Well, yes, the first was real, no doubt about that. But they're backsliding.
Look at the much-balloyhooed WHO health study that recently put the US barely ahead of Cuba, at 37 and 39 respectively. Health care is a good example of how a government treats its people. China in WAY down the list, at 144. If you get cancer in China, and have no money, you die. That's not exactly the system the revolutionaries of the 40s envisioned.
To their credit, the Chinese gov't and intellectuals of every political persuasion know they have a problem, and they'll fix it in the way they think is best. Actually, I have a certain amount of faith in their ability to bring it off without the terror and mass murder of previous revolutions.
We hear about the well-publicized cases but not the pervasiveness of day to day censorship. Imagine your local school board in charge, not some abstract federal agency like the CIA that one has contact with. Look at all the emails in TFA - they come from a real person with a real email address. not an anonymous entity.
In westernized, urban area, all this gets done "automatically" - like/. moderation almost. The "silent majority" goes about their business, a hole in the wall internet cafe gets closed down, no one gets arrested, business as usual.
In the sticks, it gets more personal. You know who's censoring your life, who the corrupt officials are. Life in general can suck pretty bad because of the huge disparity between urban rich and farm poor, and there has been some civil unrest. This is what is keeping the Chinese Government awake at night, and this is where things get nasty. Few Westerners venture into these places, and we only hear in the West about them when something bad happens..
So this is why they censor - the danger of a real, second, Proletarian Revolution. If I was a new middle class city dweller with a family, apartment, business, new car, I'd have some tough choices to make on this issue.
There actually seem to be very few IE-only sites left. Firefox 2 is VERY good about dealing with IE-centric sites. The compatibility problems are with earlier versions of IE, and earlier versions of Firefox.
And with the giant turd-ball of shite known as Flash 9.
We just went through this with a design company that others-who-shall-not-be-named hired to "design" our new corporate web site. They delivered pages that were only compatible with IE7 and Flash 9. Actually, they worked with Firefox and Flash 9, too, but crashed IE 6 and earlier versions of Flash.
We had to argue with them a bit to get them to deliver a IE 6 and Flash 8 compatible site (sorry, the others-who-shall-not-be-named insist on a Flash site). Finally they had to send a guy on site to our office for a day to fix their broken stuff - because they had no non-IE7 non-Flash 9 environment to test in.
If you're an Australian, for heaven's sake, your country barely has more than 20 million population, about 10% more than the population of the LA + Riverside + San Diego metropolitan areas. You have a bicameral legisature, with many members: 150 in the house and 76 senators, that's about 135000 per district for the house, as opposed to about 680000 in the US.
Plus, I don't keep up with Australian media, but my guess is the budget for a run for parliament is a minuscule fraction of what it is in the US or even in the UK, and that is doesn't take a any more effort to get face time with your representative than it does for me to get face time with my California "assemblyman" (state house of rep.) or county executive.
In any democracy, lazy and cynical people get the government they deserve.
According to our web stats, about 8% of our viewers are using Vista.
That's not an insubstantial share, especially since most of our viewers are probably corporate users and it's a bigger PITA for them to upgrade than a home user.
NASA and the FAA are actively promoting this idea, so cynicism about Homeland Security blocking this is probably unjustified. Real-world IFR conditions, drunk pilots, computer failures, poorly maintained vehicles, and $148K not exactly being an entry-level price point are more realistic obstacles.
Although it's more of a goofball NASA idea than anything the FAA will ever have resources to carry out in the next century. NASA' vision is a fully automated system - just like Blade Runner and the Fifth Element, especially the dystopic future part where the rich swells live in their fortified country palaces and the proles make do with their hovels in the huge city:
""It is not intended for use by short-distance commuters, by people running errands, or for any trip through city traffic or under 100 miles... if you travel between 100 and 500 miles at a stretch, particularly if your trip is either starting or ending in a more suburban or rural area, then the Transition® is for you"
Well, like most religions, you start out armed only with a big, heavy book you can whack people on the head with it, and before you know it you've got a BFG9000 in your hands.
There are a few discerpancies - for example the 92.0.0.0/8 block is solid blue but not on the bogons list, and it looks like APNIC has started to hand out blocks in this subnet.
Some blocks, like 10.0.0.0, ale "bluer" than others - ??
The standards don't make the companies save the data. On the contrary, they PROHIBIT saving the data. The problem is that a lot of PCI systems save the data by default, and merchants either can't figure out how to stop it, or try to stop it but the software saves it anyway. Few of the vendors getting vendors getting caught deliberately save it for their own convenience.
These are turnkey systems designed to be operated by non-experts. Naughty naughty code.
This is the same outfit that rips off tourists by giving lousy exchange rates at those change booths at the airport.
Last month I went to Europe and just put everything on the MasterCard. Zero fees, optimum exchange rate.
Not everyone may be so lucky - my card charges nothing for out of the country purchases and a 3% fee plus interest on ATM withdrawals, which turns out to be one of the lowest. My wife's card, though, charges over 10% fees on foreign ATM's. So Travelex may not be such a bad deal if you have a truly crappy charge card.
Geekoid had the better point. Actually, I would include PDF Reader as a "method right now to help ILLITERATE people become literate". Maybe even the OLPC "killer app", along with some kind of lightweight spreadsheet, graphing calculator, or graphing programming language. I am sure there may be others, but I don't think web surfing is one of them. You do need internet access on a OLPC type device, if only to update the device with new material.
Mostly, I just resent my tax dollars and kids' time being wasted on computer literacy projects. If I could, I'd send my kids to a school with no computers. Ask any teacher - until they are high school age, there's nothing they can't learn better from a good teacher. PCs in schools are the modern day equivalent of the "lets watch movies day" lampooned on the Simpsons.
Dunno why I got moderated troll. I think both responses were reasonable, and personally I might even buy a OLPC device under the buy one donate one campaign.
Maybe at YOUR edge but not your carriers'. Lots of banks, some gov't agencies, etc, do this already.
This has been discussed to death and beyond on the NANOG list. No way anyone but a few have the resources to install and monitor this kind of thing, more than a few would not block on the grounds of net neutrality and "information wants to be free", and even more would end up blocking huge segments of the net either my mistake or for stupid political reasons. The "routers" are busy enough routing packets without doing deep packet inspection, and NOCs are busy enough doing whatever it is they do.
Feel free to write an RFC for it though, and good luck.
Whats worse, is the average doctor's office has at least a few legacy, broken, or half-assed attempts at computerized record management lying around. There are plain old incompetent vendors, vendors who suddenly go out of business, vendors who suddenly have incompatible platforms if the doc decides to change partnership affiliations, no backups, etc. Ask your doctor about his IT adventures next time you visit - it will be an eye-opener. And if you're an IT professional, I defy you to think of something you can do within the constraints of the doc's budget and operating requirements, except 1) Go back to paper, or 2) participate in some kind of online venture like this (and there are lots of others.)
What could possibly go wrong? Well, online banking isn't exactly a big disaster. Why would this be any different?
In California the arguments against red light cameras are bullshit. I'm tired of 3 or 4 pedestrians getting killed every month at intersections in San Francisco. Run the red light, get a ticket. Tough Shit.
In California, the ticketing process is not automated:
1) Has to be issued by a law enforcement officer after reviewing the pictures taken by the camera. 2) Has to be mailed to you within 2 1/2 weeks (or something like that.) 3) The mailing contains the photos the machine took of you, as I understand it.
I got "flashed" at an intersection is San Francisco when I rolled into the crosswalk after the light turned red. I did not get a ticket. The machine strobed three times, I was mostly stopped at the first flash, completely stopped for the second, and by the thirs had already started to back out of the crosswalk. Splitting hairs legally, I probably *did* run the light, since my wheels entered the crosswalk, but law enforcement used its dicretion, luckily in my favor.
I know in some jurisdictions the pictures are mailed off to Pakistan or whereever and you only know you got cited when your registration gets blocked in two or three years. Those laws needs to be changed.
One more thing, we just got back from a trip to France. France is blanketed with photo radar and radar-crazy Gendarmerie. You can get a ticket for going 2 kph over the limit. And guess what? No asshole drivers!! It was wonderful to drive in France.
Imagemagick does, on the command line, 90% of what I do when I manipulate photos: resize, rotate, change formats, lower the jpeg quality for posting online. Easily scripted.
There are still a few things that Gimp either doesn't do very well, or takes too many keystrokes to do: Adding text to a photo (why do I have to f*** with "layers"?), and autocropping is still brain dead (can't adjust threshold above zero-black, or at least I have not figured out how.)
Slashdot Mirror
Typical loud mouthed moron on BART (SF Bay Area subway):
.. NO ..."
LMM: "WHERE YOU AT?"
LMM: "I'M ON BART"
LMM: "BART!"
LMM: "I'M ON BART!"
LMM: "YES
LMM: "I'M ON BART!"
[Train goes in to tunnel]
LMM: "HELLO?"
LMM: "HELLO?"
LMM: "HELLO?"
[Repeat N times directly proportional to loudness and stupidness of conversation]
Well, yes, the first was real, no doubt about that. But they're backsliding.
Look at the much-balloyhooed WHO health study that recently put the US barely ahead of Cuba, at 37 and 39 respectively. Health care is a good example of how a government treats its people.
China in WAY down the list, at 144. If you get cancer in China, and have no money, you die. That's not exactly the system the revolutionaries of the 40s envisioned.
To their credit, the Chinese gov't and intellectuals of every political persuasion know they have a problem, and they'll fix it in the way they think is best. Actually, I have a certain amount of faith in their ability to bring it off without the terror and mass murder of previous revolutions.
We hear about the well-publicized cases but not the pervasiveness of day to day censorship. Imagine your local school board in charge, not some abstract federal agency like the CIA that one has contact with. Look at all the emails in TFA - they come from a real person with a real email address. not an anonymous entity.
/. moderation almost. The "silent majority" goes about their business, a hole in the wall internet cafe gets closed down, no one gets arrested, business as usual.
In westernized, urban area, all this gets done "automatically" - like
In the sticks, it gets more personal. You know who's censoring your life, who the corrupt officials are. Life in general can suck pretty bad because of the huge disparity between urban rich and farm poor, and there has been some civil unrest. This is what is keeping the Chinese Government awake at night, and this is where things get nasty. Few Westerners venture into these places, and we only hear in the West about them when something bad happens..
So this is why they censor - the danger of a real, second, Proletarian Revolution. If I was a new middle class city dweller with a family, apartment, business, new car, I'd have some tough choices to make on this issue.
There actually seem to be very few IE-only sites left. Firefox 2 is VERY good about dealing with IE-centric sites. The compatibility problems are with earlier versions of IE, and earlier versions of Firefox.
And with the giant turd-ball of shite known as Flash 9.
We just went through this with a design company that others-who-shall-not-be-named hired to "design" our new corporate web site. They delivered pages that were only compatible with IE7 and Flash 9. Actually, they worked with Firefox and Flash 9, too, but crashed IE 6 and earlier versions of Flash.
We had to argue with them a bit to get them to deliver a IE 6 and Flash 8 compatible site (sorry, the others-who-shall-not-be-named insist on a Flash site). Finally they had to send a guy on site to our office for a day to fix their broken stuff - because they had no non-IE7 non-Flash 9 environment to test in.
No one does QA anymore, anyhow, meh.
Sounds like my last job.
Based on the very funny article at
/. this site once and for all, it was the subject of a previous article today!]
http://www.meangene.com/essays/microsoft_interview.html
it's probably:
CopyAllFiles(HideouslyLongListOfFiles) {
[ pop file name off HideouslyLongListOfFiles and copy it ]
[ call CopyAllFiles(HideouslyLongListOfFiles) ]
}
Which of course leaves the door open for
CopyAFile (ListOfAllBytesInTheFile) {
[ pop a byte off ListOfAllBytesInTheFile and copy it ]
[ CopyAFile (ListOfAllBytesInTheFile) ]
}
[Might as well
If you're an Australian, for heaven's sake, your country barely has more than 20 million population, about 10% more than the population of the LA + Riverside + San Diego metropolitan areas. You have a bicameral legisature, with many members: 150 in the house and 76 senators, that's about 135000 per district for the house, as opposed to about 680000 in the US.
Plus, I don't keep up with Australian media, but my guess is the budget for a run for parliament is a minuscule fraction of what it is in the US or even in the UK, and that is doesn't take a any more effort to get face time with your representative than it does for me to get face time with my California "assemblyman" (state house of rep.) or county executive.
In any democracy, lazy and cynical people get the government they deserve.
Natalie Portman can cover me with Greenpeace bumper stickers anytime!
Except when you pull the trigger a flag pops out of the barrel that says, "PWNED!"
1) Government wants s33kr1t network to spy on alleged troublemakers.
2) AT&T and Verizon cooperate, Quest refuses.
3) Contract goes to AT&T and Verizon, blows off Quest.
4) Duh!
According to our web stats, about 8% of our viewers are using Vista.
That's not an insubstantial share, especially since most of our viewers are probably corporate users and it's a bigger PITA for them to upgrade than a home user.
NASA and the FAA are actively promoting this idea, so cynicism about Homeland Security blocking this is probably unjustified. Real-world IFR conditions, drunk pilots, computer failures, poorly maintained vehicles, and $148K not exactly being an entry-level price point are more realistic obstacles.
... if you travel between 100 and 500 miles at a stretch, particularly if your trip is either starting or ending in a more suburban or rural area, then the Transition® is for you"
Although it's more of a goofball NASA idea than anything the FAA will ever have resources to carry out in the next century. NASA' vision is a fully automated system - just like Blade Runner and the Fifth Element, especially the dystopic future part where the rich swells live in their fortified country palaces and the proles make do with their hovels in the huge city:
""It is not intended for use by short-distance commuters, by people running errands, or for any trip through city traffic or under 100 miles
Well, like most religions, you start out armed only with a big, heavy book you can whack people on the head with it, and before you know it you've got a BFG9000 in your hands.
There are a few discerpancies - for example the 92.0.0.0/8 block is solid blue but not on the bogons list, and it looks like APNIC has started to hand out blocks in this subnet.
Some blocks, like 10.0.0.0, ale "bluer" than others - ??
No, those IPs ARE available. All the solid blue blocks should be on the bogon list http://www.cymru.com/Documents/bogon-dd.html and not even be routable anywhere.
1) [nothing]
/."
2) "In Search of Lost Time Posting to
The standards don't make the companies save the data. On the contrary, they PROHIBIT saving the data. The problem is that a lot of PCI systems save the data by default, and merchants either can't figure out how to stop it, or try to stop it but the software saves it anyway. Few of the vendors getting vendors getting caught deliberately save it for their own convenience.
These are turnkey systems designed to be operated by non-experts. Naughty naughty code.
This is the same outfit that rips off tourists by giving lousy exchange rates at those change booths at the airport.
Last month I went to Europe and just put everything on the MasterCard. Zero fees, optimum exchange rate.
Not everyone may be so lucky - my card charges nothing for out of the country purchases and a 3% fee plus interest on ATM withdrawals, which turns out to be one of the lowest. My wife's card, though, charges over 10% fees on foreign ATM's. So Travelex may not be such a bad deal if you have a truly crappy charge card.
There's a ginormous difference between a random word you find on Google and something that is acceptable English usage.
Geekoid had the better point. Actually, I would include PDF Reader as a "method right now to help ILLITERATE people become literate". Maybe even the OLPC "killer app", along with some kind of lightweight spreadsheet, graphing calculator, or graphing programming language. I am sure there may be others, but I don't think web surfing is one of them. You do need internet access on a OLPC type device, if only to update the device with new material.
Mostly, I just resent my tax dollars and kids' time being wasted on computer literacy projects. If I could, I'd send my kids to a school with no computers. Ask any teacher - until they are high school age, there's nothing they can't learn better from a good teacher. PCs in schools are the modern day equivalent of the "lets watch movies day" lampooned on the Simpsons.
Dunno why I got moderated troll. I think both responses were reasonable, and personally I might even buy a OLPC device under the buy one donate one campaign.
Maybe at YOUR edge but not your carriers'. Lots of banks, some gov't agencies, etc, do this already.
This has been discussed to death and beyond on the NANOG list. No way anyone but a few have the resources to install and monitor this kind of thing, more than a few would not block on the grounds of net neutrality and "information wants to be free", and even more would end up blocking huge segments of the net either my mistake or for stupid political reasons. The "routers" are busy enough routing packets without doing deep packet inspection, and NOCs are busy enough doing whatever it is they do.
Feel free to write an RFC for it though, and good luck.
Whats worse, is the average doctor's office has at least a few legacy, broken, or half-assed attempts at computerized record management lying around. There are plain old incompetent vendors, vendors who suddenly go out of business, vendors who suddenly have incompatible platforms if the doc decides to change partnership affiliations, no backups, etc. Ask your doctor about his IT adventures next time you visit - it will be an eye-opener. And if you're an IT professional, I defy you to think of something you can do within the constraints of the doc's budget and operating requirements, except 1) Go back to paper, or 2) participate in some kind of online venture like this (and there are lots of others.)
What could possibly go wrong? Well, online banking isn't exactly a big disaster. Why would this be any different?
You misspelled "... new laptop using YET STILL ILLITERATE child hacker overlords."
Although to be fair I think the OLPC project is more about replacing heavy, expensive, quickly-obsoleted textbooks than anything else.
In California the arguments against red light cameras are bullshit. I'm tired of 3 or 4 pedestrians getting killed every month at intersections in San Francisco. Run the red light, get a ticket. Tough Shit.
In California, the ticketing process is not automated:
1) Has to be issued by a law enforcement officer after reviewing the pictures taken by the camera.
2) Has to be mailed to you within 2 1/2 weeks (or something like that.)
3) The mailing contains the photos the machine took of you, as I understand it.
I got "flashed" at an intersection is San Francisco when I rolled into the crosswalk after the light turned red. I did not get a ticket. The machine strobed three times, I was mostly stopped at the first flash, completely stopped for the second, and by the thirs had already started to back out of the crosswalk. Splitting hairs legally, I probably *did* run the light, since my wheels entered the crosswalk, but law enforcement used its dicretion, luckily in my favor.
I know in some jurisdictions the pictures are mailed off to Pakistan or whereever and you only know you got cited when your registration gets blocked in two or three years. Those laws needs to be changed.
One more thing, we just got back from a trip to France. France is blanketed with photo radar and radar-crazy Gendarmerie. You can get a ticket for going 2 kph over the limit. And guess what? No asshole drivers!! It was wonderful to drive in France.
Imagemagick does, on the command line, 90% of what I do when I manipulate photos: resize, rotate, change formats, lower the jpeg quality for posting online. Easily scripted.
There are still a few things that Gimp either doesn't do very well, or takes too many keystrokes to do: Adding text to a photo (why do I have to f*** with "layers"?), and autocropping is still brain dead (can't adjust threshold above zero-black, or at least I have not figured out how.)