Not at all. We speak of farmers of third world countries, where many barely can read and write and are not schooled in economics or corporation trickery.
1,352 karma · joined November 1, 2013
And don't forget one thing: GMO might help to stop hunger in some regions, but in the current state of it, it does not. Many farmers in poor regions where lured into the GMO trap, just to find out one or two years later, that the proposed additional productivity of the crops did not make up for the additional costs of the fact that they had to buy the crops (and in case of Roundup, the glyphosate) from big corporations, which before they could take from their own harvest.
(German) Source: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/NSA-Ausschuss-BND-hat...
I know, that the German intelligence agency "BND" always wanted to have a more tight corporation with the NSA.
Question here as much I see from the first impression: How much will the system be C64 compatible? Since the C65 was never really released, there exists no real software for it and also the incorporated Basic V10 was incomplete. So the C64 emulation is what really counts. Of course it could be fun to play with a "16bit-6502" processor, but without or limited software the fun is rather limited.
I remember, when Py3 first came out, everything was incompatible -- unnecessary incompatibilities like the u" notation for Unicode string literals that was dropped. Unnecessary incompatibilities in the C-extension-module implementation layer. And so on. The list of incompatibilities was just huge.
Later several of them where dropped, like the string literal trouble ... But than the trouble was already done. Many extension modules where not lifted to the new version, since the overhead was to big.
I think, many more projects would have adopted Py3, if more extension modules would support it.
The huge library of extension modules was always the strength of Python. Now we have many projects still running on Py2, because Py3 did ignore this strength.
I think, when it would have cared more for compatibility from the beginning, much of the damage done would have been avoided.
So, it very much sounds to me, that you prefer just unproven theories, that one can draw from arbitrary analogies over sound science.
What I basically was arguing against, was the notion (as I understood it), that "scientific theory" would justify monopolies as good for society.
It is a fact, that while monopolies are good for the monopolists, it is bad for societies at large. And no "ecological" concepts can convince me from the opposite. One example: While bigger banks are good for the bankers, because countries have to rescue them, it is very bad for those countries, as everybody (except politicians) can see since 2008.
With your "ecological" theory, someone also could argue, that dinosaurs are better than mammals.
What you describe, basically is monopolism. It is well known, that monopolies are killing a free market.
> They are just being good Capitalists.
When this is true, than something is very wrong with Capitalism itself.
My concern is, that people are more upset when their favorite tv show is not view-able as when our democratic systems are eroding.
>If things in the US started falling apart ...
What exactly do you mean? Technically or society?
I think "falling apart" does not go by a click, but comes incremental. I see a lot of incremental decline in western societies at least from the 80s.
I also hoped, that people will go upset and demand changes. But I guess it is like the boiling frog. The frog feels comfortable in the lukewarm water and when it incrementally gets hotter, he does not recognize and when he does, it is just to late. We all are the boiling frog.
When North America and Western Europe are near "the top of it" (I don't know, if I completely understand the sentence correctly, but I guess you mean, that they are best in integrity ...), than this is not a good sign in my opinion.
I see an enormous decline in democracy, freedom and integrity all over the world. And as I live in Europe, I see it very drastically here. Of course I am worried about developments in countries like Russia or China, but I am even more worried about the state in which the countries are, which should be role models of freedom and democracy.
Today I am differentiating much more and I must admit that I am not knowing, why we are better of as for example South American countries. Of course, they have a high level of corruption, but when you look deeper, you will see, that we in Europe have also much corruption. The main difference: While in many South America countries everybody knows about the corruption, for example in Germany corruption is much much more covered -- but it exists, maybe even in the same degree as in South American countries. It is just covered much more. What makes me worry is, that while the normal police-men in Germany may have integrity, the normal top-politician seems to have none left. I can give no name of a top politician today, where I would assume, that he is not influenced or even bribed by some groups.
I think, that this gives a really bad signal to all the people in this nation. Many say: "Why should I pay taxes, for those crooked people?" And I must admit, that this is a strong argument in these times.
The trouble in my opinion with some judges in my country and with the police in some countries is, that everybody just assumes, that because they work for law enforcement, they have a high level of integrity. But when you look how they are educated, the subject "integrity" is not even touched (I even don't think, that it is taught in law schools).
In my country, when somebody is already a judge, there is nearly no chance at all, that this person will be held accountable for misjudging. I think, not even the highest courts can replace a judge that repeatedly and knowingly is bending the law. At least I don't know of any case at all where a judge was punished or even replaced. And don't think, that all judgments are correct in my country.
In my opinion, when there is one thing to be learned from history, it is that any person can err and even the best meaning persons can change into dictators over time depending on situations.
With the growing complexity, the systems become more and more fragile and difficult to maintain. You can see that, when software just fails on one computer and runs on an other computer with the same operating system, but some little, weird dependency (e.g. with the graphics card) just makes the program misbehave on that particular computer.
Some times I am just worried, that all the computer scientists of the world make the world of computers more and more complex and on one day, the software becomes unmanageable. Even today, as normal computer user, I some times get the impression, that computers take more time (for installing updates and updates of the updates, worrying about threats, getting the best virus scanner ...) as they save us.
They just don't care about the small developer (and sometimes not even about the customers). When they have an idea, how the world should be, they change everything needed and don't care about the effects on small software vendors or even some customers.
Apple once made this genius tv spot about 1984. Apple for me has become, what they accused IBM to be at 1984. The crazy thing is, that the normal Apple customer does not care.
There are some nice features added, but I think that some of them are also covered by newer JS versions. I really don't want to argue to much about JS, but other persons will ask the same question, I guess.
The line "optional 16bits characters strings" also makes me worry a little, since I know how much trouble an alternate approach (8bit strings vs. Unicode) there is in Python (which led to major changes in Python 3). It just makes to much headaches.
If the author is reading here, you might also consider linking to a page of your personal website, that is accessible (I get directory listing denied).
For a marathon run exactly this behavior is negative, that makes you win a sprint run. When you start fast and are eager to have fast successes, you are likely to loose the marathon.
In my experience, software development (in larger scale) needs a lot patience, planning and great staying power.
In the European Union there is also a similar trend. There exist studies that today it is much more difficult for somebody coming from lower income (and society) levels to become rich than it was 40 or 50 years ago. There is nearly no exchange anymore happening, because today's rich can rely on the fact that their money will beget more additional money nearly automatically. Also times are over, where many people build their riches from scratch. Most rich people today are rich in the second, third or fourth generation today.
Low taxes on wealth and inheritance are doing their job. But also the fact that earning money by just having (enough) money costs less tax than hard working for money in Europe (in Germany, you will pay for your worked-for money (if you earn enough) up to ~40% on taxes and additionally you have to pay social security fees that can eat up an additional 20% (estimated) of your earnings. For money you got threw having money, you will today come away with 25% flat rate tax.
With such tax laws in action, you could come to the view, that letting work your money for you is more difficult than working in a factory and must be promoted by the state.
Maybe you also can look at it the other way around: When you are not a beginner, but well settled in IT, will you always know things? No. I once was in a room filled with high paid persons where most where longer in the business than I did and where also higher paid than I did. But they just did not know what I knew. I had made the software to run 10x faster than before and they where amazed. I knew, that it just was naturally, but they did not, because they did not have my particular experience and did not know some of the details.
I think, much of the IT business is basically showing confidence. IT is about always being ignorant -- but ignoring this fact -- and get used to it.
Being in the IT business means always learn new things and always be beginner even when you have been in it for thirty years. The trick is to get used to it and don't show fear in the face of the wild dragon called "The Unknown".
That is just part of the business -- and don't fear to ask, because it is sometimes the only way to overcome the unknown.
When others make fun of you, just ignore them. Some day, they will have to ask you!
I never heard, that speculators or banks had to pay back their bonuses or gains they earned in the good years, when they lost billions in other years.
I am still not sure, if the world would not have fared much better, when the billions and billions that where given to the banks to rescue them had been given to all the people (and thus stimulate the whole economy not only the bonus-people). The banks took the money and at least in Europe still don't lend the money to firms that need it. We have now at least 6 years after the finance shock of 2008, but at least in Europe the finance crisis is still not over!
Recently, I also learnt that even in the Magna Carta (1215 BC) the property of a "free person" was protected against the grasp of the potentate.
When modern governments now disable this basic right by legal trickery, than we in essence loose our freedom.