[thechat] the political compass

[Sean G.]

Howdy,

Maybe I'm in a mood after watching the HBO special on the USA basketball
team getting hosed in the 1972 Munich Olympics
(http://www.hbo.com/sportsdocs/), or perhaps I'm in a mood because the game
was played at all (http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Terrorism/munich.html),
but both pieces are...well, what I would expect under the masthead 'USS
Clueless' and not what I would expect from Mr. Raymond.

I figure the ;) or <sarcasm> or whatever helps separate the opinion I have
of someone from the opinion I have of the dreck they splay on the web is
presumed in the first case, but I just lost whatever respect I may have had
for Raymond.

He's not a Liberal because some people who call themselves Liberal are
jerks.  He's not a Conservative because some people who call themselves
Conservative are jerks.  Well, some people who consider themselves alive are
jerks, and yet...

And from the commentary on denbeste.nu:
"We Engineerists are intensely pragmatic. We don't try to come up with
overriding philosophies ("wealth is evil", "Government regulation is evil",
"America is evil") and then judge everything based on it. Individual cases
are taken as they come, and the only criterion for any given proposal is
practical: will it work better than the alternatives?"

Those few short lines perfectly summarizes the basis of bad government and
bad programming.  I'm sure the folks in the US who first put Osama on the
payroll to fight the Soviets and the folks in Redmond who put out an email
reader that allows code in a message to effectively take over your system
just by being previewed operate under that same anti-philosophy.


=)


Sean G.

<tip type="burning VCDs">
If you burn your home movies to VideoCDs, or would like to, check out
http://www.vcdhelp.com/.  Chock full of info on formats, file types,
hardware, software, step-by-step conversion and burning procedures, and
more!  What's not to like?
</tip>

-----Original Message-----
updating a thread from last week...

"Time for everyone to pile on Eric Raymond. He lists ten reasons he's not
Liberal and ten reasons he's not Conservative and I agree with 18 out of 20
of them."
 -- USS Clueless a.k.a. denbeste.nu
http://www.denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/06/PileOn.shtml

raymond's article is
http://armedndangerous.blogspot.com/2002_06_09_armedndangerous_archive.html#
77590690


rudy