I like to visit "real" newspaper sites that have good discussion systems. Almost all of the local newspapers in Seattle have horrible comment systems that are tucked a way in such a fashion that only real nutcases seem to inhabit them.
Worse, they all seem to use digg-style "up/down" moderation. "Up/Down" moderation is horrible for anything outside product reviews. It creates a feedback loop where those that go with the group think get rewarded with "+55" and those who go against get shunned at "-11" with no way to get out of the hole.
Slashdot may not be perfect, but after using dozens if not hundreds of other discussion systems, they do have pretty much the best out there. DailyKos is close second, but only because a limited set of users can down-rate a comment and even those users can only dish out a couple down-rates a day. Anything that grants regular users the ability to make an unlimited number of down-rates will quickly turn into a cesspool of wackos.
So yeah, newspaper sites could learn a thing or two by ripping some of what slashdot does right. Slashdot could do the same and finally add a rich text editor to the comments so I can finally highlight a string of words and make it a link...but that is a different story:-)
1) That AP article is not just on nytimes.com, but a lot of other news sites also aggregated by Google. 2) AP, nor those who syndicate it, have control over how or where their content is placed on Google. They only get to say "here is my newsfeed, have fun". 3) Because of #2, if you have 40 newspapers who bought an AP article but only nytimes gets listed on the "front page" of google news, the other newspapers aren't getting any ROI on their purchase. 4) Ponies.
but they sure got paid for what happened.
Sure, in the short-run they did. But the problem with AP is they too are basically a twisted form of a news-aggregates. They aggregate news stories and sell it to a hundred newspapers who print said stories and generate revenue by selling ads next to the story. Nowdays, those newspapers are aggregated by Google, who aggregates the newspapers in such a way that only a few of the newspapers displaying that article get any traffic in which to sell ads to.
In other words, maybe AP should cut the middle man and just sell to Google.
I dont get tags either. I want it to work... but when I click on a tag in a story, nothing happens. It used to work a year ago, but then it broke. Back when stuff happened, the list it returned was almost useless because it was unsorted.
It seems like a useful feature that compliments search and sections. I hope they improve it.
It is only down to 14% on this website because this website doesn't function on any version of IE. If you try to do anything using IE, you'll quickly realize they don't test using it and you have to switch browsers. In otherwords, no it is not a major story beyond "Slashdot is a Firefox-only website"
Funny that. They should put an animated "Best viewed with Netscape" at the bottom of the page. I thought that attitude went out with Firefox.
Since I never target NS3, I'm rather curious--doesn't pretty much the entire web look like shit for you? I mean, no offense, but I never bother targeting NS3 or IE4 because I figure if you are using it, you are pretty much used to nothing on the internet working. So surely you must be used to this, right?
it doesn't do CSS
Translation: tables.
Sorry, no thanks. If I have to do tables, it means it is harder to target search engines and screen readers. I'd rather have them then people who deliberately run antique browsers and complain about how no modern website works.
I could be getting trolled though. In fact, I bet I am. Nobody uses NS3... I get more hits from the Nintendo WII and the PSP!!
Perl supports Unicode just fine. It is Slashcode itself that is stripping out anything that isn't the Queens ASCII. If I could hazard a guess as to why, it would be some kind of cheap way to prevent XSS attacks or page-widening posts. Dunno
I mean, those numbers sound small, but even I have no clue how many IO requests I am making right now... is ten cents per million a good price or a bad price? Dunno! Is a penny per 10,000 GET's a good price? Probably--that is ten bucks for 10 million requests, right?
The disadvantage is that it ties them to Amazon.
Sure it ties them to Amazon, but how tightly? I mean, as a percentage of their codebase, there is probably what, 0.5% specific to Amazon? And codebase aside, how hard is it to migrate your data from one cloud to another? I mean, at most it is a month long project and most of that is probably testing and dealing with unexpected edge cases. But none of these cloud guys do anything that really tie you in any more than a regular host.
That URL looks really unprofessional for such a big player. Can't they at least get their own hostname? It does prove my point though--about the only cost to migrate is changing the "upload avatars" code and changing the template to use a new URL structure.
What a load of rubbish. Do you honestly believe a word of what you just wrote?
If you opt for this pseudopragmatism instead, just call it whatever you want.
I call it Linux and so does everybody I know. You are fighting a war that ended years ago. Worse, you make people who support open source sound insane.
Dude, it is software, not a friggen religious movement. Have some perspective.
part-time nuclear engineers......hobbyist reactor specialists......test them in their backyard......found by accident
I really dont think I want my HAM radio friend learning the subtle nuances of nuclear weapons development by tinkering around and learning from their mistakes. That is, assuming they live through the mistake--sometimes that bit isn't always possible:-)
It has been mumbled for a while now. Remember all the discussion about it during the election? Hell, what *should* we do if Iran gets nukes? There isn't an easy answer.
People also argue that now that we've looped the head off Sadam, we've removed the only thing keeping Iran in check. I dont know enough about the history or the issues to really argue any of this though:-)
Yeah, but either they withdraw their troops or we nuke them. Those are the only two possible outcomes of invading us. Sure it might take a while to escalate to that point, but in the end either they withdraw or we nuke them. Period. There is literally no other outcome of such an event--it will always end in one of those two ways.
In otherwords, you cannot just invade half of Europe Hilter-style unless you want to be nuked. Period.
That is my point. Our military power is ineffective against such threats. We can kick Russia's ass, and they can kick ours, but we are very weak when it comes to stopping Pizza-Bomb Man.
"Warfare" vs. "Terrorism" are interchangeable and are only good for gaining political support or opposition. It is terrorism if you want to drum up support from one base, and warfare if you want to drum up support from another.
She was the only person "skilled" enough to bring out the base of die-hard republicans. Without her, McCain wouldn't have been able to count on the vote of the republican base. To the die-hard republican, she *was* the person they were voting for! The problem was, by bringing in Palin, McCain wasn't able to get the vote of so-called left-leaning republicans and "Regan democrats" (aka "The Undecideds").
Basically, McCain was trying to win the vote of two completely different bases that didn't like eachother's policies. By wining one base, he'd lose the other. But that is to be expected when you've got such a polarizing figure leading your party for eight years.
This is why the founders of the U.S. were so against them.
Things like West Point are a direct result of such ideas being proven wrong. Without a standing army (and skilled generals and engineers to lead them) at all times, we were too weak to defend ourselves. Freedom isn't very useful if somebody takes over your nation.
So, you are saying he is a "liar"?
I'm saying he is a politician. This is now international politics have always been done and always will be. To think otherwise is being naive.
And, who is the arbiter of who has "no business" owning nukes?
Seeing as how the US essentially IS NATO, no matter what, we'd be stuck supplying most of the troops and most of the money.
Pretty much. But if shit ever escalated, they'd have our back with money and troops. The only reason they dont have our back right now is because we are busy fighting our war with Oceana.
Outside of that, the US has never fought anyone who harmed them / posed a threat
"The old strategies of war". You can't just go invade half a continent anymore. The Commies aren't gonna fly 3,000 bombers across the arctic and bomb America. Hitler ain't gonna be able to just invade half of Europe. Those days are over. The Cold War marked the end of that kind of stuff.
These days, if you wanna go evil, you gotta take a couple guys and put them in a shipping container strapped with $WEAPON. Your strategy isn't to take over the country... just fuck with them and weaken them. Once you get their nation to fall, you aren't planning on moving in to their homes, you just wanted them gone from the planet.
So yeah, nuclear weapons might not render the tactics of war obsolete. But nuclear weapons have certainly rendered the strategies of war obsolete.
Yeah, Bush did a great job boosting our leadership status. Cough.
that they are immune from this "pressure" you speak of.
At least we tried. If they dont cave, fuck them.. at least we'll have our allies helping us. Bush didn't try and just said "fuck em... we'll go at it alone and if you dont help, you are an enemy to". Now we are broke footing the bill for a war we never should have got in.
Actually, it is the job of the government to protect its citizens and keep the sovereignty of its nation. There are good arguments that these pizza-bomb dudes are a threat to the nations citizens and an attack by an enemy.
The problem with the pizza-bomb dudes is they also create a huge conflict of interest. The only true way the US government can protect its citizens is to limit our freedom in order to protect our freedom. They are basically damned if they do and damned if they don't. But the fact the conflict exists does not *not* excuse them their most important duty--to protect us from our enemies.
The one thing to realize is that crazy guy isn't gonna have a mass stockpile of them either. He might get one or two of them and then use them to blow up $RANDOM_COUNTRY. It would suck a *lot* and justifiably piss people off *a lot*, but as long as everybody sane keeps their cool, the world wouldn't end. The world would end if the sane folk got into nuclear war... but but if they actually nuked each other, they wouldn't be sane would they.
What you *dont* want is to sit around and twiddle your thumbs while Crazy Guy builds a stockpile. If he gets a stockpile, all bets are off.
The real question is, if your military intelligence indicates that the nuclear weapon Crazy Guy just used was the only one he had, do you retaliate with a nuclear weapon? My answer would be no and I'd be curious to hear pro-nuke-them-to-hell arguments...
That is the question. What if one of these "rouge" countries nuke a neighbor? What if they nuke us or our allies? Do we or Russia go MAD on their ass or do we get hella pissed instead?
First of all, one nuclear weapon isn't the end of the world. It is a huge deal, yeah. But it isn't balls-to-the-wall USA vs. Russia either.
If I was president (thank god I'm not), I wouldn't nuke that country... odds are good that was the only nuclear weapon they owned and they just blew their whole load in one shot. If we nuked them to hell, it would make the situation much worse and could result in a MAD-like scenario. Worse, what if that weapon did come from "Country X" and we knew it, and retaliated with a nuclear weapon, we might risk getting into that ball-to-the-wall USA vs. Russia scenario.
In other words, I have no clue. USA vs. Russia ain't gonna happen because of MAD. Random countries with three nuclear weapons don't have enough firepower to warrant a nuclear retaliation. But the trick is to make sure all they ever have is a couple nuclear weapons--hence calls to "disarm the planet". Everybody knows we are gonna continue to have 5 bagillion nukes--the fact that we do is the only way we can even make a call to disarm the planet... it doesn't matter if dont listen, we can destroy them and the world.
He isn't naive. Nobody is gonna get rid of their nukes, especially the USA, and he knows it. It puts international pressure on countries who really have no business with them. It is just good politics.
I submit that a world without nukes would be one with much larger standing armies.
It would also be a hell of a lot less safe too. People know this too. We might say "down with nuclear weapons" in public, but if you put it to a vote, I promise you a large majority would vote to keep every nuke we own.
The only reason nuclear weapons are outdated is because they still exist. They remove the incentive to go WWII on somebodies ass. Because of nuclear weapons, if you wanna cause trouble you now have to find other ways that don't lead to your country or people turning into a glass parking lot.
In other words, warfare has evolved to deal with nuclear weapons much like bacteria have evolved to deal with antibiotics. New kinds of bacteria have been created that are immune to bacteria--but that doesn't mean the old kinds of bacteria aren't still lying around in some latent form. If you stopped using antibiotics, those old "extinct" forms of bacteria would come back. Same with warfare--if we could somehow get rid of every single nuclear weapon on earth--all the old tactics of war would suddenly become relevant and useful again.
Basically, the existence of nuclear weapons make the old tactics obsolete. Remove the nuclear weapons and the old ways are no longer obsolete.
Slashdot Mirror
I like to visit "real" newspaper sites that have good discussion systems. Almost all of the local newspapers in Seattle have horrible comment systems that are tucked a way in such a fashion that only real nutcases seem to inhabit them.
Worse, they all seem to use digg-style "up/down" moderation. "Up/Down" moderation is horrible for anything outside product reviews. It creates a feedback loop where those that go with the group think get rewarded with "+55" and those who go against get shunned at "-11" with no way to get out of the hole.
Slashdot may not be perfect, but after using dozens if not hundreds of other discussion systems, they do have pretty much the best out there. DailyKos is close second, but only because a limited set of users can down-rate a comment and even those users can only dish out a couple down-rates a day. Anything that grants regular users the ability to make an unlimited number of down-rates will quickly turn into a cesspool of wackos.
So yeah, newspaper sites could learn a thing or two by ripping some of what slashdot does right. Slashdot could do the same and finally add a rich text editor to the comments so I can finally highlight a string of words and make it a link...but that is a different story :-)
The problem is a bit more complex, I think:
1) That AP article is not just on nytimes.com, but a lot of other news sites also aggregated by Google.
2) AP, nor those who syndicate it, have control over how or where their content is placed on Google. They only get to say "here is my newsfeed, have fun".
3) Because of #2, if you have 40 newspapers who bought an AP article but only nytimes gets listed on the "front page" of google news, the other newspapers aren't getting any ROI on their purchase.
4) Ponies.
Sure, in the short-run they did. But the problem with AP is they too are basically a twisted form of a news-aggregates. They aggregate news stories and sell it to a hundred newspapers who print said stories and generate revenue by selling ads next to the story. Nowdays, those newspapers are aggregated by Google, who aggregates the newspapers in such a way that only a few of the newspapers displaying that article get any traffic in which to sell ads to.
In other words, maybe AP should cut the middle man and just sell to Google.
I dont get tags either. I want it to work... but when I click on a tag in a story, nothing happens. It used to work a year ago, but then it broke. Back when stuff happened, the list it returned was almost useless because it was unsorted.
It seems like a useful feature that compliments search and sections. I hope they improve it.
It is only down to 14% on this website because this website doesn't function on any version of IE. If you try to do anything using IE, you'll quickly realize they don't test using it and you have to switch browsers. In otherwords, no it is not a major story beyond "Slashdot is a Firefox-only website"
Funny that. They should put an animated "Best viewed with Netscape" at the bottom of the page. I thought that attitude went out with Firefox.
Since I never target NS3, I'm rather curious--doesn't pretty much the entire web look like shit for you? I mean, no offense, but I never bother targeting NS3 or IE4 because I figure if you are using it, you are pretty much used to nothing on the internet working. So surely you must be used to this, right?
Translation: tables.
Sorry, no thanks. If I have to do tables, it means it is harder to target search engines and screen readers. I'd rather have them then people who deliberately run antique browsers and complain about how no modern website works.
I could be getting trolled though. In fact, I bet I am. Nobody uses NS3... I get more hits from the Nintendo WII and the PSP!!
Perl supports Unicode just fine. It is Slashcode itself that is stripping out anything that isn't the Queens ASCII. If I could hazard a guess as to why, it would be some kind of cheap way to prevent XSS attacks or page-widening posts. Dunno
The thing about S3 is it their pricing structure is almost too granular. I mean, S3 charges $0.01 per 10,000 GET's in addition to the data transferred per request. Their EC2 charges $0.10 per 1 million I/O requests.
I mean, those numbers sound small, but even I have no clue how many IO requests I am making right now... is ten cents per million a good price or a bad price? Dunno! Is a penny per 10,000 GET's a good price? Probably--that is ten bucks for 10 million requests, right?
Sure it ties them to Amazon, but how tightly? I mean, as a percentage of their codebase, there is probably what, 0.5% specific to Amazon? And codebase aside, how hard is it to migrate your data from one cloud to another? I mean, at most it is a month long project and most of that is probably testing and dealing with unexpected edge cases. But none of these cloud guys do anything that really tie you in any more than a regular host.
BTW--I was looking at the URL structure of twitter and I tell you, if I was to use S3, I wouldn't tolerate the URL's for my images looking like this:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/twitter_production/profile_images/120987937/twitter_photo_bigger.jpg
That URL looks really unprofessional for such a big player. Can't they at least get their own hostname? It does prove my point though--about the only cost to migrate is changing the "upload avatars" code and changing the template to use a new URL structure.
What a load of rubbish. Do you honestly believe a word of what you just wrote?
I call it Linux and so does everybody I know. You are fighting a war that ended years ago. Worse, you make people who support open source sound insane.
Dude, it is software, not a friggen religious movement. Have some perspective.
Hahaha...
I really dont think I want my HAM radio friend learning the subtle nuances of nuclear weapons development by tinkering around and learning from their mistakes. That is, assuming they live through the mistake--sometimes that bit isn't always possible :-)
It has been mumbled for a while now. Remember all the discussion about it during the election? Hell, what *should* we do if Iran gets nukes? There isn't an easy answer.
People also argue that now that we've looped the head off Sadam, we've removed the only thing keeping Iran in check. I dont know enough about the history or the issues to really argue any of this though :-)
Yeah, but either they withdraw their troops or we nuke them. Those are the only two possible outcomes of invading us. Sure it might take a while to escalate to that point, but in the end either they withdraw or we nuke them. Period. There is literally no other outcome of such an event--it will always end in one of those two ways.
In otherwords, you cannot just invade half of Europe Hilter-style unless you want to be nuked. Period.
That is my point. Our military power is ineffective against such threats. We can kick Russia's ass, and they can kick ours, but we are very weak when it comes to stopping Pizza-Bomb Man.
"Warfare" vs. "Terrorism" are interchangeable and are only good for gaining political support or opposition. It is terrorism if you want to drum up support from one base, and warfare if you want to drum up support from another.
She was the only person "skilled" enough to bring out the base of die-hard republicans. Without her, McCain wouldn't have been able to count on the vote of the republican base. To the die-hard republican, she *was* the person they were voting for! The problem was, by bringing in Palin, McCain wasn't able to get the vote of so-called left-leaning republicans and "Regan democrats" (aka "The Undecideds").
Basically, McCain was trying to win the vote of two completely different bases that didn't like eachother's policies. By wining one base, he'd lose the other. But that is to be expected when you've got such a polarizing figure leading your party for eight years.
But now we've drifted so I'm done with this!
Things like West Point are a direct result of such ideas being proven wrong. Without a standing army (and skilled generals and engineers to lead them) at all times, we were too weak to defend ourselves. Freedom isn't very useful if somebody takes over your nation.
I'm saying he is a politician. This is now international politics have always been done and always will be. To think otherwise is being naive.
Duh, the guy with the most nukes!
Pretty much. But if shit ever escalated, they'd have our back with money and troops. The only reason they dont have our back right now is because we are busy fighting our war with Oceana.
The cold war?
Duh! With computer viruses that we upload to their spaceship from our apple computers! Haven't you seen the movies?
Fair enough. Let me try on a better word.
"The old strategies of war". You can't just go invade half a continent anymore. The Commies aren't gonna fly 3,000 bombers across the arctic and bomb America. Hitler ain't gonna be able to just invade half of Europe. Those days are over. The Cold War marked the end of that kind of stuff.
These days, if you wanna go evil, you gotta take a couple guys and put them in a shipping container strapped with $WEAPON. Your strategy isn't to take over the country... just fuck with them and weaken them. Once you get their nation to fall, you aren't planning on moving in to their homes, you just wanted them gone from the planet.
So yeah, nuclear weapons might not render the tactics of war obsolete. But nuclear weapons have certainly rendered the strategies of war obsolete.
Does that work?
Surely Sarah Palin would have set things straight though, right? I'm sure she can handle the nuclear launch codes. Her and Rush both.
Yeah, Bush did a great job boosting our leadership status. Cough.
At least we tried. If they dont cave, fuck them.. at least we'll have our allies helping us. Bush didn't try and just said "fuck em... we'll go at it alone and if you dont help, you are an enemy to". Now we are broke footing the bill for a war we never should have got in.
- Theodore Roosevelt.
Actually, it is the job of the government to protect its citizens and keep the sovereignty of its nation. There are good arguments that these pizza-bomb dudes are a threat to the nations citizens and an attack by an enemy.
The problem with the pizza-bomb dudes is they also create a huge conflict of interest. The only true way the US government can protect its citizens is to limit our freedom in order to protect our freedom. They are basically damned if they do and damned if they don't. But the fact the conflict exists does not *not* excuse them their most important duty--to protect us from our enemies.
It isn't an easy problem.
That is what happens when you get your news from a very narrow band of sources.
The one thing to realize is that crazy guy isn't gonna have a mass stockpile of them either. He might get one or two of them and then use them to blow up $RANDOM_COUNTRY. It would suck a *lot* and justifiably piss people off *a lot*, but as long as everybody sane keeps their cool, the world wouldn't end. The world would end if the sane folk got into nuclear war... but but if they actually nuked each other, they wouldn't be sane would they.
What you *dont* want is to sit around and twiddle your thumbs while Crazy Guy builds a stockpile. If he gets a stockpile, all bets are off.
The real question is, if your military intelligence indicates that the nuclear weapon Crazy Guy just used was the only one he had, do you retaliate with a nuclear weapon? My answer would be no and I'd be curious to hear pro-nuke-them-to-hell arguments...
That is the question. What if one of these "rouge" countries nuke a neighbor? What if they nuke us or our allies? Do we or Russia go MAD on their ass or do we get hella pissed instead?
First of all, one nuclear weapon isn't the end of the world. It is a huge deal, yeah. But it isn't balls-to-the-wall USA vs. Russia either.
If I was president (thank god I'm not), I wouldn't nuke that country... odds are good that was the only nuclear weapon they owned and they just blew their whole load in one shot. If we nuked them to hell, it would make the situation much worse and could result in a MAD-like scenario. Worse, what if that weapon did come from "Country X" and we knew it, and retaliated with a nuclear weapon, we might risk getting into that ball-to-the-wall USA vs. Russia scenario.
In other words, I have no clue. USA vs. Russia ain't gonna happen because of MAD. Random countries with three nuclear weapons don't have enough firepower to warrant a nuclear retaliation. But the trick is to make sure all they ever have is a couple nuclear weapons--hence calls to "disarm the planet". Everybody knows we are gonna continue to have 5 bagillion nukes--the fact that we do is the only way we can even make a call to disarm the planet... it doesn't matter if dont listen, we can destroy them and the world.
He isn't naive. Nobody is gonna get rid of their nukes, especially the USA, and he knows it. It puts international pressure on countries who really have no business with them. It is just good politics.
It would also be a hell of a lot less safe too. People know this too. We might say "down with nuclear weapons" in public, but if you put it to a vote, I promise you a large majority would vote to keep every nuke we own.
The only reason nuclear weapons are outdated is because they still exist. They remove the incentive to go WWII on somebodies ass. Because of nuclear weapons, if you wanna cause trouble you now have to find other ways that don't lead to your country or people turning into a glass parking lot.
In other words, warfare has evolved to deal with nuclear weapons much like bacteria have evolved to deal with antibiotics. New kinds of bacteria have been created that are immune to bacteria--but that doesn't mean the old kinds of bacteria aren't still lying around in some latent form. If you stopped using antibiotics, those old "extinct" forms of bacteria would come back. Same with warfare--if we could somehow get rid of every single nuclear weapon on earth--all the old tactics of war would suddenly become relevant and useful again.
Basically, the existence of nuclear weapons make the old tactics obsolete. Remove the nuclear weapons and the old ways are no longer obsolete.