Yes, he did. Everytime he shot a missile at a coalition plane patrolling the no-fly zones. Everytime he got caught in the past with weopons of mass destruction (throughout the mid 1990's until inspections were stopped). Everytime he, in the past, interfered with inspections.
The legal justification and technicality were already in place, and technically those violations make a continuance of the war perfectly legal.
The fact that weaponized chemicals may (or may not) have been found is immaterial (though of course finding such would provide political justification now lacking).
I do not like Bush. I don't like the way he stole the election, I don't like the way his administration has accelerated the erosion of our civil rights and privacy that began with the War on Drugs, and has continued with the War on Pedophiles, now the War on Terrorism and soon the War on Piracy.
I agree with you in disliking this war (though gratified that, once committed militarilly to the task, it has gone as well as it has), and in disliking Bush and most of what he represents.
However, the technical facts as laid down are disputed by no informed person, on either side of the issue. Iraq has in the past been in violation of the armistice, and that makes a resumption of hostilities technically legal.
And where the law is concerned (be it international, national, or what have you), technicalities are everything.
The war may suck, may as Putin has said turn out to have been a political blunder, may even be unjust (though the footage I am seeing coming out of Iraq indicates otherwise... and I do not limit myself to American, or even Western, news sources). It was not, however, in any sense illegal.
Bush is right now breaking international laws as he invades a country without support from the security council. That is illegal and the US has condemned such actions before when done by others.
Um, no, thank you for playing. Time to retake that International Law 101 course.
Iraq and the United States have been at war since 1991 (in a war authorized by the United Nations). Hostilities were suspended as the result of an armistice, NOT a treaty. Neither the United States, nor any of the other members of the coalition, were ever required to get additional permission from the UN.
All that was required was for one side or the other to break the terms of the armistice for hostilities to be resumed, perfectly legally. Additional UN resolutions would have provided political cover, but, all political rhetoric aside, the actions in Iraq by the coalition are perfectly legal, within the tenents of international law, and require no additional UN support whatsoever.
People keep referring to this as a "new" war, but technically, as the former war never officially ended and as Saddam's regime demonstrably DID violate the terms of the armistice on numerous occasions, this is, on paper at least, merely a resumption of the old war. All perfectly legal and legitimate, more's the pity.
This is why (a) we should require a declaration of war from congress for these sorts of thing, and STOP CIRCUMVENTING THE CONSTITUTION simply because we feel it more convinient to do so than to adhere to the terms our founding fathers laid down, and (b) why armistices are such fragile things, and treaties a requirement before any hope of a lasting peace can be entertained. As one who opposed the war at one time (and who changed his mind and was on the fence as a result of the appalling behavior of Germany, Belgium, and France in delaying the deployment of Turkey's defense within NATO), I find this fiction of the war somehow being "illegal" to be one of the weakest of the anti-war arguments around. It simply, demonstrably, within the tenents of international law, is untrue. The war, while bad, is quite legal.
Install Gentoo in achrooted env via Mandrake
on
Legacy-Free PCs
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· Score: 2, Informative
If you have the drive space, I highly recommend you create two sets of / and/boot partitions.
Install Mandrake on one set, then use a chrooted envoronment to install Gentoo on the other set. This has several advantages.
You get Gentoo up and running, with only a little added time (the install of binary-only distros like Mandrake is relatively quick, if less optimized and ultimately less stable)
You have a reference configuration to work from (invaluable for quickly putting together a sane XF86Config file, for example)
When you do major gentoo upgrades, you can first clone your working set of partitions to a backup set, boot off the backup set and upgrade there, or even do new gentoo installs from scratch in a chrooted environment on the second set of partitions. This leaves you with a safe, working machine no matter how experimental you choose to be, and allows you to have a working machine during long install or upgrade processes.
If the gentoo boot ISO doesn't support your motherboard, one or more of the kernel source ebuilds almost certainly does. The configuration of the working Mandrake kernel (and an lsmod to see what modules are installed, USB modules in particular) should go far in getting a Gentoo box up on that hardware.
I've done things like this for legacy-free tablets (which, while they work, don't have working digitizers yet under GNU/Linux, unlike the older Fujitsus which work flawlessly).
As an avid Gentoo user, both at work and at home, I've found the "two partition set" approach to be immensly helpful and useful.
I know many Norwegians who would take great offense at that
And very rightly so.
As an American (who has lived abroad a number of times throughout Europe and parts of Asia), I am deeply offended by the way my government treats our friends and allies (even when I disagree with them, as I did vehemently with Germany, France, and Belgium's behavior within NATO, despite agreeing with their desire to prevent an ending of the armistice and a resurgence of hostilities in Iraq).
Until our government begins treating our allies as allies and not like vassal states your friends in Norway, and mine in Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, China, and elsewhere, will all be IMHO very justified in their offense at our behavior. My wording merely puts on the table what seems to be an unspoken assumption in circles of power. Maybe by doing so, and eschewing politically correct speech in the process, we can go about changing this, for the better. I'm not holding my breath, what with those who currently yield power in Washington, but I am holding out hope.
This arrogance of power, this blind greed (and the blind, profoundly foolish and socially detrimental assumption that underlies much of it, namely the toxic meme that "Greed is Good"), and our disrespect for our neighbors and allies, must end. And soon.
I'm sure I'm missing something, but why do artists need labels any more?
What you are missing are a few very important points that the media cartels, in their extraordinarilly disingenuous rhetoric regarding non-commerical copyright infringement by individuals, would very much like you not to notice:
The cartels in general, and the recording industry in particular, are not interested in their artists financial well being (just read their standard recording contracts sometime, or the excellent analysis done by Courtney Love and Janis Ian). They are interested in their own profits, and while most artists make most of their money from live shows and would benefit from free music, the recording industry makes most of their profits from selling recording (in large part because they pocket the lion's share of the proceeds).
There are some extraordinarilly rich artists, such as Metallica and the Zombie, excuse me, I mean Michael Jackson, that have managed to finagle contracts that, contrary to most, give them a portion of that pot. They benefit from the system enormously, and serve the aforementioned cartels by giving other artists an unreasonable dream to shoot for, a dream with which they very successfully ensnare new talent which they then milk dry and forget.
It is about control, even more than money remarkably enough. This happened in the early 80's prior to MTV, where their control was so solid, and the music they released so tepid, that sales had fallen dramatically until MTV introduced an entirely new genre of music imported from Europe. Their desire to control their market absolutely stems from their cartel mindset, a mindset made possible by the monopoly entitlements their copyright priveleges extend to them and one that is difficult to overcome, even when it is working against their own bottom line. Free music would undermine that cartel, the control they wield, and fear of this sort of change will leave the cartels entrenched even if they see the possibility of a better bottom line without it. The risk simply won't be worth the benefits, to their minds, at least not until an outside group has made them all but irrelevant and decimated their business anyway, something which may not even be possible with new legislation emerging from congress and various state governments.
In short, if it were about the artists well being, free(dom) music and media would be a slam dunk. It benefits everyone... except the ever-less-necessary publishers and middlemen, who run a powerful cartel and will see our every freedom destroyed before they give up or change their business model.
It is interesting that those with such entitlement mindsets feel they should be able to earn money indefinitely (at least life+70 years) for one bit of work performed sometime in the past, while the rest of us accept that, if we wish to earn money, we must continue to work each day of our lives (weekends and vacation sometimes excepted). Given the profitability of, and real value offered by, live shows one must truly wonder why an artist, much less a publisher. would think they are entitled to proceeds from anything other than their live work. Four centuries of monopoly entitlements will, alas, do that to an industry and even a culture, to the detriment of nearly everyone (a few moghuls and poster children excepted)
At the behest of American firms and an American Media Cartel, backed by the full might (and arm twisting) of the American government.
The fact that the court system of a weak vassal state, oops, I mean, "ally" is incidental. It is our fellow Americans who are persuing this beyond all reason, and frankly, the rest of the world is correct to look at us as a nation of the Rich and blinded by power... this sort of thing makes it profoundly obvious not only to those informed of world (and local) events, but to those who normally couldn't be bothered.
That they cannot compete with PC hardware in the desktop market (I assume from the article they're thinking of creating a new desktop machine).
I have been quite scathing in my opinion of Sun's appraoch to Java (a semi-closed standard, jerking free software implimentations around, etc.) and their woeful lack of vision with regards to GNU/Linux, which has resulted in their very late arrival to the Linux scene in anything other than a half-hearted propoganda attempt, their costly hardware, their cumbersome operating system, and so on. As an employee of an ex-sun shop, I have lots of gripes, and can point to many reasons why we dumped Sun (and Microsoft) in favor of GNU/Linux.
All that having been said, Sun appears to (slowly, grudgingly) finally "get it." If so, I think they could put together quite a competative box. How?
By leveraging Microsoft's Palladium trojan for all it is worth. If AMD and Intel are offering Microsoft-Palladium enabled hardware, crippling the rest of the world (GNU/Linux, *BSD, etc.) in the process by either requiring it a la the 'secret reenabling' they allow with the CPU ID, or by simply removing the option to turn Palladium off a la the DVD Forum's phased implimentation of region coding, then Sun and Apple will be the only two desktop vendors offering uncrippled hardware.
Home users may (I stress, may... I am always surprised at how many individuals and home user's are sick of Microsoft yanking their chains, so there is no guarantee Palladium and their so-called "trusted" computing is going to fly there, either) be willing to put up with crippled products in order to cling to the familiar (Microsoft Windows), but businesses aren't going to be at all inclined to do so. Sun (and Apple) could, if they play their cards right, absolutely wipe the floor with the encumbered hardware the Wintel platform is poised to begin foisting upon us.
Which is one scenerio where Sun could excel on the desktop (and where Apple could gain significant market share).
Believe it or not, Mr L337 has acurately described what he is doing with this "protest". He is defacing public/private property, and that is a crime.
Very true.
The protests on the Streets of San Francisco are not "Civil" though they are assuredly disobedient.
"Civil" in civil disobedience refers not to civility (politeness), but to civilian, or disobedience to civil authority. There is a profound difference in both definition and implication.
In other words, the actions of those protestors snarling traffic in SF may not be civil (def: polite or cordial), but it most assuredly is "civil disobedience" (disobedience to civilian authority).
A person engaging in civil disobedience expects to be arrested and to "pay" for their crime, but choose do break the law regardless as a political statement. Ghandi and Martin Luthar King, Jr. are two such examples... both broke laws, and did jail time, in efforts to show such laws were unjust and should be repealed. They succeeded.
A protestor on the street of San Francisco blocking traffic is most certainly engaged in "civil disobedience" and, unless they are an imbecel (quite possible based on some of the rhetoric I've seen from that direction), they fully expect to be arrested and pay for their crime. This tradeoff is worthwhile in their view, as it gives them media exposure with which they can get their message across.
Web defacement might possibly be another such form of civil disobedience, though I suspect you're right in that those doing so don't expect to get caught... they probably expect to commit and crime and get away with it. If so, then you are right in pointing out that what they are doing isn't civil disobedience, else they'd turn themselves in and allow themselves to be arrested to bring more attention to the issues they are protesting. Instead, they are likely just petty vandals using an opportunity to strike out at institutions they hate.
I can relate to the hatred (in part)... I don't like the corporatization of America, or the corporate hijacking of the UN through the WTO and WIPO, any more than the next person. However, I cannot relate to or condone their behavior either... unless they turn themselves in and face the music, they are merely vandals, not civilly disobedient protestors.
If you're making a case for the war on the second or third day of the conflict, then you and the people with whom you agree, have clearly not made a reasonable case to the public.
Are you referring to the 70% that support the war, the 30% that do not, or the 100% that both groups comprise? As one of those who, until France, Germany, and Belgium placed Turkey's defense on hold as a political ploy, was firmly in the 30% "No War!" group, but has since moved to the (who knows what per cent) that are ambivelent at best, and truly uncertain whether or not the war is appropriate, just, much less a "good thing" in pragmatic geopolitical terms, I find his arguments to be more than reasonable.
Not that I necessarilly agree with all of them (I disagree with several, agree with several, and an uncertain on others), but they are certainly reasonable.
Unfortunately, I've yet to hear much in the way of reasonable arguments on the opposing side. Russia is perhaps the lone voice ("this is not wise because of its destabilizing aspects") that speaks at least one coherent and rational argument beyond "war=bad, Bush=oilman warmonger, America Nein!" and despite the fact that I agree with 2 out of 3 of those arguments, they do not portray a rational argument as to why this action is inappropriate.
On the moral front: Germany appears to have been selling technical support and components for WMD to Iraq for the last 10 years, at least. Their moral stance on this entire affair is dubious, at best. France has ongoing sweetheart deals with Saddam's regime personally, some in direct violation of existing UN resolutions: deals an Iraq without Saddam is unlikely to continue. Their moral stance on this is highly dubious, at best. Russia, who has by far been the most restrained and responsible of the war opponents in the security council (their rhetoric has been more restrained, their arguments more cohenerent, and perhaps most importantly they haven't put the tactical defense of their front-line allies, and with it the viability of their military alliances, in jeapardy simply to make political points. Germany and France have.), has immense outstanding debt owed to them by the Iraqi regime which may or may not be paid back under a new government.
And Bush has the oil connection, comes from a family with dubious political and economic motives, represents the worst about the conservative faction of America, and has dubious legitimacy as president given the 2000 elections. His moral stance is equally, but certainly not more, dubious than that of his opponents.
This in contrast to Tony Blair, whose ethical and moral stance appears to be above reproach (whether or not the action of supporting the United States is wise notwhithstanding).
As one who distrusts and despises Bush, who will with certainty vote against him again in the next election, and who has profound reservations about this war I have to say that the opponents have lacked in their arguments far more than its proponents. As one who until recently strongly opposed the war, and is now on the fence, I find this particularly distressing.
I think the war is probably a mistake. I think in taking Bagdad we could end up doing things that we, as Americans, like to believe we don't do (if not historically, at least not any more). I think we stand to lose a great deal of political influence in the world as a result, and that this will hurt the overt evangelism of rule of law and democracy as much, if not more, than it will our political and economic influence on world affairs once this conflict passes. This is a terrible risk, one that IMHO was probably unwise to take at this juncture. I think victory entails far graver danger in this conflict to America, and western democracy in general, than continued containment probably would have.
Nevertheless, all that aside, the Hawks appear to be offering vastly better arguments in favor of their position than the Doves are in opposing it, and with the extraordinarilly in
Now that I've got your attention, allow me to tell you my personal experience with student involvement in politics, or rather the shameful lack thereof, even when their own intersts are directly and immediately involved.
According to his web site, http://www.house.gov/carter/ , he has offices in Round Rock and College Station. Anyone know when he's up for election? I think a few posters on Campus with some quotes about his "idea" will get him swiftly kicked out... provided the college populous goes and votes.
Before attending the University of Illinois, I had the dubious experience of attending a smaller, less well known university in a small, backward, and very reactionary midwestern town: to wit: Illinois State University in Normal (I kid you not), Illinois.
The entire social life of that campus took place through student parties, of various sizes ranging from a few people gathered in a dorm room to hundreds gathered around a keg in an apartment complex parking lot. On the summer between my freshman and sophomore years the town passed an ordinance banning all student parties without a city permit, be they small, in-home affairs or large outdoor bashes.
Every party I attended got broken up, with an increasing sense of anger on the part of the students (lots of people no longer getting laid can do that). Undercover cops were routinely sent into people's homes, to bust up private parties as they got underway and arrest the hosts. It was as draconian as anything I'd seen in my travels at that time... for the first month or so of that semester it really did feel like eastern Germany... you were being watched all the time, and weren't safe from intrusion even in your own home. Have a few friends over, and you were at risk. It was appalling, and while there are many greater injustices in the world, it was nevertheless a real injustice taking place against young people in America, and to those of us believing we lived in a free society, quite shocking.
Worse still, the town had hired a chief of police who enjoyed rubbing student's faces in the fact, making loud public appearances, sending his police around campus in force, and even going so far as to pose for newpaper photographs in "Fun Buster" tee-shirts.
To make a long story short, the first protest the campus had probably had since the 1960's took place (this was 1984, an appropriate year), which began peacefully enough but erupted into a 6 hour melee when an angry driver threatened to kill several students with a tire iron if they didn't get out of his way (he wanted to drive through the intersection the protest was blocking), all of this in the presence of Chief of Police Lehr (spelling?). I was a personal eye-witness to this event, and even took a couple of photographs of the driver in question.
Lehr's response was even more appalling. When asked why he hadn't arrested the driver he responded that the driver "was only defending himself." Like a stone droped in water, you could feel the effect ripple through the crowd. I got away from the chief of police as fast as I could, as full beer cans, rocks, and other missles started falling.
I did not take part in any of the violence which followed, but I did see much of it. The rage was quite real, the emotions quite high, and the students quite justified in many of their complaints.
Yet, and here is the kicker, the following spring the city held elections for city council. Several pro-student candidates were running. The total student population was about equal to that of the town, and under Illinois residency laws, any student who'd been there for 6 months (i.e. everyone who had been enrolled in the fall semester) were eligable to vote as residents.
Voter registration drives set up booths in the dorms and apartment complexes. The story was in the local news and plastered all over the student newspaper. Posters everywhere, and so on.
And yes, it is a felony to commit criminal copyright infringement.
Yes, and this is one of the truly dangerous developments in the copyright cartel's assimilation of the United States government. Copyright violation was always, for more than two hundred years of American history, a CIVIL violation, not a CRIMINAL one. Redress for copyright violations was obtained through litigation in court, not the barrel of a government gun.
Unfortunately the copyright and media cartels of Hollywood bought legislation from our disgustingly corrupt public officials in Washington, and in the late 1990's turned copyright violation into a federal offense, i.e. a Felony.
A draconian police state and injustice we haven't seen since the American apartheid of the 1950's, a refusal to enforce an obscene law, or a repeal of those portions of the Sony Bono Copyright Extention Act and DMCA are really the only possible outcomes. Based on our experience with prohibition (creating two tremendous threats that have gutted our freedoms in the 20th century: the Mafia and the FBI) and its successor, the War on Drugs, I expect to see this law enforced widely, if haphazardly, with the result that our jail populations swell even more, and our country suffer social and economic fallout it will fail to recover from this obscenity for generations to come.
Welcome to the Corporate State. Bend over and take it like a man.
Last I heard, GPS is not approved for navigational use by the FAA. Meaning, you can use it, but you need to have alternate systems, and can't rely on it.
Your information is a little dated. GPS is most definitely approved for navigational use. Indeed, many NDB approaches have already been replaced with GPS approaches, and new GPS approaches are being certified all the time.
My aircraft has a Garmin 540 GPS Nav/Com installed, which is certified for instrument approaches. All that having been said, as another noted, any competent pilot knows how to fly using a number of instruments, with as much redundancy as possible. Dialing in VOR (a radio navigational aid) and using DME (distance measuring equipment), monitoring a moving map GPS, and even having a VFR-only LORAN all dialed up and operational at the same time provides invaluable cross-checking, should one instrument or another fail.
I've had my DME fail (but had GPS and even the LORAN availabe as a cross reference, in addition to triangulating two separate VORs), I've had my DG fail (but had the compass and, again, the GPS to cross-check with), and once I even had my compass fail (a seal went bad and the kerosine leaked out, so, while the compass still worked, it was far too wobbly in any but the smoothest conditions to be of much use). Once again, the GPS and working DG were sufficient to navigate on to the next decent sized airport, where I got it fixed. As for my NDB... I had the finicky thing pulled out to make room for my GPS Nav/Com... an additional glide slope, moving map positional awareness, and nav/com more than made up for the loss of AM Radio reception and the ability to navigate using an ever decreasing number of NDB stations. Of course, in South Dakota a number of AWOS and ASOS stations broadcast on NDB frequencies, but then that is what UNICOM or Flight Service are good for, in a pinch.
Pilotage (using visual references like lakes, landmarks, etc.), radio navigation, and competency with a GPS are all skills that are taught a civilian pilot (assuming said equipment is available). For an instrument rating, if the instrument is in the panel, you will be tested on it. This definitely includes a moving map GPS, if your aircraft is equipped with one, and flying a GPS approach if it is IFR certified.
... and if true, your boss (or his boss, on up to whoever is doing what you describe) belongs in jail.
This means nothing. This is a no-tooth bill that has nothing to do with increasing open source usage, but merely placating a bunch of lobbyists.
Here's how it goes when an agency is looking to buy software:
- They decide what they want, and which vendor to get it from. They seek a budget for it.
- The rules say they must let contractors compete on the bid, so they put out an RFP (request for proposals).
- They word the questions in the RFP in such a way as to make sure that the only product that will be acceptable is the one they originally planned on.
Not only is that a violation of current law (and, as another suggested, you should get the media involved), but that would be a direct violation of this law as well, since obviously if the vendor is chosen first and then the bidding started, the free software solution wasn't ever in consideration to begin with (a violation of the proposed legislation).
The law will be good for those departments which do obey the law, and will be an additional charge to be filed against the leadership of those who do not. This, to me, appears to be a good thing on two fronts: more responsible and more open IT policies in government, and additional ammunition to punish the corrupt.
Minor Correction and possible design enhancements
on
The Space Elevator
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· Score: 1
The article sez a height of 4000km. That's about 2500 miles, or roughly the width of the US. I'm not saying I want that falling on my house, but it's a far cry from wrapping itself around the world.
Read the article again. The ~4000 km value is the value used to calculate the needed strength of the material, normalized to earth surface gravity. The actual height of the wire, just to reach geosynchronous orbit, is about 35,000 km. However, that would be a dangerous design, as the net centripetal force would still allow a severed cable to fall back to earth. By increasing the length to 100,000 km we get a number of huge advantages (enough energy to fling stuff off to Mars, Venus and the asteroid belt, not to mention the moon, and a huge safety feature in that a severed cable will tend to fall away fron the earth, not toward it). However, if the cable were severed beneath the geosyncrhonous way-station, the smaller part would fall toward earth while the larger part would be flung away.
Rather than a one-way cable, I would build several loops in parallel (think ski-lifts, or a hybrid cable-car/lift, complete with brief stops in motion for people to bet on and off). You could thereby operate multiple cars per cable loop, running them up one side of the loop and down the other, with stoppage only for loading/unloading. The stoppage could even be avoided with a coupling/decoupling mechanism, whereby the car decouples at the end of is ascent/descent and is taken to a unloading area, while a new car is coupled in its place in a separate, nearby loading area through which the same loop links a few tens or hundreds of meters later.
Multiple such loops would add sufficient redundancy that the way station and platform would be relatively safe even if one or more cables did in fact sever. That still doesn't fully protect one from the small piece of falling cable, but as you point out, the atmosphere is likely to take care of that, and safety features such could be added (cross-loop tethers, or the ability for each car to stop the motion of the loop, then tether itself to the opposing side of the loop, or a neighboring loop, and so on).
With terrorism a real possibility, reasonably safe failure modes will undoubtably be a requirement of such an undertaking.
FREEDOM is a valid alternative to AUTHORITARIANISM
on
ICANN vs. ccTLDs in Geneva
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· Score: 4, Interesting
What's the alternative? We need a central authority on domain name issues to ensure that standards are kept and every country is on an equal footing when disputes occur.
Absolute nonsense. All we need is a treaty that top level domains will be handled in a compatible fashion, so that folsk in.de can resolve domain names in.ru,.us, uk, etc. Those countries can then resolve disputes within their domains according to their own laws, without the heavy hand of ICANN and its injustice-for-money-your-way resolution approach.
For international domains, such as.com,.org,.edu, etc. the body responsible for administering the treaty can be used. This body should most emphatically NOT be ICANN, whose record of abuses and thuggary is both appalling and enormous.
There really is no need for a central authority whatsoever... beyond mutual agreements to avoid top level domain name collisions. Frankly, I'd like to see a situation in which anyone can create any toplevel domain, on a first come, first serve basis, and have it be resolved by everyone. Sort of an OpenNIC on steroids, without the authority (democratic in OpenNIC's case, authoritarian in ICANN's), but that is probably too much to hope for.
Nevertheless, national autonomy in ccTLDs is neither inappropriate nor too much to hope for... it is the current status quo, and should remain so.
You can bet your boots that Sony, having a big investment in media, will put in a heap of DRM into this product.
I agree. As someone who habitually lusts after all the newest toys, I won't be touching this with a 50 foot credit card in this, or any, life.
While I'm at it, has anyone tried writing DVD's with cdrecord-ProDVD? They've locked it up so tight, you need a reg key to do anything with it now.
No.
I use dvdrtools instead... an unencumbered, DVD-RW capable fork of cdrtools. Works great, without the hassle of cdrecord-ProDVD.
As an aside, I actually ended up delaying my DVD-RW purchase for over a year because the author wouldn't tell me (or a number of other interested people) how to actually go about BUYING his damn software (i.e. where to send the $100 check to). The software prints out a message... if you already own the DVD-RW hardware, but who is going to buy hardware they aren't sure they can get useful software for? A Windows user perhaps, but certainly not I.
I purchased a DVD-RW drive two days after the first release of dvdrtools was announced on freshmeat. I store all of my video data as xvid (mpeg4) AVIs on DATA DVDs and use my HTPC for playback. Works flawlessly, with remarkably good, DVD-quality results, and without any of the DRM Sony has undoubtably built into their model.
When a DATA version of a blue laser DVD-RW drive is released by someone reputable, such as Pioneer, then I'll consider it. Provided the data portion isn't crippled with DRM or Palladium type nonsense. Otherwise, I have sufficient technology to use my 720p 61" TV as is, without compromising my data and informational freedom.
Under the right circumstances, ordinary pieces of metal (like plumbing) exposed to acid can make "batteries" by chance. More intriguing is the "un batteried" iron obelisk I recall hearing about in India--an iron monument that has resisted rusting for hundreds of years.
That is very interesting in its own right. However,
I think it's likely that the ancients put some vinegar in this metal container, discovered that it corroded badly, and threw it away.
They've found at least 12 such primative batteries, so unless they were throwing away a bunch of defecting jars that all mysteriously resembled batteries far more closely than simple storage jugs, I think the idea that they suffered a little accidental corrosion and threw it away is rather unlikely.
Virtually everyone believes these were primitive batteries, and used as such, but not to drive bronze age equivelent walkmans or the like. Rather, some believe it may have been to imbibe idols with magical "shocking" capabilities to lend credence to local religious cults, an invention that occurred likely by accident, reproduced by trial and error, and then applied (secretively) by the priests of Baal (or whatever cult was popular at the time) as a way to convice people of the divinity of their statue.
That they were batteries designed to deliver a low amperage, fairly low voltage electrical current is pretty widely accepted. Why they were made, and what they were used for, is really anybody's guess at this point... the secret seems to have died with the makers.
Uh, well, (grumble) I guess that's okay then, er...
Since your definition of apologist is likely anyone who disagrees with your prima facia absurd allegations, feel free to count my as one. Coming from someone who would post such utter nonsense (and the idiot moderators who would mod such idiocy up) that would be a compliment.
Slashdot is a community of people, voicing their own opinions in often vehement dissention to one another. It is not a collective gastalt or hive mind with one opinion, one sense of what is good and bad, or even one sense of what is 'politically correct' and what is not. It is a diverse group of people, ranging from the cheapest Microsoft shilling whore to RMS, from devout communists to zealous libertarians, from athiests to religious fundamentalists of various flavors.
Allegations of "Slashdot hypocracy" are as oxymoronic as "Peaceful Acts of Terror" and "Progressive Presidents by the name of Bush."
Back on topic, speaking for myself (and not the whole of slashdot, as you imply but in truth no one person ever can), my opinion of patents are that they are bad. Very bad. Software patents make the issues raised by all patents more obvious, and the problems more apparent (and the flaw in the reasoning that led to patents more obviuos), but these issues exist in less acute form in all areas of scientific endeavor and research, and are largely responsible for our having been far behind in aviation development at the start of world war I (as documented by none other than the US federal government itself), and for our having hydrogen vehicles (mostly buses for the moment) only now, rather than 30-40 years ago when they were invented (and the patents suppressed by the automotive and oil industries), for disruptions in AIDS and cancer research, etc. etc.
Patents are bad. They were bad when they were given to Thomas Eddison. They were bad when they were given to online book purveyors with delusions of grandeur, they are bad when they are given to Microsoft, and they are bad when they are given to Google.
About the only good patents which could possibly be granted would be those granted to an organization such as the EFF or the FSF, where the patent is used to specifically (and defensively) undermine the very proprietary system it perpetuates, in much the same way the GPL has done to copyright. Alas, I don't see too many such patents being applied for, much less granted, despite the fact that the vast majority of the "inventiveness" in the industry comes from exactly those quarters (to then be granted by the imbecels at the USPTO to copycats as 20 year monopolies).
Because if the files you were exchanging were legitimate, you wouldn't need to use peer-to-peer systems like Gnutella, Freenet etc etc, which add a lot of inefficiency just to make it harder to find the source of a file. If what you are sending weren't in some way illegal, you would just stick it on a web page.
You have just demonstrated a woeful lack of understanding of the fundamental technologies, both of client server architectures (upon which ftp and web servers are based) and peer-to-peer technologies such as gnutella, freenet, etc.
In a peer to peer environment, the more demand a particular file has, the more widely it becomes available, and the quicker it is to download. This is precisely the opposite of the "slashdot effect" so commonly seen on traditional, client/server setups (such as virtually every web page on the planet). Debian's apt-get and Gentoo's emerge would both benefit greatly, in terms of performance, by distributing their files (source tarballs, debs, ebuilds) via a peer-to-peer architecture rather than the ftp, html, and rsync client/server architectures they use now. Indeed, once keyrings and GPG signing has been implimented, they are likely to move to this, both for redundancy and performance purposes.
Properly designed peer to peer is the future of legitimate filesharing, as it removes one of the critical bottlenecks that has plagued the internet since its inception. Whether the specific implimentation is gnutella or, with our current jackbooted thugs in Washington, more and more likely Freenet, isn't really all that relevant. Performance requirements and the need for robustness and redundancy are already leading more and more so-called mainstream uses of peer-to-peer technology.
Oh, and by the way, TCP/IP is fundamentally a peer-to-peer platform, so next time you hear some fat, filthy rich, and corrupt media moghul talk about the evils of peer-to-peer technology, likely in the context of lobbying congress to ban it outright, keep in mind that they are talking about banning the fundamental design of the internet protocols themselves.
This DRM crap restricts printing. Memorization of huge documents is extremely unlikely and at the very least error-prone. Lastl, someone looking over your shoulder is not an effective means of acquiring a document. Sure, the offender could catch a glimpse of what you're looking at, but too little for too short a time.
It is an idiotic method of "security" and will likely be banned by the courts the first time it gets in the way of a subpeana.
Worse, companies will lose access to their own data, either through bugs, license management issues, lost keys/pass phrases, or a failure to upgrade on Microsoft's schedule.
Only an imbecelic IT manager would consider effectively turning over the keys... literally... to his companies documents to a less-than-trustworthy vendor like Microsoft. Indeed, only an imbecelic IT manager would consider handing said power to a completely-trustworthy vendor... any vendor, no matter how well meaning, isn't going to stay benign with that kind of power in their pocket, and Microsoft in particular has a long and well documented history of abusing exactly this sort of power.
You need security and encryption? Use PGP and a good passphrase. Too difficult for you? Then get literate already. Burning down the libraries is not a cure for illiteracy, and handing complete power over your commercial data to a software monopolist is not a cure for computer illiteracy. Only education coupled with a willingness to learn is, and I suspect many, many such foolish companies will pay a very heavy price when they go down this particular road.
If administrators can't distinguish "good" traffic from "bad" traffic, they will have no choice but to simply remove any access at all to the Internet from the problem subnets, namely dorms.
Any administrator making that sort of a decision is an incompetent moron, at best.
So, encrypt the traffic. Make it so that nobody can tell what's inside the stream. That's dandy. But if P2P usage makes it such that researchers can't get the resources or bandwidth do actually do their work or are significantly impacted (the argument of whether researchers are doing anything more than reading Slashdot or Dilbert is for a separate post), even if the traffic isn't recognized as P2P per se, you can bet that this will be the next step.
With even rudimentary traffic shaping capabilities this problem is easilly solved without removing a single person's access. Simply allocate a small percentage (say, 10%) of the outgoing and incoming bandwidth to the problem sites (the Library, student housing, and probably most student labs) for ALL traffic, encrypted or otherwise, and leave the other 90% for "serious research."
Of course, even that's draconian, as most "serious research" doesn't require a streaming mega-pipe to get done. 30%/70% is probably more reasonable.
That is, if the interest is really about keeping bandwidth open and not about kowtowing to the media cartels of southern california and new york city. On the other hand, if this is some self-righteous intellectual property proponent with a bug up their ass and an insatiable appetite for making an example of students who are simply doing what students have been doing since sheet music was invented... namely sharing music... then of course a reasonable solution like that won't work, and encryption will lead to the intellectual downgrading of the campus back to 1970 standards...actually even less than that, as it would be a campus that, for underclassmen, is one effectively sans internet and, if the University is serious about banning all encrypted traffic that might possibly, one day, contain something they don't like, sans networked student labs and arguable sans a library.
Nice solution to what is, in the hands of a capable network administrator, a non-problem.
I'm a Libertarian (card-carrying member of the Libertarian Party) and I think this is exactly the way it should go (and I'd expand it to include TV).
My only quibble is that I think it should be the states that do the "nationalizing".
I have often argued this point as well, though whether it is states or the federal government is of less interest to me than simply getting this resource out of the hands of monopolists.
Telephone lines are like highways. Can you imagine if every shipping company owned its own set of roads going to your house? There is a time and a place for public works, and a time and a place for private land ownership. Highways, water mains, telephone lines, the public airwaves, and data lines are clearly the former, while my home is clearly the latter.
State Highways vs. Federal Highways... I'd tend to agree with you that state oversight might be better, as states tend to be more effecient than the federal beaurocracy (though with the corruption at the state level and less public interest, that advantage might be muted).
Unfortunately, such an approach would cut into the FCC's power, and Baby Powell would almost certainly have a hissy fit, putting the entire thing in jeapordy (and the courts) if the states tried to do it. On the other hand, if the federal government were to do it, it might be more successful, and even if it were ultimately less effecient it would still be vastly more effecient than the oligopolies and monopolies we suffer under today. Witness rural canada's exceptional DSL service, not to mention S. Korea's, Japan's, etc...cheap, multi-megabit bandwidth standing in stark contrast to the limited availability and slow connection speeds available at any price to those of us beneath SBC Ameritech's yoke in downtown Chicago.
I think I've been reading too much about this stuff lately, but I have a hard time believing that the US Government would do anything that so explicitly hurts corporations without providing overwhelming benefit to citizens. It's clear that privacy is important to people, but copyright isn't a huge deal in everyday life.
Shortening copyright doesn't hurt the vast, vast majority of corporations at all, and it increases business opportunity for resellers of public domain works (more books published by more publishers, etc.). It only hurts a very, very few large cartels who happen to engage in a negative-sum game of locking down large swaths of our culture and preventing others, businesses and individuals alike, from participating.
Furthermore, copyright most assuradle does affect all of our lives, very intimately, and were it ubiquitiously enforced (as will happen in the digital age if the recording and media cartels have their say), you would probably be shocked at the things you wouldn't be allowed to do, or would be required to pay in order to do.
As an example, having friends invite additional friends to a party where music is playing, or a video is being shown on your television. That kills most large parties, from high school on up through middle age. Remember, public showing is defined as anyone not in your immediate circle of friends, so your good freind Joe's new girlfriend he brought doesn't (yet) fall into the category. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
The books we learn from, the music we hear, the television we watch, the songs we sing (including Happy Birthday and numerous Christmas Carols), the icons of our culture (Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer IIRC, and certainly Micky Mouse et. al.) are all privatly owned, copyrighted material.
I guess I just don't have the energy to help reinstate a government "of the people, for the people, and by the people" because it would have to be done from without, not within.
You, and the teaming masses just like you, are why we have become a plutocracy, and why our children may never know what a functioning democracy ever was. If people like yourself don't get off their asses and get involved in the political system, you will have only yourselves to blame when the jackboots come a-knocking. And, if the PATRIOT and PATRIOT II legislation is any indication, a-knocking they will certainly come.
So get off your lazy (tired, whatever) ass and do something a little more constructive than bemoaning the "inevitable", which is only "inevitable" if you choose to make it so through your own inaction.
Don't allow politicians to accept donations from anyone/thing that doesn't have a right to vote. The barriers of entry to this system, like so many other things, prevent really new ideas from coming into it.
The get out there and promote your solution to the problem. Politicians do ultimately listen to votes, not dollars, but as long as people like yourself remain inactive dollars will equal votes. This relationship however vanishes quite quickly when the populace actually does get off their ass and take to the streets on a particular subject (consider Abortion, for example, and historically Civil Rights, the lower voting age, and the end of the Vietnam War as examples where public discontent trumped moneyed interests. Money only carries a politician when the people are passive and apathetic... which is not a given unless folks like yourself choose to be.)
Leprosy v. Hansen's Disease: its all just PC Bunk
on
Leprosy Genes
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· Score: 1
The Science Daily article refers to leprosy throughout though, suggesting that North America stills prefer that nomenclature. Is this some kind of accreditation thing, akin to Farnsworth and Baird?
In other news, America continues to call a Spade a Spade, while still being unable with the next breath to refer to a crippled man as handicaped but rather "differently abled." Meanwhile Europe calls a software monopolist a software monopolist, but is unable to utter the word "leprosy", instead opting for more obfuscated and thusly less potent term, "Hansen's Disease."
I have grown to loath the political correctness of both America and Europe (which are very different from one another, by the way, yet equally obnoxious and quite toxic to clear, independent thought). I dislike dogma, and especially the kind of dancing around the facts that PC language implicity requires... and I say this as one who supports feminism, is a devout believer in the inherent social and legal equality of all people, indeed, a supporter of the vast majority of points so-called PC language attempts to promote through a newspeak style shaping of social discourse.
The approach is wrong and disingenuous, and it is time we got rid of it. Hansen's disease indeed. Feh. It is leprosy, with all that that implies.
Ironically native Americans I met when visiting Navaho Nation still call themselves "Indians" (and expect you to as well), despite the apparent reluctance on the part of the rest of the country (sports fans excepted) to use the term. "Native American" is one of the few PC terms I actually agree with, as it removes ambiguity from the language and offers a real improvement. African American vs. Black on the other hand is merely another in a series of disposable words, like "colored" and "negro", two once entirely respectful words which, just as African American will someday be, have been discarded on the scrap heap of "no longer accepted terms we got rid of in the hopes of glossing over an unpleasant bit of history." Perhaps the next iteration, in another 15 or 20 years, will be "pigment-endowed," or perhaps "Nubian American."
But of all the PC terms in circulation today, renaming diseases because of negative associations with those diseases is beyond asinine, it is beneath the most feeble intellect housed within a human skull. Shall we rename Anthrax "Letter-box Syndrome", Small Pox "Dubya's Disease", and Lou Gehrig's Disease "Stephen Hawking's Affliction?" once enough of us have seen Lou Gehrig's in action to form a negative opinion about it?
Feh. Leprosy is leprosy, political correctness be damned.
Slashdot Mirror
Saddam did not one single time break the terms.
... and I do not limit myself to American, or even Western, news sources). It was not, however, in any sense illegal.
Yes, he did. Everytime he shot a missile at a coalition plane patrolling the no-fly zones. Everytime he got caught in the past with weopons of mass destruction (throughout the mid 1990's until inspections were stopped). Everytime he, in the past, interfered with inspections.
The legal justification and technicality were already in place, and technically those violations make a continuance of the war perfectly legal.
The fact that weaponized chemicals may (or may not) have been found is immaterial (though of course finding such would provide political justification now lacking).
I do not like Bush. I don't like the way he stole the election, I don't like the way his administration has accelerated the erosion of our civil rights and privacy that began with the War on Drugs, and has continued with the War on Pedophiles, now the War on Terrorism and soon the War on Piracy.
I agree with you in disliking this war (though gratified that, once committed militarilly to the task, it has gone as well as it has), and in disliking Bush and most of what he represents.
However, the technical facts as laid down are disputed by no informed person, on either side of the issue. Iraq has in the past been in violation of the armistice, and that makes a resumption of hostilities technically legal.
And where the law is concerned (be it international, national, or what have you), technicalities are everything.
The war may suck, may as Putin has said turn out to have been a political blunder, may even be unjust (though the footage I am seeing coming out of Iraq indicates otherwise
Bush is right now breaking international laws as he invades a country without support from the security council. That is illegal and the US has condemned such actions before when done by others.
Um, no, thank you for playing. Time to retake that International Law 101 course.
Iraq and the United States have been at war since 1991 (in a war authorized by the United Nations). Hostilities were suspended as the result of an armistice, NOT a treaty. Neither the United States, nor any of the other members of the coalition, were ever required to get additional permission from the UN.
All that was required was for one side or the other to break the terms of the armistice for hostilities to be resumed, perfectly legally. Additional UN resolutions would have provided political cover, but, all political rhetoric aside, the actions in Iraq by the coalition are perfectly legal, within the tenents of international law, and require no additional UN support whatsoever.
People keep referring to this as a "new" war, but technically, as the former war never officially ended and as Saddam's regime demonstrably DID violate the terms of the armistice on numerous occasions, this is, on paper at least, merely a resumption of the old war. All perfectly legal and legitimate, more's the pity.
This is why (a) we should require a declaration of war from congress for these sorts of thing, and STOP CIRCUMVENTING THE CONSTITUTION simply because we feel it more convinient to do so than to adhere to the terms our founding fathers laid down, and (b) why armistices are such fragile things, and treaties a requirement before any hope of a lasting peace can be entertained. As one who opposed the war at one time (and who changed his mind and was on the fence as a result of the appalling behavior of Germany, Belgium, and France in delaying the deployment of Turkey's defense within NATO), I find this fiction of the war somehow being "illegal" to be one of the weakest of the anti-war arguments around. It simply, demonstrably, within the tenents of international law, is untrue. The war, while bad, is quite legal.
Install Mandrake on one set, then use a chrooted envoronment to install Gentoo on the other set. This has several advantages.
If the gentoo boot ISO doesn't support your motherboard, one or more of the kernel source ebuilds almost certainly does. The configuration of the working Mandrake kernel (and an lsmod to see what modules are installed, USB modules in particular) should go far in getting a Gentoo box up on that hardware.
I've done things like this for legacy-free tablets (which, while they work, don't have working digitizers yet under GNU/Linux, unlike the older Fujitsus which work flawlessly).
As an avid Gentoo user, both at work and at home, I've found the "two partition set" approach to be immensly helpful and useful.
Hope this helps!
I know many Norwegians who would take great offense at that
And very rightly so.
As an American (who has lived abroad a number of times throughout Europe and parts of Asia), I am deeply offended by the way my government treats our friends and allies (even when I disagree with them, as I did vehemently with Germany, France, and Belgium's behavior within NATO, despite agreeing with their desire to prevent an ending of the armistice and a resurgence of hostilities in Iraq).
Until our government begins treating our allies as allies and not like vassal states your friends in Norway, and mine in Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, China, and elsewhere, will all be IMHO very justified in their offense at our behavior. My wording merely puts on the table what seems to be an unspoken assumption in circles of power. Maybe by doing so, and eschewing politically correct speech in the process, we can go about changing this, for the better. I'm not holding my breath, what with those who currently yield power in Washington, but I am holding out hope.
This arrogance of power, this blind greed (and the blind, profoundly foolish and socially detrimental assumption that underlies much of it, namely the toxic meme that "Greed is Good"), and our disrespect for our neighbors and allies, must end. And soon.
What you are missing are a few very important points that the media cartels, in their extraordinarilly disingenuous rhetoric regarding non-commerical copyright infringement by individuals, would very much like you not to notice:
In short, if it were about the artists well being, free(dom) music and media would be a slam dunk. It benefits everyone
It is interesting that those with such entitlement mindsets feel they should be able to earn money indefinitely (at least life+70 years) for one bit of work performed sometime in the past, while the rest of us accept that, if we wish to earn money, we must continue to work each day of our lives (weekends and vacation sometimes excepted). Given the profitability of, and real value offered by, live shows one must truly wonder why an artist, much less a publisher. would think they are entitled to proceeds from anything other than their live work. Four centuries of monopoly entitlements will, alas, do that to an industry and even a culture, to the detriment of nearly everyone (a few moghuls and poster children excepted)
Funny, I thought he was being tried in Norway...
... this sort of thing makes it profoundly obvious not only to those informed of world (and local) events, but to those who normally couldn't be bothered.
At the behest of American firms and an American Media Cartel, backed by the full might (and arm twisting) of the American government.
The fact that the court system of a weak vassal state, oops, I mean, "ally" is incidental. It is our fellow Americans who are persuing this beyond all reason, and frankly, the rest of the world is correct to look at us as a nation of the Rich and blinded by power
The problem being though... where are you going to get enough Turkeys (or carbon source of choice) to make enough for a whole country?
Iraq?
[/sick humor]
That they cannot compete with PC hardware in the desktop market (I assume from the article they're thinking of creating a new desktop machine).
... I am always surprised at how many individuals and home user's are sick of Microsoft yanking their chains, so there is no guarantee Palladium and their so-called "trusted" computing is going to fly there, either) be willing to put up with crippled products in order to cling to the familiar (Microsoft Windows), but businesses aren't going to be at all inclined to do so. Sun (and Apple) could, if they play their cards right, absolutely wipe the floor with the encumbered hardware the Wintel platform is poised to begin foisting upon us.
I have been quite scathing in my opinion of Sun's appraoch to Java (a semi-closed standard, jerking free software implimentations around, etc.) and their woeful lack of vision with regards to GNU/Linux, which has resulted in their very late arrival to the Linux scene in anything other than a half-hearted propoganda attempt, their costly hardware, their cumbersome operating system, and so on. As an employee of an ex-sun shop, I have lots of gripes, and can point to many reasons why we dumped Sun (and Microsoft) in favor of GNU/Linux.
All that having been said, Sun appears to (slowly, grudgingly) finally "get it." If so, I think they could put together quite a competative box. How?
By leveraging Microsoft's Palladium trojan for all it is worth. If AMD and Intel are offering Microsoft-Palladium enabled hardware, crippling the rest of the world (GNU/Linux, *BSD, etc.) in the process by either requiring it a la the 'secret reenabling' they allow with the CPU ID, or by simply removing the option to turn Palladium off a la the DVD Forum's phased implimentation of region coding, then Sun and Apple will be the only two desktop vendors offering uncrippled hardware.
Home users may (I stress, may
Which is one scenerio where Sun could excel on the desktop (and where Apple could gain significant market share).
Believe it or not, Mr L337 has acurately described what he is doing with this "protest". He is defacing public/private property, and that is a crime.
... both broke laws, and did jail time, in efforts to show such laws were unjust and should be repealed. They succeeded.
... they probably expect to commit and crime and get away with it. If so, then you are right in pointing out that what they are doing isn't civil disobedience, else they'd turn themselves in and allow themselves to be arrested to bring more attention to the issues they are protesting. Instead, they are likely just petty vandals using an opportunity to strike out at institutions they hate.
... I don't like the corporatization of America, or the corporate hijacking of the UN through the WTO and WIPO, any more than the next person. However, I cannot relate to or condone their behavior either ... unless they turn themselves in and face the music, they are merely vandals, not civilly disobedient protestors.
Very true.
The protests on the Streets of San Francisco are not "Civil" though they are assuredly disobedient.
"Civil" in civil disobedience refers not to civility (politeness), but to civilian, or disobedience to civil authority. There is a profound difference in both definition and implication.
In other words, the actions of those protestors snarling traffic in SF may not be civil (def: polite or cordial), but it most assuredly is "civil disobedience" (disobedience to civilian authority).
A person engaging in civil disobedience expects to be arrested and to "pay" for their crime, but choose do break the law regardless as a political statement. Ghandi and Martin Luthar King, Jr. are two such examples
A protestor on the street of San Francisco blocking traffic is most certainly engaged in "civil disobedience" and, unless they are an imbecel (quite possible based on some of the rhetoric I've seen from that direction), they fully expect to be arrested and pay for their crime. This tradeoff is worthwhile in their view, as it gives them media exposure with which they can get their message across.
Web defacement might possibly be another such form of civil disobedience, though I suspect you're right in that those doing so don't expect to get caught
I can relate to the hatred (in part)
If you're making a case for the war on the second or third day of the conflict, then you and the people with whom you agree, have clearly not made a reasonable case to the public.
Are you referring to the 70% that support the war, the 30% that do not, or the 100% that both groups comprise? As one of those who, until France, Germany, and Belgium placed Turkey's defense on hold as a political ploy, was firmly in the 30% "No War!" group, but has since moved to the (who knows what per cent) that are ambivelent at best, and truly uncertain whether or not the war is appropriate, just, much less a "good thing" in pragmatic geopolitical terms, I find his arguments to be more than reasonable.
Not that I necessarilly agree with all of them (I disagree with several, agree with several, and an uncertain on others), but they are certainly reasonable.
Unfortunately, I've yet to hear much in the way of reasonable arguments on the opposing side. Russia is perhaps the lone voice ("this is not wise because of its destabilizing aspects") that speaks at least one coherent and rational argument beyond "war=bad, Bush=oilman warmonger, America Nein!" and despite the fact that I agree with 2 out of 3 of those arguments, they do not portray a rational argument as to why this action is inappropriate.
On the moral front: Germany appears to have been selling technical support and components for WMD to Iraq for the last 10 years, at least. Their moral stance on this entire affair is dubious, at best. France has ongoing sweetheart deals with Saddam's regime personally, some in direct violation of existing UN resolutions: deals an Iraq without Saddam is unlikely to continue. Their moral stance on this is highly dubious, at best. Russia, who has by far been the most restrained and responsible of the war opponents in the security council (their rhetoric has been more restrained, their arguments more cohenerent, and perhaps most importantly they haven't put the tactical defense of their front-line allies, and with it the viability of their military alliances, in jeapardy simply to make political points. Germany and France have.), has immense outstanding debt owed to them by the Iraqi regime which may or may not be paid back under a new government.
And Bush has the oil connection, comes from a family with dubious political and economic motives, represents the worst about the conservative faction of America, and has dubious legitimacy as president given the 2000 elections. His moral stance is equally, but certainly not more, dubious than that of his opponents.
This in contrast to Tony Blair, whose ethical and moral stance appears to be above reproach (whether or not the action of supporting the United States is wise notwhithstanding).
As one who distrusts and despises Bush, who will with certainty vote against him again in the next election, and who has profound reservations about this war I have to say that the opponents have lacked in their arguments far more than its proponents. As one who until recently strongly opposed the war, and is now on the fence, I find this particularly distressing.
I think the war is probably a mistake. I think in taking Bagdad we could end up doing things that we, as Americans, like to believe we don't do (if not historically, at least not any more). I think we stand to lose a great deal of political influence in the world as a result, and that this will hurt the overt evangelism of rule of law and democracy as much, if not more, than it will our political and economic influence on world affairs once this conflict passes. This is a terrible risk, one that IMHO was probably unwise to take at this juncture. I think victory entails far graver danger in this conflict to America, and western democracy in general, than continued containment probably would have.
Nevertheless, all that aside, the Hawks appear to be offering vastly better arguments in favor of their position than the Doves are in opposing it, and with the extraordinarilly in
Now that I've got your attention, allow me to tell you my personal experience with student involvement in politics, or rather the shameful lack thereof, even when their own intersts are directly and immediately involved.
... for the first month or so of that semester it really did feel like eastern Germany ... you were being watched all the time, and weren't safe from intrusion even in your own home. Have a few friends over, and you were at risk. It was appalling, and while there are many greater injustices in the world, it was nevertheless a real injustice taking place against young people in America, and to those of us believing we lived in a free society, quite shocking.
According to his web site, http://www.house.gov/carter/ , he has offices in Round Rock and College Station. Anyone know when he's up for election? I think a few posters on Campus with some quotes about his "idea" will get him swiftly kicked out... provided the college populous goes and votes.
Before attending the University of Illinois, I had the dubious experience of attending a smaller, less well known university in a small, backward, and very reactionary midwestern town: to wit: Illinois State University in Normal (I kid you not), Illinois.
The entire social life of that campus took place through student parties, of various sizes ranging from a few people gathered in a dorm room to hundreds gathered around a keg in an apartment complex parking lot. On the summer between my freshman and sophomore years the town passed an ordinance banning all student parties without a city permit, be they small, in-home affairs or large outdoor bashes.
Every party I attended got broken up, with an increasing sense of anger on the part of the students (lots of people no longer getting laid can do that). Undercover cops were routinely sent into people's homes, to bust up private parties as they got underway and arrest the hosts. It was as draconian as anything I'd seen in my travels at that time
Worse still, the town had hired a chief of police who enjoyed rubbing student's faces in the fact, making loud public appearances, sending his police around campus in force, and even going so far as to pose for newpaper photographs in "Fun Buster" tee-shirts.
To make a long story short, the first protest the campus had probably had since the 1960's took place (this was 1984, an appropriate year), which began peacefully enough but erupted into a 6 hour melee when an angry driver threatened to kill several students with a tire iron if they didn't get out of his way (he wanted to drive through the intersection the protest was blocking), all of this in the presence of Chief of Police Lehr (spelling?). I was a personal eye-witness to this event, and even took a couple of photographs of the driver in question.
Lehr's response was even more appalling. When asked why he hadn't arrested the driver he responded that the driver "was only defending himself." Like a stone droped in water, you could feel the effect ripple through the crowd. I got away from the chief of police as fast as I could, as full beer cans, rocks, and other missles started falling.
I did not take part in any of the violence which followed, but I did see much of it. The rage was quite real, the emotions quite high, and the students quite justified in many of their complaints.
Yet, and here is the kicker, the following spring the city held elections for city council. Several pro-student candidates were running. The total student population was about equal to that of the town, and under Illinois residency laws, any student who'd been there for 6 months (i.e. everyone who had been enrolled in the fall semester) were eligable to vote as residents.
Voter registration drives set up booths in the dorms and apartment complexes. The story was in the local news and plastered all over the student newspaper. Posters everywhere, and so on.
The turnout was appallingly low. Of the 25,000
And yes, it is a felony to commit criminal copyright infringement.
Yes, and this is one of the truly dangerous developments in the copyright cartel's assimilation of the United States government. Copyright violation was always, for more than two hundred years of American history, a CIVIL violation, not a CRIMINAL one. Redress for copyright violations was obtained through litigation in court, not the barrel of a government gun.
Unfortunately the copyright and media cartels of Hollywood bought legislation from our disgustingly corrupt public officials in Washington, and in the late 1990's turned copyright violation into a federal offense, i.e. a Felony.
A draconian police state and injustice we haven't seen since the American apartheid of the 1950's, a refusal to enforce an obscene law, or a repeal of those portions of the Sony Bono Copyright Extention Act and DMCA are really the only possible outcomes. Based on our experience with prohibition (creating two tremendous threats that have gutted our freedoms in the 20th century: the Mafia and the FBI) and its successor, the War on Drugs, I expect to see this law enforced widely, if haphazardly, with the result that our jail populations swell even more, and our country suffer social and economic fallout it will fail to recover from this obscenity for generations to come.
Welcome to the Corporate State. Bend over and take it like a man.
Last I heard, GPS is not approved for navigational use by the FAA. Meaning, you can use it, but you need to have alternate systems, and can't rely on it.
... I had the finicky thing pulled out to make room for my GPS Nav/Com ... an additional glide slope, moving map positional awareness, and nav/com more than made up for the loss of AM Radio reception and the ability to navigate using an ever decreasing number of NDB stations. Of course, in South Dakota a number of AWOS and ASOS stations broadcast on NDB frequencies, but then that is what UNICOM or Flight Service are good for, in a pinch.
Your information is a little dated. GPS is most definitely approved for navigational use. Indeed, many NDB approaches have already been replaced with GPS approaches, and new GPS approaches are being certified all the time.
My aircraft has a Garmin 540 GPS Nav/Com installed, which is certified for instrument approaches. All that having been said, as another noted, any competent pilot knows how to fly using a number of instruments, with as much redundancy as possible. Dialing in VOR (a radio navigational aid) and using DME (distance measuring equipment), monitoring a moving map GPS, and even having a VFR-only LORAN all dialed up and operational at the same time provides invaluable cross-checking, should one instrument or another fail.
I've had my DME fail (but had GPS and even the LORAN availabe as a cross reference, in addition to triangulating two separate VORs), I've had my DG fail (but had the compass and, again, the GPS to cross-check with), and once I even had my compass fail (a seal went bad and the kerosine leaked out, so, while the compass still worked, it was far too wobbly in any but the smoothest conditions to be of much use). Once again, the GPS and working DG were sufficient to navigate on to the next decent sized airport, where I got it fixed. As for my NDB
Pilotage (using visual references like lakes, landmarks, etc.), radio navigation, and competency with a GPS are all skills that are taught a civilian pilot (assuming said equipment is available). For an instrument rating, if the instrument is in the panel, you will be tested on it. This definitely includes a moving map GPS, if your aircraft is equipped with one, and flying a GPS approach if it is IFR certified.
... and if true, your boss (or his boss, on up to whoever is doing what you describe) belongs in jail.
This means nothing. This is a no-tooth bill that has nothing to do with increasing open source usage, but merely placating a bunch of lobbyists.
Here's how it goes when an agency is looking to buy software:
- They decide what they want, and which vendor to get it from. They seek a budget for it.
- The rules say they must let contractors compete on the bid, so they put out an RFP (request for proposals).
- They word the questions in the RFP in such a way as to make sure that the only product that will be acceptable is the one they originally planned on.
Not only is that a violation of current law (and, as another suggested, you should get the media involved), but that would be a direct violation of this law as well, since obviously if the vendor is chosen first and then the bidding started, the free software solution wasn't ever in consideration to begin with (a violation of the proposed legislation).
The law will be good for those departments which do obey the law, and will be an additional charge to be filed against the leadership of those who do not. This, to me, appears to be a good thing on two fronts: more responsible and more open IT policies in government, and additional ammunition to punish the corrupt.
The article sez a height of 4000km. That's about 2500 miles, or roughly the width of the US. I'm not saying I want that falling on my house, but it's a far cry from wrapping itself around the world.
Read the article again. The ~4000 km value is the value used to calculate the needed strength of the material, normalized to earth surface gravity. The actual height of the wire, just to reach geosynchronous orbit, is about 35,000 km. However, that would be a dangerous design, as the net centripetal force would still allow a severed cable to fall back to earth. By increasing the length to 100,000 km we get a number of huge advantages (enough energy to fling stuff off to Mars, Venus and the asteroid belt, not to mention the moon, and a huge safety feature in that a severed cable will tend to fall away fron the earth, not toward it). However, if the cable were severed beneath the geosyncrhonous way-station, the smaller part would fall toward earth while the larger part would be flung away.
Rather than a one-way cable, I would build several loops in parallel (think ski-lifts, or a hybrid cable-car/lift, complete with brief stops in motion for people to bet on and off). You could thereby operate multiple cars per cable loop, running them up one side of the loop and down the other, with stoppage only for loading/unloading. The stoppage could even be avoided with a coupling/decoupling mechanism, whereby the car decouples at the end of is ascent/descent and is taken to a unloading area, while a new car is coupled in its place in a separate, nearby loading area through which the same loop links a few tens or hundreds of meters later.
Multiple such loops would add sufficient redundancy that the way station and platform would be relatively safe even if one or more cables did in fact sever. That still doesn't fully protect one from the small piece of falling cable, but as you point out, the atmosphere is likely to take care of that, and safety features such could be added (cross-loop tethers, or the ability for each car to stop the motion of the loop, then tether itself to the opposing side of the loop, or a neighboring loop, and so on).
With terrorism a real possibility, reasonably safe failure modes will undoubtably be a requirement of such an undertaking.
What's the alternative? We need a central authority on domain name issues to ensure that standards are kept and every country is on an equal footing when disputes occur.
.de can resolve domain names in .ru, .us, uk, etc. Those countries can then resolve disputes within their domains according to their own laws, without the heavy hand of ICANN and its injustice-for-money-your-way resolution approach.
.com, .org, .edu, etc. the body responsible for administering the treaty can be used. This body should most emphatically NOT be ICANN, whose record of abuses and thuggary is both appalling and enormous.
... beyond mutual agreements to avoid top level domain name collisions. Frankly, I'd like to see a situation in which anyone can create any toplevel domain, on a first come, first serve basis, and have it be resolved by everyone. Sort of an OpenNIC on steroids, without the authority (democratic in OpenNIC's case, authoritarian in ICANN's), but that is probably too much to hope for.
... it is the current status quo, and should remain so.
Absolute nonsense. All we need is a treaty that top level domains will be handled in a compatible fashion, so that folsk in
For international domains, such as
There really is no need for a central authority whatsoever
Nevertheless, national autonomy in ccTLDs is neither inappropriate nor too much to hope for
You can bet your boots that Sony, having a big investment in media, will put in a heap of DRM into this product.
... an unencumbered, DVD-RW capable fork of cdrtools. Works great, without the hassle of cdrecord-ProDVD.
... if you already own the DVD-RW hardware, but who is going to buy hardware they aren't sure they can get useful software for? A Windows user perhaps, but certainly not I.
I agree. As someone who habitually lusts after all the newest toys, I won't be touching this with a 50 foot credit card in this, or any, life.
While I'm at it, has anyone tried writing DVD's with cdrecord-ProDVD? They've locked it up so tight, you need a reg key to do anything with it now.
No.
I use dvdrtools instead
As an aside, I actually ended up delaying my DVD-RW purchase for over a year because the author wouldn't tell me (or a number of other interested people) how to actually go about BUYING his damn software (i.e. where to send the $100 check to). The software prints out a message
I purchased a DVD-RW drive two days after the first release of dvdrtools was announced on freshmeat. I store all of my video data as xvid (mpeg4) AVIs on DATA DVDs and use my HTPC for playback. Works flawlessly, with remarkably good, DVD-quality results, and without any of the DRM Sony has undoubtably built into their model.
When a DATA version of a blue laser DVD-RW drive is released by someone reputable, such as Pioneer, then I'll consider it. Provided the data portion isn't crippled with DRM or Palladium type nonsense. Otherwise, I have sufficient technology to use my 720p 61" TV as is, without compromising my data and informational freedom.
Under the right circumstances, ordinary pieces of metal (like plumbing) exposed to acid can make "batteries" by chance. More intriguing is the "un batteried" iron obelisk I recall hearing about in India--an iron monument that has resisted rusting for hundreds of years.
... the secret seems to have died with the makers.
That is very interesting in its own right. However,
I think it's likely that the ancients put some vinegar in this metal container, discovered that it corroded badly, and threw it away.
They've found at least 12 such primative batteries, so unless they were throwing away a bunch of defecting jars that all mysteriously resembled batteries far more closely than simple storage jugs, I think the idea that they suffered a little accidental corrosion and threw it away is rather unlikely.
Virtually everyone believes these were primitive batteries, and used as such, but not to drive bronze age equivelent walkmans or the like. Rather, some believe it may have been to imbibe idols with magical "shocking" capabilities to lend credence to local religious cults, an invention that occurred likely by accident, reproduced by trial and error, and then applied (secretively) by the priests of Baal (or whatever cult was popular at the time) as a way to convice people of the divinity of their statue.
That they were batteries designed to deliver a low amperage, fairly low voltage electrical current is pretty widely accepted. Why they were made, and what they were used for, is really anybody's guess at this point
(Psst - hey, Google's getting one.)
Uh, well, (grumble) I guess that's okay then, er...
Since your definition of apologist is likely anyone who disagrees with your prima facia absurd allegations, feel free to count my as one. Coming from someone who would post such utter nonsense (and the idiot moderators who would mod such idiocy up) that would be a compliment.
Slashdot is a community of people, voicing their own opinions in often vehement dissention to one another. It is not a collective gastalt or hive mind with one opinion, one sense of what is good and bad, or even one sense of what is 'politically correct' and what is not. It is a diverse group of people, ranging from the cheapest Microsoft shilling whore to RMS, from devout communists to zealous libertarians, from athiests to religious fundamentalists of various flavors.
Allegations of "Slashdot hypocracy" are as oxymoronic as "Peaceful Acts of Terror" and "Progressive Presidents by the name of Bush."
Back on topic, speaking for myself (and not the whole of slashdot, as you imply but in truth no one person ever can), my opinion of patents are that they are bad. Very bad. Software patents make the issues raised by all patents more obvious, and the problems more apparent (and the flaw in the reasoning that led to patents more obviuos), but these issues exist in less acute form in all areas of scientific endeavor and research, and are largely responsible for our having been far behind in aviation development at the start of world war I (as documented by none other than the US federal government itself), and for our having hydrogen vehicles (mostly buses for the moment) only now, rather than 30-40 years ago when they were invented (and the patents suppressed by the automotive and oil industries), for disruptions in AIDS and cancer research, etc. etc.
Patents are bad. They were bad when they were given to Thomas Eddison. They were bad when they were given to online book purveyors with delusions of grandeur, they are bad when they are given to Microsoft, and they are bad when they are given to Google.
About the only good patents which could possibly be granted would be those granted to an organization such as the EFF or the FSF, where the patent is used to specifically (and defensively) undermine the very proprietary system it perpetuates, in much the same way the GPL has done to copyright. Alas, I don't see too many such patents being applied for, much less granted, despite the fact that the vast majority of the "inventiveness" in the industry comes from exactly those quarters (to then be granted by the imbecels at the USPTO to copycats as 20 year monopolies).
Because if the files you were exchanging were legitimate, you wouldn't need to use peer-to-peer systems like Gnutella, Freenet etc etc, which add a lot of inefficiency just to make it harder to find the source of a file. If what you are sending weren't in some way illegal, you would just stick it on a web page.
You have just demonstrated a woeful lack of understanding of the fundamental technologies, both of client server architectures (upon which ftp and web servers are based) and peer-to-peer technologies such as gnutella, freenet, etc.
In a peer to peer environment, the more demand a particular file has, the more widely it becomes available, and the quicker it is to download. This is precisely the opposite of the "slashdot effect" so commonly seen on traditional, client/server setups (such as virtually every web page on the planet). Debian's apt-get and Gentoo's emerge would both benefit greatly, in terms of performance, by distributing their files (source tarballs, debs, ebuilds) via a peer-to-peer architecture rather than the ftp, html, and rsync client/server architectures they use now. Indeed, once keyrings and GPG signing has been implimented, they are likely to move to this, both for redundancy and performance purposes.
Properly designed peer to peer is the future of legitimate filesharing, as it removes one of the critical bottlenecks that has plagued the internet since its inception. Whether the specific implimentation is gnutella or, with our current jackbooted thugs in Washington, more and more likely Freenet, isn't really all that relevant. Performance requirements and the need for robustness and redundancy are already leading more and more so-called mainstream uses of peer-to-peer technology.
Oh, and by the way, TCP/IP is fundamentally a peer-to-peer platform, so next time you hear some fat, filthy rich, and corrupt media moghul talk about the evils of peer-to-peer technology, likely in the context of lobbying congress to ban it outright, keep in mind that they are talking about banning the fundamental design of the internet protocols themselves.
This DRM crap restricts printing. Memorization of huge documents is extremely unlikely and at the very least error-prone. Lastl, someone looking over your shoulder is not an effective means of acquiring a document. Sure, the offender could catch a glimpse of what you're looking at, but too little for too short a time.
... literally... to his companies documents to a less-than-trustworthy vendor like Microsoft. Indeed, only an imbecelic IT manager would consider handing said power to a completely-trustworthy vendor ... any vendor, no matter how well meaning, isn't going to stay benign with that kind of power in their pocket, and Microsoft in particular has a long and well documented history of abusing exactly this sort of power.
It is an idiotic method of "security" and will likely be banned by the courts the first time it gets in the way of a subpeana.
Worse, companies will lose access to their own data, either through bugs, license management issues, lost keys/pass phrases, or a failure to upgrade on Microsoft's schedule.
Only an imbecelic IT manager would consider effectively turning over the keys
You need security and encryption? Use PGP and a good passphrase. Too difficult for you? Then get literate already. Burning down the libraries is not a cure for illiteracy, and handing complete power over your commercial data to a software monopolist is not a cure for computer illiteracy. Only education coupled with a willingness to learn is, and I suspect many, many such foolish companies will pay a very heavy price when they go down this particular road.
If administrators can't distinguish "good" traffic from "bad" traffic, they will have no choice but to simply remove any access at all to the Internet from the problem subnets, namely dorms.
... namely sharing music ... then of course a reasonable solution like that won't work, and encryption will lead to the intellectual downgrading of the campus back to 1970 standards...actually even less than that, as it would be a campus that, for underclassmen, is one effectively sans internet and, if the University is serious about banning all encrypted traffic that might possibly, one day, contain something they don't like, sans networked student labs and arguable sans a library.
Any administrator making that sort of a decision is an incompetent moron, at best.
So, encrypt the traffic. Make it so that nobody can tell what's inside the stream. That's dandy. But if P2P usage makes it such that researchers can't get the resources or bandwidth do actually do their work or are significantly impacted (the argument of whether researchers are doing anything more than reading Slashdot or Dilbert is for a separate post), even if the traffic isn't recognized as P2P per se, you can bet that this will be the next step.
With even rudimentary traffic shaping capabilities this problem is easilly solved without removing a single person's access. Simply allocate a small percentage (say, 10%) of the outgoing and incoming bandwidth to the problem sites (the Library, student housing, and probably most student labs) for ALL traffic, encrypted or otherwise, and leave the other 90% for "serious research."
Of course, even that's draconian, as most "serious research" doesn't require a streaming mega-pipe to get done. 30%/70% is probably more reasonable.
That is, if the interest is really about keeping bandwidth open and not about kowtowing to the media cartels of southern california and new york city. On the other hand, if this is some self-righteous intellectual property proponent with a bug up their ass and an insatiable appetite for making an example of students who are simply doing what students have been doing since sheet music was invented
Nice solution to what is, in the hands of a capable network administrator, a non-problem.
I'm a Libertarian (card-carrying member of the Libertarian Party) and I think this is exactly the way it should go (and I'd expand it to include TV).
... I'd tend to agree with you that state oversight might be better, as states tend to be more effecient than the federal beaurocracy (though with the corruption at the state level and less public interest, that advantage might be muted).
My only quibble is that I think it should be the states that do the "nationalizing".
I have often argued this point as well, though whether it is states or the federal government is of less interest to me than simply getting this resource out of the hands of monopolists.
Telephone lines are like highways. Can you imagine if every shipping company owned its own set of roads going to your house? There is a time and a place for public works, and a time and a place for private land ownership. Highways, water mains, telephone lines, the public airwaves, and data lines are clearly the former, while my home is clearly the latter.
State Highways vs. Federal Highways
Unfortunately, such an approach would cut into the FCC's power, and Baby Powell would almost certainly have a hissy fit, putting the entire thing in jeapordy (and the courts) if the states tried to do it. On the other hand, if the federal government were to do it, it might be more successful, and even if it were ultimately less effecient it would still be vastly more effecient than the oligopolies and monopolies we suffer under today. Witness rural canada's exceptional DSL service, not to mention S. Korea's, Japan's, etc...cheap, multi-megabit bandwidth standing in stark contrast to the limited availability and slow connection speeds available at any price to those of us beneath SBC Ameritech's yoke in downtown Chicago.
I think I've been reading too much about this stuff lately, but I have a hard time believing that the US Government would do anything that so explicitly hurts corporations without providing overwhelming benefit to citizens. It's clear that privacy is important to people, but copyright isn't a huge deal in everyday life.
... which is not a given unless folks like yourself choose to be.)
Shortening copyright doesn't hurt the vast, vast majority of corporations at all, and it increases business opportunity for resellers of public domain works (more books published by more publishers, etc.). It only hurts a very, very few large cartels who happen to engage in a negative-sum game of locking down large swaths of our culture and preventing others, businesses and individuals alike, from participating.
Furthermore, copyright most assuradle does affect all of our lives, very intimately, and were it ubiquitiously enforced (as will happen in the digital age if the recording and media cartels have their say), you would probably be shocked at the things you wouldn't be allowed to do, or would be required to pay in order to do.
As an example, having friends invite additional friends to a party where music is playing, or a video is being shown on your television. That kills most large parties, from high school on up through middle age. Remember, public showing is defined as anyone not in your immediate circle of friends, so your good freind Joe's new girlfriend he brought doesn't (yet) fall into the category. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
The books we learn from, the music we hear, the television we watch, the songs we sing (including Happy Birthday and numerous Christmas Carols), the icons of our culture (Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer IIRC, and certainly Micky Mouse et. al.) are all privatly owned, copyrighted material.
I guess I just don't have the energy to help reinstate a government "of the people, for the people, and by the people" because it would have to be done from without, not within.
You, and the teaming masses just like you, are why we have become a plutocracy, and why our children may never know what a functioning democracy ever was. If people like yourself don't get off their asses and get involved in the political system, you will have only yourselves to blame when the jackboots come a-knocking. And, if the PATRIOT and PATRIOT II legislation is any indication, a-knocking they will certainly come.
So get off your lazy (tired, whatever) ass and do something a little more constructive than bemoaning the "inevitable", which is only "inevitable" if you choose to make it so through your own inaction.
Don't allow politicians to accept donations from anyone/thing that doesn't have a right to vote. The barriers of entry to this system, like so many other things, prevent really new ideas from coming into it.
The get out there and promote your solution to the problem. Politicians do ultimately listen to votes, not dollars, but as long as people like yourself remain inactive dollars will equal votes. This relationship however vanishes quite quickly when the populace actually does get off their ass and take to the streets on a particular subject (consider Abortion, for example, and historically Civil Rights, the lower voting age, and the end of the Vietnam War as examples where public discontent trumped moneyed interests. Money only carries a politician when the people are passive and apathetic
The Science Daily article refers to leprosy throughout though, suggesting that North America stills prefer that nomenclature. Is this some kind of accreditation thing, akin to Farnsworth and Baird?
... and I say this as one who supports feminism, is a devout believer in the inherent social and legal equality of all people, indeed, a supporter of the vast majority of points so-called PC language attempts to promote through a newspeak style shaping of social discourse.
In other news, America continues to call a Spade a Spade, while still being unable with the next breath to refer to a crippled man as handicaped but rather "differently abled." Meanwhile Europe calls a software monopolist a software monopolist, but is unable to utter the word "leprosy", instead opting for more obfuscated and thusly less potent term, "Hansen's Disease."
I have grown to loath the political correctness of both America and Europe (which are very different from one another, by the way, yet equally obnoxious and quite toxic to clear, independent thought). I dislike dogma, and especially the kind of dancing around the facts that PC language implicity requires
The approach is wrong and disingenuous, and it is time we got rid of it. Hansen's disease indeed. Feh. It is leprosy, with all that that implies.
Ironically native Americans I met when visiting Navaho Nation still call themselves "Indians" (and expect you to as well), despite the apparent reluctance on the part of the rest of the country (sports fans excepted) to use the term. "Native American" is one of the few PC terms I actually agree with, as it removes ambiguity from the language and offers a real improvement. African American vs. Black on the other hand is merely another in a series of disposable words, like "colored" and "negro", two once entirely respectful words which, just as African American will someday be, have been discarded on the scrap heap of "no longer accepted terms we got rid of in the hopes of glossing over an unpleasant bit of history." Perhaps the next iteration, in another 15 or 20 years, will be "pigment-endowed," or perhaps "Nubian American."
But of all the PC terms in circulation today, renaming diseases because of negative associations with those diseases is beyond asinine, it is beneath the most feeble intellect housed within a human skull. Shall we rename Anthrax "Letter-box Syndrome", Small Pox "Dubya's Disease", and Lou Gehrig's Disease "Stephen Hawking's Affliction?" once enough of us have seen Lou Gehrig's in action to form a negative opinion about it?
Feh. Leprosy is leprosy, political correctness be damned.