Indeed. Next time I come into your house and stab you with a kitchen knife/drop a hairdryer into your bathtub/push you over your balcony, I'll be sure to remember that it was all your fault, after all. I'm certainly not to blame because no one ever told _me_ that if I stabbed you in the heart, you'd die.
I'm sorry to hear that your child doesn't have the training or mental capacity to understand what guns can do.
I'd like to start off with all children on an even slate, so let's assume that given the proper guidance every child will have the same knowledge and behavior. I remember this vividly. When I was 5, my dad took me hunting quite regularly. At 5, I was his bird dog... it was my job to run and pick up the dove after he had shot it, and bring it back. Every time I ran out, I saw exactly what his shotgun could do to life...
One day (6 yrs old) he decided I had learned enough and grown up enough that I could fire a gun myself. He set me up with his shotgun, took one of the dove we had bagged (already dead), and set it up about 5 yards from me. Yes, only 5 yards. He told me to take aim on the body, and squeeze the trigger. When I did... two things happened: the kick from the gun knocked me on my ass, and the bird body turned to vapor.
He had me go out and try to find what I could... a few feathers here and a chunk of meat there... what had once been a living thing was reduced to its component parts in a very bloody way. On the way home he asked me what I thought would happen if I or my little brother got shot with that gun. The thought made me cringe. Lesson learned. That, along with a lifetime of proper guidance and training, has made me respect the power of firearms.
My children will do the same. And hopefully their children. And you're right, your kids won't be coming to my house to play any time soon. They'd probably end up shooting one of my family since you haven't taken the time to raise them with the same respect I was raised with. The extent of their exposure to firearms is on network TV, where Mel Gibsons takes two bullets to the shoulder and shows up in the final scene in time to kiss the girl. They probably think its all some sort of big make-believe game.
What do you plan to do when the unknown person entering your house is up on drugs, coming to steal your stuff, but not fully in control of themselves? Are you going to just hope they take the TV, and trust them to leave you and your GF/wife/family with your lives? You must be a very trusting person.
Personally, I don't trust my life or the lives of those I love to anyone I don't know, and lot of the people I do know.
I'm not going to draw on every person who rings my doorbell or steps onto my lawn, and if someone breaks in and is trying to escape with the VCR they'll probably get to go their way. If, however, that person makes a threatening move towards me, I'll introduce him to my friends Smith and Wesson.
No one seems to be taking the side of linguistic evolution. Why is it less efficient to simply use the letter "u" instead of typing out "you" in written text? When pronounced aloud, both are identical and convey the exact same meaning. When typed, you save 2 keystrokes, and can get the exact same meaning... that's a 66% efficiency increase. Why is that bad?
Granted, substituting numbers or multiple characters for letters doesn't always have these same benefits, but in some cases it might.
This reminds me of a science fiction story I once read... I really wish I could remember the title or author (if anyone knows you would be like a tiny god to me). The story concerned itself with government sponsored change to the written English language, substitution of letters, removal or replacement of silent letters, etc. The great thing was that the story used its own reccomendations as the text progressed... the beginning was in "modern day" written english and as the story progressed (and changes were "introduced to the language" the text began to make use of them. If you started in the middle or at the end of the story you'd have no clue what it meant, but if you started at the beginning and took note of the changes, by the time you reached the end the it was completely natural to read... plus the fact it took something like 45% less space/keystrokes to create.
Simply because the teachers haven't/can't/won't evolve and adapt to a new, in some cases more efficient, form of written communication doesn't mean its wrong. You could argue that the teachers are stopping communicative progress simply because their not comfortable with it, but that wouldn't be anything new, would it?
Don't you realize that you are indeed not important to MS? You can spout on/. all day long about how Evil they are and how their software sucks, but if they want to block certain browsers off their site, they will, and the common non-tech user will see the message and change browsers. Simple as that.
It's mostly about demographic generalizations... people that use "free" software like Netscape or mozilla or what have you are also the type who'll want block banner ads and "screw the man". These users don't add to their revenue stream... they just suck bandwidth and resources... I'd block them too.
What do you gain by having all those minutae of freedom? A false peace of mind, knowing that at any moment you may be killed by terrorists because you've tied the hands of your government, but at least they're not reading your email... What difference does it make if someone reads your email to your wife without you knowing? How does that affect you?
The only logical thing I can derive from this is that you have something to hide. I'd have no problems with officials reading my email. There's notthing important in there. What do I care if they intercept my "Daily Slashdot Mailer" or my email to mom? None of them say "I'm going to destroy the airplane". I'm a law abiding citizen.
And you say people will die if we sacrifice some privacy for security? How do you come to that conclusion? Will they be innocent people, struck down by cowards while going about their daily work like those in the WTC? If sacrificing some technical details of privacy saved those people and allowed them to be alive with their families today, I'd sign today.
You miss the point. Perhaps you personally are not a criminal, but the government knows they are out there.
Your statements imply that the government should have to stay blindfolded, in a soundproof box, with a whitenoise generator and noseplugs, in a closet, simply because you are personally not a criminal.
And I'd be willing to bet if anything ever happened to you or anyone close to you, you'd be very quick to place blame on the government for not doing its duty and protecting you. If allowing the government to read my email saved only half the people who died on Sept 11th, I'd let them do it. I have nothing to hide: I'm not conspiring to kill someone or bomb a building, and I doubt the government has any interest in the latest Sluggy URL I sent a friend.
Think of the freedoms that were lost nearly 5000 innocent citizens on September the 11th. I'd trade my right to hide email from the FBI in a heartbeat if it allowed those people to still have the right to breathe, be with their loved ones, and go about their lives.
What are you trying to do... aid terrorists by helping them hide under a false stream of electronic camoflague? Are you crazy?
I'm glad the US has such a hard line stance to take care of terrorism and the entities which harbor them, and I hope they drop the book on you if you ever do such a thing.
Such an immature statement equates with saying "Hey, lets call 911 from payphones all day with fake bomb and biohazard scares, that'll keep those bastards busy so I can still take my knife on the plane."
Grow up, and realize that the government isn't 100% bad. Sometime they're truly trying to protect citizens. Why don't you get together with the government and help them come up with a way to search the internet and hunt out terrorists without stepping all over your "personal freedoms" rather than conspire to assist terrorists. If everyone on/. is half as 1337 as they claim to be we should have a solution in a few days, heck, make the project open soure if it makes you happy.
That's odd, I can install hotfixes and patches under IIS 5 without rebooting or even stopping the service in some instances.
Guess its easy to make fun of thing you don't know about. That's why I don't sink to the levels of taking cheap shots at Apache based on my own misinformation... I'm no Apache expert, but I have common sense.
Perhaps you should hop down out of your ivory technology tower and look at the real world.
Afraid to turn on the computer? YES. It happens. I have more than one _very_ non-tech friends who heard about the Code red virus months ago and would not turn on their computer for fear of losing their credit card numbers to hackers. I'm sure this happens to some people every time a big virus gets media coverage, and non-geeks stay off the computer or internet until their trusted geek advisor assures them that its safe.
Sure, this wasn't the case with you, being a part of the techno-elite, but it can be likened to a top General on a military base not being scared of being bombed by terrorists.
"What are they gonna do, bomb me? I'm a top general on a military base for crying out loud, I know what's up and can protect myself with my vast knowledge and armaments."
You do of course know that one of the mainstays of terrorism is fear by ignorance. Despite the news coverage, the chances of you getting a letter containing Anthrax spores are still slim to none (read: one in every hundred thousand or so). Does this mean no one is scared of Anthrax? Don't think so.
Your anti-MS sentiments leave out a key point, basically negating your argument.
You HAD a lock on your door. It's not the lock maker's fault you didn't lock it... its YOUR fault for having a door with a lock and not "properly configuring it".
What are you going to say? The lock maker should ship all locks locked by default? I think that'd make them pretty dang hard to install and work with, and when you have such a product no one will use it... oh wait. That sounds familiar.
Say all crypto in the US is required to have the special backdoor for government. "Oh, well the terrorists won't upgrade!" Big deal.
If everyone else uses it, and the terrorists don't, it'll be like stamping a big red "Terrorists Here!" sign on all their communication. Since they'll be the only ones using the older, sans-backdoor crypto, the intelligence agencies have a lot less stuff to sift through.
So the terrorists have two options... use the illegal crypto and have their messages stick out like a sore thumb, or use the backdoored crypto and have their messages easily accessible and decodable. Its lose-lose for them. They have to stop using electronic communication all together.
Think about these things, don't just give the immediate kneejerk reaction that slashdot is known for. Its almost as if you're saying, "Sure, its ok for 10,000 people to die so I can encrypt my grocery list" Please.
After registering and spending a short time with the Corpus, it seems to still have quite a way to go before it will be able to answer even simple questions correctly.
Apparently, the Corpus thinks the sky is not blue and that fire canot burn wood... however is did answer true to "the acronym DNA stands for Deoxyribonucleaic acid".
I wonder if this project will tend to produce a sort of genius syndrome... where obscure bits of fact are common knowledge to it, but it could never tie its own shoes.
If you read the site... before the "hospital" or what have you is unloaded at the target, they have to pump in ballast water to compensate for the weight of the cargo.
If you're carrying a 160 ton hospital, thats a good deal of water... where are they going to get it? They're going to take it from the village or whatever enbattled area they're helping out?
"Sure, here's a fully equipped hospital, but we'll have to take your entire supply of drinking water in exchange."
hrmm... looks to me like the "humanitarian" uses are a feel-good smokescreen for the real underlying capitalistic uses... I'll doubt its ever used on a single emergency relief situation.
The professor told the students exactly how his plagiarism checking program worked..... matching 6-word phrases.
The students didn't learn NOT to cheat, they learned HOW to cheat without getting caught. All you have to do is break up the six word phrases, and his program is rendered useless.
Heck, since he open-sourced his checking algorithm, the students could easily make a checking program of their own that found six word phrases, allowed them to edit them and break them up, and retested the "plagiarism stealth" of their paper.
Had he kept exactly how his program worked closed-source it would ave been much more dfficult for the students to figure out how to get around it, and maybe his little project would be valid.
Unfortunately, you don't own the airspace over your house. Your property rights only extend a few hundred yards into the air, and then end. The planes in the airspace above you can fly back and forth all they want... in fact YOU can get in serious trouble if you, say, launch a homemade helicopter into the air and it collides with a plane above your house. YOU were the one trespassing on air traffic routes...
You'r assuming that the opposing side will care about their wounded/dead. Not everyone takes care of their own like we do... in fact, left up to the humanitarians and liberals WE'D end up footing the resource cost of taking care of the enemy wounded and they'd become a burden to our forces as the opposing army runs away while we take care of their wounded.
Even more importantly, an enemy who is just wounded can pull the pin on a grenade and fire a weapon almost as well as an able soldier, so you expose your forces to even greater risk as you advance past "wounded" enemies... Firing to wound doesn't take a person out of the action, especially when they're driven by fanaticism...
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. Next time I come into your house and stab you with a kitchen knife/drop a hairdryer into your bathtub/push you over your balcony, I'll be sure to remember that it was all your fault, after all. I'm certainly not to blame because no one ever told _me_ that if I stabbed you in the heart, you'd die.
I'm sorry to hear that your child doesn't have the training or mental capacity to understand what guns can do.
I'd like to start off with all children on an even slate, so let's assume that given the proper guidance every child will have the same knowledge and behavior. I remember this vividly. When I was 5, my dad took me hunting quite regularly. At 5, I was his bird dog... it was my job to run and pick up the dove after he had shot it, and bring it back. Every time I ran out, I saw exactly what his shotgun could do to life...
One day (6 yrs old) he decided I had learned enough and grown up enough that I could fire a gun myself. He set me up with his shotgun, took one of the dove we had bagged (already dead), and set it up about 5 yards from me. Yes, only 5 yards. He told me to take aim on the body, and squeeze the trigger. When I did... two things happened: the kick from the gun knocked me on my ass, and the bird body turned to vapor.
He had me go out and try to find what I could... a few feathers here and a chunk of meat there... what had once been a living thing was reduced to its component parts in a very bloody way. On the way home he asked me what I thought would happen if I or my little brother got shot with that gun. The thought made me cringe. Lesson learned. That, along with a lifetime of proper guidance and training, has made me respect the power of firearms.
My children will do the same. And hopefully their children. And you're right, your kids won't be coming to my house to play any time soon. They'd probably end up shooting one of my family since you haven't taken the time to raise them with the same respect I was raised with. The extent of their exposure to firearms is on network TV, where Mel Gibsons takes two bullets to the shoulder and shows up in the final scene in time to kiss the girl. They probably think its all some sort of big make-believe game.
What do you plan to do when the unknown person entering your house is up on drugs, coming to steal your stuff, but not fully in control of themselves? Are you going to just hope they take the TV, and trust them to leave you and your GF/wife/family with your lives? You must be a very trusting person.
Personally, I don't trust my life or the lives of those I love to anyone I don't know, and lot of the people I do know.
I'm not going to draw on every person who rings my doorbell or steps onto my lawn, and if someone breaks in and is trying to escape with the VCR they'll probably get to go their way. If, however, that person makes a threatening move towards me, I'll introduce him to my friends Smith and Wesson.
No one seems to be taking the side of linguistic evolution. Why is it less efficient to simply use the letter "u" instead of typing out "you" in written text? When pronounced aloud, both are identical and convey the exact same meaning. When typed, you save 2 keystrokes, and can get the exact same meaning... that's a 66% efficiency increase. Why is that bad?
Granted, substituting numbers or multiple characters for letters doesn't always have these same benefits, but in some cases it might.
This reminds me of a science fiction story I once read... I really wish I could remember the title or author (if anyone knows you would be like a tiny god to me). The story concerned itself with government sponsored change to the written English language, substitution of letters, removal or replacement of silent letters, etc. The great thing was that the story used its own reccomendations as the text progressed... the beginning was in "modern day" written english and as the story progressed (and changes were "introduced to the language" the text began to make use of them. If you started in the middle or at the end of the story you'd have no clue what it meant, but if you started at the beginning and took note of the changes, by the time you reached the end the it was completely natural to read... plus the fact it took something like 45% less space/keystrokes to create.
Simply because the teachers haven't/can't/won't evolve and adapt to a new, in some cases more efficient, form of written communication doesn't mean its wrong. You could argue that the teachers are stopping communicative progress simply because their not comfortable with it, but that wouldn't be anything new, would it?
Lycoris? Linux is never going to succeed as a popular desktop OS as long as it uses names that sound like diseases.
At the end of the day your credit card number is still transmitted across the internet. Hello?
It's mostly about demographic generalizations... people that use "free" software like Netscape or mozilla or what have you are also the type who'll want block banner ads and "screw the man". These users don't add to their revenue stream... they just suck bandwidth and resources... I'd block them too.
What do you gain by having all those minutae of freedom? A false peace of mind, knowing that at any moment you may be killed by terrorists because you've tied the hands of your government, but at least they're not reading your email... What difference does it make if someone reads your email to your wife without you knowing? How does that affect you?
The only logical thing I can derive from this is that you have something to hide. I'd have no problems with officials reading my email. There's notthing important in there. What do I care if they intercept my "Daily Slashdot Mailer" or my email to mom? None of them say "I'm going to destroy the airplane". I'm a law abiding citizen.
And you say people will die if we sacrifice some privacy for security? How do you come to that conclusion? Will they be innocent people, struck down by cowards while going about their daily work like those in the WTC? If sacrificing some technical details of privacy saved those people and allowed them to be alive with their families today, I'd sign today.
I like freedom as much as anyone else. I just have a common sense balance between freedom and security.
It's amazing how people simply sling mud when they don't have a logical argument.
Your statements imply that the government should have to stay blindfolded, in a soundproof box, with a whitenoise generator and noseplugs, in a closet, simply because you are personally not a criminal.
And I'd be willing to bet if anything ever happened to you or anyone close to you, you'd be very quick to place blame on the government for not doing its duty and protecting you. If allowing the government to read my email saved only half the people who died on Sept 11th, I'd let them do it. I have nothing to hide: I'm not conspiring to kill someone or bomb a building, and I doubt the government has any interest in the latest Sluggy URL I sent a friend.
Think of the freedoms that were lost nearly 5000 innocent citizens on September the 11th. I'd trade my right to hide email from the FBI in a heartbeat if it allowed those people to still have the right to breathe, be with their loved ones, and go about their lives.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety usually wind up dead in a gutter."
Theoretical principals are nice, but do they always apply to real-world circumstances?
I'm glad the US has such a hard line stance to take care of terrorism and the entities which harbor them, and I hope they drop the book on you if you ever do such a thing.
Such an immature statement equates with saying "Hey, lets call 911 from payphones all day with fake bomb and biohazard scares, that'll keep those bastards busy so I can still take my knife on the plane."
Grow up, and realize that the government isn't 100% bad. Sometime they're truly trying to protect citizens. Why don't you get together with the government and help them come up with a way to search the internet and hunt out terrorists without stepping all over your "personal freedoms" rather than conspire to assist terrorists. If everyone on /. is half as 1337 as they claim to be we should have a solution in a few days, heck, make the project open soure if it makes you happy.
Thank you voice of reason.
Guess its easy to make fun of thing you don't know about. That's why I don't sink to the levels of taking cheap shots at Apache based on my own misinformation... I'm no Apache expert, but I have common sense.
Afraid to turn on the computer? YES. It happens. I have more than one _very_ non-tech friends who heard about the Code red virus months ago and would not turn on their computer for fear of losing their credit card numbers to hackers. I'm sure this happens to some people every time a big virus gets media coverage, and non-geeks stay off the computer or internet until their trusted geek advisor assures them that its safe.
Sure, this wasn't the case with you, being a part of the techno-elite, but it can be likened to a top General on a military base not being scared of being bombed by terrorists.
"What are they gonna do, bomb me? I'm a top general on a military base for crying out loud, I know what's up and can protect myself with my vast knowledge and armaments."
You do of course know that one of the mainstays of terrorism is fear by ignorance. Despite the news coverage, the chances of you getting a letter containing Anthrax spores are still slim to none (read: one in every hundred thousand or so). Does this mean no one is scared of Anthrax? Don't think so.
You HAD a lock on your door. It's not the lock maker's fault you didn't lock it... its YOUR fault for having a door with a lock and not "properly configuring it".
What are you going to say? The lock maker should ship all locks locked by default? I think that'd make them pretty dang hard to install and work with, and when you have such a product no one will use it... oh wait. That sounds familiar.
You're missing a crucial point here.
Say all crypto in the US is required to have the special backdoor for government. "Oh, well the terrorists won't upgrade!" Big deal.
If everyone else uses it, and the terrorists don't, it'll be like stamping a big red "Terrorists Here!" sign on all their communication. Since they'll be the only ones using the older, sans-backdoor crypto, the intelligence agencies have a lot less stuff to sift through.
So the terrorists have two options... use the illegal crypto and have their messages stick out like a sore thumb, or use the backdoored crypto and have their messages easily accessible and decodable. Its lose-lose for them. They have to stop using electronic communication all together.
Think about these things, don't just give the immediate kneejerk reaction that slashdot is known for. Its almost as if you're saying, "Sure, its ok for 10,000 people to die so I can encrypt my grocery list" Please.
New technology, better systems, building code's fault. Blah. Why overlook the obvious.
Don't work on the 100th floor. Stay on the 1st.
I think the answer to: it is bad to have many banner ads on a web site is:
TRUE
Maybe they should let GAC redesign their website...
Apparently, the Corpus thinks the sky is not blue and that fire canot burn wood... however is did answer true to "the acronym DNA stands for Deoxyribonucleaic acid".
I wonder if this project will tend to produce a sort of genius syndrome... where obscure bits of fact are common knowledge to it, but it could never tie its own shoes.
If you're carrying a 160 ton hospital, thats a good deal of water... where are they going to get it? They're going to take it from the village or whatever enbattled area they're helping out?
"Sure, here's a fully equipped hospital, but we'll have to take your entire supply of drinking water in exchange."
hrmm... looks to me like the "humanitarian" uses are a feel-good smokescreen for the real underlying capitalistic uses... I'll doubt its ever used on a single emergency relief situation.
The professor told the students exactly how his plagiarism checking program worked..... matching 6-word phrases.
The students didn't learn NOT to cheat, they learned HOW to cheat without getting caught. All you have to do is break up the six word phrases, and his program is rendered useless.
Heck, since he open-sourced his checking algorithm, the students could easily make a checking program of their own that found six word phrases, allowed them to edit them and break them up, and retested the "plagiarism stealth" of their paper.
Had he kept exactly how his program worked closed-source it would ave been much more dfficult for the students to figure out how to get around it, and maybe his little project would be valid.
Switching from red to green to blue makes the image almost like an animated GIF... you can see the trees sway and the clouds go by....
Not only are these photos in color, they also give you a sort of moving picture of nature in the scene.
This stuff is amazing...
Unfortunately, you don't own the airspace over your house. Your property rights only extend a few hundred yards into the air, and then end. The planes in the airspace above you can fly back and forth all they want... in fact YOU can get in serious trouble if you, say, launch a homemade helicopter into the air and it collides with a plane above your house. YOU were the one trespassing on air traffic routes...
You'r assuming that the opposing side will care about their wounded/dead. Not everyone takes care of their own like we do... in fact, left up to the humanitarians and liberals WE'D end up footing the resource cost of taking care of the enemy wounded and they'd become a burden to our forces as the opposing army runs away while we take care of their wounded. Even more importantly, an enemy who is just wounded can pull the pin on a grenade and fire a weapon almost as well as an able soldier, so you expose your forces to even greater risk as you advance past "wounded" enemies... Firing to wound doesn't take a person out of the action, especially when they're driven by fanaticism...