If that is the only reason then you are not human and should be shot immediately. Simple isn't it? Step one, dehumanize your target; step two, kill.
And this is your answer to somebody who doesn't shoot people because of the hassle of jail. Aren't you ever so clever to have such a better reason - what should we call it? - I know! - a human reason to shoot people. In fact, it makes you so superior that you can now pronounce who should be put to death by shooting.
And to top it off, you're encouraged in this thinking by assholes just like you modding you Insightful.
Then again, maybe your right, maybe the guy you're commenting on is a mad dog psychopath and society should be protected immediately from the likes of him.
Or maybe he lives in a world of sanctimonious, self-superior assholes that he finds little reason to not shoot.
Maybe he's even dehumanized them.
And maybe the likes of you are protected by those laws threatening imprisonment.
Maybe you should get a gun to protect yourself from guys like that, and, who knows, guys like me that seem to side with him. Because he's a real threat. He probably has buddies. You do, don't you? Now, go and warn your buddies about him or me and have them get guns too. Then he and his buddies and me and my buddies circle will increase to counter your threat. And maybe shooting will break out.
And maybe a big enough crowd of you can make the news and I know what they'll call it - WAR - because quite simply, that what war is.
And that's why I'm lashing out at you. That's what I do with warmongers and you are a warmonger whether you like it or not, and so are the deluded that modded you Insightful, and so are those that thought you were right when they read your comment.
Still feeling superior? It almost makes me wish there was a God, so I could pray that my words to you makes you get it, and makes the world I live in absent one warmonger, without violence.
You didn't pull the trigger. You didn't give the order to fire. You didn't provide logistics support to get the shooter to the target. You didn't make the gun or the bullets. You didn't send the shooter to war. You didn't vote for anyone who did send the shooter to war.
And to listen to our people, in fact, everyone is just like you and everyone is innocent.
Now you know how Viet Nam worked, and how Iraq works, and how the next one will work and all the ones after that until peace breaks out.
Remember what Kirk said - "[War] is instinctive. But the instinct can be fought. We're human beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands! But we can stop it. We can admit that we're killers...but we're not going to kill...today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill...today!" -- Kirk, A Taste Of Armageddon, Ep 23/3192.1, with thanks to http://www.geocities.com/area51/3253/regular/shatner_kirk_quotes_tos.html
My cable isn't throttled if I watch TV all day. For your sentiment and clear thinking, I say, right on!
OTOH... if you have digital cable, you do know that your TV signal is often significantly compressed (with visible quality loss) to allow them to deliver content on their infrastructure. I'm just wondering if that appears in any digital non-OTA TV provider's TOS....
You're right - they don't charge more for hours viewed, i.e., bandwidth. Cable charges more if you have more channels. They charge more if you have premium channels.
This is exactly where these clowns are going and it's obvious to me. Today, the excuse is bandwidth. But it's not coincidental that bandwidth is translating to protocols is translating to premium use.
Lets' see it for what it is: they're trying to re-write the broadband rules and make inroads in billing to use-of-premium-content. And premium content billing is something your local cable company knows PLENTY about.
It was all fun and games to slap some broadband capability on cable to drive sales and profits up. Now, VoIP and entertainment are - or will be - making Joe Average rethink his information needs. Those hours spent downloading a good movie are not hours spent watching HBO. Do they offer to raise prices or offset prices for this? Exactly - they offer to control, then raise.
It's not fun and games anymore, and HBO/Showtime isn't the next big thing. They're dead - sorry, but they are. (It's been 20 years since I've heard anyone go to someone's house to watch a movie on HBO - remember those days? Cable does!)
The P2P users may be complaining today, but this isn't a salvo against P2P - P2P is an archetypical case for these bozos (Comcast and their allies).
How soon before VoIP users are inconsiderate bandwidth hogs? Planning on buying an Apple TV for that nifty HD download? How about Netflix? How about iTMS? Amazon? Magnatune.com? Internet radio?
Somebody want to tell me that P2P torrents aren't used for _fundamentally the same_ content (with exception of VoIP... maybe), with fundamentally the same bandwidth requirements? If so, I'll tell you right now, I'm not buying that argument for a moment.
I'm radically opposed to losing ground on this issue. Many of us do indeed remember modems. They sucked. Yes, the net was so much simpler then - so were my tape-eating VHS machines and my scratchy vinyl LPs. After modems, we were threatened with ISDN - anyone but me remember how this was to be a boon because it would contribute to telecommuting and save us on roads, gas, etc, etc?
Then comes broadband technologies - and their incumbent promises - and I remember them, even if some of you don't.
If you're in the camp sympathizing with "those bandwidth hogs should pay more" - or "most people just want occasional email and the web, so the heavy users should pay" - I say this: DON'T DRINK THE KOOL-AIDE, YOU'VE HAD ENOUGH!!!
This is slashdot, people. On the theory that birds of a feather flock together - ask yourself which type of person you know more of - personally - the occasional email/web user, or the NORMAL broadband-needing regular user - be it for ISO downloads, VoIP or entertainment?
This crap about a few percent of hog users lapping it up at the expense of others is just that - a load of crap.
I hate fucking pirates as much or more as the next guy. But not all P2P is piracy and as I hope I've demonstrated, P2P isn't the point - it's the excuse. Let's be clear - we hang together or they'll hang us separately.
Aren't you making INSANELY valid points about Sony's impact on the various media industries, especially pro video? I have a LOT of friends in pro video production, and they wouldn't find this at all funny - like me, they'd find the mods "+10: Confusing."
I think the guy was saying that 720p shouldn't be treated as crap, as common marketing would have us do.
Now, I'm curious - not slagging at all, sincerely curious. What common sources are you using for your comparison? Rilly high quality OTA (not cable or DirecTV) 720p broadcast vs. BD, for example? I'm assuming ahead of time that you know about format lying by the majors in the industry - so - what sources show the big difference?
Seems to claim to deal with codecs and have a Window-sy interface. Also - mass market support at US$199 at Sears.
If adoption - as other posters above have suggested - is about a mass-retailer support, a low but not free machine, an easier interface, a pre-installed GNU/Linux, codec support so it just works, and an easier interface without a large learning curve, then this beast should be setting the world on fire.
It's not.
In addition, they claim to protect buyers from the wrath of MS patent rage and support all sorts of needed capabilities.
And they charge money for it - US$49.95 for a "digital download" (gotta love marketeers). Still not setting the world on fire.
I think back to the unspoken covenants I faced when I turned to OS X. "You can't any software for the Mac!" "Yes, I can. There MS Office, built-in apps, and Fink!" "But, I have free copies of...."
I wonder how far we've put our heads in the sand over application piracy being the principal driver dooming the world to Windows.
I know - but stopped associating with - all sorts of Windows guys trading software because _they could_. Makes me wonder how much of the perceived value of a Windows box is offset by pirated applications.
It's not because Windows itself is perceived to have value, nor because you can't get a decent machine at low cost from a major retailer with Ubuntu installed, etc.
So, I'm just saying.... maybe it's time to speak up for the real problem.
There isn't an article yet. It's due out on Feb 19 - "in the online Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" - from TFA.
The "article" is really a summary itself - in fact, it's more like a press release of the paper to come. Jared Diamond's in the "article" - a pretty heroic character for those that think - saying a good thing about the paper, so there's a clue.
You're absolutely right. I did a great disservice to foreigners by comparing them to Americans with your attitude - for so doing, and for not properly recognizing that, I sincerely apologize.
Anyone who seriously considered chemical weapons to be "WMDs" was a moron.
If your point is that the phrase, Weapons of Mass Destruction, is ludicrous and inaccurate, then OK - sort of. I don't think that was your point.
If your point was dedicated individuals can do extreme harm to a civilian populace using makeshift weaponry, then I think I want to complain about the war in Afghanistan. I won't speak for others, but I knew a lot of normal peaceniks (no slag intended) who were against the Afghanistan campaign from square one - and changed their minds when easy victory without losses to America seeming to be taking place. Then, it was all necessary, Al Queda, El Queso, etc, etc, etc.
If the point was nukes, and you want to call people morons, OK, but the history was - a) went to war over destabilization in the area could cascade to an unacceptable worldwide situation ('90s), b) mop-up uncovered definite proof that it could have been worse, Saddam was trying for weapons with an atomic or nuclear component, c) then the present debacle unfolded. Recall that in the early 2ks, we had what was considered to be a credible informant on the re-building of his nuke program ringing the dinner bell, only to learn that neither the informant nor his info were sufficiently vetted.
I don't take you for a peacenik (again, peacenik is as much compliment as anything) given your phraseology - and what you postulate(!), but neither do I take you for a weapons analyst of any sort. I worked for the US Dod and DOE during the '80s and '90s (never as regular military) for a primary mission where the capability of the departments aligned for that mission, so I had no more qualm with the silliness of the WMD phrase that I did for Dan Rather describing the F-15E as "the E is for Eagle." IOW, it's hard to understand what phrase triggers what in another person's mind.
The military categorizes the overall non-conventional threat as NBC - nuclear, biological, chemical - any one of which can render a populace and a battlefield pretty screwed, more so than due to conventional threats and effects. This campaign was nuts - it was ostensibly excused to deal with a small force, but force-on-force tactics were applied as if adequate supply lines - and correspondent security - weren't going to be at issue over the distances and timetable involved. This is a classic clusterfuck situation, as tends to happen when political leadership, the public, and the military aren't of one mind. Perhaps I'd short-circuited my explanation regarding Powell, because he didn't approve of such nonsense on his watch in the first war - and such plans were carted out before him, no doubt of that. He was against a second Vietnam, having been there, and the '90s wasn't one. This one surely seems to be.
That chemical weapons are inefficient killers, OK, I guess. Depends on the objective, the cost to deploy and the results. Had chemical or biological weapons been deployed in any major way in just one engagement, we'd have had soldiers choking (more than they were) on their own protective equipment in that environment. If that's what you'd wanted, then the efficiency would have been actually pretty high, as is your example of attacking subways, so I'm not clear on your point
To recap, you consider some people morons, chemical weapons are inefficient but are weapons of terror, and people thought WMDs meant chem weaponry and (by extension) people thought that Saddam was massing chem stockpiles.
The nation was largely supporting the Afghan campaign and the weapons involved there were box-cutters. I don't think the American people questioned that campaign because box cutters were involved. I think they did question the odd, knee-jerk reaction to Dubya next targeting the guy who hurt his dad, and demanded a higher standard of specific proof to support the objective. The demands were not sufficiently high for the fears stated.
People were dumb - fear does that to a lot of people. Get jumped in
Like a true American, you not only spelled the name of the country wrong (and the Freudian subtlety of the misspelling is particularly telling)... I don't believe that what I'm about to say isn't voicing the opinion of many hereabouts: some of us Yanks know a lot of non-Americans and non-natively-born Americans and you all tend to get on our fucking nerves from time to time with your arrogance of language usage. Yes, most all of us are _so stupid_ that we only speak one language.
In the old days, we had a stupid saying - when you point one finger, three point back at you. On the odd chance that it wasn't so stupid after all, let's see if we can count three fingers:
1. The guy is guilty of a typo but you find it necessary to berate him personally before arguing your counterpoints. (I'll give you a hint - you're entirely sanctimonious in this ad hominem.) 2. I say you just proved yourself to be a grammar or spelling Nazi. (I'll give you a hint - Nazi wasn't coined as an Americanism.) 3. You got modded 3, Insightful, proving that that others condone this practice. If he's got others condoning his point of view, they're true Americans, too, but those that condone you are all insightful? (I'll give you a hint - you don't need to study Freud to learn about hypocrisy.)
I've already posted elsewhere on the Kurds and the WMDs. I choose not to do so either way in this thread - because you upped the ante.
When you attack the man before you attack his ideas, you are simply attacking a man who has spoken - it is that simple.
What to know what a true American is? He's someone who defends a guy's right to speak, whether he believes in his point of view or not.
This ain't flamebait or trolling, but the same mentality that modded you insightful may mod me so. All I'm guilty of is giving you a chance to see how it feels to be attacked for what I see you guilty of - sanctimony, conformance and hypocrisy. You attacked him over a fucking typo as proof of what you see him guilty of - being a true American.
If you're man enough to believe your ideas stand on their own, I challenge you to apologize. And no, I don't even know him. I don't even know what he believes in.
I'm not sure that you're 100% right in your criticism.
One of the favorite forgottens of the '90s conflict and its aftermath with Iraq:
While on patrol, a group of soldiers literally stumbled over a large circle of pipe out in the desert attached to an innocuous facility. Being a news junkie - and working in a related field at the time - this one hit me like a ton of bricks. It was broadcast late night, but because Joe Reported never really got it, or so I speculate, it was one of those not-often repeated stories (again, anomalous) but its implication did become part of "what everyone knew."
If the question is why were so many willing to believe in WMDs in the first place, this time around, there it is. That we did so is shameful, but it wasn't without cause.
To have been lied to by our leaders is beyond infuriating. But we've also been played by them in another way. What didn't come out in popular media until much later - that I, a news junkie, am aware of - is Saddam stupidly bluffing and intimating that he did or could possess such capability in his responses to the West. He just didn't believe that Dubya would do anything about it.
I guess my point is to emphasize that we weren't just lied to, and we weren't just sheep to believe the lies. We were misled by guys who later decided to take the heat as liars instead of guys who were too stupid to recognize bluff from data. I guess I'd damned well be neither, but if I had to admit to the American public that a) I'm a lying politician or b) I'm a politician dumber than Saddam, - well, let's just say I can maybe see how the choice was made.
So, we weren't just sheep believing lies. We were sheep to believe the under-qualified. I'm guilty of not buying it until Colin Powell supported the position. Prior to that for me, it was easy: claims by idiots in government. So I bleated along complacently because I thought Powell's judgement would be different - trustworthy. I forgot - as did anyone like me - this simple adage: Tell me who your friends are, I'll tell you who you are. I should have known if one would get pulled up or one would get pulled down if you put Cheney and Powell alone in a room together.
As far as your personal paranoid fantasy - take heart. You nailed it in one. For a bunch of fancy words outlining this, see an earlier post of mine in this topic, if you care. Not claiming to have proved anything, but I did use a lot of correctly spelled words - your view is neither uniquely yours nor fantasy - paranoid or any other kind, IMO.
Americans are afforded the opportunity to publicly protest and try to change their government when they believe it fucks up. And a lot of Americans feel that way and act that way.
The guy that made the remark that you responded to is among the many in America trying to sort out why 9/11 happened in the first place. You might have tried to postulate that our leaders randomly invade countries without reason, etc., but you personalized our country (yepper, I'm a Yank) as a single-minded individual.
America's actions - based on our bad politics - may seem insane or uncouth - but it is never random.
Why were we in Iraq in the first place - in the '90s? Kuwait was overrun. Why was Kuwait overrun? Perhaps because they were drilling sideways into Iraq's oil - we're not completely sure - "excuse me"s to those who were - because I don't know all the facts myself. Why didn't we take out Saddam and his regime then? Because the president at the time recognized his Constitutional limits under his edict to act.
You can simplify it all down to oil and you'd be right. We use oil - a lot. Last I'd checked, our oil consumption boils down to supporting our agribusiness - we do tend to feed a great deal of the world - and our military. You may even charge that our military is protecting our big business. OK, even if the statement's not even wrong, I'll play along and postulate that you don't like our military protecting the agribusiness that feeds so much of the world.
Where have some large American grain shipments gone? Throughout the '70s, it went to the Soviet Union - oddly enough, we were held hostage by Soviet policies at the UN, all the while doing our level best to feed their people so desperation wouldn't lead to Armageddon. How about North Korea? Same thing - they've been in famine, we've been trying to feed them, their leaders take the food, and indoctrinate their people to believe that we're going to eat their babies - literally.
George W has a clear history of not tolerating anyone who hurts his dad. Saddam hurt him politically and later tried to assassinate him - Clinton, BTW, responded with a small flood of Tomahawks to that. We all knew - or rather - many of us knew, but others learned the hard way - that Saddam not playing ball with Dubya was going to be his end.
I've talked to more than a fair share of Middle Easterners. Are you even aware that the popular belief was that America didn't oust Saddam because we lost the war there in the '90s? Are you even aware that Saddam believed that he could intimate that he had WOMDs as a bluff against Dubya?
Our invasion there was many things, but it wasn't random, neither was it without reason. And I don't mean reason as in have a reason or have an excuse, I mean reason as in a reasoning process was involved. It may have been GIGO, it may have been immoral, but it was perfectly predictable. Random and without reason is never predictable.
Tell me truthfully - who in the world didn't believe or wasn't worried or never considered - that there was a danger of America invading Iraq the day Dubya took the oath of office?
Maybe you're alive today to post here because our policies of the past prevented a nuclear holocaust. Just maybe. And maybe those policies came about because we bear the burden of unleashing nuclear hell on the world and would like to avoid it at all costs - for ourselves and others. Maybe we have a conscience about that and have tried to elect appropriately responsible governments to curtail that hell. Just maybe.
Everybody likes to be the saint. We're not. Neither are we simply a bunch of madmen or Satans.
I had an altercation in an Asian bar where a European guy and his buddies wanted to tangle with me and m
Almost. Had one of those hot rods in RL growing up in Detroit.
Linux is exactly like that. You're on your own until you call a couple of buddies - then about 15 people show up - about half of them carrying six packs, the rest carrying parts in their backpacks.
When you're on the road a few hours later, not only is your original problem fixed, but your jets have been changed, the cooling system's been redone and you've just picked up between another 4 to 7 horsepower.
Not a criticism or flamebait, so please don't take it that way.
I have a yahoo account (don't really use it), but I primary think of them as a search engine. Used them until after google came along, but joined the pack.
So based on that, here's my question - _if_ Yahoo is a search engine, and _because_ you point how they're not a sustainable business, then perhaps the real deal is that your post has three links in it, none of them from Yahoo. In fact, you use google as the first link to find out / prove how Yahoo was doing with its employment.
No one pointed out the irony until now. It's that proof in and of itself of the trouble Yahoo _really_ has? Advertising requires mindshare or is meant to build it - whichever way you want, you just proved _something_.
Know _exactly_ what you mean about frustration being the mother of effort - for myself, I don't know whether to like that about myself or not. A lot of what I end up proving and doing in life are because some ignoramus told me I couldn't do it because others couldn't or was wrong when I knew I was right. Like it or not about myself, I don't change - don't plan to.
Thanks for the info. The criticism that I was pretending for dramatic effect holds no water. You seem to know the ins and outs have researched it.
I submitted that trusting an accounting isn't the same as knowing you can.
If I was wrong, then I wrong - but dramatic, I wasn't. I know what I don't know - and knew it when I posted it. If all you read was dramatic effect, then my point stands - and so does yours, but maybe not in the way you'd like.
Re:Vista moved my cheese /are there any real reaso
on
Hostile ta Vista, Baby
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Fine.
But In The Beginning... doesn't suggest that you do use command lines. It suggest a certain irrationality in the defense of Windows. No need to tell you though, all of the longtime Linux users I've met read the book years ago, otherwise, I'd wonder if you were judging a book by its title.
I guess you raise a chicken and egg question: Did those apps rise to prominence because Windows was ubiquitous and they made the right choice to support Windows, or did Windows become ubiquitous because its apps were so great and only Windows made those apps possible (technically)?
It's all moot. No one in their right mind will vote with their wallets away from Microsoft - because Windows has the apps everybody wants, Windows upgrade after Windows upgrade after Windows upgrade.
Luckily, most of that money goes back to University research and the inventors... I was ok or had mixed feelings (tending to ok) on the whole issue of universities owning patents and being afforded all rights thereto, until I read your comment.
Now, the hair on the back of my neck is up.
Is it just me, or isn't it true that virtually all out-of-court settlements are kept private?
I do not live in a world where I trust any university to receive sums from corporations with totals to be kept secrect, and be confident of where the money went.
Hail, hail our alma maters and all that - but I bet dollars to doughnuts that anyone with blind trust because it's a university are in line to find out why we force public accountability - we have to.
I know a lot of accountants. If asked, I'm sure that they could change the books around and make it look like football is paying for research and research is paying for basketball.
Most of the money of goes back to research? You don't know that. You don't know really how much is involved. Your trusting what people behind closed doors have come out and told you.
Please - tell me I'm wrong. Don't research it and then tell me - tell me you _knew_ when you wrote it. Because if you didn't, you're indicating that the situation already exists where the public - sample size you - is already accepting assumption as fact where public monies are involved.
If I'm hard on you for this, apologies. But put what you say together with what a previous poster said, to the effect that private money is going to research, but public money is going elsewhere - then re-read this.
Please - tell me I'm wrong, because I want to be. But my gut tells me that I'm not.
Typical CNET logic: Proclaim Linus' preference that beauty and intuition would take a backseat to functionality - and the problem that they have with this - wait for it - that the design and usability factor (sic) are more important, therefore Win and OS X are better for people than Linux, and from this - or as if it is in support - we arrive at Linus possibly no longer speaking for Linux.
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
I didn't RTFA and I'm not going to RTFA. Whenever I hear logic like this, it makes me reach for my revolver.
And while I'm in the mood, don't get me started on how CNET isn't really complaining about Linux, it's GNU part - you know, the part that seems to be always denied by not using the proper name, GNU/Linux, but always gets trundled out as a defense mechanism.
I hate the smell of bad logic. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
And for anyone tempted to not get it - this post isn't flamebait. It's a retaliation against the slagging my intelligence was just given.
Maybe I'd be in a better mood if the summary went, "An anonymous reader laughed his fucking ass off when he saw this crap, and thought - correctly - that any of us in a bad mood might find fun in slagging CNET. Here's their latest proof that journalist with IQs below 50 can get a job at CNET - because they know their market:..."
From TFA:
In contrast, we have not yet achieved the penetration that we might have desired on user desktop systems, at least if you don't count the fact that Free Software provides a large part of Apple's MacOS today, and critical elements of Microsoft Windows as well. Both companies have been forced to develop strategies to live with us, some of them less comfortable than others. I had about 80 different complaints each of the three times I read TFA. The lines above stood out as a way to crystalize two complaints, which I very much intend as constructive criticism. I'm not trying to fix you personally - the end goal is successful promotion (or on-going success, or improved success, if you prefer) of Open Source.
1. You state that both companies were forced to develop strategies to live with us. Is that really true or accurate? It may be, but it doesn't ring true. Apple was going down the tubes because of Apple. I thought they embraced Open Source in Darwin as a survival mechanism - in fact, I'm rather certain of it. I think there's a difference between embracing FOSS as a survival strategy and being saved as opposed to developing a strategy to live with FOSS. Also, as I recall, didn't we complain that MS had essentially ripped off FOSS for its TCP/IP stuff before finally coming clean without coming really clean? (I'm not sure of the detail, it was a lot of years ago, but it seems to have truthiness.) Are you referring to back-handed abuse of FOSS for profit as a strategy to live with FOSS? If so, I'd guess that is grammatically and therefore technically accurate - but is it accurate to the picture advertised - "develop strategies to live with us," or is accurate to the picture, "developed strategies to exploit us?"
2. You state that there are two companies to which you refer, but some of those companies are less comfortable than others. The words some and others imply plurality. When you divide two, you get two ones. Two units. You don't get two pluralities. This forces a cognitive dissonance that encourages hyper-criticality. Not good for promotion. It makes one wonder what you really mean to say, at the kindest.
If I missed your point(s) that I focused on in the example, then please understand from my feedback how others may be missing it, too, in their own ways.
Sub designers, aircraft...cars...chairs...these guys/gals are supposed to have studied things like fish, birds, trees and insects for reasons why, and why not, long before they were hired to actually build things. Well, thank you very much Mr. Tattletale.
Did it ever occur to you that we did study these things long before we were hired, and we publish this stuff to explain our lost time so the boss doesn't figure out that what we're really doing is posting to slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
And this is your answer to somebody who doesn't shoot people because of the hassle of jail. Aren't you ever so clever to have such a better reason - what should we call it? - I know! - a human reason to shoot people. In fact, it makes you so superior that you can now pronounce who should be put to death by shooting.
And to top it off, you're encouraged in this thinking by assholes just like you modding you Insightful.
Then again, maybe your right, maybe the guy you're commenting on is a mad dog psychopath and society should be protected immediately from the likes of him.
Or maybe he lives in a world of sanctimonious, self-superior assholes that he finds little reason to not shoot.
Maybe he's even dehumanized them.
And maybe the likes of you are protected by those laws threatening imprisonment.
Maybe you should get a gun to protect yourself from guys like that, and, who knows, guys like me that seem to side with him. Because he's a real threat. He probably has buddies. You do, don't you? Now, go and warn your buddies about him or me and have them get guns too. Then he and his buddies and me and my buddies circle will increase to counter your threat. And maybe shooting will break out.
And maybe a big enough crowd of you can make the news and I know what they'll call it - WAR - because quite simply, that what war is.
And that's why I'm lashing out at you. That's what I do with warmongers and you are a warmonger whether you like it or not, and so are the deluded that modded you Insightful, and so are those that thought you were right when they read your comment.
Still feeling superior? It almost makes me wish there was a God, so I could pray that my words to you makes you get it, and makes the world I live in absent one warmonger, without violence.
You didn't pull the trigger. You didn't give the order to fire. You didn't provide logistics support to get the shooter to the target. You didn't make the gun or the bullets. You didn't send the shooter to war. You didn't vote for anyone who did send the shooter to war.
And to listen to our people, in fact, everyone is just like you and everyone is innocent.
Now you know how Viet Nam worked, and how Iraq works, and how the next one will work and all the ones after that until peace breaks out.
Remember what Kirk said - "[War] is instinctive. But the instinct can be fought. We're human beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands! But we can stop it. We can admit that we're killers...but we're not going to kill...today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill...today!" -- Kirk, A Taste Of Armageddon, Ep 23/3192.1, with thanks to http://www.geocities.com/area51/3253/regular/shatner_kirk_quotes_tos.html
As I recall, putting annoying sound - bad music? - directly into the brain was used to control the wrongful in Childhood's End.
OTOH... if you have digital cable, you do know that your TV signal is often significantly compressed (with visible quality loss) to allow them to deliver content on their infrastructure. I'm just wondering if that appears in any digital non-OTA TV provider's TOS....
You're right - they don't charge more for hours viewed, i.e., bandwidth. Cable charges more if you have more channels. They charge more if you have premium channels.
This is exactly where these clowns are going and it's obvious to me. Today, the excuse is bandwidth. But it's not coincidental that bandwidth is translating to protocols is translating to premium use.
Lets' see it for what it is: they're trying to re-write the broadband rules and make inroads in billing to use-of-premium-content. And premium content billing is something your local cable company knows PLENTY about.
It was all fun and games to slap some broadband capability on cable to drive sales and profits up. Now, VoIP and entertainment are - or will be - making Joe Average rethink his information needs. Those hours spent downloading a good movie are not hours spent watching HBO. Do they offer to raise prices or offset prices for this? Exactly - they offer to control, then raise.
It's not fun and games anymore, and HBO/Showtime isn't the next big thing. They're dead - sorry, but they are. (It's been 20 years since I've heard anyone go to someone's house to watch a movie on HBO - remember those days? Cable does!)
OK, by now I've made my point, I hope.
The P2P users may be complaining today, but this isn't a salvo against P2P - P2P is an archetypical case for these bozos (Comcast and their allies).
How soon before VoIP users are inconsiderate bandwidth hogs? Planning on buying an Apple TV for that nifty HD download? How about Netflix? How about iTMS? Amazon? Magnatune.com? Internet radio?
Somebody want to tell me that P2P torrents aren't used for _fundamentally the same_ content (with exception of VoIP... maybe), with fundamentally the same bandwidth requirements? If so, I'll tell you right now, I'm not buying that argument for a moment.
I'm radically opposed to losing ground on this issue. Many of us do indeed remember modems. They sucked. Yes, the net was so much simpler then - so were my tape-eating VHS machines and my scratchy vinyl LPs. After modems, we were threatened with ISDN - anyone but me remember how this was to be a boon because it would contribute to telecommuting and save us on roads, gas, etc, etc?
Then comes broadband technologies - and their incumbent promises - and I remember them, even if some of you don't.
If you're in the camp sympathizing with "those bandwidth hogs should pay more" - or "most people just want occasional email and the web, so the heavy users should pay" - I say this: DON'T DRINK THE KOOL-AIDE, YOU'VE HAD ENOUGH!!!
This is slashdot, people. On the theory that birds of a feather flock together - ask yourself which type of person you know more of - personally - the occasional email/web user, or the NORMAL broadband-needing regular user - be it for ISO downloads, VoIP or entertainment?
This crap about a few percent of hog users lapping it up at the expense of others is just that - a load of crap.
I hate fucking pirates as much or more as the next guy. But not all P2P is piracy and as I hope I've demonstrated, P2P isn't the point - it's the excuse. Let's be clear - we hang together or they'll hang us separately.
Is it just me, or are you Insightful, not Funny?
Aren't you making INSANELY valid points about Sony's impact on the various media industries, especially pro video? I have a LOT of friends in pro video production, and they wouldn't find this at all funny - like me, they'd find the mods "+10: Confusing."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betacam
Either IHBT or I'm the only one getting it..... rsvp.
I think the guy was saying that 720p shouldn't be treated as crap, as common marketing would have us do.
Now, I'm curious - not slagging at all, sincerely curious. What common sources are you using for your comparison? Rilly high quality OTA (not cable or DirecTV) 720p broadcast vs. BD, for example? I'm assuming ahead of time that you know about format lying by the majors in the industry - so - what sources show the big difference?
Many thanks.
I used to fiddle (read: work for a living) with X. You had various window managers, configured them, etc, etc, etc. (Cue the dead horse.)
...."
I read here that it's about the desktop, but when has the Linux community embraced strategies to oust Windows?
There was Lindows - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._Lindows - but in googling for it, I came across this, that I didn't know about:
http://www.linspire.com/
Seems to claim to deal with codecs and have a Window-sy interface. Also - mass market support at US$199 at Sears.
If adoption - as other posters above have suggested - is about a mass-retailer support, a low but not free machine, an easier interface, a pre-installed GNU/Linux, codec support so it just works, and an easier interface without a large learning curve, then this beast should be setting the world on fire.
It's not.
In addition, they claim to protect buyers from the wrath of MS patent rage and support all sorts of needed capabilities.
And they charge money for it - US$49.95 for a "digital download" (gotta love marketeers). Still not setting the world on fire.
I think back to the unspoken covenants I faced when I turned to OS X. "You can't any software for the Mac!" "Yes, I can. There MS Office, built-in apps, and Fink!" "But, I have free copies of
I wonder how far we've put our heads in the sand over application piracy being the principal driver dooming the world to Windows.
I know - but stopped associating with - all sorts of Windows guys trading software because _they could_. Makes me wonder how much of the perceived value of a Windows box is offset by pirated applications.
It's not because Windows itself is perceived to have value, nor because you can't get a decent machine at low cost from a major retailer with Ubuntu installed, etc.
So, I'm just saying.... maybe it's time to speak up for the real problem.
There isn't an article yet. It's due out on Feb 19 - "in the online Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" - from TFA.
The "article" is really a summary itself - in fact, it's more like a press release of the paper to come. Jared Diamond's in the "article" - a pretty heroic character for those that think - saying a good thing about the paper, so there's a clue.
In fact - a little googling revealed that TFA in question is nothing more than a sophomoric rewording of a Stanford "news release" - http://news-service.stanford.edu/pr/2008/pr-ehrlich-021308.html
Wake me on the 19th when there's something to see.
You're absolutely right. I did a great disservice to foreigners by comparing them to Americans with your attitude - for so doing, and for not properly recognizing that, I sincerely apologize.
Thanks for pointing that out.
Nope.
I even hoped to finally learn why Tor likes oatmeal in this thread, but that didn't happen.
Anyone who seriously considered chemical weapons to be "WMDs" was a moron.
If your point is that the phrase, Weapons of Mass Destruction, is ludicrous and inaccurate, then OK - sort of. I don't think that was your point.
If your point was dedicated individuals can do extreme harm to a civilian populace using makeshift weaponry, then I think I want to complain about the war in Afghanistan. I won't speak for others, but I knew a lot of normal peaceniks (no slag intended) who were against the Afghanistan campaign from square one - and changed their minds when easy victory without losses to America seeming to be taking place. Then, it was all necessary, Al Queda, El Queso, etc, etc, etc.
If the point was nukes, and you want to call people morons, OK, but the history was - a) went to war over destabilization in the area could cascade to an unacceptable worldwide situation ('90s), b) mop-up uncovered definite proof that it could have been worse, Saddam was trying for weapons with an atomic or nuclear component, c) then the present debacle unfolded. Recall that in the early 2ks, we had what was considered to be a credible informant on the re-building of his nuke program ringing the dinner bell, only to learn that neither the informant nor his info were sufficiently vetted.
I don't take you for a peacenik (again, peacenik is as much compliment as anything) given your phraseology - and what you postulate(!), but neither do I take you for a weapons analyst of any sort. I worked for the US Dod and DOE during the '80s and '90s (never as regular military) for a primary mission where the capability of the departments aligned for that mission, so I had no more qualm with the silliness of the WMD phrase that I did for Dan Rather describing the F-15E as "the E is for Eagle." IOW, it's hard to understand what phrase triggers what in another person's mind.
The military categorizes the overall non-conventional threat as NBC - nuclear, biological, chemical - any one of which can render a populace and a battlefield pretty screwed, more so than due to conventional threats and effects. This campaign was nuts - it was ostensibly excused to deal with a small force, but force-on-force tactics were applied as if adequate supply lines - and correspondent security - weren't going to be at issue over the distances and timetable involved. This is a classic clusterfuck situation, as tends to happen when political leadership, the public, and the military aren't of one mind. Perhaps I'd short-circuited my explanation regarding Powell, because he didn't approve of such nonsense on his watch in the first war - and such plans were carted out before him, no doubt of that. He was against a second Vietnam, having been there, and the '90s wasn't one. This one surely seems to be.
That chemical weapons are inefficient killers, OK, I guess. Depends on the objective, the cost to deploy and the results. Had chemical or biological weapons been deployed in any major way in just one engagement, we'd have had soldiers choking (more than they were) on their own protective equipment in that environment. If that's what you'd wanted, then the efficiency would have been actually pretty high, as is your example of attacking subways, so I'm not clear on your point
To recap, you consider some people morons, chemical weapons are inefficient but are weapons of terror, and people thought WMDs meant chem weaponry and (by extension) people thought that Saddam was massing chem stockpiles.
The nation was largely supporting the Afghan campaign and the weapons involved there were box-cutters. I don't think the American people questioned that campaign because box cutters were involved. I think they did question the odd, knee-jerk reaction to Dubya next targeting the guy who hurt his dad, and demanded a higher standard of specific proof to support the objective. The demands were not sufficiently high for the fears stated.
People were dumb - fear does that to a lot of people. Get jumped in
In the old days, we had a stupid saying - when you point one finger, three point back at you. On the odd chance that it wasn't so stupid after all, let's see if we can count three fingers:
1. The guy is guilty of a typo but you find it necessary to berate him personally before arguing your counterpoints. (I'll give you a hint - you're entirely sanctimonious in this ad hominem.)
2. I say you just proved yourself to be a grammar or spelling Nazi. (I'll give you a hint - Nazi wasn't coined as an Americanism.)
3. You got modded 3, Insightful, proving that that others condone this practice. If he's got others condoning his point of view, they're true Americans, too, but those that condone you are all insightful? (I'll give you a hint - you don't need to study Freud to learn about hypocrisy.)
I've already posted elsewhere on the Kurds and the WMDs. I choose not to do so either way in this thread - because you upped the ante.
When you attack the man before you attack his ideas, you are simply attacking a man who has spoken - it is that simple.
What to know what a true American is? He's someone who defends a guy's right to speak, whether he believes in his point of view or not.
This ain't flamebait or trolling, but the same mentality that modded you insightful may mod me so. All I'm guilty of is giving you a chance to see how it feels to be attacked for what I see you guilty of - sanctimony, conformance and hypocrisy. You attacked him over a fucking typo as proof of what you see him guilty of - being a true American.
If you're man enough to believe your ideas stand on their own, I challenge you to apologize. And no, I don't even know him. I don't even know what he believes in.
I'm not sure that you're 100% right in your criticism.
One of the favorite forgottens of the '90s conflict and its aftermath with Iraq:
While on patrol, a group of soldiers literally stumbled over a large circle of pipe out in the desert attached to an innocuous facility. Being a news junkie - and working in a related field at the time - this one hit me like a ton of bricks. It was broadcast late night, but because Joe Reported never really got it, or so I speculate, it was one of those not-often repeated stories (again, anomalous) but its implication did become part of "what everyone knew."
http://www.iraqwatch.org/perspectives/bas-iraq-hide-seek-9-91.htm
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/nuke/program.htm
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13117790.400-iraq-clings-to-its-nuclear-secrets-.html
If the question is why were so many willing to believe in WMDs in the first place, this time around, there it is. That we did so is shameful, but it wasn't without cause.
To have been lied to by our leaders is beyond infuriating. But we've also been played by them in another way. What didn't come out in popular media until much later - that I, a news junkie, am aware of - is Saddam stupidly bluffing and intimating that he did or could possess such capability in his responses to the West. He just didn't believe that Dubya would do anything about it.
I guess my point is to emphasize that we weren't just lied to, and we weren't just sheep to believe the lies. We were misled by guys who later decided to take the heat as liars instead of guys who were too stupid to recognize bluff from data. I guess I'd damned well be neither, but if I had to admit to the American public that a) I'm a lying politician or b) I'm a politician dumber than Saddam, - well, let's just say I can maybe see how the choice was made.
So, we weren't just sheep believing lies. We were sheep to believe the under-qualified. I'm guilty of not buying it until Colin Powell supported the position. Prior to that for me, it was easy: claims by idiots in government. So I bleated along complacently because I thought Powell's judgement would be different - trustworthy. I forgot - as did anyone like me - this simple adage: Tell me who your friends are, I'll tell you who you are. I should have known if one would get pulled up or one would get pulled down if you put Cheney and Powell alone in a room together.
As far as your personal paranoid fantasy - take heart. You nailed it in one. For a bunch of fancy words outlining this, see an earlier post of mine in this topic, if you care. Not claiming to have proved anything, but I did use a lot of correctly spelled words - your view is neither uniquely yours nor fantasy - paranoid or any other kind, IMO.
OK - much as I hate to just enter to equivalent polemics, I'd think Randy Newman's song at the Apple Keynote is relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_Eg7fQ7P8g
Americans are afforded the opportunity to publicly protest and try to change their government when they believe it fucks up. And a lot of Americans feel that way and act that way.
The guy that made the remark that you responded to is among the many in America trying to sort out why 9/11 happened in the first place. You might have tried to postulate that our leaders randomly invade countries without reason, etc., but you personalized our country (yepper, I'm a Yank) as a single-minded individual.
America's actions - based on our bad politics - may seem insane or uncouth - but it is never random.
Why were we in Iraq in the first place - in the '90s? Kuwait was overrun. Why was Kuwait overrun? Perhaps because they were drilling sideways into Iraq's oil - we're not completely sure - "excuse me"s to those who were - because I don't know all the facts myself. Why didn't we take out Saddam and his regime then? Because the president at the time recognized his Constitutional limits under his edict to act.
You can simplify it all down to oil and you'd be right. We use oil - a lot. Last I'd checked, our oil consumption boils down to supporting our agribusiness - we do tend to feed a great deal of the world - and our military. You may even charge that our military is protecting our big business. OK, even if the statement's not even wrong, I'll play along and postulate that you don't like our military protecting the agribusiness that feeds so much of the world.
Where have some large American grain shipments gone? Throughout the '70s, it went to the Soviet Union - oddly enough, we were held hostage by Soviet policies at the UN, all the while doing our level best to feed their people so desperation wouldn't lead to Armageddon. How about North Korea? Same thing - they've been in famine, we've been trying to feed them, their leaders take the food, and indoctrinate their people to believe that we're going to eat their babies - literally.
George W has a clear history of not tolerating anyone who hurts his dad. Saddam hurt him politically and later tried to assassinate him - Clinton, BTW, responded with a small flood of Tomahawks to that. We all knew - or rather - many of us knew, but others learned the hard way - that Saddam not playing ball with Dubya was going to be his end.
I've talked to more than a fair share of Middle Easterners. Are you even aware that the popular belief was that America didn't oust Saddam because we lost the war there in the '90s? Are you even aware that Saddam believed that he could intimate that he had WOMDs as a bluff against Dubya?
Our invasion there was many things, but it wasn't random, neither was it without reason. And I don't mean reason as in have a reason or have an excuse, I mean reason as in a reasoning process was involved. It may have been GIGO, it may have been immoral, but it was perfectly predictable. Random and without reason is never predictable.
Tell me truthfully - who in the world didn't believe or wasn't worried or never considered - that there was a danger of America invading Iraq the day Dubya took the oath of office?
Maybe you're alive today to post here because our policies of the past prevented a nuclear holocaust. Just maybe. And maybe those policies came about because we bear the burden of unleashing nuclear hell on the world and would like to avoid it at all costs - for ourselves and others. Maybe we have a conscience about that and have tried to elect appropriately responsible governments to curtail that hell. Just maybe.
Everybody likes to be the saint. We're not. Neither are we simply a bunch of madmen or Satans.
I had an altercation in an Asian bar where a European guy and his buddies wanted to tangle with me and m
Almost. Had one of those hot rods in RL growing up in Detroit.
Linux is exactly like that. You're on your own until you call a couple of buddies - then about 15 people show up - about half of them carrying six packs, the rest carrying parts in their backpacks.
When you're on the road a few hours later, not only is your original problem fixed, but your jets have been changed, the cooling system's been redone and you've just picked up between another 4 to 7 horsepower.
Not a criticism or flamebait, so please don't take it that way.
I have a yahoo account (don't really use it), but I primary think of them as a search engine. Used them until after google came along, but joined the pack.
So based on that, here's my question - _if_ Yahoo is a search engine, and _because_ you point how they're not a sustainable business, then perhaps the real deal is that your post has three links in it, none of them from Yahoo. In fact, you use google as the first link to find out / prove how Yahoo was doing with its employment.
No one pointed out the irony until now. It's that proof in and of itself of the trouble Yahoo _really_ has? Advertising requires mindshare or is meant to build it - whichever way you want, you just proved _something_.
Have you even read the book in question?
Ok, so it's like slashdot is the Daytona 500 and Microsoft is a Dodge, whereas GM is a Jet Ski.
Got it!
No hard feelings.
:)
Know _exactly_ what you mean about frustration being the mother of effort - for myself, I don't know whether to like that about myself or not. A lot of what I end up proving and doing in life are because some ignoramus told me I couldn't do it because others couldn't or was wrong when I knew I was right. Like it or not about myself, I don't change - don't plan to.
Maybe it's a sign of an inventor.
Cheers
Thanks for the info. The criticism that I was pretending for dramatic effect holds no water. You seem to know the ins and outs have researched it.
I submitted that trusting an accounting isn't the same as knowing you can.
If I was wrong, then I wrong - but dramatic, I wasn't. I know what I don't know - and knew it when I posted it. If all you read was dramatic effect, then my point stands - and so does yours, but maybe not in the way you'd like.
Fine.
But In The Beginning... doesn't suggest that you do use command lines. It suggest a certain irrationality in the defense of Windows. No need to tell you though, all of the longtime Linux users I've met read the book years ago, otherwise, I'd wonder if you were judging a book by its title.
I guess you raise a chicken and egg question: Did those apps rise to prominence because Windows was ubiquitous and they made the right choice to support Windows, or did Windows become ubiquitous because its apps were so great and only Windows made those apps possible (technically)?
It's all moot. No one in their right mind will vote with their wallets away from Microsoft - because Windows has the apps everybody wants, Windows upgrade after Windows upgrade after Windows upgrade.
Now, the hair on the back of my neck is up.
Is it just me, or isn't it true that virtually all out-of-court settlements are kept private?
I do not live in a world where I trust any university to receive sums from corporations with totals to be kept secrect, and be confident of where the money went.
Hail, hail our alma maters and all that - but I bet dollars to doughnuts that anyone with blind trust because it's a university are in line to find out why we force public accountability - we have to.
I know a lot of accountants. If asked, I'm sure that they could change the books around and make it look like football is paying for research and research is paying for basketball.
Most of the money of goes back to research? You don't know that. You don't know really how much is involved. Your trusting what people behind closed doors have come out and told you.
Please - tell me I'm wrong. Don't research it and then tell me - tell me you _knew_ when you wrote it. Because if you didn't, you're indicating that the situation already exists where the public - sample size you - is already accepting assumption as fact where public monies are involved.
If I'm hard on you for this, apologies. But put what you say together with what a previous poster said, to the effect that private money is going to research, but public money is going elsewhere - then re-read this.
Please - tell me I'm wrong, because I want to be. But my gut tells me that I'm not.
Typical CNET logic: Proclaim Linus' preference that beauty and intuition would take a backseat to functionality - and the problem that they have with this - wait for it - that the design and usability factor (sic) are more important, therefore Win and OS X are better for people than Linux, and from this - or as if it is in support - we arrive at Linus possibly no longer speaking for Linux.
..."
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
I didn't RTFA and I'm not going to RTFA. Whenever I hear logic like this, it makes me reach for my revolver.
And while I'm in the mood, don't get me started on how CNET isn't really complaining about Linux, it's GNU part - you know, the part that seems to be always denied by not using the proper name, GNU/Linux, but always gets trundled out as a defense mechanism.
I hate the smell of bad logic. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
And for anyone tempted to not get it - this post isn't flamebait. It's a retaliation against the slagging my intelligence was just given.
Maybe I'd be in a better mood if the summary went, "An anonymous reader laughed his fucking ass off when he saw this crap, and thought - correctly - that any of us in a bad mood might find fun in slagging CNET. Here's their latest proof that journalist with IQs below 50 can get a job at CNET - because they know their market:
Yeah. That's the ticket.
1. You state that both companies were forced to develop strategies to live with us. Is that really true or accurate? It may be, but it doesn't ring true. Apple was going down the tubes because of Apple. I thought they embraced Open Source in Darwin as a survival mechanism - in fact, I'm rather certain of it. I think there's a difference between embracing FOSS as a survival strategy and being saved as opposed to developing a strategy to live with FOSS. Also, as I recall, didn't we complain that MS had essentially ripped off FOSS for its TCP/IP stuff before finally coming clean without coming really clean? (I'm not sure of the detail, it was a lot of years ago, but it seems to have truthiness.) Are you referring to back-handed abuse of FOSS for profit as a strategy to live with FOSS? If so, I'd guess that is grammatically and therefore technically accurate - but is it accurate to the picture advertised - "develop strategies to live with us," or is accurate to the picture, "developed strategies to exploit us?"
2. You state that there are two companies to which you refer, but some of those companies are less comfortable than others. The words some and others imply plurality. When you divide two, you get two ones. Two units. You don't get two pluralities. This forces a cognitive dissonance that encourages hyper-criticality. Not good for promotion. It makes one wonder what you really mean to say, at the kindest.
If I missed your point(s) that I focused on in the example, then please understand from my feedback how others may be missing it, too, in their own ways.
Hope this helps.
Did it ever occur to you that we did study these things long before we were hired, and we publish this stuff to explain our lost time so the boss doesn't figure out that what we're really doing is posting to slashdot.
Thanks for outing us. Thanks a lot.