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The weakest link in hardware/software security is people.

To summarize: people are a problem. - Douglas Adams (short version of the original to better fit the topic)

I think you might want to rethink that position.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

Trump wins election

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
        H. L. Mencken

While I'm not exactly a fan of Gawker, nor do I think Hulk Hogan's lawsuit was unfounded - the problem I have is that a very rich person basically paid lawyers to find problems and subsequently destroy a media entity that he didn't like. This is somewhat dangerous precedent - don't piss off the rich.

Translation: Rich people should have fewer rights than I do.

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." - Anatole France

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/90.html

Either you got it or you don't.

I'd gone years without using adblocking software,

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

-- H. L. Menken

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/38777.html

Generally, they work by brand recognition. Same as ads on TV, etc. When they show you an ad for (e.g.) a Ford truck, you aren't supposed to go out and buy one right away. It's supposed to linger in the back of your mind, so that when you do go shopping for a truck, you're inclined towards buying a Ford.

As the old saying goes, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." -John Wanamaker

Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

-DNA

I'd expect that a 20:1 reduction in human solders isn't going to be unreasonable.
[...]
But if the 5% say, "We are doing all the work so we should get 100% of the benefits of society" then this is going to end ugly.

For whom? I guess it depends on how good those robot soldiers are.

And you don't even need to pay them! Now that's progress http://www.quotationspage.com/...

from an intellectual point of view [...] paying more taxes will also results in more disposable income.

Perhaps, "intellectual point of view" means something else where you live. The only way this is possible is for the tax-spending government to spend the taxes both wiser and with higher efficiency, than the majority of taxpayers would've spent them on their own. Although this is possible in theory — and may even have happened a few times in history — usually whatever a government does (from running a railroad to building a web-site), is done poorly. This is not a "partisan" statement — it is a widely accepted wisdom. The expression "not bad for government job" is part of vernacular. Heck, Harry Truman pointed out decades ago: "Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship."

Some things — like waging war — can not be done safely by non-government entities, because non-governmental customers ordering such services may get too tempted. But for most things, it is both fairer and more efficient to let people decide, how to spend their monies.

Democracy.

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/364.html

At that instant, US citizen's protected rights are constitutionally violated by a deliberate government action.

Except, US citizens no longer have protected rights. Because the government is bypassing and ignoring the Constitution.

And huge amounts of people are essentially saying "awesome, keep us safe from the terrorists", and completely missing what's happening around them. As long as they can still go shopping and the TV shows stay on the air, they simply don't care.

9/11 was the point at which the US voluntarily ceased to stop being a free country, but most people don't understand that. What's even worse, they keep acting like they're free and defend what the government is doing.

So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause.

Apparently Mr. Moalin once missed a telephone call from "Aden Hashi Ayrow, the senior al Shabaab leader," which makes it likely that a little more was going on than merely the donation of "a small sum of money."

Is this important?

He's claiming not that the evidence is wrong, he's claiming that it was collected illegally.

It's often been said that the defense of freedom is the defense of scoundrels (H. L. Mencken). We believe that a kiddie porn merchant has the right to a fair trial, the KKK has the right to assemble, and Rosa Parks has the right to sit in the front of the bus.

Should we base the legitimacy of rights and freedoms on the character of the accused party?

Relax, soon these people will be running your healthcare system.

"I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."

http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Douglas_Adams/

random mutations?

Mutations are a big part of evolution.

I will admit I am not smart enough to see how a single-cell organism can ever become a fish.

It's easy to understand, it might just take you a few billions of years.

The problem with understanding this is that these processes happen on a timescale that is far beyond human imagination, just like the vastness of space is far beyond human imagination. You might think that a 100 years lifespan is a long time, but in evolution's terms it's not even a blip on the radar. The evolutionary change between generations is far too small to be noticeable in macroscopic lifeforms, but it piles up over the tens of thousands of years.

The only way to see these processes in a regular human's life span is to look at smaller lifeforms with a much higher rate of change. This part is easily visible to everyone who follows the issue with antibiotics, and why they have to be modified every year.

To get back to your fish-related question, there are a bazillion number of factors that lead from bacteria to fish, and we don't know the vast majority of them. You're skipping a lot of intermediary steps there as well. You can't observe how it happened (because you don't have the right environment and enough time), you can only observe the processes behind it.

It's probably where those "Everything that can be invented has been invented. Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899" quotes are coming from. (Yes, I know it is a myth).

This is what we should have for our House of Representatives. We will keep the same politicians, in order to have their meetings and craft the bills, but when it comes to the final passage, it will be decided by the People online. That way stupid stuff like TARP will not pass (almost 80% of Americans were against it). The Senate would still function normally, with politicians voting "aye" or "nay", so as to block any bad bills the People's House might pass.

The founders didn't trust democracy. That's why they built a democratic republic. (It was that 51% eating the 49% thing.) You can find lots of quotes to this effect like this one by Alexander Hamilton:

It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.
Alexander Hamilton, Speech on 21 June 1788 urging ratification of the Constitution in New York.
US (Scottish-born) lawyer & politician (1755 - 1804)

The House was supposed to most directly represent the people and be impulsive. The Senate was supposed to represent the states and be a roadblock to the impulsiveness of the House (as the probably fictional quote attributed to Washington says, the saucer to cool the tea). This was why until the unfortunate 17th Amendment Senators were selected directly by the States and not by popular vote. Senators would be those who wouldn't have to be concerned with being elected while the Representatives would be attuned to the people because they're constantly running for re-election.

If you look at the division of responsibilities you can see this to some degree. The Representatives, representing the people, are allotted by population. The Senators, representing the several equal States, are equally allotted two per State. The people, through the House, approve spending (all spending bills must originate in the House). The States (which are not, as most believe, just political subdivisions of the United States but were considered to be sovereign entities that had agreed to bind together) agree to treaties negotiated by and appointments by the President by instructing their Senators to approve or disapprove. Now the States have little say in the Federal government outside of filing lawsuits.

(As an aside, that's also one of the main reasons that we have the Electoral College as it's the people of each State who elect the President, not the population of the United States at large.)

If you remember several years back there was a huge stink about "unfunded federal mandates". Would any except a very good and clearly beneficial "unfunded federal mandate" have a chance of passing a body like the Senate if it were representing those having to provide the funding instead of those who can't wait to get the "free" goodies?

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/33085.html

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

We have reached that point for a majority of people. It's all flippin' magic to them and people who practice magic should be burned at the stake.

Welcome back to the dark ages... where is knowledge is bad and fear is the preferred tool to keep people from getting all uppity.

is too important to be left to chance."
Robert R. Coveyou

Making decisions without taking the people into account is becoming quite common these days in EU. Crisis is the best justification they found. When Papaandreou said he will make a referendum, he was dismissed. An ex-banker is now leading the country. In Italy, it was decided (not by the people) the government should be changed. An ex-banker is now leading the country. See this http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/37700.html ... So the fact that governments are making EU level decisions without consulting the only elected instance at the EU level (the parlament) is quite concerning.

No, I can't believe it. The other thing that is hard to believe is that after you had already been burned once by that brand that you went back and bought it again. You'd think that some people would learn from their experiences but that is not always the case. " Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Actually, I think that was Franklin, not Jefferson, but otherwise, yes, you are correct.

The source I show for that quote is actually Bob Edwards? http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Bob_Edwards/

I've also seen it reference in Bloom County

"The journey of 1,000 miles begins with the first step", Lao-Tzu quote

unfortunately, "terrorist" has become a new witch-hunt word - equal in power (or a VERY close second to "pedo")

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." --George Santayana.

"Witch" in the 1600's.

"Communist" in the 1950's.

"Terrorist" from 2001-???

And we keep repeating the same mistakes, over and over and over again.

Carl Sagan

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/26980.html

It's just like these things never happen ...

Computer Science isn't a Science?

Yes, but it isn't about Computers; so it's ok.

... after forty years we should have detected something more conclusive than the "wow" event. It means that there are no signals to detect (either they don't exist or are so attenuated that they cannot be detected) or that there is some flaw in our approach to detecting the signal. ...

Or maybe space is big...

"To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it." --G.K. Chesterton (source)

Nice quote. Oh wait...

"To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it." --G.K. Chesterton (source)

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." -John Adams

Nuclear power has one thing going for it:

• * High Energy Density

Nuclear power also has several strikes:

• * High maintenance - everything has to work all the time so that your plant doesn't explode and make hundreds of square miles uninhabitable
• * High initial cost
• * High shutdown costs
• * stuck with billion-dollar boiling water reactors and pressurized water reactors

Even if a superior reactor design comes along, there's an incredible financial incentive to stick with the technology that was first developed and deployed (see the Wired story on thorium).

The best argument in favor of nuclear power is that "it may have problems, but it's all we've got". Nuclear advocates rightly point out that, compared to coal, oil, natural gas, and even hydropower (complicated), perhaps nuclear isn't so bad. Coal is abundant but dirty, oil is expensive and dirty, natural gas is cleaner but still poisons the ocean with CO2, and hydropower has it's own challenges.

But the one "black swan" that never gets talked about is "disruptive technology" that changes the entire energy equation.

One example: I've mentioned Global Resource Corporation's Microwave here before. This device uses specific microwave frequencies to release gaseous and liquid hydrocarbons from solids, such as coal (diesel, propane, butane). The company had a prototype that worked on tires, but they fell apart before they could get commercial versions of their technology to market. Luckily archive.org has a copy of their website: http://waybackmachine.org/*/http://www.GlobalResourceCorp.com. I remember reading about a cool patent that used Magnetic Resonance to figure out what specific microwaves a given sample of "trash" would need to be broken down...

GRC's site talked about applying the technology to tar sands, to coal mining, breaking down hundreds of millions of used tires piled everywhere... How would the energy equation change if harvesting coal and tar sands didn't require massive amounts of energy?

Here's something else: according to an old story on money.cnn.com, the largest single use of electricity in southern California is pumping water. And very large amount of water is used to generate electricity.

So, with these twin issues... What if Raphial Morgado's MYT (Mighty) pump really is as good as he says it is? Suppose you could get 25% more water pumped for the same amount of electricity, or generate 25% more electricity with the same amount of steam?

Whereas Global Resource Corp's special microwaves haven't reached market because it was torpedo'd by mismanagement (or maybe there's a technical problem - I'm pretty certain that the science is sound), Morgado's pump is in limbo because he hasn't yet found anyone who'd lend him $4-million or $10-million to build a factory. He has plenty of offers to buy the technology outright, but he has the audacity to presume that he should be the one to profit from his invention.

Imagine if the demand for energy suddenly plunged by more than 25%. Oil is only going for $100/barell because demand roughly matches supply. If supply exceeds demand by a significant percentage, we'd be back to $1/gallon gas in a heartbeat.

These are just the two technologies that

I think Winston Churchlll has something to say about that. Democracy allows people to vote their rights away, but makes it difficult for them to be taken by force. I think that's a fair trade.

Well, I wasn't there at the time, so I'll have to take folks word on it, but that's what the interweb tells me. It certainly made me laugh. And by all means apply as needed. http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/286.html

"Rare earths" aren't really that rare. There are many potential mining sites worldwide. They're sparse, in that huge amounts of rock have to be processed to get small amounts of metal.

Rare, in this case, is a relative term. You might play poker and rarely get a royal flush (1 in 649,740) but if you play a billion hands you'll get an average of 1539 royal flushes. You never go above the rare chance to get a royal flush but with a big enough sample size you are likely to end up with a lot of them.

The Earth is a HUGE sample size but that doesn't change the fact that the rare earths are, well, rare! Of course almost every element is rare in comparison to the most common element, hydrogen.

Microsoft's attitude to OSS is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until they can find a rock.

Have you ever heard the phrase, "Love the sinner, hate the sin."?

You mean the quote from Mahatma Gandhi? It doesn't apply, here.

We can significantly advance security without having a deleterious impact on individual rights in most instances. At the same time, there are situations where trade-offs are inevitable.

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it. Publilius Syrus (~100 BC)

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/34596.html

As Stephen King once claimed

Just to maintain the high standards of Slashdot pedantry, it was Robert Bloch. Wonderful horror author, too bad people are starting to forget him.

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.

When you're quoting someone, does it hurt to acknowledge? Those who haven't read that book will think you came up with that on your own, and you don't want to be unduly credited, do you?

Ends can have beginnings. At least, Winston Churchill thought so. http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/24921.html

So presumably ends must be able to continue, or we'd never reach the actual end of the end.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C.S. Lewis

I know I find it increasingly frustrating to contribute because whatever you add, there's always someone waiting to revert it immediately without any attempt at compromise or discussion.

I also have to say that I think people will find it humourous 50 years from now when they look back at comments from 2009 about how there's not much new stuff to add. That's a bit like the fellow who wanted to close the patent office in 1899 because everything had already been invented.

"There is no such thing as bad publicity, except your own obituary." --Brendan Behan

the release takes its nickname from the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement

Which. let's face it, is something KDE4 could benefit from for a long time. Why would anybody opt for continuous and gradual improvement when they can simply install openbox and get a huge improvement all at once?

Original quote by George Bernard Shaw:

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."