You could pretty easily implement a democracy inside a republic like the US. Simply start a party where each representative is bound to place every decision he encounters onto a public discussion board--and is required to vote with the majority.

If the board involved discussions like those at slashdot, the process would involve many more voters and ensure that they were more educated--perhaps even improving on a pure democracy by allowing people to vote on individual arguments and not simply the end result--this would record the true meaning behind election results for future refinement.

It would also be reasonable to require members of this party to install a microphone and camera in their office with a 24 hour broadcast.

Yeah, it would have to be iterative--like anything else it would have dozens of bugs and exploits to work out, but in the long run I think it could be made to work--reducing corruption and external financial influences by corporations and lobbyists to almost nill, and wouldn't require a single change to our existing laws.

I was thinking the same thing. The fact that you are beeping something out is just as bad as not beeping it out.

That said, I don't find people saying naughty words to be a problem or offensive in any way, I kind of appreciate it at times.

But if you are bothered by "fuck you", you should be just as bothered by "F*** you".

I'm a 20 year programmer, I've worked on it just about daily in C, C++, Java and a few others. I find that if I'm typing at my limit then I'm not thinking enough and probably messing something up and putting out WAY too much code for others to maintain.

I spend more time reducing the amount of code "Faster" typests put out.

I do know programmers who use vi and have used Eclipse as well. They generally call it a wash--although I did have one guy say something that kind of made sense--he had gotten so used to the way eclipse code-completes and brings up documentation mid-line at a keystroke that he had forgotten how to code without it, so he uses vi to force him to work harder and remember all that stuff. That sort of made sense to me I guess, although I'd just install eclipse myself.

Actually, I'd disagree.

If you were to make the climate inhospitable enough and reduce the population by 99.99999% or so, it would be nearly impossible to recover. You could never again sustain large populations and the lack of genetic diversity (and food diversity) with the restricted population size would probably end it within a few thousand years with no hope of creating a population large enough to do anything about it either through terraforming or space exploration.

And I really don't think we're that far from such a shift. Imagine two large mountains with a slight valley between them and a ball rolling back and forth between the peaks. That ball is our ecology rolling back and forth between ice age and arid--in general it wants to self-correct back to the middle, but if you happen to crest a peak and it heads down the other side, it's not coming back--we're venus or mars in no time (say a few thousand years max)

Legally a DS cannot be programmed by a user.
Legally an iPad cannot be programmed by a user.

I've seen a couple routers that legally allow a general purpose Linux OS to be loaded and any program to be run.

My argument isn't about how the device CAN be used, it's how it's allowed to be used, what it's intended to do.

All of these things are intended as appliances. A few routers and (up until recently) the PS/3 are the appliances I know of that are allowed to also be general purpose computers--I know there are others but the DS and iPad are certainly not in that category.

Solar has a SERIOUS problem that makes it completely resistant to corporate investment... It's that it is virtually impossible to monopolize the market.

What would you invest in if you were a corporation only interested in your own profits, solar panels that everyone could buy once and put on their roofs for 10 years or a nuclear reactor where you can sell electricity every day of the year at an ever increasing cost? If you picked solar, you've just been fired by the shareholders!

Although solar is picking up steams, the steps are slower. there is investment in research, research, experimentation, revision, testing, production, mass production--all of which are required to reach "affordable product" (Pulled that out of the air, but I hope you get what I mean)

Anyway, when you have someone funding that entire cycle at all stages, it moves orders of magnitude faster.

Actually a corporation might even be better off manipulating the darker/less public parts of a government to hamper solar production--not that anyone would do such a thing.

From the point of view of someone who doesn't remember or want to remember shortcuts, VI is an abomination.

I use VI occasionally when I can't avoid it. You have to know a few commands (:wq, :q!, a, i, x, dd, /) to be able to use it, but at that it is the most annoying system possible.

If possible I use "cat > file" instead.

VIM is supposed to have help, so I gave it a try. Here's my review of VIM

It comes up with a little help screen.

It says a bunch of stuff I don't really want to read--I just want to know how to navigate to a position visible on the screen--something you should be able to do with a mouse.

I see that :help or f1 gives me "on-line help". worth a try.

I hit f1. It splits the screen and gives me a bunch of other help commands. WTF. I'd already be done twice if I had started with notepad!

Wait, it says I can type ":set mouse=a" to get my mouse to work.

Now I'll type in a little bit to see if it works. I know how to do that, it's "i".

I returns "Cannot make changes, 'modifiable' is off.

Screw this, I'm done. :q!

Damn, they did break the one key I knew! :q! ALWAYS quits out. I'll do it again.

There that worked. Crap, so much for this improved VIM functionality, I'll stick with vi in cases of extreme emergency when cat >> file just won't do the job.

Yeah, I realize I could put in a little effort and get much further, but I've already wasted more time just in this session than I could possibly gain back in the next the years by knowing VI inside and out.

The funny thing is that the arguments by the pro-vi guys are just as ridiculous as this.

I do wish all editors had "dd" though.

Everyone seems to forget that iPad is a dedicated device--a large iPod that happens to run certain apps developed for the iPhone. It is no more a general purpose computer than a Nintendo DS, a router or the cable box sitting on top of your TV. (although some routers actually CAN run Linux and general purpose apps legally--within licensing terms--so I guess those are general purpose computers.)

Nobody has the RIGHT to develop apps on an iPad--period. Apple ALLOWS many people to develop apps for their dedicated device, but that doesn't make it a general purpose computer (Many people can develop apps for a cable box too--that's what I'm doing--but the cable company still controls deployment just like Apple).

This misunderstanding is actually why you hear many of your more technical friends say "iPad, why would you get one of those???", they want it to be a computer and notice that it doesn't fit, but perhaps don't understand that it's not in any way targeted at them. It's just not a general computer computer, it's not intended to be one and it won't be as long as Apple gets their way.

Disclaimer: I love my iPhone and have finally displaced all my windows computers (mostly) with Macs. Still I really dislike Apples anti-competitive practices and will be waiting for the Unix iPad clones this Christmas--I may even start adjusting the Mac/Linux ratio away from Mac soon.

I had assumed that at these "camps" children might engage in a couple 2 hour sessions a day, but for the most part they would be encouraged to interact in other ways.

I mean, when you go to a camp for any topic, you spend most of your time on things vaguely or not at all associated with that topic.

They could have kids play a sports game on the computer then play it for real and compare, or kids that like role playing might re-enact some of it outdoors (Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt!)

If they actually allow kids to sit around inside and play for 12 hours a day every day then I have a problem with it too!

It makes me wonder if you realize that what they did had nothing to do with creating a print server--it was genericising the print drivers which can still be a royal pain in the ass on windows. It also takes care of hooking you up to local print servers--also pretty cool.

I mean, I realize you were being sarcastic, but that should have SOME relation to the article.

What they did is actually amazingly useful.

What on earth makes you think they want you to read it. They would prefer you didn't and just said you did--which you do. Hey, it works!

Most of the time your computer at work is physically secure enough for the data that is on it.

Your work computer better not be accessible through the firewall.

Your office should ensure that viruii do not exist, this includes monitoring firewall traffic and computer activity internally.

With those precautions, aging passwords isn't going to help.

With them, aging passwords probably won't help.

The only thing they are going to help is when someone has physical access to your computer--and when that happens any /.er will tell you that all bets are off and passwords are pretty much irrelevant.

So what is the drawback? If there are any passwords I have to change regularly, I'll toggle between two.

If they don't allow toggling, I'll add the month to the end or something like that.

If that's blocked (too similar) I'll write it down and tape it to my damn monitor. Physical security is NOT my job.

The one thing a password is good for is keeping co-workers from sabotaging me via sending bad emails or putting child porn on my computer. If they force rotation and I have to tape my password to my monitor, this is the one level of security I lose (which is a pretty reasonable chance to take).

Wouldn't you say that if something should be left to parents and it IS left to parents and it isn't taken care of that there needs to be a fix beyond "this should be left to the parents"?

I had some difficulty seeing some of the images at Avatar. It was still pretty, but I thought there should be more "Popping out" stuff--I literally saw two images in front of the screen, but it seemed like I was missing a lot.

I intend to go back and watch again from a different position in the theater and concentrate on effects more carefully--I think it really is a matter of retraining yourself.

I think discussing your new iPhone game on slashdot is an NP-Easy way to get a substantial popularity boost.