[Mr. Kinney points a pistol at ED-209] ED-209: [menacingly] Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply. [Mr. Kinney drops the pistol on the floor] ED-209: [ED-209 advances, growling] You have 15 seconds to comply. [Mr. Kinney tries to run away] ED-209: You have 10 seconds to comply. [entire room of people in full panic trying to stay out of the line of fire] ED-209: You have 5 seconds to comply... four... three... two... one... I am now authorized to use physical force! [ED-209 opens fire and shreds Mr. Kinney]
The number of female suicide bombers is so small as to be a data anomaly.
No. A "data anomaly" would be "left handed suicide bombers". Or "lesbian suicide bombers".
A female suicide bomber DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS their cherry-picked "evidence" for their theory.
A woman does not become a suicide bomber because she cannot find a mate. In most of those countries, there are more men than women.
A woman does not become a suicide bomber because she wants the 72 virgins.
And so forth.
You left out the first sentence of that section which frames the rest of the argument:
Suicide missions are not always religiously motivated, but according to Oxford University sociologist Diego Gambetta, editor of Making Sense of Suicide Missions, when religion is involved, the attackers are always Muslim.
No I did not. As I said: Basically, they took the pool of "suicide attacks" and ignored everything that contradicted their theory. Sorry, but that isn't the way science works. You cannot just keep excluding data points until your theory is "supported" by what is left. That is what is known as "Junk science".
As I said, this excerpt from a future book is an accumulation of studies that have been out for a while.
Yeah, that's great. There's nothing like the flavour of vintage "studies".
And by cherry-picking the "studies" you cite and excluding data-points that contradict your theory, you can "prove" just about anything you want to.
Here's a free clue - in Science, you make a statement that is falsifiable and then you attempt an experiment that would demonstrate such.
Since they are not addressing female suicide bombers, it is "Junk science". Otherwise the presence of female suicide bombers would be the falsification of their theory and they'd modify the theory.
Basically, the Saudi royals have made a deal with the devil, as it were. They give money to their local religious whackos with the tacit agreement that the whackos won't stir up the population to overthrow them.
You're on the right track.
Where does the wealth of the Saudi royals come from?
Oil.
What special talents do the royals have that generates the oil?
None. The oil is there.
How do the Saudi royals control the oil?
Whomever is in control of the country is in control of the oil.
So you end up with a situation where wealth is available to anyone who can establish control. And there are only 4 means of control.
1. Political 2. Religious 3. Family 4. Economic
The Economic control goes to whomever controls the country. So what you see is a battle between radical extreme groups focusing on the other three positions. Blood feuds between families. Religious suicide bombers. Political assassinations.
It's like all those "friends find lots of money and end up killing each other" stories. The value of the prize exceeds the value of the people you'd have to kill to get it.
Which also tells you how to finally achieve peace in the mid-east. Wait for the oil to run out and then focus on self-sufficient farming and high tech exports.
None of this is particularly new information. It's more of an accumulation of knowledge that's been out for a while.
Not exactly. It's more of a cherry-picked collection of "studies" and "facts" that support their claims.
Here, let's start with a good example:
It is the combination of polygyny and the promise of a large harem of virgins in heaven that motivates many young Muslim men to commit suicide bombings. Consistent with this explanation, all studies of suicide bombers indicate that they are significantly younger than not only the Muslim population in general but other (nonsuicidal) members of their own extreme political organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. And nearly all suicide bombers are single.
Contradictory fact - women also become suicide bombers.
Contradictory fact - Japanese Kamikazes.
Basically, they took the pool of "suicide attacks" and ignored everything that contradicted their theory. Sorry, but that isn't the way science works. You cannot just keep excluding data points until your theory is "supported" by what is left. That is what is known as "Junk science".
It seems that they've picked examples of whatever they want to claim and then claimed that those examples are the norm.
Long before TV--in 15th- and 16th- century Italy, and possibly two millennia ago--women were dying their hair blond.
And... ? Was it a fad / fashion? I don't remember seeing many representations of that in the art from that period. And speaking of that art.
Women's desire to look like Barbie--young with small waist, large breasts, long blond hair, and blue eyes--is a direct, realistic, and sensible response to the desire of men to mate with women who look like her. There is evolutionary logic behind each of these features.
Sure there is. You might want to look at what was actually painted back then. In particular, Peter Paul Rubens who was painting at that time.
And I'm sure that blue eyes have some evolutionary significance. Not.
This will create another excuse not to use OpenOffice. People will cling to MS Office (even if they are required to use ODF now) and OO will not gain users.
So? ODF isn't about killing Microsoft Office. It's about establishing an Open standard for documents that ANY word processor can support.
The reason that Microsoft is fighting this so much is that once their document lock-in is gone, anyone can use any word processor that suits them.
If Microsoft Word is the best ever word processor in your opinion, then why should you NOT have the choice to use it when working on documents? As long as the file can be edited by whomever you send it to on the word processor that they have chosen.
Entrapment would be forcing them or coercing them to commit the crime, often with another illegal act. Prostitution sting operations, for example, are often very close to (or over the line of) entrapment, as the police plant streetwalkers (an illegal act) in order to catch another illegal act.
What are you talking about?
The cops have women dress up like prostitutes dress and hang out in areas where prostitutes hang out.
What's "illegal" about that?
It's entrapment when the fake prostitute offers sex for money BEFORE the guy does. Because the guy MAY NOT have offered money for sex on his own.
Yes, ideally, all people should aspire to live their lives ethically.
Now, in this specific case, the computer had a picture of three cute girls. The "geek" checked where that picture was and downloaded the entire folder labeled "out clubbin!!!".
Living ethically is a lot easier when someone isn't deliberately setting you up.
you can't fix stupid. The biggest bug in Windows is between the chair and keyboard. The item in question is gullable, has admin privilages, and can run widely dispensed Windows specific code.
Now look at Ubuntu.
By default, you are a less privileged user. You have to do RESEARCH on how to log in as the root account. And the people who are most likely to be a problem are the least likely to do the research. This limits the trojan and virus threat.
By default, there are no open ports. This limits the worm threat.
People can STILL manage to get their Ubuntu machines infected. But it takes a LOT of work on their part and it's very easy to clean them.
Once the infection rate falls below the disinfection rate, the "threat" dies.
Microsoft is TRYING to get around to doing this. But they're still learning. Maybe Vista +1 will follow Ubuntu's lead.
Since linux is even harder to keep patched automatically it would not be a better situation (Flame me if you wish but please don't say something moronic as "its' as simple as "apt-get update-all".
Well, it seems that the moderators are as uninformed as you are. Imagine that.
Most current distributions AUTOMATICALLY check for updates.
And they do NOT require "Windows Genuine Advantage" or any such crap (unless you're running Novell). Ubuntu does this flawlessly.
And even if you believe that linux is more resistant to holes than windows that's not an issue: Remember most of these bots come in as trojans not remote execution exploits, and they don't even need to run as root--so linux is not going to be more secure against trojans people welcome into their user spaces.
Actually, at the moment it appears that the majority of NEW infections are coming from holes in IE.
Zombies send out spam telling you that you have a greeting card at site 123.321.123.321 and when you go there, IE is cracked.
So, running Linux WOULD prevent that.
And regarding trojans, Linux makes it FAR more difficult to run software WITHOUT specifically intending to do so than on Windows. So Linux is more resistant to trojans.
Go ahead and claim that just because it is possible for a sysadmin to fuck up his system despite all the precautions otherwise... well, you know what you're going to attempt to claim.
The fact is that Linux is far more resistant to viruses, trojans and worms.
And that is sufficient because it appears to drop the infection rate below the disinfecting rate. So the threats die because they're cleaned faster than they can spread.
But we've gone over this before and we'll go over this again.
It's not an archive of files in a single format, it's an archive of files in general, many formats, depending on which format the file was originally in.
And being a government, these files are INCREDIBLY important.
Why haven't they been converted? Really, all their DIGITAL archives should be in a single format by now.
The system wasn't thought up any more than a library thinks up all the books it contains.
All those books are in a single format. And paper records can last a LOT longer than digital records. They still have the original Constitution and that's more than 200 years old.
They've found papyrus records that were 2,000 years old.
It looks like paper is a better choice for keeping records than digital formats.
They don't care about that level of fraud. They'll just sell the debt to a collection agency and you'll end up fighting the collection agency to get your credit report fixed.
And that's for anything that they just didn't charge back to the merchants.
Your credit should be frozen BY DEFAULT.
The credit reporting agencies should send you a form letter EVERY SINGLE TIME anyone tries to access your info. And just include the cost of that processing in the fee they charge.
The merchants can pass that fee on to you when you want to establish credit with them. And if you fuck up and it doesn't get approved, they can have you pay again to try again.
It's a simple process and it would almost eliminate ONE type of fraud. Not all fraud and not other types of fraud. But you wouldn't have to worry about anyone opening up new accounts in your name.
The biggest mistake is that they're trying to imply that an IP address is tied to a specific person at a specific point in time.
It is not.
It may be tied to a specific computer. Or a specific router / firewall. Or even a specific UNSECURED wireless access point.
But it is NOT tied to a specific person.
Their second biggest mistake is claiming (without any evidence) that each file being "pirated" represents a lost sale. So the courts need to work REALLY REALLY FAST to stop the money being lost.
Their third biggest mistake is that the machine with the IP address, that is associated with the "piracy" is 100% under the conscious, knowing control of the person who is being charged. As opposed to your neighbor using your unprotected wireless access point to download files without your knowledge.
Really? How many package managers? Some use apt-get, others RPM whatever.
rpm apt slackware's pkgtool gentoo's emerge
And learning them would be included in the single day it would take for anyone familiar with any distribution to learn a different distribution.
How many desktops?
So it seems that you're trying to define "fragmentation" as "choices".
Why is that?
No one refers to the car market as "fragmented" just because you can buy a Ford OR a Chevy.
And if you buy a Chevy you can get a sports car OR a pickup truck OR an SUV.
And you can get them in manual OR automatic.
"Choice" is not "fragmentation". Learning to drive a manual pickup truck does not prevent you from learning to drive an automatic sports car. And the learning process will take less than a day.
But the more fragmented the Linux market is, the better MS looks as a corporate choice.
But Linux is not "fragmented".
Right now, I'm burning CentOS 5.0 because I don't want to pay RedHat to test and play with a new OS that I don't need support for, and it is only one of a few different RH clones.
And each of those "clones" works in almost the exact same way.
There is no "fragmentation". Any software that runs on the latest version of RHEL will also run on the latest version of Ubuntu. Or Slackware. etc.
Microsoft has to be liking what it is seeing, with every day a new distribution of Linux coming out, and no single standard. Different files in different places...
And yet that does not seem to be hampering Linux's growth at all.
So maybe it isn't as big a problem as you believe it to be.
Anyone who knows Red Hat can pick up Ubuntu in less than a day. And Slackware in another day. And Gentoo over a weekend. At which point, you pretty much know every distribution out there.
... how has the amount of code they actually approve and that gets into the kernel changed?
Once you become a guru coder, you may write less code yourself, but you may approve more code over all. That would be code written by other people that you check, tell them where the bugs are and they fix the bugs and re-submit the code.
When the code is up to your standards (and the evidence is the flat rate of bugs) then the code is included in the kernel.
There was a time (long ago) when Linus wrote ALL of the code himself. If you look at just that metric, Linus barely writes anything anymore (percentage-wise).
How many gorillas went around telling their friends about the "alien" who keeps watching them?
How many lions get interviewed every time there's a storm to tell about the "aliens" who put tracking devices on their ears?
If they're staying hidden, they're not doing a very good job at it. If they are there, they certainly ARE affecting our behaviour. Just look at TFA's content.
They could just setup on the other side of the moon and catch our broadcasts if they wanted to "study" us. No weird sightings or crashes or anything.
Here's why: assume that windows was technologically backwards and couln't get on the internet. Would you then agree that Linux was less secure, because the possibility exists to hack it over the internet while that possibility does not exist for windows? No, that wouldn't be an appropriate assesment of security.
Actually, it would be appropriate.
If you can remove an avenue of attack, you have increased the security of your system.
Now, by removing it from the Internet you have also reduced the FUNCTIONALITY of your system.
So you end up with a less functional, more secure system.
Security is all about evaluating the possible threats and reducing their effectiveness.
Teredo gives Vista the ability to get to ipv6 from behind a NAT, so vista has the ability to access more things (in this one limited way). Thus it should not be counted as a vulnerability unless Linux has a way to do the same thing, in which case we can compare the security implications of Linux's method versus Vista's method.
No. If it is an avenue for attack, it is an avenue for attack.
If it is vulnerable, it is vulnerable.
We've been over this before with Firefox's avoidance of ActiveX. Sometimes, increasing your security simply means NOT including some functionality.
Slashdot Mirror
[Mr. Kinney points a pistol at ED-209]
ED-209: [menacingly] Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply.
[Mr. Kinney drops the pistol on the floor]
ED-209: [ED-209 advances, growling] You have 15 seconds to comply.
[Mr. Kinney tries to run away]
ED-209: You have 10 seconds to comply.
[entire room of people in full panic trying to stay out of the line of fire]
ED-209: You have 5 seconds to comply... four... three... two... one... I am now authorized to use physical force!
[ED-209 opens fire and shreds Mr. Kinney]
From the movie Robocop.
Seems like there's at least one anti-science kid out there with mod points.
Too bad. Whether you like it or not, science is science.
And that article is nothing but "Junk science".
Go ahead and mod this one down, too.
No. A "data anomaly" would be "left handed suicide bombers". Or "lesbian suicide bombers".
A female suicide bomber DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS their cherry-picked "evidence" for their theory.
A woman does not become a suicide bomber because she cannot find a mate. In most of those countries, there are more men than women.
A woman does not become a suicide bomber because she wants the 72 virgins.
And so forth.
No I did not. As I said:
Basically, they took the pool of "suicide attacks" and ignored everything that contradicted their theory. Sorry, but that isn't the way science works. You cannot just keep excluding data points until your theory is "supported" by what is left. That is what is known as "Junk science".
Yeah, that's great. There's nothing like the flavour of vintage "studies".
And by cherry-picking the "studies" you cite and excluding data-points that contradict your theory, you can "prove" just about anything you want to.
Here's a free clue - in Science, you make a statement that is falsifiable and then you attempt an experiment that would demonstrate such.
Since they are not addressing female suicide bombers, it is "Junk science". Otherwise the presence of female suicide bombers would be the falsification of their theory and they'd modify the theory.
Instead, they attempt to modify the data set.
You're on the right track.
Where does the wealth of the Saudi royals come from?
Oil.
What special talents do the royals have that generates the oil?
None. The oil is there.
How do the Saudi royals control the oil?
Whomever is in control of the country is in control of the oil.
So you end up with a situation where wealth is available to anyone who can establish control. And there are only 4 means of control.
1. Political
2. Religious
3. Family
4. Economic
The Economic control goes to whomever controls the country. So what you see is a battle between radical extreme groups focusing on the other three positions. Blood feuds between families. Religious suicide bombers. Political assassinations.
It's like all those "friends find lots of money and end up killing each other" stories. The value of the prize exceeds the value of the people you'd have to kill to get it.
Which also tells you how to finally achieve peace in the mid-east. Wait for the oil to run out and then focus on self-sufficient farming and high tech exports.
Not exactly. It's more of a cherry-picked collection of "studies" and "facts" that support their claims.
Here, let's start with a good example:
Contradictory fact - women also become suicide bombers.
Contradictory fact - Japanese Kamikazes.
Basically, they took the pool of "suicide attacks" and ignored everything that contradicted their theory. Sorry, but that isn't the way science works. You cannot just keep excluding data points until your theory is "supported" by what is left. That is what is known as "Junk science".
And this article is full of junk science.
And
Sure there is. You might want to look at what was actually painted back then. In particular, Peter Paul Rubens who was painting at that time.
And I'm sure that blue eyes have some evolutionary significance. Not.
So? ODF isn't about killing Microsoft Office. It's about establishing an Open standard for documents that ANY word processor can support.
The reason that Microsoft is fighting this so much is that once their document lock-in is gone, anyone can use any word processor that suits them.
If Microsoft Word is the best ever word processor in your opinion, then why should you NOT have the choice to use it when working on documents? As long as the file can be edited by whomever you send it to on the word processor that they have chosen.
It's all about the applications. There are too many apps that too many people use that are available on their Windows machines.
There will not be a "year of the Linux desktop".
There will only be the year when people realize that most everyone else is running Linux, too.
What are you talking about?
The cops have women dress up like prostitutes dress and hang out in areas where prostitutes hang out.
What's "illegal" about that?
It's entrapment when the fake prostitute offers sex for money BEFORE the guy does. Because the guy MAY NOT have offered money for sex on his own.
Yes, ideally, all people should aspire to live their lives ethically.
Now, in this specific case, the computer had a picture of three cute girls. The "geek" checked where that picture was and downloaded the entire folder labeled "out clubbin!!!".
Living ethically is a lot easier when someone isn't deliberately setting you up.
Because a chocolate fireguard would MELT in a fire.
It's just a figure of speech. Although I prefer "chocolate kettle".
Now look at Ubuntu.
By default, you are a less privileged user. You have to do RESEARCH on how to log in as the root account. And the people who are most likely to be a problem are the least likely to do the research. This limits the trojan and virus threat.
By default, there are no open ports. This limits the worm threat.
People can STILL manage to get their Ubuntu machines infected. But it takes a LOT of work on their part and it's very easy to clean them.
Once the infection rate falls below the disinfection rate, the "threat" dies.
Microsoft is TRYING to get around to doing this. But they're still learning. Maybe Vista +1 will follow Ubuntu's lead.
Well, it seems that the moderators are as uninformed as you are. Imagine that.
Most current distributions AUTOMATICALLY check for updates.
And they do NOT require "Windows Genuine Advantage" or any such crap (unless you're running Novell). Ubuntu does this flawlessly.
Actually, at the moment it appears that the majority of NEW infections are coming from holes in IE.
Zombies send out spam telling you that you have a greeting card at site 123.321.123.321 and when you go there, IE is cracked.
So, running Linux WOULD prevent that.
And regarding trojans, Linux makes it FAR more difficult to run software WITHOUT specifically intending to do so than on Windows. So Linux is more resistant to trojans.
Go ahead and claim that just because it is possible for a sysadmin to fuck up his system despite all the precautions otherwise
The fact is that Linux is far more resistant to viruses, trojans and worms.
And that is sufficient because it appears to drop the infection rate below the disinfecting rate. So the threats die because they're cleaned faster than they can spread.
But we've gone over this before and we'll go over this again.
And being a government, these files are INCREDIBLY important.
Why haven't they been converted? Really, all their DIGITAL archives should be in a single format by now.
All those books are in a single format. And paper records can last a LOT longer than digital records. They still have the original Constitution and that's more than 200 years old.
They've found papyrus records that were 2,000 years old.
It looks like paper is a better choice for keeping records than digital formats.
They dump it on the merchant and on you.
They don't care about that level of fraud. They'll just sell the debt to a collection agency and you'll end up fighting the collection agency to get your credit report fixed.
And that's for anything that they just didn't charge back to the merchants.
Your credit should be frozen BY DEFAULT.
The credit reporting agencies should send you a form letter EVERY SINGLE TIME anyone tries to access your info. And just include the cost of that processing in the fee they charge.
The merchants can pass that fee on to you when you want to establish credit with them. And if you fuck up and it doesn't get approved, they can have you pay again to try again.
It's a simple process and it would almost eliminate ONE type of fraud. Not all fraud and not other types of fraud. But you wouldn't have to worry about anyone opening up new accounts in your name.
The biggest mistake is that they're trying to imply that an IP address is tied to a specific person at a specific point in time.
It is not.
It may be tied to a specific computer. Or a specific router / firewall. Or even a specific UNSECURED wireless access point.
But it is NOT tied to a specific person.
Their second biggest mistake is claiming (without any evidence) that each file being "pirated" represents a lost sale. So the courts need to work REALLY REALLY FAST to stop the money being lost.
Their third biggest mistake is that the machine with the IP address, that is associated with the "piracy" is 100% under the conscious, knowing control of the person who is being charged. As opposed to your neighbor using your unprotected wireless access point to download files without your knowledge.
Anyone have any others?
And every week we lose more of them.
That's mother-fucking TREASON and he should have been SHOT like we used to do with traitors.
Bush can pardon his corpse.
It comes under giving "Aid" to "their Enemies".
But never once "outing" a CIA agent ...
I'd have to say that there is a noticeable difference between the two acts.
Perjuring yourself over a consensual blow job is a crime.
Perjuring yourself to cover "outing" a CIA agent if MOTHER-FUCKING TREASON.
rpm
apt
slackware's pkgtool
gentoo's emerge
And learning them would be included in the single day it would take for anyone familiar with any distribution to learn a different distribution.
So it seems that you're trying to define "fragmentation" as "choices".
Why is that?
No one refers to the car market as "fragmented" just because you can buy a Ford OR a Chevy.
And if you buy a Chevy you can get a sports car OR a pickup truck OR an SUV.
And you can get them in manual OR automatic.
"Choice" is not "fragmentation". Learning to drive a manual pickup truck does not prevent you from learning to drive an automatic sports car. And the learning process will take less than a day.
But Linux is not "fragmented".
And each of those "clones" works in almost the exact same way.
There is no "fragmentation". Any software that runs on the latest version of RHEL will also run on the latest version of Ubuntu. Or Slackware. etc.
And yet that does not seem to be hampering Linux's growth at all.
So maybe it isn't as big a problem as you believe it to be.
Anyone who knows Red Hat can pick up Ubuntu in less than a day. And Slackware in another day. And Gentoo over a weekend. At which point, you pretty much know every distribution out there.
... how has the amount of code they actually approve and that gets into the kernel changed?
Once you become a guru coder, you may write less code yourself, but you may approve more code over all. That would be code written by other people that you check, tell them where the bugs are and they fix the bugs and re-submit the code.
When the code is up to your standards (and the evidence is the flat rate of bugs) then the code is included in the kernel.
There was a time (long ago) when Linus wrote ALL of the code himself. If you look at just that metric, Linus barely writes anything anymore (percentage-wise).
How many gorillas went around telling their friends about the "alien" who keeps watching them?
How many lions get interviewed every time there's a storm to tell about the "aliens" who put tracking devices on their ears?
If they're staying hidden, they're not doing a very good job at it. If they are there, they certainly ARE affecting our behaviour. Just look at TFA's content.
They could just setup on the other side of the moon and catch our broadcasts if they wanted to "study" us. No weird sightings or crashes or anything.
The players don't like radar. The cheaters do.
Following your logic, the game would offer the ability to instantly kill any enemy, at any range, automatically. Regardless of intervening obstacles.
Yeah, that sounds like a fun game.
Cheaters want those because cheaters don't want to play by the same limits that everyone else does.
Actually, it would be appropriate.
If you can remove an avenue of attack, you have increased the security of your system.
Now, by removing it from the Internet you have also reduced the FUNCTIONALITY of your system.
So you end up with a less functional, more secure system.
Security is all about evaluating the possible threats and reducing their effectiveness.
No. If it is an avenue for attack, it is an avenue for attack.
If it is vulnerable, it is vulnerable.
We've been over this before with Firefox's avoidance of ActiveX. Sometimes, increasing your security simply means NOT including some functionality.