Usually when I visit, live in, or know someone who moves to a city, the last thing on their mind is whether the fundamental infrastructure of the city could collapse and kill everybody. Usually they just want to get their shit moved and get to their new job or open their business.
They knew for over 4 decades that the levees wouldn't hold up to a cat 3.
They refused to fix it for 4 decades.
It's the fault of the damned local government and the damned local people who refused to fix it. They actively worked to prevent repairs and construction because they feared it would hurt their economy and interrupt mardi gras.
No it isn't. Here's a tip: Code runs on computers. Code can be read by both humans and computers alike. Source code or compiled code.
If someone wants to look for backdoors in the compiled Windows code, they can. It's hard, but it's not impossible. All it takes is ONE person finding one suspicious chunk of code to let the cat out of the bag.
It's not worth the risk for open source, it's not worth the risk for closed source, it's not even worth the risk for private off-the-record conversations.
And if they had smuggled something into it, the testimony before Congress would have been sealed. The fact we know about it without some kind of secret leak means that we can be confident the NSA did not think the disclosure was valuable intel.
The hardware reliability comes from having fault-tolerant, hot-swappable, redundant, well-tested hardware. The "cloud" hopes to achieve this, yet doesn't.
The software reliability comes from having fault-tolerant, well-designed, well-tested software. This takes time, sure, but it can just as easily be done with forward-thinking to allow for growth and change.
The problem is not mainframes, mainframe programmers, or PHBs resistant to change. The problem is people rushing the newest shiny, do-nothing feature, people willing to sacrifice reliability and forgo proper design and testing, vendors end-of-lifing shit for no reason other than planned obsolescence, and the general inability of people to plan ahead - opting instead to throw money at the problem later.
Hell, because of this mentality we don't even have phones that work right anymore.
If my text is of color X, then you must use all pixel elements in a specific way to render it as such.
Text can therefore only be rendered at a pixel level.
All of the fucking clear type crap just makes text blurry with shitty colored edges. No, I don't want my fucking black text to have red or blue around the edges.
This shit is fucking terrible, and god help you if you rotate your display. IT NEVER FUCKING WORKS.
They are comfortable running systems on ancient mainframes running ULTRA.
I would be comfortable doing the same thing. Why do people shit on mainframes? They may cost a lot of money and time, but they're orders of magnitude more dependable than any other server solution that exists.
When I built a new computer for my brother (who was on the same shitty rig for like 6 years) I was finally able to get rid of his Matrix green numbers screen saver.
1: Who cares where they advertise? Google can do the same. The ads are not misleading. It's a "decision engine" because (according to MS marketing) Bing is focused on quality and relevance of search results, not quantity.
2: Google toolbar is installed with some apps. How was this not a point of contention when Google did it, or when Yahoo did it, or when Ask did it, or when MSN did it, or when AOL did it, or when...
3: Some websites that used to imbed direct links are no imbedding Google searches instead.
It IS, in fact, surprising that MS has gained market share so quickly. Yahoo and Ask and other sites couldn't get shit years ago with the exact same tactics. Years later, MS tries when the game is stacked in Google's favor far more than before, and does far better than others in the past have. MS is still miles behind Google, and will likely remain miles behind Google. But their growth is nothing to dismiss.
Most MSIE updates (and more than a few non-MSIE installs) over the past few years have switched users to MSN/Live/Bing/Whatever-its-called-this-year, and it's not at all easy to straightforward to change MSIE's search provider to Google.
Complete bullshit.
The only update that "changes" your search provider is upgrading from IE7 to IE8, and that keeps your previous setting as default and walks you through how to choose your own and add/remove options. It is also trivial to change the default search provider.
So, great job of knowing what "penultimate" means, but next time work on reading and understanding the post in which it is used before accusing someone of using it wrong.
I think you mean "accusing someone of using it incorrectly".
Buddy of mine who deployed in Iraq tells a story of an insurgent whom wasn't stopped in spite of the fact that he had absorbed no less than six center of mass hits from the M9. Makes you question the wisdom of the military abandoning the Model 1911, doesn't it?
Nah, it makes me question the wisdom of training people to shoot center mass. Aim for the brain every time.
You made a SPELLING mistake, not a GRAMMATICAL mistake.
1: You made a yelling mistake, not an EMPHATIC mistake.
2: You made a lexical error, not a COMPREHENSION error.
3: You made a grammatical error, not a LOGISTIC error.
4: You're just wrong.
[1: Capitalization is not for emphasis.] [2: "Error" is correct and "mistake" is, well, an error unless I'm mistaken.] [3: "Spelling" is (in this context) a noun. "Grammatical" is an adjective. "Mistake" is a noun in both cases. The clauses do not agree with each other and do not want to be contrasted in such a manner.] [4: Swapping "you're" and "your" is in fact a grammatical error, not a spelling error.]
If you're going to be pedantic, at least do it correctly.
Slashdot Mirror
But it was the local government that refused to do the necessary repairs, maintenance, and new construction that they were told needed to be done.
For four decades.
Usually when I visit, live in, or know someone who moves to a city, the last thing on their mind is whether the fundamental infrastructure of the city could collapse and kill everybody. Usually they just want to get their shit moved and get to their new job or open their business.
That's really stupid.
Roads? Crime rate? Hospitals? Police/fire response times? Earthquakes/fires/floods/tornadoes/etc? Schools?
Fuck that shit, I've got to call UHAUL because my futon won't fit in my car.
No. It's retarded.
They knew for over 4 decades that the levees wouldn't hold up to a cat 3.
They refused to fix it for 4 decades.
It's the fault of the damned local government and the damned local people who refused to fix it.
They actively worked to prevent repairs and construction because they feared it would hurt their economy and interrupt mardi gras.
What?
Terrible analogy.
No it isn't.
Here's a tip: Code runs on computers. Code can be read by both humans and computers alike. Source code or compiled code.
If someone wants to look for backdoors in the compiled Windows code, they can. It's hard, but it's not impossible. All it takes is ONE person finding one suspicious chunk of code to let the cat out of the bag.
It's not worth the risk for open source, it's not worth the risk for closed source, it's not even worth the risk for private off-the-record conversations.
Yes, this.
And if they had smuggled something into it, the testimony before Congress would have been sealed. The fact we know about it without some kind of secret leak means that we can be confident the NSA did not think the disclosure was valuable intel.
WHAT DO YOU KNOW AND WHERE IS MY TINFOIL HAT?
No. Death to all forms of font blurring.
Uh, that's a very small part of the reliability.
The hardware reliability comes from having fault-tolerant, hot-swappable, redundant, well-tested hardware. The "cloud" hopes to achieve this, yet doesn't.
The software reliability comes from having fault-tolerant, well-designed, well-tested software. This takes time, sure, but it can just as easily be done with forward-thinking to allow for growth and change.
The problem is not mainframes, mainframe programmers, or PHBs resistant to change. The problem is people rushing the newest shiny, do-nothing feature, people willing to sacrifice reliability and forgo proper design and testing, vendors end-of-lifing shit for no reason other than planned obsolescence, and the general inability of people to plan ahead - opting instead to throw money at the problem later.
Hell, because of this mentality we don't even have phones that work right anymore.
There is no such thing as a sub-pixel.
If my text is of color X, then you must use all pixel elements in a specific way to render it as such.
Text can therefore only be rendered at a pixel level.
All of the fucking clear type crap just makes text blurry with shitty colored edges. No, I don't want my fucking black text to have red or blue around the edges.
This shit is fucking terrible, and god help you if you rotate your display. IT NEVER FUCKING WORKS.
I bet their landlines were still working.
They are comfortable running systems on ancient mainframes running ULTRA.
I would be comfortable doing the same thing.
Why do people shit on mainframes? They may cost a lot of money and time, but they're orders of magnitude more dependable than any other server solution that exists.
Yes, that includes the "cloud".
They're terrible movies. Yes, even the first one.
But, yes, one occasionally forgets that Slashdot is well-populated by semanticists and nit-pickers.
Cheers.
When I built a new computer for my brother (who was on the same shitty rig for like 6 years) I was finally able to get rid of his Matrix green numbers screen saver.
Offtopic for sure, but I absolutely fucking LOVE how ol' Booney Boy and his "plan" disappeared when oil prices went LOL.
Oil prices were ridiculous. He came on TV and announced how he would be talking to us about his plan over the coming months.
We got 1 follow up commercial to that, a vague introduction to his plan.
Then oil prices started to return, and I haven't heard a peep out of Pickens since.
1: Who cares where they advertise? Google can do the same. The ads are not misleading. It's a "decision engine" because (according to MS marketing) Bing is focused on quality and relevance of search results, not quantity.
2: Google toolbar is installed with some apps. How was this not a point of contention when Google did it, or when Yahoo did it, or when Ask did it, or when MSN did it, or when AOL did it, or when ...
3: Some websites that used to imbed direct links are no imbedding Google searches instead.
It IS, in fact, surprising that MS has gained market share so quickly. Yahoo and Ask and other sites couldn't get shit years ago with the exact same tactics. Years later, MS tries when the game is stacked in Google's favor far more than before, and does far better than others in the past have. MS is still miles behind Google, and will likely remain miles behind Google. But their growth is nothing to dismiss.
Most MSIE updates (and more than a few non-MSIE installs) over the past few years have switched users to MSN/Live/Bing/Whatever-its-called-this-year, and it's not at all easy to straightforward to change MSIE's search provider to Google.
Complete bullshit.
The only update that "changes" your search provider is upgrading from IE7 to IE8, and that keeps your previous setting as default and walks you through how to choose your own and add/remove options. It is also trivial to change the default search provider.
For the uninitiated: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/1298/sc750a.html
Why would you ever take that case OUT of use?
It's perfect.
So, great job of knowing what "penultimate" means, but next time work on reading and understanding the post in which it is used before accusing someone of using it wrong.
I think you mean "accusing someone of using it incorrectly".
You prefer something that's terrible to hold, aim, and control, and that looks like ass?
I wish cops would abandon tasers and go back to batons so one day you would get the beating you deserve, and it would actually harm you.
Perhaps you should go fuck yourself and the horse you rode in on :) Might be more enjoyable than the plastic bag and pillow that you usually use.
Mod parent up insightful.
(About what Hognoxious should do, not about which is more enjoyable. I have no experience with bags or pillows or horses.)
Buddy of mine who deployed in Iraq tells a story of an insurgent whom wasn't stopped in spite of the fact that he had absorbed no less than six center of mass hits from the M9. Makes you question the wisdom of the military abandoning the Model 1911, doesn't it?
Nah, it makes me question the wisdom of training people to shoot center mass. Aim for the brain every time.
You made a SPELLING mistake, not a GRAMMATICAL mistake.
1: You made a yelling mistake, not an EMPHATIC mistake.
2: You made a lexical error, not a COMPREHENSION error.
3: You made a grammatical error, not a LOGISTIC error.
4: You're just wrong.
[1: Capitalization is not for emphasis.]
[2: "Error" is correct and "mistake" is, well, an error unless I'm mistaken.]
[3: "Spelling" is (in this context) a noun. "Grammatical" is an adjective. "Mistake" is a noun in both cases. The clauses do not agree with each other and do not want to be contrasted in such a manner.]
[4: Swapping "you're" and "your" is in fact a grammatical error, not a spelling error.]
If you're going to be pedantic, at least do it correctly.