I've given up treating myself as a traditional "employee". I refuse to work any amount of time uncompensated. Much like my employer refuses to do charity work for his/her customer. Every hour I work without getting paid is ultimately reduces my hourly rate.
I treat myself as a business. If I am not getting paid, I am not showing up. All life long we trade time for money. If your not getting anything for your time, than you are losing out. Some could argue that money isnt worth time, but thats a load of horse crap (since you'll run out of time if you dont eat).
Anyway. I've been able to do this because I stopped thinking like my parents trained me too as soon as I realized 1. corporations are going to do whatever it is they need to do to maximize profite, 2. i need to think EXACTLY like corporations, 3. that there are other companies out there that are willing to compensate me better than my current employer. All I have to do is provide the skills and expertise to entice them to give it to me. And thats one part training, and two parts marketing.
I find password policy to be rather following password: "iL0v3 Ur3 m0nk3| @$sz. " is completely useless against:
- Key stroke loggers - Systems still using Crypt (I'm looking at you Solaris) - People who walk away from their desktop - People who log into their desktop logged in as root - Systems that allow "sudo su -" without password - Phishing Attacks - Stupid people who will open any attachment, even go so far and disable antivirus just to be able to do it.
The problem isnt with password policy. Lets face it, strong passwords are meant to prevent brute force attacks of various kinds. Unless your using the top 10 passwords in the crack library, its highly unlikely that someone is going to "guess" a standard password. Strong passwords are meant to stop programs that already have access to the encrypted password file. Either that file is AES 256 or its not. If its not, it doesnt matter WTF your password is.
Oh, and using your historical passwords is rather stupid, considering those old password algorithms (3DES etc) are all easily broken by determined hackers.
Whats my point? I dunno. Let me know if you figure it out.
I dont normally replied to anon but you make my point for me.
"human life doesnt really have much value if its not yours." The war cry of the communist/socialist/environmentalist elitist. Rail against everything. Decry every solution as "inhumane", all the while proposing fantasy ideas that have no merit or foundation in reason. I add in the catastrophes to make a "clear" point. I grew up in the coal mining regions of the USA. Care to take a shot at the statistics on "Black Lung" alone?
Between 1987 and 1996, 14,489 people died from "Black Lung". Care to guess how many people, world wide who died from Nuclear power during that same time period? Since 1990, more than 20,000 people have died from black lung. http://www.courier-journal.com/cjextra/blacklung/index.html
Counting bodies isn't as abstract as counting parts per million of carbon in the air, or closely guarded computer models predicting weather patterns... Its fairly simple.
Even the most wacky, statistics skewing websites in existence cannot logically link nuclear power ALONE to being a dangerous source of energy. (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0131-03.htm . PS: A great article if you need a laugh, it links "power production" and "nuclear weapons production" into the same category, "nuclear energy and weapons programs up to 1989 will account for 65 million deaths". I'm sure 64 million of those are due to coal and gas energy sources.
Anyway. Anonymous snipes backed by "emotion" of wanting to "save the people" is all you can expect from the left. When confronted with logic or even a touch of rational debate, lefties put on their super hero masks and start talking about "the value of life".
Another group of people wanted to do whats best for the people too. They made gulags and had great leaps forward for the progress of man kind!
I found an interesting document from the IAEA. Now, I'm not a big fan of UN run organizations (most are socialist leaning), but this is report is fairly unbiased and presents good arguments on both sides.
This report talks about making nuclear plants profitable compared to other energy sources and gives a bit of analysis surrounding the energy debate. A good read.
With the current administration and its very obvious ties to the environmentalist and alternative energy lobbies, I am very surprised it took 6 months for scare mongering about nuclear power plants to begin. Nuclear power has already proven to be the safest means of producing large quantities of energy, even if you include the most EXTREME and exaggerated outcomes of all nuclear catastrophes combined (lets even throw in Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Of course, you'd have to include all the people who die in the production of coal or oil over the course of the centuries, but nuclear comes out the winner.
We are just unfortunate enough to live in a time where the people in power grew up under the shadow of nuclear annihilation. This child hood trauma has caused the lefty environmentalists to forsake the cleanest possible energy alternative available that allows us to maintain our standards of living. Sure, alternative energy supplies will help increase supply and lower prices eventually, but nuclear is the only way to ween our dependence off of fossil fuels in the short term (20-50 years). I mean, what about global warming?!?! I mean, Climate Change.
Look, even if you are a global warming / climate change / or you dont believe in global warming / climate change , or just a skeptic either way, the benefits of nuclear are undeniable.
Oh, and I'd be more than happy to have one of those plants in my backyard. Lots of high paying jobs, and a cool landmark on the horizon. Probably cheap electricity as a payoff to locals to boot.
"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life," said Judge Sotomayor.
"Don't like it? Go be a cop in Saudi, where I'm sure you're allowed to be as racist as you like."
Or New York, where you can become a judge on a circuit court.
How about "white folks' greed runs a world in need" -- BHO
And this article is tagged Republican? Republicans run their racists out on a rail, Democrats try to put them into the supreme court and elect them to president.
You mean both "political parties" not both ends of the political spectrum. It is the statist that is the enemy of freedom, and they exist in both political parties. In the Republican party, they are the "Christian Taliban" that the DailyKosSlashdot user loves to rail on. In the Democratic party, they are the "Socialist Utopians" who wish to repeat the failures of the 20th century, but are doing it for "social justice" and the "good of the people".
I am not sure what "non statist" Democrats actually stand for (perhaps workers rights?), but on the Republican side, the "individualists" are called "conservatives". The conservatives in the Republican party are the best friends of people who want to be free, they just do not know it, and unfortunately they are imperfect beings (like everyone else), and get snooked into voting and supporting the Republican Statists because they fashion themselves as "Moderates". Unfortunately, the statists in both political parties are in control.
For those who hate "conservatives" with pure vitrol, go check out the "Heritage Foundation" (www.Heritage.org) and take a closer look at what we believe and the ideas we have for solutions. Dont believe the hype you see on tv (also largely controlled by statist liberals).
And no, George W. Bush and his ilk are NOT conservatives (medicare plan B, Department of Homeland security, the Iraq War, etc..). They are the "electable moderates".
Even worse. Those same people, those who are "proud to have voted for a black man" are the same people who believe in "socialism". These same people drive up taxes in their own state in the quest for their Utopian fantasy, only to drive their state into fiscal calamity (see California, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New York for details). Then those same idealogical "elites", watching the fruits of their fantasies choke the life out the world they live in, move to those evil nasty, low tax, red states (see Nevada, Texas, Florida, and Virginia for details).
Then they start the quest for their Utopian fantasy all over... and with it the same decay happens all over again (see Virginia for details).
And dont worry about those evil closet racists moving because "xxxx" (insert undesirable minority group there) are moving into their neighborhoods. I am sure our new government god will make sure these social injustices will be corrected.
Basic unix tools can do the trick. find (atime,ctime,etc) mixed with egrep, or just egrep with -R... all sorts of solutions, right at your command line.
Someone marked this funny. It should be fairly frightening, especially if you are an advocate or beneficiary of open source software. This can be a very quick and effective way of shutting down open source.
Which minority group is being denied housing, voting rights or employment? Please back up accusations with empirical evidence.
Someone who claims someone is "superior" (better, more enlightened, smarter, etc..) based solely or even partly on race, is "racist". This does not mean malevolently racist, but racist none the less. There are two kinds of racists. The uninformed, uneducated, person who has these fears due to ignorance and those who use race as bate to divide and conquer to gain political or other forms of authority. I assure you the later is the more sinister of the two, but they are usually the ones who are self professed champions of social justice. The sad irony is that they foment racial strife, and prolong the suffering of the poor by seeding myths and half truths (which helps keep areas impoverished).
I'm a hard core conservative, but I have to say that I like the argument presented. It seems practical enough if presented in the form of incentives instead of regulation, has the possibility of reducing the load on the national energy grid (as well as local and regional grids) and allows the people to spend less money cooling their homes, allowing them to save the money or spend it elsewhere.
My main question is, why is something so simple sounding not already in practice? If painting my roof a lighter color will cut my cooling costs, I'll be buying paint tomorrow (provided the paint costs less than the energy savings).
How on earth would the Verizon employee know that its really a cop calling? How would the Verizon employee know that the guy is really in trouble? Verizon is a "business" that has to protect itself from all sorts of predators, government employees/agents included.
How did the Verizon employee know that the cop wasnt just asking to turn on the cell phone to track someone for other than "emergency" purposes? That could make Verizon liable as an accomplice for an illegal search and siezure.
Let me guess, what if the cop called, said it was an emergency (life and death) and they turned the phone on, only to find out that the cop was just using Verizon to aide in some sort of surviellance operation? I'm sure there would be all sorts of whiney little socialists pounding at the keyboards saying, "there they go again, spying on us! Tin foil hats! Tin foil hats! Evil corpratations!"
I know, how about we FINE every retard on slashdot who "demands" "social justice" for "evil corporation" that doesnt jump at every knee jerk populist sounding situation.
Humans are EVIL and destroying the world. EVERYTHING humans do is BAD. No matter what. the person you replied to will find something wrong with the world around him/her, simply because they cannot adjust to it. Feel comforted in the fact that if this same person was living in a cave, surrounded by the scenic beauty of nature, he would in turn be longing for civic society and technological advances that would one day make nature less hostile and lethal to weakly human beings.
Some people are just malcontents and can only identify negatively to the world.
Yeah, *YAWN*
The experts could never be wrong. We should have stopped ALL progress back in the 1970's to stop global cooling dead in its tracks...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
I think people are just tired of bullshit "the sky is falling" warnings coming out of scientific circles. 40 Years ago the world was freezing, 5 years ago the world was "warming" and now its just that the climate is "changing". Has anyone learned anything about the boy who cried wolf? The rhetoric keeps changing and people just dont want to hear it anymore.
How cant you love it though? The possibilities in this merger are endless. Sun has been keeping afloat for the past 10 years. Their products are not bad, but way too expensive, for anything not requiring massive amounts of horse power. There are plenty of things that Sun does better than anyone else, such as massive Oracle databases... but not much else. For a while I was hoping that Solaris would just die already, but man did it make an improvement in 10 (I like the zones, what can I say). Perhaps they can open source some of it? (unlikely) Most likely they will use Solaris as a closed source "graduated" step. But... whateva.
Perhaps IBM will just take the Sparc architecture, and take the best parts and put it into its offerings, and let the core of Sparc die. I wouldnt be too horribly sad to see it go.
Dialogue with Iran. I'm sure this will pay off well for the entire world. Because as Americans, we know that Iran hasnt done anything bad for the ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD to ignore them (include a majority of middle eastern states). It was President Bushes fault. He had a time machine and went back in time and caused Iran to do the evil shit it does. Because thats what the media says, so it must be true.
He closed Gauntanamo to the applause of his Socialist European allies... who now wont take any of those scum bags in. Why? Because they know how bad 99% of them really are, and they dont want that in their back yard. Isnt it great to bow down to international pressure... who are really just pandering to their own constituents on topics THEY KNOW the US is right on? The proof is in the pudding.
Bush won the war in Iraq before he left office. The media just forgot to tell everyone. Barry will tout himself as the savior, but in the end of the day, there will be a Democratic nation in the middle east besides Isreal, and it will be because of Bush, and not Obama.
BTW for you fucktards who are going to put all the blame on Bush, it was Islamic fundamentalists and Iranian trained death squads that did 99% of the damage in Iraq, not US forces. Of course, its "hate speech" to call out Islamists, and unfair to pick on Iran. Good thing Barry is trying to make friends with both. Just like Bill Clintock did, and look how well that worked out.
Also for the record, Bush helped push democratic reform in Pakistan (I know, memories are short, Musharraf took over Pakistan under Clintons watch).
And if you havent been watching the news, Barry has been trying to get all sorts of interesting figures into political office, and has been pretty unsuccessful. Talk about cronyism? Take a look who he has had rubber stamped through into the Defense/Intelligence agencies (besides keeping Gates and General "Betrayus" as you liberal fucks like to call him... I guess you all call him by his right name now that the annointed one has blessed him).
This change is just another example of dumb chasing dumber. Unfortunately, I think the execs at NBC missed the whole "market crashed" thing, and the stupid people no longer have unlimited and unreasonable credit lines available to them meaning: just because the "geek, male" market may be small, there is a very reasonably good chance that this "niche" market will retain its purchasing power through a market turn down. Why? Because we are not fucking stupid. How do you tell stupid? Take people who believe wrestling is real. Do you think these people are going to be buying new cars or renting rent controlled trailers?
Geeks are and will always be the best demographic. They are the ultimate in disposable income, high purchase price, items because they dont waste their money on more nickle and dime type things (such as friends, girl friends, going out to parties, etc..). Of course... whats the chances of an advertising exec reading slashdot... or reading at all... anything more than what can fit onto the screen of a PDA....
Russia, China, and any other nation that has launched a rocket into space will more than likely have weapons technology that can hit high flying targets with some degree of accuracy. A slow moving, easily tracked, obvious target, can be deployed over international waters to track ground based movements of foreign military assets in times of non war (believe it or not, nations track each others movements outside of war). Besides, shooting one of these down in international waters could lead to war, which no major nation today wants to get into with one another.
The alternative, as the linked article states, is for counter insurgency, where the opponent would not have the means to shoot it down at 60,000+ feet. The fact that the blimp can stay airborne for 10 years, an area can be monitored 24x7 without any gaps in coverage. This can effectively deny an enemy use of terrain during its deployment (and coupled with modern computing and imagery, used to trace covert actions on behalf of non-uniformed actors). Also, being at a scant 60,000 feet, it will be able to be brought down for easier retrofit and have its fight paths altered relatively easily. The price tag will probably be low compared to spy satellites.
For the rest of slashdot that are concerned about this being used against American citizens, I have a secret for you: Tin foil hats will keep it from reading your thoughts.
"a tremendous portion of the American annual budget goes toward the Military-Industrial Complex"
Ah yes, I know, this is slashdot, and I'm going to get modded troll/flaimbait, but just for your edification, our Federal government was created with a very limited amount of powers in mind, most of which were focused DIRECTLY at military affairs. I'm not sure why people whine and complain that the government spends tons of cash on defense but not on XYZ, when its the job of the government to spend money on defense.
For a list of enumerated powers (not the squishy interpreted ones), check out:
I'm glad to see the government spend money on things it is SUPPOSE to... now if it would just cut out the shit that its not (like social security, Medicare, ponies, butterflies, and good will towards men).
"New evidence from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft supports a long-held suspicion that much of the Red Planet's atmosphere was simply blown away -- by the solar wind."
So... according to NASA, Mars has been screwed for about 4 billion years:
"How do scientists know when the dynamo turned off? "Mars has been kind to us," explains Mitchell. "There are two large impact basins, Hellas and Argyre, about four billion years old that are demagnetized. If the dynamo was still operating when those impact features formed, the crust would have re-magnetized as they cooled. The dynamo must have stopped before then.""
According to the following link, life started on earth 3.8 billion years ago:
So... this gives Mars approximately 600 million years to come up with "some" form of life before its magnetosphere stopped working (because after that, the environment probably became very inhospitable). Considering it took earth 2.2 billion years to create life... we are gambling that Mars had life sooner than Earth?
Would it even be possible for a planet to have life on it within 500 million years of its creation? From what I understand, Earth was awfully uninhabitable to life in its first billion years (fire and brimstone kinda stuff, Venus like). Why would Mars be any different?
Slashdot Mirror
I've given up treating myself as a traditional "employee". I refuse to work any amount of time uncompensated. Much like my employer refuses to do charity work for his/her customer. Every hour I work without getting paid is ultimately reduces my hourly rate.
I treat myself as a business. If I am not getting paid, I am not showing up. All life long we trade time for money. If your not getting anything for your time, than you are losing out. Some could argue that money isnt worth time, but thats a load of horse crap (since you'll run out of time if you dont eat).
Anyway. I've been able to do this because I stopped thinking like my parents trained me too as soon as I realized 1. corporations are going to do whatever it is they need to do to maximize profite, 2. i need to think EXACTLY like corporations, 3. that there are other companies out there that are willing to compensate me better than my current employer. All I have to do is provide the skills and expertise to entice them to give it to me. And thats one part training, and two parts marketing.
I find password policy to be rather following password: "iL0v3 Ur3 m0nk3| @$sz. " is completely useless against:
- Key stroke loggers
- Systems still using Crypt (I'm looking at you Solaris)
- People who walk away from their desktop
- People who log into their desktop logged in as root
- Systems that allow "sudo su -" without password
- Phishing Attacks
- Stupid people who will open any attachment, even go so far and disable antivirus just to be able to do it.
The problem isnt with password policy. Lets face it, strong passwords are meant to prevent brute force attacks of various kinds. Unless your using the top 10 passwords in the crack library, its highly unlikely that someone is going to "guess" a standard password. Strong passwords are meant to stop programs that already have access to the encrypted password file. Either that file is AES 256 or its not. If its not, it doesnt matter WTF your password is.
Oh, and using your historical passwords is rather stupid, considering those old password algorithms (3DES etc) are all easily broken by determined hackers.
Whats my point? I dunno. Let me know if you figure it out.
WTF. Is this slashdot or dailkos? Can posts have a semblance of unbias? How the fuck did this get published?
Not anti-trust avoidance at all.
Havent you been reading?!?
Microsoft is accusing Linux of cyber-bullying and will use this to have linux outlawed in the US, Germany and the UK.
another diabolical move.
I dont normally replied to anon but you make my point for me.
"human life doesnt really have much value if its not yours." The war cry of the communist/socialist/environmentalist elitist. Rail against everything. Decry every solution as "inhumane", all the while proposing fantasy ideas that have no merit or foundation in reason. I add in the catastrophes to make a "clear" point. I grew up in the coal mining regions of the USA. Care to take a shot at the statistics on "Black Lung" alone?
Between 1987 and 1996, 14,489 people died from "Black Lung". Care to guess how many people, world wide who died from Nuclear power during that same time period? Since 1990, more than 20,000 people have died from black lung. http://www.courier-journal.com/cjextra/blacklung/index.html
Counting bodies isn't as abstract as counting parts per million of carbon in the air, or closely guarded computer models predicting weather patterns... Its fairly simple.
Even the most wacky, statistics skewing websites in existence cannot logically link nuclear power ALONE to being a dangerous source of energy. (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0131-03.htm . PS: A great article if you need a laugh, it links "power production" and "nuclear weapons production" into the same category, "nuclear energy and weapons programs up to 1989 will account for 65 million deaths". I'm sure 64 million of those are due to coal and gas energy sources.
Anyway. Anonymous snipes backed by "emotion" of wanting to "save the people" is all you can expect from the left. When confronted with logic or even a touch of rational debate, lefties put on their super hero masks and start talking about "the value of life".
Another group of people wanted to do whats best for the people too. They made gulags and had great leaps forward for the progress of man kind!
I found an interesting document from the IAEA. Now, I'm not a big fan of UN run organizations (most are socialist leaning), but this is report is fairly unbiased and presents good arguments on both sides.
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/te_1123_prn.pdf
This report talks about making nuclear plants profitable compared to other energy sources and gives a bit of analysis surrounding the energy debate. A good read.
With the current administration and its very obvious ties to the environmentalist and alternative energy lobbies, I am very surprised it took 6 months for scare mongering about nuclear power plants to begin. Nuclear power has already proven to be the safest means of producing large quantities of energy, even if you include the most EXTREME and exaggerated outcomes of all nuclear catastrophes combined (lets even throw in Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Of course, you'd have to include all the people who die in the production of coal or oil over the course of the centuries, but nuclear comes out the winner. We are just unfortunate enough to live in a time where the people in power grew up under the shadow of nuclear annihilation. This child hood trauma has caused the lefty environmentalists to forsake the cleanest possible energy alternative available that allows us to maintain our standards of living. Sure, alternative energy supplies will help increase supply and lower prices eventually, but nuclear is the only way to ween our dependence off of fossil fuels in the short term (20-50 years). I mean, what about global warming?!?! I mean, Climate Change. Look, even if you are a global warming / climate change / or you dont believe in global warming / climate change , or just a skeptic either way, the benefits of nuclear are undeniable. Oh, and I'd be more than happy to have one of those plants in my backyard. Lots of high paying jobs, and a cool landmark on the horizon. Probably cheap electricity as a payoff to locals to boot.
"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life," said Judge Sotomayor.
"Don't like it? Go be a cop in Saudi, where I'm sure you're allowed to be as racist as you like."
Or New York, where you can become a judge on a circuit court.
How about "white folks' greed runs a world in need" -- BHO
And this article is tagged Republican? Republicans run their racists out on a rail, Democrats try to put them into the supreme court and elect them to president.
You mean both "political parties" not both ends of the political spectrum. It is the statist that is the enemy of freedom, and they exist in both political parties. In the Republican party, they are the "Christian Taliban" that the DailyKosSlashdot user loves to rail on. In the Democratic party, they are the "Socialist Utopians" who wish to repeat the failures of the 20th century, but are doing it for "social justice" and the "good of the people".
I am not sure what "non statist" Democrats actually stand for (perhaps workers rights?), but on the Republican side, the "individualists" are called "conservatives". The conservatives in the Republican party are the best friends of people who want to be free, they just do not know it, and unfortunately they are imperfect beings (like everyone else), and get snooked into voting and supporting the Republican Statists because they fashion themselves as "Moderates". Unfortunately, the statists in both political parties are in control.
For those who hate "conservatives" with pure vitrol, go check out the "Heritage Foundation" (www.Heritage.org) and take a closer look at what we believe and the ideas we have for solutions. Dont believe the hype you see on tv (also largely controlled by statist liberals).
And no, George W. Bush and his ilk are NOT conservatives (medicare plan B, Department of Homeland security, the Iraq War, etc..). They are the "electable moderates".
Even worse. Those same people, those who are "proud to have voted for a black man" are the same people who believe in "socialism". These same people drive up taxes in their own state in the quest for their Utopian fantasy, only to drive their state into fiscal calamity (see California, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New York for details). Then those same idealogical "elites", watching the fruits of their fantasies choke the life out the world they live in, move to those evil nasty, low tax, red states (see Nevada, Texas, Florida, and Virginia for details).
Then they start the quest for their Utopian fantasy all over... and with it the same decay happens all over again (see Virginia for details).
And dont worry about those evil closet racists moving because "xxxx" (insert undesirable minority group there) are moving into their neighborhoods. I am sure our new government god will make sure these social injustices will be corrected.
Basic unix tools can do the trick. find (atime,ctime,etc) mixed with egrep, or just egrep with -R... all sorts of solutions, right at your command line.
Someone marked this funny. It should be fairly frightening, especially if you are an advocate or beneficiary of open source software. This can be a very quick and effective way of shutting down open source.
Which minority group is being denied housing, voting rights or employment? Please back up accusations with empirical evidence.
Someone who claims someone is "superior" (better, more enlightened, smarter, etc..) based solely or even partly on race, is "racist". This does not mean malevolently racist, but racist none the less. There are two kinds of racists. The uninformed, uneducated, person who has these fears due to ignorance and those who use race as bate to divide and conquer to gain political or other forms of authority. I assure you the later is the more sinister of the two, but they are usually the ones who are self professed champions of social justice. The sad irony is that they foment racial strife, and prolong the suffering of the poor by seeding myths and half truths (which helps keep areas impoverished).
I'm a hard core conservative, but I have to say that I like the argument presented. It seems practical enough if presented in the form of incentives instead of regulation, has the possibility of reducing the load on the national energy grid (as well as local and regional grids) and allows the people to spend less money cooling their homes, allowing them to save the money or spend it elsewhere.
My main question is, why is something so simple sounding not already in practice? If painting my roof a lighter color will cut my cooling costs, I'll be buying paint tomorrow (provided the paint costs less than the energy savings).
How on earth would the Verizon employee know that its really a cop calling? How would the Verizon employee know that the guy is really in trouble? Verizon is a "business" that has to protect itself from all sorts of predators, government employees/agents included. How did the Verizon employee know that the cop wasnt just asking to turn on the cell phone to track someone for other than "emergency" purposes? That could make Verizon liable as an accomplice for an illegal search and siezure. Let me guess, what if the cop called, said it was an emergency (life and death) and they turned the phone on, only to find out that the cop was just using Verizon to aide in some sort of surviellance operation? I'm sure there would be all sorts of whiney little socialists pounding at the keyboards saying, "there they go again, spying on us! Tin foil hats! Tin foil hats! Evil corpratations!" I know, how about we FINE every retard on slashdot who "demands" "social justice" for "evil corporation" that doesnt jump at every knee jerk populist sounding situation.
You missed his overall point.
Humans are EVIL and destroying the world. EVERYTHING humans do is BAD. No matter what. the person you replied to will find something wrong with the world around him/her, simply because they cannot adjust to it. Feel comforted in the fact that if this same person was living in a cave, surrounded by the scenic beauty of nature, he would in turn be longing for civic society and technological advances that would one day make nature less hostile and lethal to weakly human beings.
Some people are just malcontents and can only identify negatively to the world.
Yeah, *YAWN* The experts could never be wrong. We should have stopped ALL progress back in the 1970's to stop global cooling dead in its tracks... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling I think people are just tired of bullshit "the sky is falling" warnings coming out of scientific circles. 40 Years ago the world was freezing, 5 years ago the world was "warming" and now its just that the climate is "changing". Has anyone learned anything about the boy who cried wolf? The rhetoric keeps changing and people just dont want to hear it anymore.
How cant you love it though? The possibilities in this merger are endless. Sun has been keeping afloat for the past 10 years. Their products are not bad, but way too expensive, for anything not requiring massive amounts of horse power. There are plenty of things that Sun does better than anyone else, such as massive Oracle databases... but not much else. For a while I was hoping that Solaris would just die already, but man did it make an improvement in 10 (I like the zones, what can I say). Perhaps they can open source some of it? (unlikely) Most likely they will use Solaris as a closed source "graduated" step. But... whateva. Perhaps IBM will just take the Sparc architecture, and take the best parts and put it into its offerings, and let the core of Sparc die. I wouldnt be too horribly sad to see it go.
You just insulted the liberal Mecca. Prepare to have not only this thread, but all your historical threads, get modded into oblivion.
Dialogue with Iran. I'm sure this will pay off well for the entire world. Because as Americans, we know that Iran hasnt done anything bad for the ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD to ignore them (include a majority of middle eastern states). It was President Bushes fault. He had a time machine and went back in time and caused Iran to do the evil shit it does. Because thats what the media says, so it must be true.
He closed Gauntanamo to the applause of his Socialist European allies... who now wont take any of those scum bags in. Why? Because they know how bad 99% of them really are, and they dont want that in their back yard. Isnt it great to bow down to international pressure... who are really just pandering to their own constituents on topics THEY KNOW the US is right on? The proof is in the pudding.
Bush won the war in Iraq before he left office. The media just forgot to tell everyone. Barry will tout himself as the savior, but in the end of the day, there will be a Democratic nation in the middle east besides Isreal, and it will be because of Bush, and not Obama.
BTW for you fucktards who are going to put all the blame on Bush, it was Islamic fundamentalists and Iranian trained death squads that did 99% of the damage in Iraq, not US forces. Of course, its "hate speech" to call out Islamists, and unfair to pick on Iran. Good thing Barry is trying to make friends with both. Just like Bill Clintock did, and look how well that worked out.
Also for the record, Bush helped push democratic reform in Pakistan (I know, memories are short, Musharraf took over Pakistan under Clintons watch).
And if you havent been watching the news, Barry has been trying to get all sorts of interesting figures into political office, and has been pretty unsuccessful. Talk about cronyism? Take a look who he has had rubber stamped through into the Defense/Intelligence agencies (besides keeping Gates and General "Betrayus" as you liberal fucks like to call him... I guess you all call him by his right name now that the annointed one has blessed him).
Anyway. -1 Troll.
Parent tends to think that the media is controlled by the government.
Try "vice versa" and your much closer to the truth.
This change is just another example of dumb chasing dumber. Unfortunately, I think the execs at NBC missed the whole "market crashed" thing, and the stupid people no longer have unlimited and unreasonable credit lines available to them meaning: just because the "geek, male" market may be small, there is a very reasonably good chance that this "niche" market will retain its purchasing power through a market turn down. Why? Because we are not fucking stupid. How do you tell stupid? Take people who believe wrestling is real. Do you think these people are going to be buying new cars or renting rent controlled trailers?
Geeks are and will always be the best demographic. They are the ultimate in disposable income, high purchase price, items because they dont waste their money on more nickle and dime type things (such as friends, girl friends, going out to parties, etc..). Of course... whats the chances of an advertising exec reading slashdot... or reading at all... anything more than what can fit onto the screen of a PDA....
Russia, China, and any other nation that has launched a rocket into space will more than likely have weapons technology that can hit high flying targets with some degree of accuracy. A slow moving, easily tracked, obvious target, can be deployed over international waters to track ground based movements of foreign military assets in times of non war (believe it or not, nations track each others movements outside of war). Besides, shooting one of these down in international waters could lead to war, which no major nation today wants to get into with one another.
The alternative, as the linked article states, is for counter insurgency, where the opponent would not have the means to shoot it down at 60,000+ feet. The fact that the blimp can stay airborne for 10 years, an area can be monitored 24x7 without any gaps in coverage. This can effectively deny an enemy use of terrain during its deployment (and coupled with modern computing and imagery, used to trace covert actions on behalf of non-uniformed actors). Also, being at a scant 60,000 feet, it will be able to be brought down for easier retrofit and have its fight paths altered relatively easily. The price tag will probably be low compared to spy satellites.
For the rest of slashdot that are concerned about this being used against American citizens, I have a secret for you: Tin foil hats will keep it from reading your thoughts.
"a tremendous portion of the American annual budget goes toward the Military-Industrial Complex"
Ah yes, I know, this is slashdot, and I'm going to get modded troll/flaimbait, but just for your edification, our Federal government was created with a very limited amount of powers in mind, most of which were focused DIRECTLY at military affairs. I'm not sure why people whine and complain that the government spends tons of cash on defense but not on XYZ, when its the job of the government to spend money on defense.
For a list of enumerated powers (not the squishy interpreted ones), check out:
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#A1Sec8
I'm glad to see the government spend money on things it is SUPPOSE to... now if it would just cut out the shit that its not (like social security, Medicare, ponies, butterflies, and good will towards men).
Ok, I'll bite.
Someone else pointed out this site, I'll post the link and pull some references from it:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast31jan_1.htm
Where did it go?
"New evidence from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft supports a long-held suspicion that much of the Red Planet's atmosphere was simply blown away -- by the solar wind."
So... according to NASA, Mars has been screwed for about 4 billion years:
"How do scientists know when the dynamo turned off? "Mars has been kind to us," explains Mitchell. "There are two large impact basins, Hellas and Argyre, about four billion years old that are demagnetized. If the dynamo was still operating when those impact features formed, the crust would have re-magnetized as they cooled. The dynamo must have stopped before then.""
According to the following link, life started on earth 3.8 billion years ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution
According to the following link our solar system is about 4.6 billion years old:
http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/the-solar-system/how-old-is-the-solar-system/
So... this gives Mars approximately 600 million years to come up with "some" form of life before its magnetosphere stopped working (because after that, the environment probably became very inhospitable). Considering it took earth 2.2 billion years to create life... we are gambling that Mars had life sooner than Earth?
Would it even be possible for a planet to have life on it within 500 million years of its creation? From what I understand, Earth was awfully uninhabitable to life in its first billion years (fire and brimstone kinda stuff, Venus like). Why would Mars be any different?