bonkers, and decide to shoot 20 people at an airport.
First of all, I resent the characterization. If you're going to argue the point, don't resort to FUD. It undermines your credibility. OK?
Second, you have no evidence that violent crime rates are higher because of the legality of concealed carry. There is evidence (on bothsides of the gun control debate) that concealed carry does not lead to an increase in crime. Admittedly, this is because most concealed carry permit holders are white men who live in the suburbs -- that is, the persons who are least likely to need a firearm. But, that also contradicts your claim that legal concealed carry leads to more guns "on the street."
If you ask me, the high violent crime rate in the United States is due to completely different factors, such as poverty, racial segregation, poor education, or maybe even the hormones in our food.
The horror, I have lived my entire live without the FREEDOM of getting shot by a trigger-happy firearm owner....
Strange, I hang out with firearm owners all the time, and I've never been shot, either.
Firearm owners tend to play judge a little to easy (else they didn't need a gun, do they?).
No offense, but I think this speaks to a certain prejudice amoung gun-control advocates. I can't speak for all gun owners, and certainly not persons who own guns illegally (e.g. gangbangers). Speaking just for myself, the reason why I own and carry a concealed weapon is because, if it comes to a matter of life or death, them or me, I want overwhelming force on my side. I hope I never have to use it; I go out of my way to avoid getting into situations where I might need it; but I'm glad it's there, in case I need that absolute last resort.
I agree that firearms ownership is a poor solution to the crime problem. The best solution to crime is to create genuine economic opportunity for the poor, preferably by encouraging investment in poor neighborhoods.
In a good society guns are controlled, and the controllers are controlled by an elected government and thus are controlled by the people themselfs....
Which is exactly the situation I don't want; any more than I want the elected people regulating my freedom of speech, my freedom to worship (or not worship) as I choose, my daughter's right to an abortion, etc. Even in a democracy, there are some individual freedoms which must remain inviolate, in spite of the Will of the People.
You are using guns protecting yourself, you just don't give them to people who don't need them.
I'd rather have individuals determine need for themselves. As long as someone doesn't have a criminal record, is sane, and knows how to use a firearm safely, they are probably more compitent to determine their own needs, individually, than the People, collectively, would be.
Slashdot Mirror
Your arguments fail the common sense test. The DMCA forbids me from playing my legally-aquired DVD, for private screening, using DeCSS -- an action which harms nobody, including myself. This is similar to saying that I can only read a publisher's books using a certain kind of glasses, under penalty to law. It's a specious legal argument intended to save the MPAA from admitting that they bought into a flimsy standard.
Some peope would rather listen to marketroids than read the actual fricking license, that's why. Chalk it up to basic laziness, or to ignorant prejudice, whichever.
Yeah, now if RH could turn a GAAP profit things would be just fabulous.
Me, I'm working on mainframes and going to school to learn as much about AI as I can. I'm praying that my experience won't overshadow my eductation once my thesis is done. But, if it is, at least I can program on mainframes.
I'm pretty sure that Linus could get picked up by, say, IBM, if he lost his job with Transmeta. IBM is always in the market for good kernel hackers. ;)
Of course, this assumes that TurboLinux really isn't closing its doors.
Sounds to me like a non-story, or at worst, an indication that their US operation might contract and the company focus might shift to Japan.
This should be interesting. Mesa3D is licensed under the MIT license; this is one of the open source licenses that Microsoft claims to love. Let's see how much they love it now, eh?
Amen. This is one of the many reasons why I don't bother with gun mags. Other reasons: I got sick of the T&A adverts (not that I'm not looking, but come on, if you need a blonde wearing next to nothing to get my attention, your product must not be that exciting); Massad Ayoob has gotten boring; I can usually get better information on what's coming down the pipe from gossip at the range.
The best gun mag I've seen is American Rifleman. It caters to me as a shooter, period. It doesn't make stupid assumptions about my other political opinions. Hell, sometimes I think Charleton Heston is doing a better job of attacking the Police State than the so-called liberals in Congress. Just the fact that I get this mag once a month is worth the price of NRA membership.
I'm a liberal Democrat. Hell, I'm probably on the left wing of what most people consider liberal Democrats. I support abortion rights, gay rights, gay marriage, Head Start, massive health care reform, stricter environmental regulations, getting "Under God" out of the Pledge, etc.
I'm also an NRA and JPFO member. I own several firearms, have a CCW, and am trying to decide whether to purchase an SSR or an AR-15 next (I ain't touching the Mini-14, no matter how much I like Ruger's handguns).
It doesn't do any good to pigeonhole people in the gun rights game. The NRA may have 5+ million members, but we can still use all the allies we can get.
Also, I don't beleive there needs to be any sort of extra laws passed for the "special case" of when a gun is used.
The NRA actually disagrees with you here; it is their opinion that a crime committed with a gun should carry a stiff additional penalty.
I do, however, believe that you should need a license use a gun (in the same way that you need a license to drive a car).
I pretty much agree with this sentiment, as long as (1) the barrier to obtaining such a license isn't set too high and (2) such a license also functions as a concealed carry permit and has nationwide reciprocity (just like a driver's license).
I also beleive that guns should be registered for the purposes of tracking ownership (in the same way you have to register a car).
This creates a problem. The old saw that registration leads to confiscation is an old saw for a reason: it's happened too many times before in the real world. And registration does zip, zero, nothing, to prevent firearms from being stolen and winding up in the hands of a gangbanger or convicted felon; all it does is create fertile grounds for another lawsuit.
I also beleive that some guns, such as fully automatic weapons and rocket launchers, should not be in the hands of the general public ... at least, not without special permits (much like you need a special class of license to drive a semi - you can't drive one with the same type of license you get to drive your car).
You'll be glad to know that this restriction is in place and is vigorously enforced. One needs a Class III permit to legally own an automatic weapon or a destructive device; these permits are a real bitch to get your hands on, as they require an extensive background check, approval from local law enforcement, and $200 for the tax stamp. This allows you to own a $5000+ fully automatic weapon -- as much good as the damn thing will do you. Unless it's an M-60 or something more substantial, it's a waste of time; and, arguably, it's a waste of ammo anyway. If the BATF even thinks you own an automatic weapon or a similar Class III device without the proper stamp, they go in with guns blazing, often with disasterous results (Waco, Ruby Ridge).
I respectfully submit that your analogy to a car is fundamentally flawed. It is a privalege to drive an automobile. It is a right to keep and bear arms, even if the government has a legitimate interest in regulating that right. This is something I wish more liberal Democrats (esp. Jan Schakowski, because I like her) would grasp.
Answer: Because it's embarassing to have the President and Vice President locked up on Death Row.
The death penalty in the United States is usually reserved for murderers and traitors. And even if you could get a murder conviction, there's still the question of whether Bush is mentally retarded or not.
Man shaving: Gilette
Small children: Bayer aspirin
Car on a sunny road: Honda or GM
Car being destroyed: Ford
Computer in cheesy series like V.I.P.: Red Hat, IBM, Sun or Mandrake
Computer geek with personality problems: Slashdot
Computer being broken into: Microsoft
Bob Dole: Viagra
Sarah Michelle Gellar: Trojans
Powerful, cynical villain: RIAA
George W. Bush: Hooked on Phonics
Dick Cheney: Arthur Anderson
Others?
4 cups of tea and a coke here.
If you ask me, the American government needs to rebuild that village, as a way of apologizing for our actions and ensuring, one hopes, future prosperity for its people.
Chances of our doing this? I'd be pretty surprised if anyone in the White House even remotely considered this.
Assuming for a sec that this isnt' meant as humor, trolling, or flame-baiting:
The kind of AI that you're going to get in these AVs is a few orders of magnatude below what people seem to expect. These aren't intelligent beings per se; they're robots that are capable of responding to chaotic conditions. That means that they can avoid rocks and possibly dodge incoming mortar fire. This is simple, moth-brain stuff, nothing even remotely like Skynet and the Terminator.
Let's assume that these 'bots demonstrate emerging anti-human behavior; the next step is to insert a couple of schema into their architechture, one that says obey commands from recognized superior officers and another that says don't fire upon friendly forces under any circumstances.
Hope this helps.
Some of us like wasting processor cycles that way.
I think this should be optional, btw. Linux is Linux whether it's running on an 8MHz 386 with four megs of RAM or a 3Ghz Pentium 4 with four gigs of RAM.
The PaperKlip.
This is a software agent that determines what kind of task you're trying to do, pops up, and provides "helpful" advice. Like the MS Office Paperclip agent, the advice isn't that great, and it's a HUGE burden on resources. Unlike the MS Office Paperclip agent, it provides "helpful" advice for the ENTIRE KDE project.
Mandrake users will love it; Debian users will want to destroy the author on sight. The author will show up to LUG meetings with a fake beard and sunglasses.
So, here's my contrarian outlook: I think hundreds of years from now, historians are going to have an enormous amount of information about contemporary society, and it will all be neatly catalogued and classified. I wouldn't be surprised if this was Google's real objective. Corolary to this: I think the Digital Dark Age is mostly hype. It could occur, but only if the technology behind modern archiving fails catastrophicly.
UML and other modelling fads. My former employer required the use of 65-page UML diagrams for the simplest command-line utilities. Why? Because it was popular, and the investors liked to make sure we were buzzword-compliant. UML is designed for non-technical audiences, and as such it flies in the face of the engineering goals it is designed to solve.
I've found UML, or at least quasi-UML, useful; any time I design a system I draw a quick UML sketch just to help me think about what's invovled. Unless, that is, it's something really dead simple .. something equivalent to a homework assignment. Sometimes most of the really hard work goes into a good UML diagram, and the rest becomes easy.
But despite this, I can't help but reflect on your statement in utter horror. What the hell kind of UML diagram does one put together for, say, ls? Or cd? Or a numerical calculation?
Code review. Code review is a power trip and best, and a drain on morale at worst. If a programmer cannot be trusted to develop excellent code, he should be replaced with somebody who can. It's a tight labor market on the developers' side, so incompetent programmers should be spending their time reading O'Reilley books instead of playing games and looking at porn in their parents' basement.
I disagree with you on two fronts. One, I've always found code review beneficial for a project. Weaker coders learn good habits; stonger coders teach good habits; bugs not visible to some become visible to others; the general quality of code improves. People who can't deal with constructive criticism of their code make for bad team-mates.
Secondly, I've never met anyone who became a good programmer by reading books, even books as high quality as O'Reilly's. I learned to code by writing code and reading others' code. The books make handy references, but sticking to books is akin to trying to learn to write well by reading the dictionary.
Large, geographically concentrated development teams. The best work is emphatically not done by 1400 people in the Redmond campus. The best work is done by culling experts of individual niche areas from around the globe. Not surprisingly, this is the model that Linux and most Open Source software uses, and that is why OSS is phenominally successful compared with any of its proprietary competition.
Most of Microsoft's problems can probably be directly attributed to the size of its development team. MS project designers might do well to re-read The Mythical Man-Month (if they never read it, they have no business being project designers, IMO).
If Linux has one big, intrinsic, cultural problem, it's the lack of well-written documentation. HOWTOs don't cut it.
Good point, but having a record of violent crime is a pretty good indicator that that person will commit another violent crime. Until that point, I'd rather give the benefit of the doubt.
Similar but unrelated fact: about 90% of all conviced murderers ate bread 24 hours before they committed murder.
Obviously we should ban bread. It's far more dangerous than guns could ever be.
(Note: sarcasm)
First of all, I resent the characterization. If you're going to argue the point, don't resort to FUD. It undermines your credibility. OK?
Second, you have no evidence that violent crime rates are higher because of the legality of concealed carry. There is evidence (on both sides of the gun control debate) that concealed carry does not lead to an increase in crime. Admittedly, this is because most concealed carry permit holders are white men who live in the suburbs -- that is, the persons who are least likely to need a firearm. But, that also contradicts your claim that legal concealed carry leads to more guns "on the street."
If you ask me, the high violent crime rate in the United States is due to completely different factors, such as poverty, racial segregation, poor education, or maybe even the hormones in our food.
Strange, I hang out with firearm owners all the time, and I've never been shot, either.
No offense, but I think this speaks to a certain prejudice amoung gun-control advocates. I can't speak for all gun owners, and certainly not persons who own guns illegally (e.g. gangbangers). Speaking just for myself, the reason why I own and carry a concealed weapon is because, if it comes to a matter of life or death, them or me, I want overwhelming force on my side. I hope I never have to use it; I go out of my way to avoid getting into situations where I might need it; but I'm glad it's there, in case I need that absolute last resort.
I agree that firearms ownership is a poor solution to the crime problem. The best solution to crime is to create genuine economic opportunity for the poor, preferably by encouraging investment in poor neighborhoods.
Which is exactly the situation I don't want; any more than I want the elected people regulating my freedom of speech, my freedom to worship (or not worship) as I choose, my daughter's right to an abortion, etc. Even in a democracy, there are some individual freedoms which must remain inviolate, in spite of the Will of the People.
I'd rather have individuals determine need for themselves. As long as someone doesn't have a criminal record, is sane, and knows how to use a firearm safely, they are probably more compitent to determine their own needs, individually, than the People, collectively, would be.