Yeah, I noticed just today that it doesn't record everything! Very strange. Could turbolinks-alike implementations be throwing it off?
59 karma · joined June 28, 2013
That governments are inevitably an extension of their citizens' will is a thing that sounds nice to believe, but isn't necessarily true. It's easy to imagine situations where a small minority gains forceful control of a majority. Whether that is the case for any one nation is a much trickier question, but it certainly can happen.
I like the EFF, but I've stopped putting any kind of credibility into their different blog posts and articles.
Wide Sargasso Sea, Coetzee's Foe, and Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead all come immediately to mind. Re-imagining another author's work is a common enough tactic that I'd bet it wouldn't be very hard to find 10 excellent examples of literary fanfic. You might be able to do it just with Shakespeare fanfic.
I have a feeling, though, that this a self-fulfilling assertion, in that you will try to re-define "fan fiction" to go around anything of literary merit that is brought up. The same thing happens with other supposedly inferior genres. Someone asks, Is there any literary scifi? People name some, and then the person responds, Well, that's not really scifi.
I'd guess that "not actually literary" is, in reality, part of the way you are defining fanfic.
In any event, disparaging fanfic by appealing to high literature is a lost cause, because the very techniques of fanfic are solidly embedded in the literary tradition, even if you want to argue about the exact definition of fanfic. Pastiche, playful appropriation, even adversarial reimagination -- all of these are fair game, and can make for sublime reading.
"I'm not terribly interested in following this advice" is a lot different from "this advice is not appropriate for the site." Rejecting something doesn't mean it wasn't relevant.
Having a large audience / lots of followers is a powerful thing. Maybe it isn't vicious in the sense that it isn't violent, but I think it can definitely be a way to bully.
Not much I guess, but if they're suddenly faced with the prospect of existing on $0/year, I imagine it'd look pretty nice. Quite a lot of people live on 15K per person in the family, so I don't think they'd be hopeless. I think BI is supposed to hit a sweet spot akin to the "better than a sharp stick" thing you mention. You could live off it if you really wanted to, but it'd kind of suck, and your life overall would be more enjoyable with a job.
I think a lot of the appeal of BI comes from two ideas. One: automation technology possibly introducing a "new normal" in terms of unemployment levels, in which case BI might help a society not eat itself. Two: it may, possibly, be much more efficient than the various welfare programs you mention. I don't think that's been proven, but it's a tantalizing idea.
I'm not really an expert on the idea though, so, two cents.
edit - I'm also not sure that automation tech introducing sweeping society-damning joblessness is something that will ever actually happen.
Also, because of the Torvalds mention earlier in this thread, I thought it'd be interesting to compare the people you mention here to him. Almost all of them look quite tame when you compare their behavior to Torvalds's. Kane's online persona does run toward being a jerk, and is probably the only one that could stand toe-to-toe with Torvalds in terms of brashness and hostility.
So why do these "very aggressive" people bother you so much, when Torvalds is generally seen as something of a hero? Are you willing to rate Torvalds's behavior as being just as "toxic" as theirs? The fictional QA report you describe in a later post actually sounds quite a lot like some stuff Torvalds has written. Do you have a similarly dutifully-annotated post in storage that details all of Torvalds's sins? Does his behavior set OSS back in the same way you claim these people set their communities back?
Maybe we should start referring to Torvalds as a "very aggressive programmer" ...
Note: I realize this post relies quite a bit on things I can't know. "ta140604" may very well think Torvalds is just as problematic as the people he discusses here. The point is to add a little context, and give you something to chew on the next time you see a post like this, where "a wild pseudonym appears!" expressly to smear a group of people that question the status quo. Yes, it's entirely likely that these people are all huge jerks. Most of us are jerks. But why are we so concerned with the fact that they, specifically, are jerks, when we don't give a shit about it in most everyone else?
And no matter how strong the case may be for college, in the end there's no glossing over costs. I just checked the total cost of attendance for our state school here, and it is 20K/year for residents. 80K-ish in debt is a big, serious, worth-thinking-over decision, full stop. Presenting this as a no-brainer will always be irresponsible until the costs go down.
And even if the debt pays off over the course of your multi-decade career, it's worth asking the question of whether paying down such debt already when you are so young is going to be how you want to kick off your adult life. Not claiming to have the answer to that one.
Ultimately I think it's flawed to claim a form of education that is so outrageously expensive should be just as crucial as high school. If you can't reasonably save for it, it should be a luxury.
Personally I think this example is way more reasonable than most other technical "gotcha" problems. (I say that because I could solve it despite not having studied CS and being still relatively inexperienced.) But at least they're not asking how many pickles you could eat before exploding if you were shrunk down to the size of a kitten's tongue and placed on a miniature rocking horse that may or may not be alive inside its sad plastic shell.
Penpals don't mail source code back and forth to each other.
Thinking knowing to code is as important as literacy is just another version of people thinking their specific profession is super-important because it's what they spend their time doing. I imagine some especially pompous auto mechanics think knowing the internals of a car is as important as reading and writing. (Though, I imagine there are much fewer pompous auto mechanics than pompous hackers.)
edit - Somehow, I goofed and lost the rest of my post. Anyhow, I noticed that in a separate blog post, the author said something like "Programming isn't just a job for me, but a way of life." I questioned whether that is something you can say of a job that is truly dead-end.
In general, I don't think there's a compelling reason why Writing Composition has to be tied so closely to Literature. And really of the two most demanding essay-writing profs I had, only one taught literature. (The other taught symbolic logic and a Frege/Russell/Wittgenstein seminar I took.)
You're right that most the essays are derivative and bad, but I think that's general to all writing--fiction, non-fiction, academic writing, whatever. It's all usually derivative and bad because it's really hard to make something that isn't. And while there is a taste for those name-dropping "look what I've read" essays, I never had a prof that didn't also appreciate a tight, close reading. I always stuck to close reading anyway, as I suspect most people on this forum would. (It feels less bullshitty to look at one or two small things extremely closely, than to fling around loose references to god knows what theories and famous names.)
It's interesting that your friend said that. I'm not sure I understand completely what is meant by that, but here's my personal take on it: I think literary criticism should be subject to the same scrutiny that the original literary texts are. And if a work doesn't partake of creative exuberance* like an excellent novel or poem might, then I can't really be bothered to care about it. I think literature should respond in kind. Some criticism does this, and is breathtaking in the same way reading Whitman, e.g., can be breathtaking. Bloom's little book Anxiety of Influence, for example, is something I found beautiful and strange in a way I had never before encountered.
I don't think academic literary critics really see what they do as an artform necessarily, so my view is probably a very marginal one, and one they might scoff at. I don't even know of a sub-discipline that promotes criticism-as-artform, so maybe I'm just weird. Probably weird.
In the end I try to take a soft stance on this because I want to leave room for the idea that other people may enjoy things that I don't. I would never talk about literature the way they do outside of the pressures of "academic success," but perhaps they find it to be genuinely thrilling. If so, I'm only happy for them, and wish them the best. Many of them had an obvious passion for literature, including one prof who was completely looney-tunes for Shakespeare. :-) And that's nothing but delightful.
* - which isn't to imply there need be an exuberant style.
I'm on 36.0.1941.0 dev-m.
For several years I followed the mailing lists dedicated to several of my favorite authors, and at the same time took literature classes at university. Both were great, but I'll always consider those mailing lists my "real" education in literature. University was mostly good for learning to write a certain kind of essay, and how to read in ways that are valued by tenured professors (which isn't exactly a bad thing--these are smart, interesting people).
And anyway, is the gray zone itself really such a problem? Being close to someone and sometimes wondering whether there's something "else" there seems pretty normal. Maybe we should just be OK with a bit of ambiguity in some of our friendships. It won't kill you ...
I think a few principles, once applied, make navigating the gray zone almost trivial:
-First, if you think you might be interested, engage in light harmless flirting and gauge the response. If there is no/negative response, then move on. The flirting should truly be harmless. If you friend feels uncomfortable, unsafe, or demeaned, then you have flirted wrongly. Apologize and move on.
-If you've determined you're interested, decide whether it is worth acting on. Sometimes it isn't - for instance, if you're married, or you're just too busy or whatever. Just move on.
-If you're interested and it's worth acting on, promptly express interest in a way that is clear and firm, but not embarrassing or intimidating to your friend. Do not express interest if you are not ready to take "no" for an answer. If you can't take "no" for an answer, just move on and try to figure out why. Where a lot of people go wrong here is instead of actually asking, they half-ask and half-demand. That is going to frighten your friend, and you probably won't be friends any longer.
-If you're rejected, accept it and don't lash out. If you goofed and made things super-awkward and uncomfortable, then lighten the air with a silly joke or something (ie make it clear that you're not going to flip, and that you're cool). Lashing out is going to create a toxic environment for everyone, and it's going to suck. Instead, deal with your feelings on your own, and continue to treat your friend with respect. And, of course, move on.
It's maybe a little awkward to continue working next to stop who rejected you--or who you rejected--but in my experience, it really isn't that bad at all, and it goes away quickly. What's much worse is to ignore one of these steps, and then have things end in a massive immature blow-out. Just take responsibility and be clear, and don't have undue expectations.
And it's often not too late to save yourself. In one case I was a massive douche, but I owned up to my behavior, apologized, and said I hoped we could eventually put this behind us. We did eventually, and it was fun.
Basically, you just have to be considerate and know when to move the hell on.
Further, what you call "cooperation" I think would largely would be a lack of organization. The ability to organize can grant immense power, and when people talk about the power of large crowds like this I think there's usually an unstated assumption of "if they were to spontaneously act in great--or at least adequate--coordination." I don't think it's fair to assess power in terms of something like a body count, and to ignore the power granted by organization.
If low prices drove the competitors out, then high prices will surely see them flood back in.
Any firm that gains monopoly power and hikes the prices without inviting fresh competition probably worked out some sweetheart deal with the government--and even then, they're better off keeping margins fairly low, since a govt-approved monopoly is easier to justify when the firm is not obscenely profitable.
Ultimately I don't think a business born out of deep discounts is suited well to massive price hikes. It destroys the identity they've built with consumers and if they weren't in the game to be deep discounters over the long haul, then I'd say they'll die. They would be better off maintaining the discounts while improving their cost structure.
The onus lies with the authorities to distinguish between real leads and moronic, no-threat-at-all leads, and to not trample on the rights of innocent people while doing so. Unless the lady that reported him knew for sure that the authorities would grossly misbehave like this, I'd say she's fine. She's likely just a moron; blaming her lets the police and the DA off too easily.
The good-people-in-bad-systems thing reminds me of the HBGary story generally. I don't know that I would describe Aaron Barr as a "good" guy at all--I certainly would not wish to ever associate with him--but his motivations throughout seemed pretty banal. Ambition, desire to take down the "bad hackers" in a showy way, desire to defend institutions he sees as basically okay.
Furthermore it does not always have to be the case that good people are working in rotten systems. Some people are genuinely terrible. And even in the case of basically good people who actions are warped by a rotten system - I think any basic idea of moral responsibility prevents us from excusing them for that. And at a certain level I'm not sure what the usefulness is in continuing to call them "good people." It instills empathy and prevents us from constructing cartoon-images of these people in our heads, but it can cross over into becoming an exercise in glossing over worthwhile anxiety . . . "Things aren't really -that- bad, it's just a case of good people stuck in a rotten system . . . "
Finally, the feds coming down this hard on any journalist--it shouldn't matter that he's independent, and possibly kind of hackish--is an alarming compromise of free speech.
Stratfor: I just don't see how you can dismiss this as "just their job." This isn't even a potential op. It's the case of a private company openly toying with the idea of illegally executing some dude for personal reasons. That seems reprehensible in any context, and certainly worthy of whatever scandal it generates.
It's sad to hear what all has happened to him. The way they treated his mother is especially shameful. Really this is just a very upsetting piece in general.