Like a PGP key-signing party -- remember those? -- but without the party, and only a surly union-slug postal clerk instead of dozens of new and interesting techie friends. Too bad it never really caught on except as a way to check your open-source downloads.
I am concerned that what begins as a voluntary initiative will one day become quasi-mandatory, like carrying a driver's license.
just a reiteration of some of the nastier racist formulas
Well then, Shuji Nakamura must be a nasty anti-Japanese racist too, since he makes essentially the same arguments. I guess that's just 'drivel' to you, and never mind that he is the most accomplished Japanese scientist since Shinichiro Tomonaga.
Did you bother to read the link I provided? Would you please do so, and then also go read this white paper from a representative of the Japanese ministry of science and technology. It not only reiterates many of the same points I have made, but provides quantitative statistics and pertinent examples to back them up. Oh, and read this article from the Japan Times, too.
Nasty racism, indeed. Chirping politically-correct twits like you cheapen the term 'racist' and dishonor the memory of true victims of racism. You think calling someone a 'racist' or 'mean-spirited' or 'bourgeois' settles all arguments. Wait until you get out of college, you stupid little nose-picker, and see how things really are in the world.
Q: Why is Japan so much more advanced than the U.S. and other 1st world nations?
You are begging the question here, assuming as true that which you wish to prove.
In some regards Japan is more advanced (robots, miniaturized consumer electronics, catering to every bizarre sexual fetish.) In other fields it is not (stealth aircraft, computer operating systems, GPS.)
Since WWII, Japan has not been allowed greater than a 1000 person National Guard
This is complete rubbish. The SDF is an army in all but name and far larger than 1000 men, although rather lacking in airlift and heavy weapons capability.
and is otherwise protected by the US's armed forces.
True. Damn freeloaders. But better that, than reviving the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.
This has many effects. One is more money to spend on technological R&D.
Japan's government has poured billions down the R & D rathole, trying to choose technology winners in advance and shape their development. Remember fifth-generation computing? Most of this money is wasted, or at best can be described as subsidies for non-competitive but politically connected corporations.
Another is more money to spend on education, which leads to a smarter population capable of making huge technology leaps.
Much of the extra time spent on education in Japan is devoted to learning the 10,000 (or is it 25,000?) ideographic characters that an educated Japanese must know. We, on the other hand, learn our alphabet in first grade and add modest increments of orthography up to about sixth grade, after which it ceases to be taught at all.
Moreover, the Japanese educational milieu is brutally suppressive of creative thinking and independence. Regimented rote learning begins in early childhood and continues through the high school years, suppplemented by "cram schools" to prepare for the rigorous but irrelevant college entrance examinations. Once in college, students snooze through four years of studies. Even the mighty Todai is a joke compared to any second-tier research university in America, much less Harvard or Cal Tech.
After college, the salaryman goes to work in a big company doing mind-numbing work in a rigid hierarchy, churning out well-made but derivative consumer goods. Or he stays in academia where the hierarchy is, if anything, even worse. Maybe after he has been a professor's dogsbody for fifteen years he can get his name on a paper, or maybe not, if the lab director doesn't like him.
In truth, you could hardly imagine a system that would stifle independent thought more effectively. If the Japanese succeed in scientific endeavors like the blue LED, it is in spite of their educational system rather than because of it. And most of the true scientific breakthroughs seem still to come from us hairy gai-jin barbarians; the reams of patents the Japanese file are typically concerned with minor variations on trivial matters like building a better dildo or toilet.
As a final note, I have seen the inside of a Japanese classroom. It is spartan to a degree that would not be believed in even a poor neighborhood in the US. I guarantee you that we spend more per student per year in this country, especially in big-city systems where teaching and learning are secondary to providing jobs for otherwise unemployable union thugs and political hacks.
Furthermore, the Japanese have other cultural factors that contribute alongside these economic factors to create an environment suited very well for developing bleeding edge technology.
Since you brought it up-- I assume what you are likely referring to is the racial and social strictures that would boggle the mind of most young Americans.
The Japanese are the most racist people on earth, by a wide margin. Koreans whose families have lived in Japan for centuries are denied citizenship and barely tole
Bull-fucking-shit. She's perfect, and anyone who says otherwise has bought into the perverted ideal of feminine "fashion" where women are supposed to look like fourteen-year-old boys.
Reject the tyranny of homosexual fashion designers and magazine art directors. They are all filthy pedophile perverts. Accept women for how they ought to be.
The worst oppressors of women are faggots sucking shit off their boyfriends' cocks.
the type of code necessary for safety critical systems is really unsuited to open source. safety code is built with formal verification, then scientific lab testing.
I don't agree with you. This dive computer had a design error, not a programming error. All the algorithm verification in the world wouldn't have caught this error. But if the code had been published open source, maybe someone would have caught the erroneous assumption that a diver on the surface would continue to breathe the Nitrox mixture instead of taking out his regulator and breathing normally.
It may be true that open source as a method of creating the code would be inefficient. But publishing the source so anyone could review it might have avoided a tragedy.
Me neither. I've thought long and hard about it, but finally decided that it's not worth the risk. I make my living with my eyes.
What works well for me is ordinary spectacles for work and daily wear, with disposable contact lenses for occasional use. I put them in before I swim, ski, scuba, go out for an evening with my wife, etc. Then before I go to bed, I discard them. Never a problem.
I used to watch lousy cartoons (Roger Ramjet anyone?) with a bowl of sugary cereal on Saturday mornings. They also had a few even worse Sunday morning cartoons, if you recall, interspersed among the sweaty ranting TV preachers. I watched those too, with another bowl of Sugar Smacks.
My son plays Little League and goes swimming on weekends, because he can watch better cartoons any time he wants.
I've had two Olympus digital cameras. One failed after it fell from a table to a carpeted floor. The other failed after only about 100 pictures for no reason at all.
Canon or Nikon are supposed to be more durable, based on what I've read. I'll be getting a Digital Elph soon.
It's a travesty that McDonalds had to pay even one penny to this stupid old cow and her filthy leech lawyers. I don't care if they served the fucking coffee at a full rolling boil.
Or do you just prefer to libel innocent people who get hurt by corporations?
Libel huh? Who would think of that first, but a fucking lawyer parasite?
God Almighty do I hate lawyers. We need to smash the legal system. Limits on punitive damages, punitives paid to the state general fund instead of the scum sucking lawyers, loser-pays rules, no more contingency fees. Just for a start. Drive them out of business by the hundreds of thousands.
9 out of every 10 lawyers are useless fucking wastes of oxygen dragging down this country's economy. I want to see them unemployed, selling apples on the street corner, and hear the lamentations of their homeless wives and children.
You go on and on about Jeb and Florida, but forget that voter fraud is by and large a Democrat specialty.
Would you find it surprising that black Republicans in the 2000 Florida election had a 50-fold higher likelihood of having their ballots invalidated than black Democrats? It's true. That's because the precincts where so many blacks had their votes stolen were actually under the control of the Democratic machine.
Statistical analysis shows that by far the most likely reason for so many "double punched" ballots in black Florida precincts was that Democratic operatives took stacks of ballots after the voting and ran ice picks through the Gore hole. Gore votes were unchanged; Bush and Buchanan votes were rejected because of double punching. This is also why there were so many hanging chads; the ice picks did not separate the chads cleanly.
Lewinsky had no bearing on how well he ran the country.
Horse shit. It was a gross breach of security. Such behavior exposed him to blackmail. What if Lewinsky had been an agent of Mossad? It was also, according to feminist dogma, sexual harrassment of an underling.
He wouldn't have been able to get a job as a janitor at the CIA, if he had to go through the same security clearance process as everyone else working in sensitive jobs in the executive branch.
The first time he stuck his cock in Monica's mouth, he became unfit to hold a position of trust, regardless of your opinion of the morality of his actions. The Senate was guilty of dereliction of duty for not removing him from office. It boggles my mind that apparently serious people could argue otherwise.
True, the BBC is taxpayer-funded and doesn't need to worry too much about ratings
Or balance, or truth, or objectivity...
Even by English standards, the BBC newsroom is a pack of loony-left Trotskyites at the fringes of respectable opinion. They are as anti-American as anyone in Europe.
which is fine if they would not jump on a high horse and berate the US
I think it's comical that the French, of all people, think they are in any position to pontificate to anyone about how to treat the poor downtrodden Third World.
The French (and Belgians) set the world's standard for cruel, rapacious colonialism for generations.
Their paranoia about preserving the Francophonie induces them to support one thieving French-speaking tyrant after another after another, and they send the Foreign Legion into a different piss-ant African nation practically every year.
Every decent Frenchman turned his back on France as soon as he could, and now the only good ones left are over here. The rest are contemptible putains de merde, by and large.
I hear so much supercilious bitching from the PC zealots about the one button mouse, so it bears repeating: Use any goddamn USB mouse you want and it will probably work fine. You won't even need to install a driver, unlike some shitty OS's out there. Plug it in and then right-click and scroll until your fingernails fall off.
I use a MacAlly two button optical mouse with a scroll wheel. Absolutely bullet proof.
I agree that Apple should think about making the two button mouse standard, but doubt it will happen as long as the monomaniacal genius Jobs is in charge.
The most useful book I have read is Mac OS X Unleashed, by Ray. Packed with useful information at an intermediate to advanced level. Has the best discussion of NetInfo I have found.
Kelby's Mac OS X Killer Tips is also pretty good for icon surfing and exploring the UI.
Considering the facts, and my personal behavior, my chances of getting HIV/AIDS are nearly nil.
Didn't you get the memo? Please tell me you remember that AIDS is a threat to everyone, it's racist and homophobic to point out any behavioral aspects of its transmission, and the fact that it still exists at all is Ronald Reagan's fault. Sheesh. Now come on back to the bath-house for some barebacking, cupcake.
Apple has also cultivated a fanatical following, who have long since accepted the fact that Apple eschews long-term backward compatibility.
This is the most ridiculous thing in the whole article. Obviously he has forgotten the 68k emulator after the PowerPC changeover, as well as the Classic environment on OS X, both of which have worked perfectly in my experience.
Furthermore, I think there is a higher proportion of old Apple machines still running than equivalent old PC's. I saw an SE/30 doing a fine job as a mail server not that long ago. How many people are still using 286/386 vintage stuff?
People who confuse true intelligence with the ability to hire a ghostwriter seem to think of Gore as some kind of intellectual. Sorry guys. He was a B/C student, a law school dropout, and a divinity school dropout. Loser with a big L. He'd be managing a Nashville K-mart if not for his daddy's pull.
W, on the other hand, completed an MBA. His family name may have got him into Harvard but it didn't get him out.
Slashdot Mirror
I am concerned that what begins as a voluntary initiative will one day become quasi-mandatory, like carrying a driver's license.
-ccm
Well then, Shuji Nakamura must be a nasty anti-Japanese racist too, since he makes essentially the same arguments. I guess that's just 'drivel' to you, and never mind that he is the most accomplished Japanese scientist since Shinichiro Tomonaga.
Did you bother to read the link I provided? Would you please do so, and then also go read this white paper from a representative of the Japanese ministry of science and technology. It not only reiterates many of the same points I have made, but provides quantitative statistics and pertinent examples to back them up. Oh, and read this article from the Japan Times, too.
Nasty racism, indeed. Chirping politically-correct twits like you cheapen the term 'racist' and dishonor the memory of true victims of racism. You think calling someone a 'racist' or 'mean-spirited' or 'bourgeois' settles all arguments. Wait until you get out of college, you stupid little nose-picker, and see how things really are in the world.
-ccm
You are begging the question here, assuming as true that which you wish to prove.
In some regards Japan is more advanced (robots, miniaturized consumer electronics, catering to every bizarre sexual fetish.) In other fields it is not (stealth aircraft, computer operating systems, GPS.)
Since WWII, Japan has not been allowed greater than a 1000 person National Guard
This is complete rubbish. The SDF is an army in all but name and far larger than 1000 men, although rather lacking in airlift and heavy weapons capability.
and is otherwise protected by the US's armed forces.
True. Damn freeloaders. But better that, than reviving the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.
This has many effects. One is more money to spend on technological R&D.
Japan's government has poured billions down the R & D rathole, trying to choose technology winners in advance and shape their development. Remember fifth-generation computing? Most of this money is wasted, or at best can be described as subsidies for non-competitive but politically connected corporations.
Another is more money to spend on education, which leads to a smarter population capable of making huge technology leaps.
Much of the extra time spent on education in Japan is devoted to learning the 10,000 (or is it 25,000?) ideographic characters that an educated Japanese must know. We, on the other hand, learn our alphabet in first grade and add modest increments of orthography up to about sixth grade, after which it ceases to be taught at all.
Moreover, the Japanese educational milieu is brutally suppressive of creative thinking and independence. Regimented rote learning begins in early childhood and continues through the high school years, suppplemented by "cram schools" to prepare for the rigorous but irrelevant college entrance examinations. Once in college, students snooze through four years of studies. Even the mighty Todai is a joke compared to any second-tier research university in America, much less Harvard or Cal Tech.
After college, the salaryman goes to work in a big company doing mind-numbing work in a rigid hierarchy, churning out well-made but derivative consumer goods. Or he stays in academia where the hierarchy is, if anything, even worse. Maybe after he has been a professor's dogsbody for fifteen years he can get his name on a paper, or maybe not, if the lab director doesn't like him.
In truth, you could hardly imagine a system that would stifle independent thought more effectively. If the Japanese succeed in scientific endeavors like the blue LED, it is in spite of their educational system rather than because of it. And most of the true scientific breakthroughs seem still to come from us hairy gai-jin barbarians; the reams of patents the Japanese file are typically concerned with minor variations on trivial matters like building a better dildo or toilet.
As a final note, I have seen the inside of a Japanese classroom. It is spartan to a degree that would not be believed in even a poor neighborhood in the US. I guarantee you that we spend more per student per year in this country, especially in big-city systems where teaching and learning are secondary to providing jobs for otherwise unemployable union thugs and political hacks.
Furthermore, the Japanese have other cultural factors that contribute alongside these economic factors to create an environment suited very well for developing bleeding edge technology.
Since you brought it up-- I assume what you are likely referring to is the racial and social strictures that would boggle the mind of most young Americans.
The Japanese are the most racist people on earth, by a wide margin. Koreans whose families have lived in Japan for centuries are denied citizenship and barely tole
Bull-fucking-shit. She's perfect, and anyone who says otherwise has bought into the perverted ideal of feminine "fashion" where women are supposed to look like fourteen-year-old boys.
Reject the tyranny of homosexual fashion designers and magazine art directors. They are all filthy pedophile perverts. Accept women for how they ought to be.
The worst oppressors of women are faggots sucking shit off their boyfriends' cocks.
-ccm
I don't agree with you. This dive computer had a design error, not a programming error. All the algorithm verification in the world wouldn't have caught this error. But if the code had been published open source, maybe someone would have caught the erroneous assumption that a diver on the surface would continue to breathe the Nitrox mixture instead of taking out his regulator and breathing normally.
It may be true that open source as a method of creating the code would be inefficient. But publishing the source so anyone could review it might have avoided a tragedy.
-ccm
Me neither. I've thought long and hard about it, but finally decided that it's not worth the risk. I make my living with my eyes.
What works well for me is ordinary spectacles for work and daily wear, with disposable contact lenses for occasional use. I put them in before I swim, ski, scuba, go out for an evening with my wife, etc. Then before I go to bed, I discard them. Never a problem.
-ccm
-ccm
My son plays Little League and goes swimming on weekends, because he can watch better cartoons any time he wants.
-ccm
Canon or Nikon are supposed to be more durable, based on what I've read. I'll be getting a Digital Elph soon.
-ccm
Sure. That's what insurance or Medicare is for.
It's a travesty that McDonalds had to pay even one penny to this stupid old cow and her filthy leech lawyers. I don't care if they served the fucking coffee at a full rolling boil.
Or do you just prefer to libel innocent people who get hurt by corporations?
Libel huh? Who would think of that first, but a fucking lawyer parasite?
God Almighty do I hate lawyers. We need to smash the legal system. Limits on punitive damages, punitives paid to the state general fund instead of the scum sucking lawyers, loser-pays rules, no more contingency fees. Just for a start. Drive them out of business by the hundreds of thousands.
9 out of every 10 lawyers are useless fucking wastes of oxygen dragging down this country's economy. I want to see them unemployed, selling apples on the street corner, and hear the lamentations of their homeless wives and children.
-ccm
Would you find it surprising that black Republicans in the 2000 Florida election had a 50-fold higher likelihood of having their ballots invalidated than black Democrats? It's true. That's because the precincts where so many blacks had their votes stolen were actually under the control of the Democratic machine.
Statistical analysis shows that by far the most likely reason for so many "double punched" ballots in black Florida precincts was that Democratic operatives took stacks of ballots after the voting and ran ice picks through the Gore hole. Gore votes were unchanged; Bush and Buchanan votes were rejected because of double punching. This is also why there were so many hanging chads; the ice picks did not separate the chads cleanly.
Maybe you think it is normal for minority precincts to report 99.94% voter registration, 100% voter turnout, with 90%+ of votes for the Democratic candidate, and always reporting after the Republican county vote totals come in. I don't.
If voter fraud is ever stamped out completely, the Democrats can kiss the White House goodbye for a generation.
-ccm
So because mean old John Ashcroft makes you wet yourself, vote fraud is OK? Spoken like a true Democrat.
-ccm
You have answered your own question.
-ccm
Horse shit. It was a gross breach of security. Such behavior exposed him to blackmail. What if Lewinsky had been an agent of Mossad? It was also, according to feminist dogma, sexual harrassment of an underling.
He wouldn't have been able to get a job as a janitor at the CIA, if he had to go through the same security clearance process as everyone else working in sensitive jobs in the executive branch.
The first time he stuck his cock in Monica's mouth, he became unfit to hold a position of trust, regardless of your opinion of the morality of his actions. The Senate was guilty of dereliction of duty for not removing him from office. It boggles my mind that apparently serious people could argue otherwise.
-ccm
Or balance, or truth, or objectivity...
Even by English standards, the BBC newsroom is a pack of loony-left Trotskyites at the fringes of respectable opinion. They are as anti-American as anyone in Europe.
-ccm
I think it's comical that the French, of all people, think they are in any position to pontificate to anyone about how to treat the poor downtrodden Third World.
The French (and Belgians) set the world's standard for cruel, rapacious colonialism for generations.
Their paranoia about preserving the Francophonie induces them to support one thieving French-speaking tyrant after another after another, and they send the Foreign Legion into a different piss-ant African nation practically every year.
Every decent Frenchman turned his back on France as soon as he could, and now the only good ones left are over here. The rest are contemptible putains de merde, by and large.
-ccm
I use a MacAlly two button optical mouse with a scroll wheel. Absolutely bullet proof.
I agree that Apple should think about making the two button mouse standard, but doubt it will happen as long as the monomaniacal genius Jobs is in charge.
-ccm
-ccm
Didn't you get the memo? Please tell me you remember that AIDS is a threat to everyone, it's racist and homophobic to point out any behavioral aspects of its transmission, and the fact that it still exists at all is Ronald Reagan's fault. Sheesh. Now come on back to the bath-house for some barebacking, cupcake.
-ccm
This is the most ridiculous thing in the whole article. Obviously he has forgotten the 68k emulator after the PowerPC changeover, as well as the Classic environment on OS X, both of which have worked perfectly in my experience.
Furthermore, I think there is a higher proportion of old Apple machines still running than equivalent old PC's. I saw an SE/30 doing a fine job as a mail server not that long ago. How many people are still using 286/386 vintage stuff?
-ccm
Yup. What's your point?
-ccm
I beg your pardon but W. does indeed have an MBA from Harvard to go with his bachelor's degree from Yale.
Not that I give a shit about the Ivy League anyway, but it seems clear that his academic record beats Gore hollow.
-ccm
And a big boom, a fountain of water and an oil slick would then say "F**K YOU IVAN." Not that that's a bad thing...
-ccm
-ccm
W, on the other hand, completed an MBA. His family name may have got him into Harvard but it didn't get him out.
-ccm