Not really, no. Who would even read their posting? Who would even care?
Maybe in some Taliban-controlled country it could be a problem, but I doubt they're buying much internet porn over there.
Oh, you'd be surprised. Several years ago, a friend of mine worked in Iraq doing computer forensics on computers taken from Islamic whack jobs. One of his jobs was to watch all the porn videos looking for other video that might have been embedded in it. There was a lot of it. It wouldn't surprise me if there's plenty of porn on Taliban computers.
There has never been an occurrence of a variety of human stupidity that Mark Twain has not commented on. One particular quote comes to mind with regard to the anonymous poster above:
"The trouble ain't that there are too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.”
I wonder how he will remain on the board once the feds finally get their hands on him. He's a marked man. Daniel Ellsberg avoided going to prison on a technicality, because of the government's gross misconduct and illegal evidence gathering. I don't think Edward Snowden will be so lucky when his rendition is finally carried out.
Whenever some idiot politician opens his mouth and crap like this comes out, I wonder what wisecrack would come out of Mark Twain's mouth or erupt from his vitriolic pen. Perhaps he would rehash something like what he wrote for a newspaper in 1866 when he was living in California:
"And speaking of steamboats reminds me of an incident of my late trip to Sacramento. I want to publish it, as showing how going north on the [Sacramento] river gradually enfeebles one's mind, and accounts for the strange imbecility of legislators who leave her sensible men and become the reverse, to the astonishment of their constituents, by the time they reach their seats at Sacramento."
Just add a "Windows Mode" and a "Tablet Mode" switch and bring back the classic Start Menu in Windows Mode. There, now everybody's happy. Heck, even throw in a Hybrid Mode for the ten people who love the current UI.
It seems so simple, doesn't it? I guess that means that Microsoft would never understand the idea.
and I like it's idea, a lot. The issue is in implementation. The need to shore up the consistency, continuity. The need to adjust conveyance.
Of course they can't shore up the multitude of whiners that hate change, even though it can be logically explained to them why it's technically better.
Apparently you've been smoking some of that funny weed and it's rotted out your brain. Implementation has nothing to do with the problem with the Metro interface. The interface is unusable by any sane and sober person who has used a computer before. Eliminating the pull-down menu, for example, a stalwart standby for the thirty years the GUI has been in the realm of the masses and for years before at Xerox, seemed to be a stupid thing to do, a guaranteed way of pissing everyone off. Ribbon menus have their advantages but not many.
Windows 8 is unusable.... and maddening. The mainframes I used as an undergrad in the 1980's were easier to use... and figure out.
And British motorways are among the safest roads on the planet, thereby demonstrating that speed limits have little to do with safety.
Well, my experience with British motorways during that trip to the UK was that they are wide, well-maintained, and as smooth as a baby's butt. They better be given the gouging British drivers experience every time they fill up. I can't say that about a lot of the American Interstate system or the major highways I've been on in Canada. Traveling fast on those is not exactly the safest thing to do for you or your car's overall physical condition.
For the longest time, I-5 in California had potholes that were legendary, caused by 40 ton trucks riding on concrete that is too thin and ten years beyond its designed life. They were the bane of frequent travelers and the suspension of their cars between the SF Bay Area and LA such as myself. Fortunately, most of that old concrete has been paved over or rebuilt although some remain and there were some new ones I noticed when I went down that way two weeks ago. The same could be said about I-80 for much of its length through California, especially between Vallejo and Dixon and again over the Sierra Nevada mountains into Nevada, at that time. Again, the state has repaved, rebuild, and ground down most of the worst of it over recently. But "well-maintained" is not a word that can be used to describe California's major highways.
When I last visited the UK drivers drove like maniacs on the motorway. Speed limits seemed to be universally ignored. 100 miles per hour seemed to be typical.
Well, is it? The Mafia used all the tools of legitimate business such double-entry accounting techniques and computers long ago to run their businesses. Just because these thugs are less classy than the Mafia doesn't make them any less willing to use modern tools.
But my concerns go beyond how the gangs are using these tools to do their dirty business. In the past, courts have outlawed gangs and ordered gang members to not associate with each other. Are these restrictions, restrictions which are constitutionally iffy, going to soon extend into cyberspace? Yes, they are criminal organizations and those who join them criminals, but does that necessarily mean that these people can never use cyberspace?
Also, the talk from AC above about municipal bonds confuses me - I thought that sates and city level governments weren't allowed to run deficits in the USA, so how can they issue bonds? (Is a bond issue not just a form of deficit spending?).
Well, the issuance of debt obligations such as bonds don't count as "deficits". I think the definition of a deficit is the budgeting of the expenditure of money without having yet identified the means of acquiring it. A bond issue is different in that the money is borrowed first through their sales. It's merely semantics, of course, but it's an important distinction.
There is nothing wrong with governments borrowing money in order to finance public works or infrastructure projects. Indeed, that's how state and local governments historically have built things. Furthermore, governments do short term borrowing from banks, etc. all the time. Government expenditures are generally even throughout the year but tax revenue doesn't come in evenly.
Put ALL effort into engines that don't use fossil fuel at all. Thanks.
Exactly, since the internal combustion engine has no future at all in the long term, such a breakthrough is not exactly "news that matters". Now, a great breakthrough in battery technology, or, even better, a nuclear fusion electrical generation station would be something worth thinking about. High storage capacity batteries that can be fully charged in only a few minutes and last for hundreds of kilometers of high-speed driving would kill the internal combustion engine for most vehicles. But nuclear fusion would make energy so cheap that people could still use their internal combustion engines if they really wanted to, but they wouldn't because fuel cell-based cars are mechanically much simpler and more reliable... and should be cheaper.
It is actually an interesting concept. Many Libraries that I am involved with in a support role are struggling to find a place in a modern world where the majority of people have the information that they need at their finger tips. People just do not visit Libraries in the way they used to.
They are often now becoming a community service operation for the disadvantaged and often have more people using the internet than people actually borrowing books but even then the level of visitation makes it hard to justify them staying open.
Indeed, the last time I was in a library was to use one of their meeting rooms to meet with friends to discuss some crazy idea one of them had for a startup. It was on a Sunday afternoon and the library was inundated with people, people carrying books as well as DVD's and CD's. Libraries are more than simply a place to find books and get information. They have tried to become a place which can be considered to be the center of the local community.
Cutting out the books entirely would seem like a sensible move because nobody seems to read them.
I beg to differ. I have an e-book reader given to me as a gift stuffed with free e-books of works in the public domain. Yet, I hardly ever use it because I prefer to read paper books. There are many people who use the stacks in a traditional library; you just never seem to notice them. My sister is one of them. She reads about 100 books a year, all novels, all traditional books from the local library.
You won't find much in the Bush, Jr. library that Bush wrote that wasn't written in crayon. Anything written by Dick Cheney will be either written in blood or a pen forged in hell.
Thank God the US Constitution doesnt prescribe a legal language or there was a good chance it could have been German at that time.
Well, maybe. The belief is that if the constitution had stated what the official languages would be, German might have been one of them. I don't think anyone doubted that English would remain the language of government given that English was the language of government and business then which is perhaps the reason one was not specified. But there were so many German speakers in the United States at the time, including one ancestor of mine, that if an official language or languages were specified, German would have been one of them out of necessity. I seem to recall that an official translation of the Declaration of Independence was created in 1776 in order to allow the German speakers, including that ancestor of mine, to understand it.
But there are defacto languages of government used in legal precedents and communicating legislation with citizens.
Quite true. In California, just about every governmental publication other than the acts of the legislature is published in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Chinese. Where I live you will find city governmental publications in English, Spanish, and Russian. In Puerto Rico, the federal courts operate in English while the commonwealth courts operate in Spanish. The language of government there is Spanish. When Puerto Rico becomes the 51st state (it will happen eventually), it will be the only state where English won't get you very far when dealing with the government.
As the subject says, he's a petaQ! However, it would have been more interesting if he had stood up in the council chambers, said "taH pagh taHbe' " (to be or not to be), and then disemboweled himself with a handy d'k tagh dagger was carrying. It would have been even better if appeared in Klingon warrior's armor.
Well, there is that Coke machine at CMU, allegedly the only Coke machine on the Internet that would give you information the temperature and count of its inventory so you didn't have to run downstairs to to learn that the root beer you were craving is out of stock or is warm. In the old days you "fingered" its account on a Unix machine to learn its status. I think the status was in the.plan file.
Alcoholics Anonymous—The beginning chapters of the AA "Big Book" ought to be read by everyone. In all seriousness, I have yet to meet a person who does not need to be in a Twelve Step program. Just replace the words "alcohol" and "alcoholic" with your own poison, vice, obsession, or difficulty in life and you'll probably find that what you read there applies to you and that practicing the Twelve Steps and leading a life of increased humility would help you cope with it in a healthy way.
Ecclesiastes—Probably the most philosophical book of the Bible, one that has a great deal of value for me.
George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm—Both books are reminders of what unchecked government power will lead to and offer us countless reminders of the value of freedom and how costly it is when you lose it.
The Epic of Gilgamesh—The Sumerian/Babylonian story of a proud arrogant king, two-thirds divine, who is humbled by death, his human limitations, and his own mortality.
William Golding's Lord of the Flies—A book that demonstrates in spades the best and the worst features of the human condition and I think gets to the heart of what human beings really are.
Charles Dickens' Dombey and Son—While all of the Dickens' novels I've read have a similar philosophical character, this book is in my opinion his best.
Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose—Even though it takes place in 1327, the issues the novel discusses are eminently relevant to today; indeed, to any period of time, past, present, or future. Religious freedom, censorship and banned books, the love of knowledge and scholarship, controversy over fundamentalist religious dogmas and doctrines, the danger of a theocracy, and the roles love should play in a person's life are all issues that are discussed in this wildly entertaining mystery. It's a modern classic as dense and well-written as the best of Tolstoy or Dickens.
Carl Sagan's Cosmos—No book I know of does as good of a job of using the science to promote the humanities. It's a great read.
Name of the Rose is a "must read" for any thoughtful, intelligent person. Even though it takes place in 1327, the issues the novel discusses are eminently relevant to today; indeed, to any period of time, past, present, or future. Religious freedom, censorship and banned books, the love of knowledge and scholarship, controversy over fundamentalist religious dogmas and doctrines, the danger of a theocracy, and the roles love should play in a person's life are all issues that are discussed in this wildly entertaining mystery.
It's one of those books that ought to be read again and again over a person's life like one's favorite Dickens novel(s) or Tolstoy's War and Peace, books that are so densely packed with delicious and minute detail that a subsequent read will turn up new discoveries to titillate the intellect. Great literature is that which is worthy of being read throughout a person's lifetime, and Name of the Rose fits that mold brilliantly.
Indeed, escape is a new offense, he will have to spend more time in prison in addition to completing his original sentence, and he will no longer be housed in a Club Fed. He'll be behind the razor wire now. Sucks to be him.
They'll catch him no doubt pretty soon... unless this was coordinated with someone on the outside. If so, he could be far away by now. But they'll catch him eventually. As many people have pointed out recently in many posts on many topics, it's hard to remain anonymous and hide in plain sight these days.
You heard it here first: Fourth Amendment defeated 5-4.
I haven't read the opinion—I'm not in the mood for that kind of comedy today—but one must keep in mind that this is also a First Amendment issue as well, the issue being the right to anonymous free association, something that the ACLU has brought up in its lawsuit against the NSA regarding its own phone records that have been swept up in the NSA's dragnet. In the past, the Supreme Court has been very clear regarding the right to the right to associate anonymously. But the right-wing conservative fascists on the court might rule differently. But if any of them are students of history, especially recent history, and take note of the simple fact that if a government is given the liberty to reach into these fundamental rights it will abuse them, they will rule justly on this issue.
Slashdot Mirror
If a retailer sends you something you didn't order, by law it's yours. Simple as that.
Not really, no. Who would even read their posting? Who would even care?
Maybe in some Taliban-controlled country it could be a problem, but I doubt they're buying much internet porn over there.
Oh, you'd be surprised. Several years ago, a friend of mine worked in Iraq doing computer forensics on computers taken from Islamic whack jobs. One of his jobs was to watch all the porn videos looking for other video that might have been embedded in it. There was a lot of it. It wouldn't surprise me if there's plenty of porn on Taliban computers.
There has never been an occurrence of a variety of human stupidity that Mark Twain has not commented on. One particular quote comes to mind with regard to the anonymous poster above:
"The trouble ain't that there are too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.”
Stay inside, fool.
I wonder how he will remain on the board once the feds finally get their hands on him. He's a marked man. Daniel Ellsberg avoided going to prison on a technicality, because of the government's gross misconduct and illegal evidence gathering. I don't think Edward Snowden will be so lucky when his rendition is finally carried out.
Whenever some idiot politician opens his mouth and crap like this comes out, I wonder what wisecrack would come out of Mark Twain's mouth or erupt from his vitriolic pen. Perhaps he would rehash something like what he wrote for a newspaper in 1866 when he was living in California:
"And speaking of steamboats reminds me of an incident of my late trip to Sacramento. I want to publish it, as showing how going north on the [Sacramento] river gradually enfeebles one's mind, and accounts for the strange imbecility of legislators who leave her sensible men and become the reverse, to the astonishment of their constituents, by the time they reach their seats at Sacramento."
Windows 8 has many positives. Most of the Hate I have seen is mainly with the appearance and people not wanting to change anything.
Points to people with flip phones.
I'm a flip phone user, you insensitive clod! And changing a user interface as much as Windows 8 has done pretty much eliminates all of the positives.
Just add a "Windows Mode" and a "Tablet Mode" switch and bring back the classic Start Menu in Windows Mode. There, now everybody's happy. Heck, even throw in a Hybrid Mode for the ten people who love the current UI.
It seems so simple, doesn't it? I guess that means that Microsoft would never understand the idea.
and I like it's idea, a lot. The issue is in implementation.
The need to shore up the consistency, continuity.
The need to adjust conveyance.
Of course they can't shore up the multitude of whiners that hate change, even though it can be logically explained to them why it's technically better.
Apparently you've been smoking some of that funny weed and it's rotted out your brain. Implementation has nothing to do with the problem with the Metro interface. The interface is unusable by any sane and sober person who has used a computer before. Eliminating the pull-down menu, for example, a stalwart standby for the thirty years the GUI has been in the realm of the masses and for years before at Xerox, seemed to be a stupid thing to do, a guaranteed way of pissing everyone off. Ribbon menus have their advantages but not many.
Windows 8 is unusable.... and maddening. The mainframes I used as an undergrad in the 1980's were easier to use... and figure out.
'Nuf said.
And British motorways are among the safest roads on the planet, thereby demonstrating that speed limits have little to do with safety.
Well, my experience with British motorways during that trip to the UK was that they are wide, well-maintained, and as smooth as a baby's butt. They better be given the gouging British drivers experience every time they fill up. I can't say that about a lot of the American Interstate system or the major highways I've been on in Canada. Traveling fast on those is not exactly the safest thing to do for you or your car's overall physical condition.
For the longest time, I-5 in California had potholes that were legendary, caused by 40 ton trucks riding on concrete that is too thin and ten years beyond its designed life. They were the bane of frequent travelers and the suspension of their cars between the SF Bay Area and LA such as myself. Fortunately, most of that old concrete has been paved over or rebuilt although some remain and there were some new ones I noticed when I went down that way two weeks ago. The same could be said about I-80 for much of its length through California, especially between Vallejo and Dixon and again over the Sierra Nevada mountains into Nevada, at that time. Again, the state has repaved, rebuild, and ground down most of the worst of it over recently. But "well-maintained" is not a word that can be used to describe California's major highways.
When I last visited the UK drivers drove like maniacs on the motorway. Speed limits seemed to be universally ignored. 100 miles per hour seemed to be typical.
Mafia dons wear better suits and more tasteful bling than the "gangsta" wastes of skin.
Well, is it? The Mafia used all the tools of legitimate business such double-entry accounting techniques and computers long ago to run their businesses. Just because these thugs are less classy than the Mafia doesn't make them any less willing to use modern tools.
But my concerns go beyond how the gangs are using these tools to do their dirty business. In the past, courts have outlawed gangs and ordered gang members to not associate with each other. Are these restrictions, restrictions which are constitutionally iffy, going to soon extend into cyberspace? Yes, they are criminal organizations and those who join them criminals, but does that necessarily mean that these people can never use cyberspace?
Also, the talk from AC above about municipal bonds confuses me - I thought that sates and city level governments weren't allowed to run deficits in the USA, so how can they issue bonds? (Is a bond issue not just a form of deficit spending?).
Well, the issuance of debt obligations such as bonds don't count as "deficits". I think the definition of a deficit is the budgeting of the expenditure of money without having yet identified the means of acquiring it. A bond issue is different in that the money is borrowed first through their sales. It's merely semantics, of course, but it's an important distinction.
There is nothing wrong with governments borrowing money in order to finance public works or infrastructure projects. Indeed, that's how state and local governments historically have built things. Furthermore, governments do short term borrowing from banks, etc. all the time. Government expenditures are generally even throughout the year but tax revenue doesn't come in evenly.
Put ALL effort into engines that don't use fossil fuel at all. Thanks.
Exactly, since the internal combustion engine has no future at all in the long term, such a breakthrough is not exactly "news that matters". Now, a great breakthrough in battery technology, or, even better, a nuclear fusion electrical generation station would be something worth thinking about. High storage capacity batteries that can be fully charged in only a few minutes and last for hundreds of kilometers of high-speed driving would kill the internal combustion engine for most vehicles. But nuclear fusion would make energy so cheap that people could still use their internal combustion engines if they really wanted to, but they wouldn't because fuel cell-based cars are mechanically much simpler and more reliable... and should be cheaper.
It is actually an interesting concept. Many Libraries that I am involved with in a support role are struggling to find a place in a modern world where the majority of people have the information that they need at their finger tips. People just do not visit Libraries in the way they used to.
They are often now becoming a community service operation for the disadvantaged and often have more people using the internet than people actually borrowing books but even then the level of visitation makes it hard to justify them staying open.
Indeed, the last time I was in a library was to use one of their meeting rooms to meet with friends to discuss some crazy idea one of them had for a startup. It was on a Sunday afternoon and the library was inundated with people, people carrying books as well as DVD's and CD's. Libraries are more than simply a place to find books and get information. They have tried to become a place which can be considered to be the center of the local community.
Cutting out the books entirely would seem like a sensible move because nobody seems to read them.
I beg to differ. I have an e-book reader given to me as a gift stuffed with free e-books of works in the public domain. Yet, I hardly ever use it because I prefer to read paper books. There are many people who use the stacks in a traditional library; you just never seem to notice them. My sister is one of them. She reads about 100 books a year, all novels, all traditional books from the local library.
You won't find much in the Bush, Jr. library that Bush wrote that wasn't written in crayon. Anything written by Dick Cheney will be either written in blood or a pen forged in hell.
Thank God the US Constitution doesnt prescribe a legal language or there was a good chance it could have been German at that time.
Well, maybe. The belief is that if the constitution had stated what the official languages would be, German might have been one of them. I don't think anyone doubted that English would remain the language of government given that English was the language of government and business then which is perhaps the reason one was not specified. But there were so many German speakers in the United States at the time, including one ancestor of mine, that if an official language or languages were specified, German would have been one of them out of necessity. I seem to recall that an official translation of the Declaration of Independence was created in 1776 in order to allow the German speakers, including that ancestor of mine, to understand it.
But there are defacto languages of government used in legal precedents and communicating legislation with citizens.
Quite true. In California, just about every governmental publication other than the acts of the legislature is published in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Chinese. Where I live you will find city governmental publications in English, Spanish, and Russian. In Puerto Rico, the federal courts operate in English while the commonwealth courts operate in Spanish. The language of government there is Spanish. When Puerto Rico becomes the 51st state (it will happen eventually), it will be the only state where English won't get you very far when dealing with the government.
Klingon is not one of them.
Tell that to the Klingons in our midst! Qapla'!
As the subject says, he's a petaQ! However, it would have been more interesting if he had stood up in the council chambers, said "taH pagh taHbe' " (to be or not to be), and then disemboweled himself with a handy d'k tagh dagger was carrying. It would have been even better if appeared in Klingon warrior's armor.
Well, there is that Coke machine at CMU, allegedly the only Coke machine on the Internet that would give you information the temperature and count of its inventory so you didn't have to run downstairs to to learn that the root beer you were craving is out of stock or is warm. In the old days you "fingered" its account on a Unix machine to learn its status. I think the status was in the .plan file.
Alcoholics Anonymous—The beginning chapters of the AA "Big Book" ought to be read by everyone. In all seriousness, I have yet to meet a person who does not need to be in a Twelve Step program. Just replace the words "alcohol" and "alcoholic" with your own poison, vice, obsession, or difficulty in life and you'll probably find that what you read there applies to you and that practicing the Twelve Steps and leading a life of increased humility would help you cope with it in a healthy way.
Ecclesiastes—Probably the most philosophical book of the Bible, one that has a great deal of value for me.
George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm—Both books are reminders of what unchecked government power will lead to and offer us countless reminders of the value of freedom and how costly it is when you lose it.
The Epic of Gilgamesh—The Sumerian/Babylonian story of a proud arrogant king, two-thirds divine, who is humbled by death, his human limitations, and his own mortality.
William Golding's Lord of the Flies—A book that demonstrates in spades the best and the worst features of the human condition and I think gets to the heart of what human beings really are.
Charles Dickens' Dombey and Son—While all of the Dickens' novels I've read have a similar philosophical character, this book is in my opinion his best.
Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose—Even though it takes place in 1327, the issues the novel discusses are eminently relevant to today; indeed, to any period of time, past, present, or future. Religious freedom, censorship and banned books, the love of knowledge and scholarship, controversy over fundamentalist religious dogmas and doctrines, the danger of a theocracy, and the roles love should play in a person's life are all issues that are discussed in this wildly entertaining mystery. It's a modern classic as dense and well-written as the best of Tolstoy or Dickens.
Carl Sagan's Cosmos—No book I know of does as good of a job of using the science to promote the humanities. It's a great read.
Name of the Rose is a "must read" for any thoughtful, intelligent person. Even though it takes place in 1327, the issues the novel discusses are eminently relevant to today; indeed, to any period of time, past, present, or future. Religious freedom, censorship and banned books, the love of knowledge and scholarship, controversy over fundamentalist religious dogmas and doctrines, the danger of a theocracy, and the roles love should play in a person's life are all issues that are discussed in this wildly entertaining mystery.
It's one of those books that ought to be read again and again over a person's life like one's favorite Dickens novel(s) or Tolstoy's War and Peace, books that are so densely packed with delicious and minute detail that a subsequent read will turn up new discoveries to titillate the intellect. Great literature is that which is worthy of being read throughout a person's lifetime, and Name of the Rose fits that mold brilliantly.
Due for release in 2015? Not anymore.
Indeed, escape is a new offense, he will have to spend more time in prison in addition to completing his original sentence, and he will no longer be housed in a Club Fed. He'll be behind the razor wire now. Sucks to be him.
They'll catch him no doubt pretty soon... unless this was coordinated with someone on the outside. If so, he could be far away by now. But they'll catch him eventually. As many people have pointed out recently in many posts on many topics, it's hard to remain anonymous and hide in plain sight these days.
You heard it here first: Fourth Amendment defeated 5-4.
I haven't read the opinion—I'm not in the mood for that kind of comedy today—but one must keep in mind that this is also a First Amendment issue as well, the issue being the right to anonymous free association, something that the ACLU has brought up in its lawsuit against the NSA regarding its own phone records that have been swept up in the NSA's dragnet. In the past, the Supreme Court has been very clear regarding the right to the right to associate anonymously. But the right-wing conservative fascists on the court might rule differently. But if any of them are students of history, especially recent history, and take note of the simple fact that if a government is given the liberty to reach into these fundamental rights it will abuse them, they will rule justly on this issue.