Perhaps these symbols were still far from forming a structured script. Still, from the article it seems that they were used for communication, which is the main goal of writing. The reason why this is amazing is clear when you put it into the context of humankind 60.000 years later: we STILL have tribes that have no concept of writing, and in some countries analphabetism is affecting large swaths of the population.
That reminds me of Civilization, when you "find Writing in scrolls of ancient wisdom". Who knows how much of such "ancient wisdom" was lost and then re-developed only to be lost again, during these past tens of millennia. In fact, a lot of the engineering and science developed during the Apollo program, with the passing of Wernher von Braun and some of his colleagues, can well be considered lost. Sorry for the digression.
Incredibly enough, I find the logo to be quite spiffy, and the CDs' artwork rather fine - considering the distro generated in a country where large parts of the population live (and die) in concentration camps, and yet other large parts of the population starve to death.
On the box for Red Star Linux they might have just written "Beloved Leader, thank you for using Red Star - we hope you enjoy it!"
Novell has been taking good care of Suse Linux. Since Novell bought them, they continued working on what I think is the best Linux distro, without hindrance, boosted their marketshare and helped in giving Linux a corporate-friendly image. I hope the new owners of Novell (should such takeover really take place) will have a hands-off approach and let things chug along nicely, as they have been.
Little correction: not really controlled as much as co-owned, but the point stands. That is, it's not a coincidence.
OTOH:
Citing a report by Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Reuters quoted Hamas official Mahmoud Nasser as saying that Jordanian and Egyptian intelligence agencies had probably tracked Mabhouh prior to his assassination.
I could not find the Reuters article. The quote is from the Jerusalem Post
While I don't agree with your main conclusion (that it probably was Mossad), at least I don't mind discussing with an intelligent interlocutor such as yourself. What a breath of fresh air, in this thread!
If one is about to forge passports, what better method then to use facilities under your control to duplicate foreign passports of dual-citizenship holders when they visit Israel (which is the common denominator of the Dubai plot passports). Since very few non-Jews do so these days and given the political climate in Israel it is likely that the misguided Mossad shmucks doing the forging probably expected some sort of patriotic rallying around the flag by the victims if the scheme was discovered, it is quite a reasonable assertion.
Two fallacies: first, obviously the method you mention isn't good, as long as it involves duplicating the identities of Israeli nationals. Secondly, a lot of non-Jews visit Israel. Oh wait, there are other fallacies: thrid: you have obviously completely married and committed to your own idea that the passports must have been duplicated on Israeli soil, so you can't see the other possibilities - for instance, oh, I dunno... that they weren't. And because you are so married to that idea, you could never even contemplate the thought that the identities were not stolen by an Israeli secret service, but someone else. That would require you to open your view a bit, widen the tiny little box in which your brain is capable of operating. A huge intellectual task indeed, for the likes of you. But if you try, you will make a giant leap for yourself.
Finally, your use of the term "Jews", "schmucks" and "rallying around the flag" shows that you're nothing more than a bigoted racist, and hence, firmly limited by the tiny-miny little mental box in which you painted your whole existence.
I think I listed plenty of reasons, and each argument by itself is enough to discredit the claims by the Dubai police. (e.g. Forged Israeli national's passports? Please.).
All you have as a retort is a handwaving argument about secret services being all sloppy. Well, I know the CIA has been sloppy, there is proof of it (like the double-agent in Afghanistan that blew up 7 american FBI and CIA agents), and there have been unsuccessful Mossad operations, but there is no proof of sloppy Mossad executions. Your handwaving does not constitute an argument.
OK, let's see: the Dubai police has, so far, incriminated 26 suspects which have fled the country, two of them to Iran. The only individuals actually captured by the Dubai police are 3 Palestinians. (That would make the number of operatives equal to 29). Additionally, the police actually found succinylcholine (a muscle relaxant) in Mabhouh's blood (so he wouldn't fight back when, allegedly, smothered with a pillow). Some of the passports used by the alleged operatives belong to Israeli citizens (7 of them, IIRC).
You don't see any problem with these?
First of all, 29 operatives - that's a recipe for disaster; the more people involved, the higher the likelihood for an error. Mossad has used two to four people in the past, even for much higher profile targets (we know this from the few botched missions). As for how much does adding people to the operation increase the likelihood for error, it's given by the formula 1 - (1 - q)^n, where q is the likelihood that one agent will screw up, and n is the number of participating agents. Secondly, no Israeli agent would flee to Iran - because it's a paranoidly tightly controlled police state. Thirdly, Mossad would never use identities stolen from Israeli citizens, as that would endanger the lives of said citizens (and protecting lives of Israeli citizens is one of Mossad's raison d'etre), AND it would point a giant flashing sign at Israel. Mossad doesn't need to use Israeli citizen's identities. Fourthly, Mossad does not leave traces behind them. Their targets have historically been either shot or their death defied forensics. Fifthly, the only captured people are Palestinians. This would point at the involvement of Fatah rather than Israel.
The whole operation, while successful, seems mired in sloppiness (having such a large group of people involved, all of them identified - WTF? And leaving evidence at the scene etc. etc.), which should be enough to discredit the claim that Mossad was in involved.
Extensively-drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) is already a nearly-unstoppable killer. In fact, it could very well be a doomsday bacterium. It is deadly, practically untreatable, survives well outside of the human body (as long as it's away from direct sunlight), rather long incubation period.... Finally, to diagnose XDR-TB you'll currently need anywhere between 2 to 4 MONTHS! All that time you might be curing a person with drugs that are ineffective.
Your post misses the mark: Nazis were not opposed to Christian scientists. They were against Jewish scientists. Against as in, first they marginalized them, made it difficult for them to work, then to find a job and finally (if the scientists and their family were stil residing in Germany or a Nazi-occupied country) deported to a concentration camp and gassed.
Germany COULD have had a nuclear weapon before the allies, if only they didn't engage in their futile/counterproductive policy of extermination, genocde and racial discrimination against Jews. Scientists like Szilard (father of nuclear fission) would have stayed in Germany instead of moving to the USA where they then worked on the Manhattan project.
And a note at the end: had the Nazis had a nuclear weapon, it would have changed the course of history. They didn't necessarily need more than one, either: just blow up one major USSR city (say, Moscow) and watch the Eastern front fold up and a truce being signed.
I doubt anyone except a few dyed in the wool fanbois or anyone who's worked in the real world for more than 6 months take much notice of what the FSF says anymore
Wait a second there. I agree to some extent with your view on the FSF's poor PR skills, but they are still an extremely important organization to whom a lot of engineers and software developers are indebted to. FYI, I am no FSF fanboi and I have worked in the industry (mostly IT) for the last 15 years.
Those are extremely important problems to consider. I must admit, I was only familiar with the issue of mountain top removal. Thank you very much for educating me on the other two.
I'm not an Obama fan, but when he does something right he deserves credit for it, so good job Mr. President. I just hope this doesn't get bogged down in too much bureaucracy and lawsuits by "environmentalists." Note how "environmentalists" is in quotes because anyone rational who claims to care about air pollution, global warming, deforestation, etc. etc. should love the idea of new, very safe nuclear power plants. A back of the napkin calculation means a 1.1 Gigawatt reactor can put out the peak energy of 110 of the big 10 Megawatt wind turbine... and the wind turbine can't output at peak energy all the time. Take into account the fact that the land footprint for a nuclear power plant is tiny compared to wind or solar and you have a solution that is a very good thing for the environment.
As for nuclear waste, it's a political problem not a technological problem. Despite the fear-mongering you hear about "10,000 years of waste" the truly nasty stuff actually has a much shorter half-life, and the stuff that is radioactive for 10,000 years is dangerous... but not any more dangerous than the chemicals that get spewed from Coal-fired plants or the chemicals that are used in manufacturing photo-voltaic solar panels. One other thing.. if reprocessing were actually used in the US the amount of this nasty waste would be much much lower to boot. Once again, politics trumps technology in preventing solutions to problems from actually being implemented.
I completely agree with you, on every point. However, 8 bn$ in loan guarantees is very little.
Storing spent nuclear plant fuel (byproducts) is a headache, but: a) do you prefer to pump it into the atmosphere, like coal plants do? Oh yeah, because you might want to know that coal plants pump into the atmosphere way more radioactive materials ALONG WITH OTHER NASTY SUBSTANCES, than nuclear plants. b) we could re-use those byproducts, or drastically reduce their amount, if we built breeder reactors.
Sadly, Obama didn't mention either of these. Vision's too limited, I guess?
I really don't care from where they source their NAND Flash. Kingston gets a big plus in my book, because they are the only vendor that sells SLC-based SD and CF cards (also some USB drives). All other manufacturers just put MLC chips in their devices and hide this fact under a lot of meaningless glitz.
FYI, the SLC-based Kingston cards are the Elite Pro line of SD and FC cards. It's the only kind I'd confidently use in my netbook as an additional SSD drive.
I have a biased view on this, as I work with blind and visually impaired people, but anyhow: Apple keyboards suck bigtime, because it's extremely difficult to differentiate the keys by just touch. They are purposely made to be all alike. The Enter key is almost exactly like any other, except a bit longer - this is NOT enough for a touch-typist to distinguish it easily from other keys.
For reference, Thinkpads have excellent keyboards, on which one can type quite comfortably without looking at them.
The US as a whole; when it comes to internet access, is a 2nd or even 3rd world country. The stranglehold of AT&T and the like, has stunted the infrastructure development, both for tethered Internet access, as well as for mobile telecommunications (there are a lot of things broken in the US mobile phone policies and networks). For once, you have the opportunity to leapfrog over your Internet dark ages - I say don't waste it.
Microsoft Phone Support: Thank you for calling Microsoft, all calls may be monitored for training purposes and to ensure quality of service. Now, what seems to be the problem... Customer: That's right. *pause* Microsoft Phone Support:... ? Sir, you have to give me more information. Customer: I'll tell you my problem. WAT is my problem. Microsoft Phone Support: Sir, I don't know the answer to that question, you haven't told me yet. Customer: I didn't ask you a question. Microsoft Phone Support: Then why did you call? Why do you need help? Customer: WAT's wrong. I can't activate Windows 7 but I just bought it! Microsoft Phone Support: Okay, let's try to diagnose this problem. What's wrong? Customer: Yes, I already said that, I know WAT is wrong! That is precisely why I called! Microsoft Phone Support: Wait, why are you calling? Customer: WAT! Microsoft Phone Support: I said, why are you calling?! Customer: WAT! WAT, GODDAMNIT, WAT!!!
I nearly peed myself. It's funny, because I can see something like this playing itself out in real life, more than once.
I don't get the criticism of the Google ad, I thought it was just perfect.
It has a story. The story is not offensive, but rather personal and endearing. There is a positive message. There is a happy end (since we're expecting a baby any day, I am quite biased on this one). And google is there, from the very beginning, like a faithful, useful, reliable friend.
I am a big OpenOffice fan AND user. I think it's great and I will continue to use it for my scientific documents, presentations and drawings. It's a nearly unbeatable package for many reasons. That said, Google Docs does have ONE feature that none other office suite has, at least not quite as well implemented: groupwork. Google Docs allows concurrent editing in a way and scale that I have not seen anywhere else, and the only reason people are not crazy about it, is (I guess) because it's a paradigm shift in way of working. If/when people realize the potential of groupwork offered by Google Docs, this office suite could become one of the most popular, without actually replacing the others. It could also increase the popularity of OpenOffice and the other office suites that save in ODF formats. I can imagine doing part of the work with Google Docs for parallele editing with a co-author, and then finalize it with OpenOffice. For example.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps these symbols were still far from forming a structured script. Still, from the article it seems that they were used for communication, which is the main goal of writing. The reason why this is amazing is clear when you put it into the context of humankind 60.000 years later: we STILL have tribes that have no concept of writing, and in some countries analphabetism is affecting large swaths of the population.
That reminds me of Civilization, when you "find Writing in scrolls of ancient wisdom". Who knows how much of such "ancient wisdom" was lost and then re-developed only to be lost again, during these past tens of millennia. In fact, a lot of the engineering and science developed during the Apollo program, with the passing of Wernher von Braun and some of his colleagues, can well be considered lost. Sorry for the digression.
Thanks a lot for that.
Incredibly enough, I find the logo to be quite spiffy, and the CDs' artwork rather fine - considering the distro generated in a country where large parts of the population live (and die) in concentration camps, and yet other large parts of the population starve to death.
On the box for Red Star Linux they might have just written "Beloved Leader, thank you for using Red Star - we hope you enjoy it!"
Novell has been taking good care of Suse Linux. Since Novell bought them, they continued working on what I think is the best Linux distro, without hindrance, boosted their marketshare and helped in giving Linux a corporate-friendly image. I hope the new owners of Novell (should such takeover really take place) will have a hands-off approach and let things chug along nicely, as they have been.
Little correction: not really controlled as much as co-owned, but the point stands. That is, it's not a coincidence.
OTOH:
Citing a report by Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Reuters quoted Hamas official Mahmoud Nasser as saying that Jordanian and Egyptian intelligence agencies had probably tracked Mabhouh prior to his assassination.
I could not find the Reuters article. The quote is from the Jerusalem Post
While I don't agree with your main conclusion (that it probably was Mossad), at least I don't mind discussing with an intelligent interlocutor such as yourself. What a breath of fresh air, in this thread!
Apparently they were still too subtle, so next time they should leave a few Mossad ID cards and a Star of David necklace behind.
Don't give the Dubai chief of police an new ideas. Let him use his own creativity.
If one is about to forge passports, what better method then to use facilities under your control to duplicate foreign passports of dual-citizenship holders when they visit Israel (which is the common denominator of the Dubai plot passports). Since very few non-Jews do so these days and given the political climate in Israel it is likely that the misguided Mossad shmucks doing the forging probably expected some sort of patriotic rallying around the flag by the victims if the scheme was discovered, it is quite a reasonable assertion.
Two fallacies: first, obviously the method you mention isn't good, as long as it involves duplicating the identities of Israeli nationals. Secondly, a lot of non-Jews visit Israel.
Oh wait, there are other fallacies: thrid: you have obviously completely married and committed to your own idea that the passports must have been duplicated on Israeli soil, so you can't see the other possibilities - for instance, oh, I dunno... that they weren't. And because you are so married to that idea, you could never even contemplate the thought that the identities were not stolen by an Israeli secret service, but someone else. That would require you to open your view a bit, widen the tiny little box in which your brain is capable of operating. A huge intellectual task indeed, for the likes of you. But if you try, you will make a giant leap for yourself.
Finally, your use of the term "Jews", "schmucks" and "rallying around the flag" shows that you're nothing more than a bigoted racist, and hence, firmly limited by the tiny-miny little mental box in which you painted your whole existence.
I think I listed plenty of reasons, and each argument by itself is enough to discredit the claims by the Dubai police. (e.g. Forged Israeli national's passports? Please.).
All you have as a retort is a handwaving argument about secret services being all sloppy. Well, I know the CIA has been sloppy, there is proof of it (like the double-agent in Afghanistan that blew up 7 american FBI and CIA agents), and there have been unsuccessful Mossad operations, but there is no proof of sloppy Mossad executions. Your handwaving does not constitute an argument.
OK, let's see: the Dubai police has, so far, incriminated 26 suspects which have fled the country, two of them to Iran. The only individuals actually captured by the Dubai police are 3 Palestinians. (That would make the number of operatives equal to 29). Additionally, the police actually found succinylcholine (a muscle relaxant) in Mabhouh's blood (so he wouldn't fight back when, allegedly, smothered with a pillow). Some of the passports used by the alleged operatives belong to Israeli citizens (7 of them, IIRC).
You don't see any problem with these?
First of all, 29 operatives - that's a recipe for disaster; the more people involved, the higher the likelihood for an error. Mossad has used two to four people in the past, even for much higher profile targets (we know this from the few botched missions). As for how much does adding people to the operation increase the likelihood for error, it's given by the formula 1 - (1 - q)^n, where q is the likelihood that one agent will screw up, and n is the number of participating agents.
Secondly, no Israeli agent would flee to Iran - because it's a paranoidly tightly controlled police state.
Thirdly, Mossad would never use identities stolen from Israeli citizens, as that would endanger the lives of said citizens (and protecting lives of Israeli citizens is one of Mossad's raison d'etre), AND it would point a giant flashing sign at Israel. Mossad doesn't need to use Israeli citizen's identities.
Fourthly, Mossad does not leave traces behind them. Their targets have historically been either shot or their death defied forensics.
Fifthly, the only captured people are Palestinians. This would point at the involvement of Fatah rather than Israel.
The whole operation, while successful, seems mired in sloppiness (having such a large group of people involved, all of them identified - WTF? And leaving evidence at the scene etc. etc.), which should be enough to discredit the claim that Mossad was in involved.
Extensively-drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) is already a nearly-unstoppable killer. In fact, it could very well be a doomsday bacterium. It is deadly, practically untreatable, survives well outside of the human body (as long as it's away from direct sunlight), rather long incubation period.... Finally, to diagnose XDR-TB you'll currently need anywhere between 2 to 4 MONTHS! All that time you might be curing a person with drugs that are ineffective.
Your post misses the mark: Nazis were not opposed to Christian scientists. They were against Jewish scientists. Against as in, first they marginalized them, made it difficult for them to work, then to find a job and finally (if the scientists and their family were stil residing in Germany or a Nazi-occupied country) deported to a concentration camp and gassed.
Germany COULD have had a nuclear weapon before the allies, if only they didn't engage in their futile/counterproductive policy of extermination, genocde and racial discrimination against Jews. Scientists like Szilard (father of nuclear fission) would have stayed in Germany instead of moving to the USA where they then worked on the Manhattan project.
And a note at the end: had the Nazis had a nuclear weapon, it would have changed the course of history. They didn't necessarily need more than one, either: just blow up one major USSR city (say, Moscow) and watch the Eastern front fold up and a truce being signed.
I doubt anyone except a few dyed in the wool fanbois or anyone who's worked in the real world for more than 6 months take much notice of what the FSF says anymore
Wait a second there. I agree to some extent with your view on the FSF's poor PR skills, but they are still an extremely important organization to whom a lot of engineers and software developers are indebted to. FYI, I am no FSF fanboi and I have worked in the industry (mostly IT) for the last 15 years.
Nothing wrong with either of those.
That Anonymous Coward is a very prolific poster.
for a day or two, and then shoot him in the head. One less psychopath in the world can only be a good thing.
Those are extremely important problems to consider. I must admit, I was only familiar with the issue of mountain top removal. Thank you very much for educating me on the other two.
I'm not an Obama fan, but when he does something right he deserves credit for it, so good job Mr. President. I just hope this doesn't get bogged down in too much bureaucracy and lawsuits by "environmentalists." Note how "environmentalists" is in quotes because anyone rational who claims to care about air pollution, global warming, deforestation, etc. etc. should love the idea of new, very safe nuclear power plants. A back of the napkin calculation means a 1.1 Gigawatt reactor can put out the peak energy of 110 of the big 10 Megawatt wind turbine... and the wind turbine can't output at peak energy all the time. Take into account the fact that the land footprint for a nuclear power plant is tiny compared to wind or solar and you have a solution that is a very good thing for the environment.
As for nuclear waste, it's a political problem not a technological problem. Despite the fear-mongering you hear about "10,000 years of waste" the truly nasty stuff actually has a much shorter half-life, and the stuff that is radioactive for 10,000 years is dangerous... but not any more dangerous than the chemicals that get spewed from Coal-fired plants or the chemicals that are used in manufacturing photo-voltaic solar panels. One other thing.. if reprocessing were actually used in the US the amount of this nasty waste would be much much lower to boot. Once again, politics trumps technology in preventing solutions to problems from actually being implemented.
I completely agree with you, on every point. However, 8 bn$ in loan guarantees is very little.
some facts about nuclear energy.
1/Nuclear energy does not make economic sense. http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50308 (translation: it is expensive)
2/Having to store waste for over 100000 years is not what someone with any common sense would call 'green'.
3/limited liability. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act
4/fuel-dependency
Storing spent nuclear plant fuel (byproducts) is a headache, but:
a) do you prefer to pump it into the atmosphere, like coal plants do? Oh yeah, because you might want to know that coal plants pump into the atmosphere way more radioactive materials ALONG WITH OTHER NASTY SUBSTANCES, than nuclear plants.
b) we could re-use those byproducts, or drastically reduce their amount, if we built breeder reactors.
Sadly, Obama didn't mention either of these. Vision's too limited, I guess?
I really don't care from where they source their NAND Flash. Kingston gets a big plus in my book, because they are the only vendor that sells SLC-based SD and CF cards (also some USB drives). All other manufacturers just put MLC chips in their devices and hide this fact under a lot of meaningless glitz.
FYI, the SLC-based Kingston cards are the Elite Pro line of SD and FC cards. It's the only kind I'd confidently use in my netbook as an additional SSD drive.
I have a biased view on this, as I work with blind and visually impaired people, but anyhow: Apple keyboards suck bigtime, because it's extremely difficult to differentiate the keys by just touch. They are purposely made to be all alike. The Enter key is almost exactly like any other, except a bit longer - this is NOT enough for a touch-typist to distinguish it easily from other keys.
For reference, Thinkpads have excellent keyboards, on which one can type quite comfortably without looking at them.
The US as a whole; when it comes to internet access, is a 2nd or even 3rd world country. The stranglehold of AT&T and the like, has stunted the infrastructure development, both for tethered Internet access, as well as for mobile telecommunications (there are a lot of things broken in the US mobile phone policies and networks). For once, you have the opportunity to leapfrog over your Internet dark ages - I say don't waste it.
Came here to see an American complain about spelling/grammar and am leaving satisfied.
On the other hand, it's nice to see a Burmese posting on Slashdot.
Microsoft Phone Support: Thank you for calling Microsoft, all calls may be monitored for training purposes and to ensure quality of service. Now, what seems to be the problem ... ... ? Sir, you have to give me more information.
Customer: That's right.
*pause*
Microsoft Phone Support:
Customer: I'll tell you my problem. WAT is my problem.
Microsoft Phone Support: Sir, I don't know the answer to that question, you haven't told me yet.
Customer: I didn't ask you a question.
Microsoft Phone Support: Then why did you call? Why do you need help?
Customer: WAT's wrong. I can't activate Windows 7 but I just bought it!
Microsoft Phone Support: Okay, let's try to diagnose this problem. What's wrong?
Customer: Yes, I already said that, I know WAT is wrong! That is precisely why I called!
Microsoft Phone Support: Wait, why are you calling?
Customer: WAT!
Microsoft Phone Support: I said, why are you calling?!
Customer: WAT! WAT, GODDAMNIT, WAT!!!
I nearly peed myself.
It's funny, because I can see something like this playing itself out in real life, more than once.
I don't get the criticism of the Google ad, I thought it was just perfect.
It has a story.
The story is not offensive, but rather personal and endearing.
There is a positive message.
There is a happy end (since we're expecting a baby any day, I am quite biased on this one).
And google is there, from the very beginning, like a faithful, useful, reliable friend.
I think this ad has genius written all over it.
Google docs doesn't exactly offer more features
I am a big OpenOffice fan AND user. I think it's great and I will continue to use it for my scientific documents, presentations and drawings. It's a nearly unbeatable package for many reasons. That said, Google Docs does have ONE feature that none other office suite has, at least not quite as well implemented: groupwork. Google Docs allows concurrent editing in a way and scale that I have not seen anywhere else, and the only reason people are not crazy about it, is (I guess) because it's a paradigm shift in way of working. If/when people realize the potential of groupwork offered by Google Docs, this office suite could become one of the most popular, without actually replacing the others. It could also increase the popularity of OpenOffice and the other office suites that save in ODF formats. I can imagine doing part of the work with Google Docs for parallele editing with a co-author, and then finalize it with OpenOffice. For example.