Yep. Friends of the founder also get more political/social leverage in the org, so they get more resources to execute their ideas, and their results are valued more highly by leadership.
I tried reading and understanding the arguments made here, but just could not make any correlation with my day to day experience using ORMs.
is it possible that the fact this article is written in 2006 simply makes it dated? it seems very catastrophizing but we've come a long way and are just more aware of how to work with or around the shortcomings and flaws of ORMs.
I've often written programs where I'm trying to encapsulate pure in memory state into business objects and run into the same type of issues people complain about with ORMs. programming is just hard, we don't have to be such dogmatists about it.
I probably should have linked to the original article[1] instead of codinghorror's summary.
I don't think the article being from 2006 (or 2004) makes it dated (though it does have a date). I think it addresses a fundamental issue with ORMs that will always be there, which makes it a bit of a classic.
David Hang's Django ORM article has a bullet-point section on ORM cons, including "difficult debugging", "performance", "hides underlying SQL". Whereas Neward's article goes into depth on each of the following topics:
The Object-Relational Impedence Mismatch
The Object-to-Table Mapping Problem
The Schema-Ownership Conflict
The Dual-Schema Problem
Entity Identity Issues
The Data Retrieval Mechansim Concern
The Partial-Object Problem and the Load-Time Paradox
If you haven't read the original article, I highly recommend it. You'll learn a bit more about "Vietnam" (from a US perspective), and be better equipped to discuss and make decisions about ORMs afterward.
[My own opinion is that ORMs can be useful (I wouldn't say never use one), but that a programmer should be grounded in SQL and the relational model[2] first, so that they'll know when to, and when not to, use one.]
The link to the page uses the text "has been released". It's not intuitive at all that clicking this text would bring you to a page to learn more about what Cosmic is. The text "COSMIC, our new desktop environment for Pop!_OS and other Linux distros" could have been the clickable link instead.
I mean, I'm opposed to lobbying and bribes as a whole.
However, if lobbying is just a sad reality of modern society, I'm pretty much forced to not be bothered by lobbying for a cause that I am in favor of (crackdowns on monopolies).
How much has Ticketmaster spent on lobbying in the past?
You’re conflating wildly-different subjects. This article is about gifts, which are personal and the closest thing in our system to bribes. (They become bribes if traded for official acts. This article seems to describe bribery.)
Lobbying is a blanket term for communicating with electeds. If you’re against lobbying you’re against being able to call your elected. Lobbying, i.e. bottom-up political communication, is inherent to democracy.
Well, there's also the professional lobbying class that wine and dine the reps and probably know them on a first name basis, and are supported by multi million dollar war chests from multinational mega corps. That's what most people think of when they say lobbying, not Joe Schmoe writing an email or two every four years.
> there's also the professional lobbying class that wine and dine the reps and probably know them on a first name basis
In many cases because they once worked for them. (I tend to support a cooling-off period for electeds and staffers.)
On wining and dining, the limits are usually $50. If you go to the D.C. lobbying haunts, you’ll notice that number coming up in specials.
Most lobbying is actually advising the client, not the elected.
> what most people think of when they say lobbying, not Joe Schmoe writing an email or two every four years
What about the ACLU or EFF?
I’m not arguing against your characterisation of the popular representation. I’m arguing that representation is wrong. To the absurd point that it disempowers those who hold it.
>On wining and dining, the limits are usually $50. If you go to the D.C. lobbying haunts, you’ll notice that number coming up in specials.
Oh that makes me feel better. They are limited by $x, so why not spend Y million dollars subsidizing some establishment so they can sell "gifts" for $X?
>What about the ACLU or EFF?
Do they use their money to lobby millions to politicians or for proper signal boosting and PR to make the populace aware? I'm not a fan of my money going towards "gifts" either. Ideally these orgs simply help make issues aware and the voters do the rest.
I know someone who used to think that, but the company all but forced her to become a lobbyist anyway. She quickly discovered that most of her job is being a free expert on topics the company is in but doesn't have a political position on. Sometimes her job is to kill some bill the company doesn't like, but most of the time she is the expert on what is really going on in the real world.
>Sometimes her job is to kill some bill the company doesn't like,
Wish I could fund a bill hitman.
>but most of the time she is the expert on what is really going on in the real world.
Sure, but they are inevitably influenced on what to say or not say by the ones funding her. Conflict of interest. I'm guessing if she finds out about some inconvinient truth that's she's not necessarily free to lobby for the truth. She's representing a company, after all.
Lobbying covers most of the corruption in the 1st world.
Accepting gifts is risky, they are often forbidden or at least need to be reported.
It is much easier to accept legal bribes - donations, speaker invitations, PAC support. Professional lobbying often includes legal knowledge that allows to offer such bribes legally.
> Accepting gifts is risky, they are often forbidden or at least need to be reported
Literally what this article is about.
> legal bribes - donations, speaker invitations, PAC support
You’re conflating wildly different things. Donations, to a campaign or a PAC, are not personal. These are money in politics. But they’re to a campaign and decently scrutinised.
Speaking engagements are part of the revolving door that is much closer to gifts and, as you correctly point out, corruption.
> overlap between 'gifts' and 'lobbying' is significant
Source? Most federal electeds are prohibited from accepting gifts from lobbyists [1]. (Meals are capped at $50. Yes, most electeds take these limits seriously.)
> is often used euphemistically to describe exactly that overlap
This is a reflection of the state of civic education in our country. Someone who cannot differentiate lobbying (paid to reimbursed to pro bono) from gifts from bribery is almost entirely lobotomised from being able to wield one of the most basic civic powers: assembly.
What is the value of me telling you [some very specific economic indicator] is [good/bad]? Technically this is public information you can get from many sources, but you call the lobbyist in that industry because they know. One the one hand the information is free, on the other hand to understand what all those numbers mean and give a quick summary is very valuable.
The proper and intended purpose of lobbyists is to communicate information that is not readily available or understood.
Ideally we want our electors to have information so that they can make informed decisions about the law.
If new legislation would bankrupt bluegill inc., you would want your legislator to know that is a consequence. The lobbyists is who tells them that.
Law is made in an information poor environment where few of the consequences are understood. I think that most of the people that object to lobbying don't understand this.
I think we understand this. I think we also understand that current lobbyists are not neutral actors, like how they (ideally) would be in a court proceeding.
ideally, politicians would seek out or be invited to a forum to help understand these issues. a boring forums with as many bells and whistles as some random meetup, not some fancy ball with subsidized dinners. But at this point I think it's just easier to punish "gifts" more harshly.
Lobbyist arent supposed to be neutral actors, and we shouldn't want or expect them to be. It is the politician that is expected to be neutral.
The goal of Johnny's lobbyist is to communicate Johnny's concerns. The same as if you were to write a letter to your congressman - you are sharing your thoughts and insights.
>ideally, politicians would seek out or be invited to a forum to help understand these issues. a boring forums with as many bells and whistles as some random meetup, not some fancy ball with subsidized dinners. But at this point I think it's just easier to punish "gifts" more harshly.
99% of lobbying is exactly what you describe: boring emails, phone calls, technical essays and testimonials.
"neutral" is doing a lot of heavy lifting and I apologize for that. Let me recontextualize it to this:
a proper lobbyists should be speaking in their own interests, not necessarily as a paid actor for a corporation. Paying someone a full time job to more or less woo over politicians as an envoy carries a bunch of financial perversions that leads to this very conversation.
My "neutral" comment should refer to my proposed forums. I feel people in such forums should be relatively neutral and able to compile arguments from multiple perspectives. If lawyers and reps can't do this, it makes sense to lean on a subject matter expert. But that expert should not be speaking for themselves in such a context. They should be doing what I imagined a rep to do: read a lot of different viewpoints and compile it for the lawmaker.
>99% of lobbying is exactly what you describe: boring emails, phone calls, technical essays and testimonials.
Sure, I imagine we're mostly focusing on the 1%, but it's a very powerful 1% (as usual). Enough to spoil the barrel and require reform. It rarely takes a consensus of bad to regulate the bad.
>a proper lobbyists should be speaking in their own interests, not necessarily as a paid actor for a corporation.
Im very confused by this. What line are you drawing between the interest of the lobbyist and that of the corporation? They are one and the same. The lobbyist is the representitive the the company or interest group. who is at risk of perversions? surely not the lobbyist?
Im also not sure what you mean by forums. The place where the information is collected and sorter is the office and mind of the representative.
Are you thinking that representative should all have to go through a 3rd party expert placed between them and their constituents? Who would pay this expert? If the politician pays them, what is the difference between using this third party and not? Is the idea that the expert (who has their own biases) would be be better suited to balance opinions?
>What line are you drawing between the interest of the lobbyist and that of the corporation? They are one and the same.
Financial incentive, basically. It's a blurry line but there's definitely a difference between a collective group of citizens demanding X law, and a person who's full time job is to coax a politican to make such a decision. Especially with today's workforce, most of us literally don't have time to do that.
It's human nature to bond with someone you spend a lot of time talking to, so it's hard to define that line. But I don't think these "gift" policies are doing much to deter such attempts at neutrality.
>who is at risk of perversions? surely not the lobbyist?
The spirit of the law. The pitch for democracy is 'vote for what matters', but the grease of a few people with enough time on their hands can overwrite that. That should be corrected somehow. I'm not confident it will, but there should be more checks and balances against such workarounds.
>Im also not sure what you mean by forums. The place where the information is collected and sorter is the office and mind of the representative.
You said above earlier that they lack the time and expertise to be that office and mind, right? I'm just proposing a way to be informed without it mostly being influenced by corporations who can afford the time to
The forum is merely an ideal. Something that still happens with town halls, but nowhere near as often as before (at least, not in my region). The rep themself may not have time to do this regularly, but an envoy can help collect such information.
>Are you thinking that representative should all have to go through a 3rd party expert placed between them and their constituents
If they can't physically do it themselves, there should be some alternatives. Not everything needs to be thoroughly fact checked (another ideal but overkill), and some is just opinion. But I'd hope there'd be some experts for stuff like tax reform (things people are biased against) or environment (things people simply may lack technical details for).
And hopefully that economist isn't also biased for corporate tax cuts, nor environmentalist biased to keep petroleum flowing. That's part of why things slowed down.
>Who would pay this expert?
We already do? I'm sure the government has both available, entire administrations dedicated to some (hopefully they aren't shut down).
If they aren't there, it'd be far from the worst use of a contractor/consultant I've seen.
>Is the idea that the expert (who has their own biases) would be be better suited to balance opinions?
Ideally, yes. You can't stop all biases, incompetencies, and corruption. But we can take baby steps.
The article clearly states that the connections you mention don't make up a community:
> Many praise the myriad benefits that smartphones and social media are said to bring; online connection can give a person a sense of “community,” we are told. We can find new friends, discover just about any idea imaginable, network, and even date through our phones. We can video chat with hundreds of people simultaneously from far-flung locations. We can pursue learning largely untethered from any physical space. Based on all of this, it would be easy to assume that place doesn’t matter.
> I disagree. Physical place actually matters far more than we realize, especially as our lives become ever more placeless.
The people selling this idea of "online community" figured out that if they become the middleman for all of our personal interactions that they can charge us for each one or charge someone else for access to us. One of the reasons Instagram is so horrifying to me is that it takes something like "personal messages" and puts Instagram front and center in controlling whose message you see and at what time, and they use that to foster fake relationships with salespeople making marketing videos in their kitchens.
The article indeed makes that argument. But from a functional perspective it just isn't true, virtual communities have replaced physical ones.
I also think it sells short the attractiveness of these digital communities. A digital community can be something where you spend many hours a day, with the same people, where the connections are just as important as your connections in real life. It isn't just dating apps, Facebook and YouTube.
Of course what the article wants to say that they are different, which is obviously true and I do absolutely agree that digital communities can be very detrimental and aren't a replacement with the necessary benefits.
> where the connections are just as important as your connections in real life
That's the problem statement: these degenerate images of real communities are attractive and they become important despite being incomplete and ultimately crippling.
It's exactly analogous to junk food which is attractive and which becomes "important" to the people addicted to it even as it slowly destroys their health.
I strongly disagree that online spaces can't be fulfilling. A private, invite-only discord server with a couple layers of core-member regulars, friends-of-friends, and miscellaneous passerby is a compelling substitute for joining something like the Oddfellows or Masons. In the server I hang out in, 2 people have met their spouses, a handful formed romantic relationships, and most everyone has made at least a few lasting friendships.
If that's "degenerate", what's your definition of a meaningful social space?
It sounds like you and your friends run a very nice online neighborhood, that's terrific and I don't mean to detract from that.
I'm pointing out the enormous difference in bandwidth between online and in-person interaction. It's difficult even to estimate the orders of magnitude!
Online interaction can be a healthy adjunct to a healthy social life. It's when online interaction replaces in-person interaction that we evidently get a mental health crisis.
> what's your definition of a meaningful social space?
Thanks for asking. I would start with Christopher Alexander's "Pattern Language" et. al.[1] and add in applied ecology (i.e. Permaculture, Greenway[2])
The idea being if the neighborhood is comfortable and full of life the meaningful social relations should hopefully follow. (And if not, at least you're comfortable and well-fed and not causing anybody any problems.)
