There are a lot of English speaking people for whom the pronunciation of "nigga" and "nigger" are not substantially different.
Even with the twist they put on it in the 'hood.
When I was a kid, the words had not yet differentiated. Nigga was just the way some people said nigger.
But being called, for instance, "one cool mothafucka" leaves me with mixed feelings. Likewise, being told, "Hey, you're alright. You're a decent nigger." I appreciate the intent, and I'm not going to argue with the words, but I'm not really all that cool. It's my personality, but I don't really get tight with much of anybody but my next of kin.
Sorry for the drive-by post the other day, but I was tired, and when I woke up I had to go to work.
You make a lot of assumptions, and seem to get your back up for not much purpose.
I have no desire to use the word, "nigger". The word offends me, to a certain extent, whatever the race of the person who says it, although it offends me for different reasons according to the person saying it and the (apparent) intended meaning. I suppose I also gave a nod to a self-contradictory attitude that seems to be common among minorities. (Prejudices are often self-contradictory.)
But I was merely pointing out that the lawyer who has stepped forward would seem to be outside that group for which the word "nigs" would be something near an automatic indication of white supremacist leanings.
And I did acknowledge that, if the guy does have prejudices, he would seem to be more conscious of his prejudices than many who pretend they are not prejudiced.
Does it bother you to know that I know that you are prejudiced? It shouldn't, because there is not a human alive who is not prejudiced. Even brand-new babies have their unreasoned (and unreasoning) preferences. Part of the purpose in life would seem to be to have the opportunity of getting many of our prejudices broken over our own heads. Once we recover our composure, no, it's not a big deal.
Many blacks refer to each other and themselves as niggers.
Non-whites can actually (usually) get away with using the term. Whites can't, but that's because whites are, by definition, racist.
Not all black people think this way, but the word nigger is not necessarily racist. At least this guy is willing to post his raw brain dumps with a warning instead of a whitewash. Maybe he has prejudices, maybe he was just writing as fast as he could during the lecture.
FWIW, I've found that people who recognize their own prejudices generally are less prejudiced in their behavior than people who don't.
Available for: Mac OS X v10.5.6 and later with Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 2, Mac OS X Server v10.5.6 and later with Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 2
Impact: Multiple vulnerabilities in Java Web Start and Java Plug-in
Description: Multiple vulnerabilities exist in Java Web Start and the Java Plug-in, the most serious of which may allow untrusted Java Web Start applications and untrusted Java applets to obtain elevated privileges. Visiting a web page containing a maliciously crafted Java applet may lead to arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the current user. This update provides patches for the Java Bug IDs 6694892, 6707535, 6727081 and 6767668 from Sun Microsystems.
So Apple fixed some things back in February, but I can't tell if they fixed them all.
Reasonable assumptions about the state of the machine in question?
If the OS has been back-doored, assume that (there is a non-zero possiblity that) anything bad that the system code can do has been done. If the system code can "refresh" the BIOS, assume that the BIOS itself has been "refreshed" with a "new" BIOS your friend doesn't really want.
(The only way I'd trust the BIOS after the OS has been holed, is if there were a physical strap that ties the write signal to the BIOS flash RAM inactive. And not just a flag jumper, it must physical block writes to be safe. If the jumper can be overridden in software, you're not safe assuming it hasn't been. Or, if the BIOS is an actual ROM, so that it can't be flashed, period, then it might be trusted.)
If there is a restore partition, of course you must assume that there is a trojan and/or a back-doored OS in it, hidden in several places, so that even if you find one and remove it, one of the others will kick in and restore the backdoor.
I'd probably want to be very careful about the data on the computer. It's quite possible some video or sound file or such has malware hidden in it. Oh, and MSOffice documents and PDFs and....
I think the first thing I'd do is get the friend to get a Mac. Or get a new PC and install (maybe dual-boot) Linux on it. Get your friend used to using non-MS stuff.
Before you use the pwn3ed PC or the data that was on it again, clean both the BIOS and the internal disk(s).
Pull out the disk(s) of the pwn3d PC.
Download, if you can, a clean BIOS from the motherboard manufacturer, and re-flash the BIOS. (If you have a dual BIOS, you'll need to check that the inactive BIOS can't be "updated" by the OS.) If you can't, go get a free software BIOS and flash the BIOS with that, instead.
If you decide to buy new disks, don't install them until the BIOS has been cleaned.
From there, if you have an install CD for MSWindows, that is not a copy of the restore partition that somebody burned for back (after being possibly infected back before anyone noticed), you can install from that if you still have the stomach for it.
But I think, just to really be sure the malware gets walked on, I would install Ubuntu on it anyway. Default to using the whole disk, and select the option to manually check the partitions after it auto-partitions. Make sure the install will erase all the base partitions.
After installing Ubuntu (or maybe freeBSD or Fedora or openBSD, whatever) and kicking the tires, you can use the *nix OS to make sure no partitions are still hiding, and you can make sure the partition you think should be marked to boot is the one that really is marked to boot.
And then you can re-install MSWindows, if your friend really has the stomach for the risk. Of course, before you let him use it, you need to apply all the service packs and updates and load on an anti-virus/anti-malware purchased from a reputable company through a reputable store.
Then and only then, I'd let your friend start using that machine again.
The reason for buying a new machine? He needs to go around and log into all his on-line services and change passwords, and probably do so as soon as he can. And he really should only do that on a clean computer that he owns.
Oh, and make sure he doesn't re-use any passwords, whether on-line or for the computer itself. Maybe help him generate near-random passwords longer than 13 characters.
Now, that data. If your friend can be prevailed on to switch, and never use Microsoft software again, the data should be fairly safe. If not, he must prepare the OS to not mount autoexec before he mounts the disk to scan it. I'd suggest a USB-to-ATA converter to allow the thing to be hot mounted, but, then again, some versions of MSWindows will try to autoexec USB devices anyway, so you need to watch that. I think I'd go to the trouble of mounting a known-safe drive on the converter to test that it can be safely mounted, first.
I think I'm playing this out in my head and remembering a laptop I used at the last computer company I worked for, before I got fed up with the industry --
No install CD. Get it yet?
How do you do a re-install? There's a partition on the disk dedicated to holding an install image.
Does that clarify things for you?
And, yeah, some MSWindows installers do, in fact, fail to default to a choice to completely re-format the whole disk.
Release candidate works fine (for a home PC) on my ancient clamshell iBook. I was surprised at how not-heavy OO.org is on that guy. 300MHz G3.
Starts a bit slow, like Java, but once it's running, it's useable.
I installed the release candidate to check a bug in the part where the installer sets up the boot partitions and walks on the Mac OS 9 drivers, which means you have to boot from something else, run the Mac OS 9 hard disk setup for the version of the OS you're running, and "refresh" the drivers if you want for to multi-boot with Mac OS 9 so your kids can run the bundled games. Nope. I need to send the guys working on that bug a working clamshell iBook with maxed RAM and a largish HD. But I guess I put a higher priority on my kids playing games than on getting that bug fixed.
The games RC installs are working much better on PPC than they have in the past, too.
I don't see much difference, except that the students tend to play a better game of emotional chess.
I do admit, I would like to see more opportunities to guide research projects at the middle and high school level. I miss that part of the University environment.
But, then, I also have this idea in the back of my mind that the system sometimes attributed to Thomas Jefferson is correct, where public school ends at grade three, after teaching reading, (w)riting, and (a)rithmetic. After that, the idea is that each individual should learn on the job.
In countries with large character sets, six years look to be necessary, and I guess the modern world probably requires a little more than the three "Rs", but I'd still like to give a lot of my fifth- and sixth-graders more applied subjects to study.
Which points out the other side of that, that society must change, to accept the idea of studying while we work, basically for our entire lives.
There's really no reason anyone should have to work longer than 20 hours a week, and there's no reason we should be watching TV all the rest of the time, so there's plenty of time to study, if we, as a larger society, can just quit fighting each other, both on the warfields and in the marketplace. (Boxing rings and football fields, yeah, but that is, or should be, a different kind of fighting.)
I suppose it's just my attitude, but I've learned useful things from every teacher I've had, things that were on-topic, as well as things that were extra-topical.
Somehow, early-on, I got this idea that my education was ultimately my own responsibility, that I was the one who would end up living with the education I got. So I tried to learn from what the teachers could tell me. And I have never had one teacher that couldn't teach me useful things.
I have had a few teachers whose bad influence competed with their good influence, but, while those teachers failed me, they usually met the needs of other students.
Teaching is not an easy job, and it is all to easy to criticize.
That's one of the more relevant posts here. Every field has these problems:
People who don't know what their job is.
People who know too much about the other guy's job and not enough about their own.
People who know what their own job is but don't know what any one else's job is. (Or, rather, they think they know what their job is, but they don't know how it fits in with the other jobs that need to be done, so they have trouble producing results others can use.)
People who are so busy working that they forget to do the job. (And people so busy doing the job that they don't have time to work.)
But showing weakness is not necessarily going to undermine your authority.
Admitting to an error is not exactly showing weakness, either.
Teaching the subject is not the primary goal of a class. It's number two, generally. But the subject is the seat of your authority as a teacher. If you are dedicated to presenting the subject in a way that makes it accessible to the students, and if your are dedicated to giving the students opportunities to gain enough experience and understanding of the subject to prepare to master the subject, and to choose whether the subject is one they want to pay the price to master, you don't have authority problems.
The subject is the authority. Lean on it.
Admittedly, you do get a few students in your classes who should not be there, and some of those will try to take it out on you and their fellow students. You may not be able to help them get into classes more suited for their needs, but you can deal with them as necessary if you know what your priorities are and act by them.
Usually. In some cases it does end up taking more than the duration of the class to solve a particular student's riddles.
Which brings us to what should be the first priority of the teacher -- keeping the students from killing each other.
Heh. Erm, maybe it would be appropriate to point out that the way to avoid unhealthy competition between the students (and between students and teachers) is to help them understand that education is not the teachers' responsibility.
The teachers can only present, explain, encourage. The actual learning is each individual student's job. No one can do that for them.
If you tie the teacher's wages to students' scores on standardized tests, the teachers end up teaching the test instead of the subject. And then you get students who are good at taking (a certain kind of) tests, instead of students who can work.
The easiest way to turn kids into unthinking adults is to never give them a chance to learn discipline. It takes self-discipline to think.
There are two ways to do that.
One is by too much external discipline, never giving them a chance to do anything but what the teacher thinks. (That's a really hard thing to do to a whole class, but teachers can selectively do that to a few of the standouts, to cow the rest.)
The other is to never ask them to stretch, never push them at all.
Well, movietube.com would probably be the safest name for it.
Anyway, youtube as a paid sight^H^H^H^H^H site run by the "artists associations" would no longer be youtube.
But the idea (expanded on a bit below by others) of youtube as a portal for the internet version of guys playing guitars on the streetcorners might be interesting. Except, even there, I'd rather toss a fiver in the hat of the guy on the corner than pitch a youtuber a fiver via paypal, other things being equal.
Well, then again, I guess I don't see samisen on the street corner, even in Kyoto or Osaka.
(Setting aside the idea that this should only be good enough for the undersirables in developing country X...)
For now, I'm not thinking about a game video controller.
I'm thinking about an LCD video controller for a pocket calculator that costs less than JPY 5,000 and runs dc if I ask it to. And gforth and vi. Oh, and bash and gcc, of course.
And maybe I can plug in an SD with an English--Japanese--Spanish--Korean--etc. dictionary on it.
How long can this "modern" society continue to support this out-dated concept of "billions of dollars" having some sort of meaning?
"Billions of dollars" is basically the excuse for all the things that we think are the causes of, for example, global warming, and the current slump in the economy.
It's also the excuse for the existence of Microsoft and INTEL, and for the tons of junk they produce, most of which adds unnecessarily to the landfills every day.
No, we wouldn't have processors this fast without INTEL's contributions. No, we wouldn't really need them.
Likewise, we wouldn't have such a high penetration of PCs into our everyday lives, but we wouldn't think we needed them so much, without Microsoft.
No, money is not the root of all evil, but the love of money (along with several similar passions that are strictly equivalent in personal and social consequences) is.
Money is not value. It merely represents value, but even that only within ordinary contexts. Billions of dollars is not an ordinary context.
Well, because corrupt governments have this instinct to attempt self-preservation in destructive ways. (Self-destructive ways, in the end, for all that.)
Slashdot Mirror
Heh.
Well, I think you should've at least gotten one funny mod out of that. Informative, too, maybe.
Two thoughts:
There are a lot of English speaking people for whom the pronunciation of "nigga" and "nigger" are not substantially different.
Even with the twist they put on it in the 'hood.
When I was a kid, the words had not yet differentiated. Nigga was just the way some people said nigger.
But being called, for instance, "one cool mothafucka" leaves me with mixed feelings. Likewise, being told, "Hey, you're alright. You're a decent nigger." I appreciate the intent, and I'm not going to argue with the words, but I'm not really all that cool. It's my personality, but I don't really get tight with much of anybody but my next of kin.
What conversation?
Sorry for the drive-by post the other day, but I was tired, and when I woke up I had to go to work.
You make a lot of assumptions, and seem to get your back up for not much purpose.
I have no desire to use the word, "nigger". The word offends me, to a certain extent, whatever the race of the person who says it, although it offends me for different reasons according to the person saying it and the (apparent) intended meaning. I suppose I also gave a nod to a self-contradictory attitude that seems to be common among minorities. (Prejudices are often self-contradictory.)
But I was merely pointing out that the lawyer who has stepped forward would seem to be outside that group for which the word "nigs" would be something near an automatic indication of white supremacist leanings.
And I did acknowledge that, if the guy does have prejudices, he would seem to be more conscious of his prejudices than many who pretend they are not prejudiced.
Does it bother you to know that I know that you are prejudiced? It shouldn't, because there is not a human alive who is not prejudiced. Even brand-new babies have their unreasoned (and unreasoning) preferences. Part of the purpose in life would seem to be to have the opportunity of getting many of our prejudices broken over our own heads. Once we recover our composure, no, it's not a big deal.
Many blacks refer to each other and themselves as niggers.
Non-whites can actually (usually) get away with using the term. Whites can't, but that's because whites are, by definition, racist.
Not all black people think this way, but the word nigger is not necessarily racist. At least this guy is willing to post his raw brain dumps with a warning instead of a whitewash. Maybe he has prejudices, maybe he was just writing as fast as he could during the lecture.
FWIW, I've found that people who recognize their own prejudices generally are less prejudiced in their behavior than people who don't.
So Apple fixed some things back in February, but I can't tell if they fixed them all.
Reasonable assumptions about the state of the machine in question?
If the OS has been back-doored, assume that (there is a non-zero possiblity that) anything bad that the system code can do has been done. If the system code can "refresh" the BIOS, assume that the BIOS itself has been "refreshed" with a "new" BIOS your friend doesn't really want.
(The only way I'd trust the BIOS after the OS has been holed, is if there were a physical strap that ties the write signal to the BIOS flash RAM inactive. And not just a flag jumper, it must physical block writes to be safe. If the jumper can be overridden in software, you're not safe assuming it hasn't been. Or, if the BIOS is an actual ROM, so that it can't be flashed, period, then it might be trusted.)
If there is a restore partition, of course you must assume that there is a trojan and/or a back-doored OS in it, hidden in several places, so that even if you find one and remove it, one of the others will kick in and restore the backdoor.
I'd probably want to be very careful about the data on the computer. It's quite possible some video or sound file or such has malware hidden in it. Oh, and MSOffice documents and PDFs and ... .
I think the first thing I'd do is get the friend to get a Mac. Or get a new PC and install (maybe dual-boot) Linux on it. Get your friend used to using non-MS stuff.
Before you use the pwn3ed PC or the data that was on it again, clean both the BIOS and the internal disk(s).
Pull out the disk(s) of the pwn3d PC.
Download, if you can, a clean BIOS from the motherboard manufacturer, and re-flash the BIOS. (If you have a dual BIOS, you'll need to check that the inactive BIOS can't be "updated" by the OS.) If you can't, go get a free software BIOS and flash the BIOS with that, instead.
If you decide to buy new disks, don't install them until the BIOS has been cleaned.
From there, if you have an install CD for MSWindows, that is not a copy of the restore partition that somebody burned for back (after being possibly infected back before anyone noticed), you can install from that if you still have the stomach for it.
But I think, just to really be sure the malware gets walked on, I would install Ubuntu on it anyway. Default to using the whole disk, and select the option to manually check the partitions after it auto-partitions. Make sure the install will erase all the base partitions.
After installing Ubuntu (or maybe freeBSD or Fedora or openBSD, whatever) and kicking the tires, you can use the *nix OS to make sure no partitions are still hiding, and you can make sure the partition you think should be marked to boot is the one that really is marked to boot.
And then you can re-install MSWindows, if your friend really has the stomach for the risk. Of course, before you let him use it, you need to apply all the service packs and updates and load on an anti-virus/anti-malware purchased from a reputable company through a reputable store.
Then and only then, I'd let your friend start using that machine again.
The reason for buying a new machine? He needs to go around and log into all his on-line services and change passwords, and probably do so as soon as he can. And he really should only do that on a clean computer that he owns.
Oh, and make sure he doesn't re-use any passwords, whether on-line or for the computer itself. Maybe help him generate near-random passwords longer than 13 characters.
Now, that data. If your friend can be prevailed on to switch, and never use Microsoft software again, the data should be fairly safe. If not, he must prepare the OS to not mount autoexec before he mounts the disk to scan it. I'd suggest a USB-to-ATA converter to allow the thing to be hot mounted, but, then again, some versions of MSWindows will try to autoexec USB devices anyway, so you need to watch that. I think I'd go to the trouble of mounting a known-safe drive on the converter to test that it can be safely mounted, first.
Then I'd let the ant
Not a good thing at all.
Is that what you're trying to say?
He said the guy didn't do a very careful install.
I think I'm playing this out in my head and remembering a laptop I used at the last computer company I worked for, before I got fed up with the industry --
No install CD. Get it yet?
How do you do a re-install? There's a partition on the disk dedicated to holding an install image.
Does that clarify things for you?
And, yeah, some MSWindows installers do, in fact, fail to default to a choice to completely re-format the whole disk.
No need for autorun.
Release candidate works fine (for a home PC) on my ancient clamshell iBook. I was surprised at how not-heavy OO.org is on that guy. 300MHz G3.
Starts a bit slow, like Java, but once it's running, it's useable.
I installed the release candidate to check a bug in the part where the installer sets up the boot partitions and walks on the Mac OS 9 drivers, which means you have to boot from something else, run the Mac OS 9 hard disk setup for the version of the OS you're running, and "refresh" the drivers if you want for to multi-boot with Mac OS 9 so your kids can run the bundled games. Nope. I need to send the guys working on that bug a working clamshell iBook with maxed RAM and a largish HD. But I guess I put a higher priority on my kids playing games than on getting that bug fixed.
The games RC installs are working much better on PPC than they have in the past, too.
I don't see much difference, except that the students tend to play a better game of emotional chess.
I do admit, I would like to see more opportunities to guide research projects at the middle and high school level. I miss that part of the University environment.
But, then, I also have this idea in the back of my mind that the system sometimes attributed to Thomas Jefferson is correct, where public school ends at grade three, after teaching reading, (w)riting, and (a)rithmetic. After that, the idea is that each individual should learn on the job.
In countries with large character sets, six years look to be necessary, and I guess the modern world probably requires a little more than the three "Rs", but I'd still like to give a lot of my fifth- and sixth-graders more applied subjects to study.
Which points out the other side of that, that society must change, to accept the idea of studying while we work, basically for our entire lives.
There's really no reason anyone should have to work longer than 20 hours a week, and there's no reason we should be watching TV all the rest of the time, so there's plenty of time to study, if we, as a larger society, can just quit fighting each other, both on the warfields and in the marketplace. (Boxing rings and football fields, yeah, but that is, or should be, a different kind of fighting.)
While your point about many teachers preferring the more manageable students is a valid point, I think it is not the only reasonnot to segregate.
Smart students get smarter when they teach other students, especially when they help teach students who have a hard time understanding.
Handling a classroom where students are teaching each other may not be part of the typical curriculum in courses in education, but it should be.
The subjects being taught are secondary to the education we want them to be getting.
Not to say that I like teaching mediocrity, but I don't think that's what you mean, either.
Power is sort of open.
Is AMD64 open in any sense?
But, what kind of case?
Better in what sense?
I suppose it's just my attitude, but I've learned useful things from every teacher I've had, things that were on-topic, as well as things that were extra-topical.
Somehow, early-on, I got this idea that my education was ultimately my own responsibility, that I was the one who would end up living with the education I got. So I tried to learn from what the teachers could tell me. And I have never had one teacher that couldn't teach me useful things.
I have had a few teachers whose bad influence competed with their good influence, but, while those teachers failed me, they usually met the needs of other students.
Teaching is not an easy job, and it is all to easy to criticize.
Seriously, why?
That's one of the more relevant posts here. Every field has these problems:
People who don't know what their job is.
People who know too much about the other guy's job and not enough about their own.
People who know what their own job is but don't know what any one else's job is. (Or, rather, they think they know what their job is, but they don't know how it fits in with the other jobs that need to be done, so they have trouble producing results others can use.)
People who are so busy working that they forget to do the job. (And people so busy doing the job that they don't have time to work.)
People.
Imperfect people. Like you and me.
It may not be specifically liberal or specifically conservative, but /. definitely has an agenda.
Yeah, good points.
But showing weakness is not necessarily going to undermine your authority.
Admitting to an error is not exactly showing weakness, either.
Teaching the subject is not the primary goal of a class. It's number two, generally. But the subject is the seat of your authority as a teacher. If you are dedicated to presenting the subject in a way that makes it accessible to the students, and if your are dedicated to giving the students opportunities to gain enough experience and understanding of the subject to prepare to master the subject, and to choose whether the subject is one they want to pay the price to master, you don't have authority problems.
The subject is the authority. Lean on it.
Admittedly, you do get a few students in your classes who should not be there, and some of those will try to take it out on you and their fellow students. You may not be able to help them get into classes more suited for their needs, but you can deal with them as necessary if you know what your priorities are and act by them.
Usually. In some cases it does end up taking more than the duration of the class to solve a particular student's riddles.
Which brings us to what should be the first priority of the teacher -- keeping the students from killing each other.
Heh. Erm, maybe it would be appropriate to point out that the way to avoid unhealthy competition between the students (and between students and teachers) is to help them understand that education is not the teachers' responsibility.
The teachers can only present, explain, encourage. The actual learning is each individual student's job. No one can do that for them.
One students best teacher is another's nightmare.
If you tie the teacher's wages to students' scores on standardized tests, the teachers end up teaching the test instead of the subject. And then you get students who are good at taking (a certain kind of) tests, instead of students who can work.
There is no way to objectively evaluate teachers.
look again.
The easiest way to turn kids into unthinking adults is to never give them a chance to learn discipline. It takes self-discipline to think.
There are two ways to do that.
One is by too much external discipline, never giving them a chance to do anything but what the teacher thinks. (That's a really hard thing to do to a whole class, but teachers can selectively do that to a few of the standouts, to cow the rest.)
The other is to never ask them to stretch, never push them at all.
Maybe, you could have the user-uploaded junk, and then people can upload links to related "professional" content on a "metube.com" or something.
This "metube.com" would be for pay.
Hmm.
paytube.com
ourtube.com
yourtubes.com
tubeyou.com
movietube.com
protube.com
outtube.com
intube.com
testtube.com
mafiaatube.com
Well, movietube.com would probably be the safest name for it.
Anyway, youtube as a paid sight^H^H^H^H^H site run by the "artists associations" would no longer be youtube.
But the idea (expanded on a bit below by others) of youtube as a portal for the internet version of guys playing guitars on the streetcorners might be interesting. Except, even there, I'd rather toss a fiver in the hat of the guy on the corner than pitch a youtuber a fiver via paypal, other things being equal.
Well, then again, I guess I don't see samisen on the street corner, even in Kyoto or Osaka.
Hmmmmmm.
(Setting aside the idea that this should only be good enough for the undersirables in developing country X ...)
For now, I'm not thinking about a game video controller.
I'm thinking about an LCD video controller for a pocket calculator that costs less than JPY 5,000 and runs dc if I ask it to. And gforth and vi. Oh, and bash and gcc, of course.
And maybe I can plug in an SD with an English--Japanese--Spanish--Korean--etc. dictionary on it.
I don't take the optimists' point of view. I suspect shills.
huh? did I miss something?
How long can this "modern" society continue to support this out-dated concept of "billions of dollars" having some sort of meaning?
"Billions of dollars" is basically the excuse for all the things that we think are the causes of, for example, global warming, and the current slump in the economy.
It's also the excuse for the existence of Microsoft and INTEL, and for the tons of junk they produce, most of which adds unnecessarily to the landfills every day.
No, we wouldn't have processors this fast without INTEL's contributions. No, we wouldn't really need them.
Likewise, we wouldn't have such a high penetration of PCs into our everyday lives, but we wouldn't think we needed them so much, without Microsoft.
No, money is not the root of all evil, but the love of money (along with several similar passions that are strictly equivalent in personal and social consequences) is.
Money is not value. It merely represents value, but even that only within ordinary contexts. Billions of dollars is not an ordinary context.
Well, because corrupt governments have this instinct to attempt self-preservation in destructive ways. (Self-destructive ways, in the end, for all that.)