What specifically about windows desktop is making your experience much better than the Ubuntu desktop? Have you tried the Ubuntu desktop lately?
For one, my complaint about KDE also applies to Ubuntu 10.10 (GNOME). As I said in my first post:
They sort tasks top to bottom first then only left to right. So if you have a double height taskbar and you close one button in the middle, all the buttons to the right of the closed button change position! That is so stupid.
By double height I mean double-row. Windows sorts left to right first, then top to bottom, so if you close a taskbar "button", fewer buttons are affected - only the left-most and rightmost.
Yes I could stick to a single height taskbar and use multiple desktops/workspaces to spread the windows around, or group task buttons, but that makes switching tasks slower.
Instead of multiple desktops, when I need to very quickly work and switch amongst a set of windows, I use a program I wrote (called LinkKey) that allows me to quickly assign alt+[number] to a window/task.
That way I can just click a particular bunch of windows I want to work with (in reverse order), press alt+0. Pressing that sets alt+1 = the most recent window, alt+2 = the second most recent window, alt+3 = the third most recent window and so on till alt+9. I can also press alt+shift+[number] to replace that particular "slot" with the current foreground window. To me that's still faster than assigning those "working set of windows" to a workspace, and then clicking amongst them for switching.
I find it useful when using a laptop without multiple monitors. With multiple monitors I could just spread the windows about, if they are just for reference. But even multi monitors are not so helpful if I need to copy and paste stuff amongst say 3 or 4 different windows. For that the alt+[number] stuff is better.
AFAIK it's even fewer keystrokes than "screen", and works with GUI apps;). I also added a "bank switching" feature so that you could keep two (or more) sets of hotkey-window mappings, but I haven't found the need to use that.
As long as I'm well compensated for my losses, I wouldn't care if they take over the entire country, so long as they actually do a much better job of running the country than the present government.
For example, if Singapore took over my country (Malaysia), I actually wouldn't mind. It's unlikely that they'd do worse than the current government.
So just get over it already and drop the bad algorithm. How hard can it be?
0) What algorithms do you propose as replacements? 1) How hard can it be? Maybe you can "walk the talk" by deleting/disabling all the CA certs in your browser that use bad algorithms- e.g. algorithms that you did not propose in 0). Same goes for not using browsers, ssh servers and clients that do not support algorithms in 0).
Don't be surprised if you find that some CAs are still using MD2!
If you only have a few windows open you don't need much of a GUI to manage them, almost any GUI will do (assuming it doesn't crash etc). As I said: "nearly any crappy GUI can seem cool and easy for a workload that only has 3 windows open".
Similarly if you only have a few processes running, you don't need a fancy kernel. In the extreme if you only have one process running, you don't need a 200 line patch to your Linux kernel to run it. You don't even need a kernel. Since that one process is all that runs.
Where a "Desktop UI" shows much of its power is how much it augments humans, from making life easier for "noobs" all the way to increasing productivity for users willing to take the trouble to learn shortcuts and more advanced techniques.
I do know a few people who use OSX or Linux as their desktops, but all their GUIs do is "browser" and "screen" (the screen manager). If a GUI can't make things easier and better than "screen" it's not that good is it? Think about that before flaming me.
Forgive me if I have higher standards, but fact is the GUI designers have had decades to come up with things that are actually better. Yet most of what I see are like fancy "cutscenes" in computer games. Stuff that's nice to look at, but after the first few times people want to skip them to get to the "real thing". From the 10GUI demo video, stuff like 10GUI fall into the "cutscene" category.
Run a separate instance of firefox for facebook? Might even be a good idea to launch it as a separate user, so if you get pwned on facebook it doesn't affect your email, or your banking etc.
10gui just _looks_ nice to the naive, and probably OK for people who only can cope with a few windows open at a time. But I don't see how it's actually going to be faster in task switching than using alt-tab, or clicking on task bar buttons.
The 10GUI interface would just get in my way a lot.
I often have about 30 windows open (I have a double height taskbar) - ssh sessions, browsers for work, browsers for nonwork (e.g. slashdot:) ), IM windows, editor, email, virtual box machines, file managers, it all starts to add up. I find opening and closing stuff only to reopen them again is usually a waste of time - why close an app if you're not running out of memory and you can still remember which task button raises it? So if a colleague on IM says: "hey can you restart XYZ again?" I don't have to ssh in, and etc. All I need to do is just click on the correct task button, press up arrow, confirm its what I want, press enter.
Sad to say, I find Windows XP/7 is so far best for handling stuff like that. Even better than OSX.
I tried doing the 30+ windows thing on OSX, using Expose. But it's just slower - more steps to get from one window to another. In contrast, on windows I can just click on the desired task button and that's it, no need for two clicks, or click then pause or other bullshit. Keep in mind, I'm not saying Windows is the best possible, there's still room for improvement. For instance, it'll be nice to be able to "alt-tab" from one browser tab to another browser tab (so much so that sometimes I open new browser windows just to be able to alt-tab between them).
KDE when I last used it was stupid. They sort tasks top to bottom first then only left to right. So if you have a double height taskbar and you close one button in the middle, all the buttons to the right of the closed button change position! That is so stupid.
If you think it's ridiculous to have 30 windows open, keep this in mind - nearly any crappy GUI can seem cool and easy for a workload that only has 3 windows open. It's when you need to juggle lots of tasks at the same time that's where the GUI either adds value or gets in the way. On-topic analogy: it's just like an O/S, a crappy kernel can seem good when you only have 3 concurrent processes. It's when you have 30 concurrent _running_ processes that you find out whether the kernel's IO and CPU scheduling is good, mediocre or poor.
I would prefer a GUI that's good for the naive/noob users, but at the same time provides short-cuts that can speed things up immensely for users that are willing to learn them.
GUI designers should not assume that users are not able to learn "fancy" stuff. Just watch an experienced Starcraft player (actions per second and all that;) ) or some other competitive gamer, or watch a skilled person handling a Point-of-Sale machine.
A great UI should be able to hyper-augment humans. To paraphrase a perlism, a great GUI should make simple things trivial, and difficult things easier.
Desktop GUI designers should not be saying "most people don't do difficult things so let's just handle the simple case".
It's way too easy for Bernanke to shit out another trillion bucks whenever he feels like it. One of the greatest advantages of gold is that it's pretty damned hard to inflate it.
Do read the above link. Summary: not a disadvantage to be able to create money when by doing so you in effect TAX THE REST OF THE WORLD (at least those holding net positive amounts of YOUR currency).
Your real problem would be that when the "US Mugabe" (aka US Gov) prints money, it is no longer handing the Old Mugabe Cronies (aka US citizens) a good enough share of the created money. Say the US Mugabe is handing over most of the printed money to its NEW Cronies, and not the US citizens. What would Mugabe's old cronies do if that happened? What do the US citizens do? Vote US Mugabe back into power?
Your other problem would be if the rest of the world starts switching to a different currency (Euro?) to buy oil, trade stuff, lend and borrow etc. Then when the US creates money, the rest of the world would be less affected and would laugh just like they laugh at Zimbabwe.
But as long as the rest of the world continues to hold and use trillions of US dollars, they won't be laughing whenever the US creates money. Even if they are too stupid to know what is actually happening (and many even "flee to the US dollar" for safety).
Another related thing: I always find it funny that people say that China is screwing the USA when China lends the US trillions of US dollars. Just think about it, China has just lent the US trillions of US dollars, which the US can create at any time[1], and the US turns around and uses that money to buy goods from other nations (including China!).
The US's problem is not that it has an advantage, the US's problem is it is wasting it.
China poisons its citizens to be a cheap mega-factory (they do have some sort of long term plan though - they're building > 100 nuclear power stations) and the USA uses the resulting savings to "get fat, buy cheap toys and big TVs", instead of investing the savings for a better future. The US is screwing itself way more than China is screwing them.
[1] The US has ALREADY created trillions without seemingly huge problems, Google for: federal reserve trillions (whenever they say "borrowed from US citizens/taxpayers" the numbers in your bank account don't go down immediately, so what has happened? Your money has actually become worth less, just most haven't realized it yet). So what's the big problem if it creates 2 trillion if China really wants US to pay up. It can always do fancy tricks to create it. Seems like most people are still too stupid to figure it out.
I on the other hand believe in the intrinsic value of gold. Gold is too useful a material to be made a currency.
If you make gold a currency it will be too expensive for the current practical stuff we are using gold for because there isn't enough gold around. We wouldn't be able to use gold in many items we are currently using gold for because it'll be a significant percentage of a person's salary.
Using gold as a currency is like using 10 specific sea-shells as currency for the whole world (with the big difference that those seashells aren't as useful). Those sea shells suddenly become very very expensive. You're not going to grind them up to make coatings for astronaut helmet visors.
165000 tonnes / 6 billion = 27.5 grams. 27.5 grams of gold per person as their entire savings on average.
Currently a ton of circuit boards has about 80 to 1500 grams of gold.
Now figure how much a current gold-containing motherboard would be in terms of your monthly salary in gold. And thus work out how much gold you'd be able to use in a motherboard in a "gold = currency" world.
Then redo the math with the reasonable assumption that Bill Gates and friends would own 50% of all the gold.
Excerpts: Article (8) The Israeli existence in Palestine is a Zionist invasion with a colonial expansive base, and it is a natural ally to colonialism and international imperialism. Article (12) Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence. Article (19) Armed struggle is a strategy and not a tactic, and the Palestinian Arab People's armed revolution is a decisive factor in the liberation fight and in uprooting the Zionist existence, and this struggle will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated.
If there can be so few "True Atheists", then it seems most people want a "Religion". Whether it one of the popular religions, or worship of the Great Communist Leader, or "Gaia", or "The Best Team in the world, and I'm willing to bash anyone who says otherwise", they just have a need to be part of a Greater Thing.
Arguably atheism was the initial state (unless you believe the ancestors of humans and primates had religion too which would be interesting;) ), and then religion emerged and more importantly _outcompeted_ atheism.
So as long as humans remain humans, plain atheism doesn't look like it would become a large majority. The "substrate" and environment has to change significantly. But I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.
Even if God etc doesn't exist, as long as the placebo effect exists (and remains significant), certain types of religions will outcompete atheism over the long run. Because strict atheism will pose no net benefits[1], whereas certain religions would produce benefits via the placebo effect. So as long as the net benefits outweigh the costs of a religion, adherents as a whole would benefit more from that religion than from atheism.
Some religions have/had very high costs of course, but not all. Plus the costs and benefits have to be taken across the group as a whole, because some religions while costing a few individuals a lot (their entire lives in fact), would benefit the group more overall.
[1] I believe most atheists would say atheism is a result not a cause, producing benefits is not applicable - it's just what happens when you hold a certain world view.
My point was that muslims first have to deal with the "ABC"s as per the link. If they continue to hold those beliefs, they will continue cause problems.
And as long as most Palestinians hold on to these "ABC"s they contribute to the Palestinian problem.
I'm not a huge supporter of Israel at all, but I sure understand why they do what they do. It's like you fighting with someone, if he: 1) Doesn't promise to not kill you. 2) Keeps hitting you and trying to kill you whenever you let him go. It's pretty understandable if you put a choke-hold on him and not let go. Not pleasant to watch, but from what I see many of the Palestinians and their supporters share a HUGE part of the blame for their situation.
Israel seems to get on reasonably with Egypt and Jordan, after both agreed to make peace with Israel. But the rest of the Arab/muslim nations including the Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel and they want to eliminate Israel.
So why is anyone surprised when Israel does not want to loosen their chokehold on the Palestinians?
In July 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton convened a peace summit between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Barak reportedly offered the Palestinian leader approximately 95% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem,[13] and that 69 Jewish settlements (which comprise 85% of the West Bank's Jewish settlers) would be ceded to Israel. He also proposed "temporary Israeli control" indefinitely over another 10% of the West Bank territory--an area including many more Jewish settlements. According to Palestinian sources, the remaining area would be under Palestinian control, yet certain areas would be broken up by Israeli bypass roads and checkpoints. Depending on how the security roads would be configured, these Israeli roads might impede free travel by Palestinians throughout their proposed nation and reduce the ability to absorb Palestinian refugees.
Arafat rejected this offer. President Clinton reportedly requested that Arafat make a counter-offer, but he proposed none. Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami who kept a diary of the negotiations said in an interview in 2001, when asked whether the Palestinians made a counterproposal: "No. And that is the heart of the matter. Never, in the negotiations between us and the Palestinians, was there a Palestinian counterproposal."
They rejected that offer. Why don't they make a counterproposal? The Palestinians don't really want to make peace with Israel. To them peace = Israel wiped out.
Yes it's pretty nasty what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, slowly strangling someone is nasty. But what should they do? The Palestinians themselves don't really want to make peace with Israel (as long as killing Jews is considered part of your religion, go figure how long that peace will last).
As for the USA, sure they give aid to Israel (3 billion a year). But guess what, they also give Egypt about a billion a year too (they also give Jordan some money). You can say it's unfair that the USA gives Israel more money, but go visit both Israel and Egypt, compare how well each has been managing their resources, people and wealth.
From a secular perspective being a citizen of Israel would be better than being a citizen of "Greater Palestine" ruled by Hamas (assuming Israel is gone). Plenty of evidence - this "arrested for heresy" story is just one.
But it doesn't look like most Palestinians see it that way, they'd rather wipe out Israel and be ruled/oppressed by Hamas or similar. That is their dream.
That "country" is oppressed because that "country" is at war with Israel and these sort of people given more freedoms would be wiping the Israelis out with even greater enthusiasm than wiping out their own heretics.
If you think they're just going change and be so nice to Jews, Christians and pagans you should take a really close look at the history of Islam.
The scenario I'm talking about is that you've managed to get "root" privileges in the virtual machine (presumably via some other exploit), and the only thing between you and pwning the Host is:
a) A VM config issue ( can talk to the host) b) A bug in the VM software c) A bug in the CPU or other hardware.
Whether this "Debug Mode" is equivalent to c) is what I'm talking about.
Is it legal and viable for a lawyer to do stuff like: "My client never laid eyes on the victim of this horrible crime; but even if he did, he was not at the scene of the murder at the time of the killing; but even if he was, he's not the shooter; but even if he was, he was insane; and if he wasn't, then it was clearly self-defense."
Slashdot Mirror
Nope. Not the same thing, unless you only have two tabs opened.
alt+tab deals with windows in terms of "most recently used".
ctrl+tab goes to the next tab in "position". ctrl+shift+tab goes to the previous tab in "position". They don't do "most recently used tab".
What specifically about windows desktop is making your experience much better than the Ubuntu desktop? Have you tried the Ubuntu desktop lately?
For one, my complaint about KDE also applies to Ubuntu 10.10 (GNOME). As I said in my first post:
They sort tasks top to bottom first then only left to right. So if you have a double height taskbar and you close one button in the middle, all the buttons to the right of the closed button change position! That is so stupid.
By double height I mean double-row. Windows sorts left to right first, then top to bottom, so if you close a taskbar "button", fewer buttons are affected - only the left-most and rightmost.
Yes I could stick to a single height taskbar and use multiple desktops/workspaces to spread the windows around, or group task buttons, but that makes switching tasks slower.
Instead of multiple desktops, when I need to very quickly work and switch amongst a set of windows, I use a program I wrote (called LinkKey) that allows me to quickly assign alt+[number] to a window/task.
That way I can just click a particular bunch of windows I want to work with (in reverse order), press alt+0. Pressing that sets alt+1 = the most recent window, alt+2 = the second most recent window, alt+3 = the third most recent window and so on till alt+9. I can also press alt+shift+[number] to replace that particular "slot" with the current foreground window. To me that's still faster than assigning those "working set of windows" to a workspace, and then clicking amongst them for switching.
I find it useful when using a laptop without multiple monitors. With multiple monitors I could just spread the windows about, if they are just for reference. But even multi monitors are not so helpful if I need to copy and paste stuff amongst say 3 or 4 different windows. For that the alt+[number] stuff is better.
AFAIK it's even fewer keystrokes than "screen", and works with GUI apps ;). I also added a "bank switching" feature so that you could keep two (or more) sets of hotkey-window mappings, but I haven't found the need to use that.
Lastly, Windows 7 does have something like that, it's winkey+[number], but it's more on a per app basis, see: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Keyboard-shortcuts
The Windows 7 approach works well enough for most people. But the Windows 7 GUI seems to be a lot more cluttered for little gain in usability.
As long as I'm well compensated for my losses, I wouldn't care if they take over the entire country, so long as they actually do a much better job of running the country than the present government.
For example, if Singapore took over my country (Malaysia), I actually wouldn't mind. It's unlikely that they'd do worse than the current government.
So just get over it already and drop the bad algorithm. How hard can it be?
0) What algorithms do you propose as replacements?
1) How hard can it be? Maybe you can "walk the talk" by deleting/disabling all the CA certs in your browser that use bad algorithms- e.g. algorithms that you did not propose in 0). Same goes for not using browsers, ssh servers and clients that do not support algorithms in 0).
Don't be surprised if you find that some CAs are still using MD2!
If you only have a few windows open you don't need much of a GUI to manage them, almost any GUI will do (assuming it doesn't crash etc). As I said: "nearly any crappy GUI can seem cool and easy for a workload that only has 3 windows open".
Similarly if you only have a few processes running, you don't need a fancy kernel. In the extreme if you only have one process running, you don't need a 200 line patch to your Linux kernel to run it. You don't even need a kernel. Since that one process is all that runs.
Where a "Desktop UI" shows much of its power is how much it augments humans, from making life easier for "noobs" all the way to increasing productivity for users willing to take the trouble to learn shortcuts and more advanced techniques.
I do know a few people who use OSX or Linux as their desktops, but all their GUIs do is "browser" and "screen" (the screen manager). If a GUI can't make things easier and better than "screen" it's not that good is it? Think about that before flaming me.
Forgive me if I have higher standards, but fact is the GUI designers have had decades to come up with things that are actually better. Yet most of what I see are like fancy "cutscenes" in computer games. Stuff that's nice to look at, but after the first few times people want to skip them to get to the "real thing". From the 10GUI demo video, stuff like 10GUI fall into the "cutscene" category.
Douglas Engelbart must be a bit disappointed - one of his dreams was human augmentation. That was about 40 years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart
Run a separate instance of firefox for facebook? Might even be a good idea to launch it as a separate user, so if you get pwned on facebook it doesn't affect your email, or your banking etc.
10gui just _looks_ nice to the naive, and probably OK for people who only can cope with a few windows open at a time. But I don't see how it's actually going to be faster in task switching than using alt-tab, or clicking on task bar buttons.
:) ), IM windows, editor, email, virtual box machines, file managers, it all starts to add up. I find opening and closing stuff only to reopen them again is usually a waste of time - why close an app if you're not running out of memory and you can still remember which task button raises it? So if a colleague on IM says: "hey can you restart XYZ again?" I don't have to ssh in, and etc. All I need to do is just click on the correct task button, press up arrow, confirm its what I want, press enter.
;) ) or some other competitive gamer, or watch a skilled person handling a Point-of-Sale machine.
The 10GUI interface would just get in my way a lot.
I often have about 30 windows open (I have a double height taskbar) - ssh sessions, browsers for work, browsers for nonwork (e.g. slashdot
Sad to say, I find Windows XP/7 is so far best for handling stuff like that. Even better than OSX.
I tried doing the 30+ windows thing on OSX, using Expose. But it's just slower - more steps to get from one window to another. In contrast, on windows I can just click on the desired task button and that's it, no need for two clicks, or click then pause or other bullshit. Keep in mind, I'm not saying Windows is the best possible, there's still room for improvement. For instance, it'll be nice to be able to "alt-tab" from one browser tab to another browser tab (so much so that sometimes I open new browser windows just to be able to alt-tab between them).
KDE when I last used it was stupid. They sort tasks top to bottom first then only left to right. So if you have a double height taskbar and you close one button in the middle, all the buttons to the right of the closed button change position! That is so stupid.
If you think it's ridiculous to have 30 windows open, keep this in mind - nearly any crappy GUI can seem cool and easy for a workload that only has 3 windows open. It's when you need to juggle lots of tasks at the same time that's where the GUI either adds value or gets in the way. On-topic analogy: it's just like an O/S, a crappy kernel can seem good when you only have 3 concurrent processes. It's when you have 30 concurrent _running_ processes that you find out whether the kernel's IO and CPU scheduling is good, mediocre or poor.
I would prefer a GUI that's good for the naive/noob users, but at the same time provides short-cuts that can speed things up immensely for users that are willing to learn them.
GUI designers should not assume that users are not able to learn "fancy" stuff. Just watch an experienced Starcraft player (actions per second and all that
A great UI should be able to hyper-augment humans. To paraphrase a perlism, a great GUI should make simple things trivial, and difficult things easier.
Desktop GUI designers should not be saying "most people don't do difficult things so let's just handle the simple case".
Unfortunately, on wooden handrails, the underside is often where the splinters are :(.
It's way too easy for Bernanke to shit out another trillion bucks whenever he feels like it. One of the greatest advantages of gold is that it's pretty damned hard to inflate it.
For the USA, that's the huge _disadvantage_ of gold: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1006095&cid=25493341
Do read the above link. Summary: not a disadvantage to be able to create money when by doing so you in effect TAX THE REST OF THE WORLD (at least those holding net positive amounts of YOUR currency).
Your real problem would be that when the "US Mugabe" (aka US Gov) prints money, it is no longer handing the Old Mugabe Cronies (aka US citizens) a good enough share of the created money. Say the US Mugabe is handing over most of the printed money to its NEW Cronies, and not the US citizens. What would Mugabe's old cronies do if that happened? What do the US citizens do? Vote US Mugabe back into power?
Your other problem would be if the rest of the world starts switching to a different currency (Euro?) to buy oil, trade stuff, lend and borrow etc. Then when the US creates money, the rest of the world would be less affected and would laugh just like they laugh at Zimbabwe.
But as long as the rest of the world continues to hold and use trillions of US dollars, they won't be laughing whenever the US creates money. Even if they are too stupid to know what is actually happening (and many even "flee to the US dollar" for safety).
Another related thing: I always find it funny that people say that China is screwing the USA when China lends the US trillions of US dollars. Just think about it, China has just lent the US trillions of US dollars, which the US can create at any time[1], and the US turns around and uses that money to buy goods from other nations (including China!).
The US's problem is not that it has an advantage, the US's problem is it is wasting it.
China poisons its citizens to be a cheap mega-factory (they do have some sort of long term plan though - they're building > 100 nuclear power stations) and the USA uses the resulting savings to "get fat, buy cheap toys and big TVs", instead of investing the savings for a better future. The US is screwing itself way more than China is screwing them.
[1] The US has ALREADY created trillions without seemingly huge problems, Google for: federal reserve trillions (whenever they say "borrowed from US citizens/taxpayers" the numbers in your bank account don't go down immediately, so what has happened? Your money has actually become worth less, just most haven't realized it yet). So what's the big problem if it creates 2 trillion if China really wants US to pay up. It can always do fancy tricks to create it. Seems like most people are still too stupid to figure it out.
I on the other hand believe in the intrinsic value of gold. Gold is too useful a material to be made a currency.
If you make gold a currency it will be too expensive for the current practical stuff we are using gold for because there isn't enough gold around. We wouldn't be able to use gold in many items we are currently using gold for because it'll be a significant percentage of a person's salary.
Using gold as a currency is like using 10 specific sea-shells as currency for the whole world (with the big difference that those seashells aren't as useful). Those sea shells suddenly become very very expensive. You're not going to grind them up to make coatings for astronaut helmet visors.
Estimates are 165,000 tonnes of gold _ever_ mined. http://www.gold.org/faq/answer/76/how_much_gold_has_been_mined/
165000 tonnes / 6 billion = 27.5 grams. 27.5 grams of gold per person as their entire savings on average.
Currently a ton of circuit boards has about 80 to 1500 grams of gold.
Now figure how much a current gold-containing motherboard would be in terms of your monthly salary in gold. And thus work out how much gold you'd be able to use in a motherboard in a "gold = currency" world.
Then redo the math with the reasonable assumption that Bill Gates and friends would own 50% of all the gold.
How many foxconn employees so far? I think they've got a fair number to go till they hit their "quota" for the year...
Some of those were probably "copy-cat" suicides too.
Foxconn also had a suicide payout policy which might have convinced some of those to suicide so that their families get money.
Foxconn has about half a million employees.
The USA has a suicide rate of about 10-14 per 100k: http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html
If you have 500000 employees, one shouldn't be so surprised if 50 of them kill themselves every year.
AFAIK, Google doesn't provide AAAA records for most of their services to just anyone: http://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/
Anything interesting you might wish to mention?
My points will still stand for Fatah. As far as I know, an English translation of Fatah's constitution is here: http://www.alzaytouna.net/arabic/?c=1598&a=97061
Excerpts:
Article (8) The Israeli existence in Palestine is a Zionist invasion with a colonial expansive base, and it is a natural ally to colonialism and international imperialism.
Article (12) Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.
Article (19) Armed struggle is a strategy and not a tactic, and the Palestinian Arab People's armed revolution is a decisive factor in the liberation fight and in uprooting the Zionist existence, and this struggle will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated.
He's an amateur.
This is what I call a great cyberheist:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=armOzfkwtCA4
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aGvwttDayiiM
Or if fancy computer tricks are required:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/07/24/business/0724-webBIZ-trading.ready.html
If there can be so few "True Atheists", then it seems most people want a "Religion". Whether it one of the popular religions, or worship of the Great Communist Leader, or "Gaia", or "The Best Team in the world, and I'm willing to bash anyone who says otherwise", they just have a need to be part of a Greater Thing.
;) ), and then religion emerged and more importantly _outcompeted_ atheism.
Arguably atheism was the initial state (unless you believe the ancestors of humans and primates had religion too which would be interesting
So as long as humans remain humans, plain atheism doesn't look like it would become a large majority. The "substrate" and environment has to change significantly. But I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.
Even if God etc doesn't exist, as long as the placebo effect exists (and remains significant), certain types of religions will outcompete atheism over the long run. Because strict atheism will pose no net benefits[1], whereas certain religions would produce benefits via the placebo effect. So as long as the net benefits outweigh the costs of a religion, adherents as a whole would benefit more from that religion than from atheism.
Some religions have/had very high costs of course, but not all. Plus the costs and benefits have to be taken across the group as a whole, because some religions while costing a few individuals a lot (their entire lives in fact), would benefit the group more overall.
[1] I believe most atheists would say atheism is a result not a cause, producing benefits is not applicable - it's just what happens when you hold a certain world view.
My point was that muslims first have to deal with the "ABC"s as per the link. If they continue to hold those beliefs, they will continue cause problems.
And as long as most Palestinians hold on to these "ABC"s they contribute to the Palestinian problem.
I'm not a huge supporter of Israel at all, but I sure understand why they do what they do. It's like you fighting with someone, if he:
1) Doesn't promise to not kill you.
2) Keeps hitting you and trying to kill you whenever you let him go.
It's pretty understandable if you put a choke-hold on him and not let go. Not pleasant to watch, but from what I see many of the Palestinians and their supporters share a HUGE part of the blame for their situation.
Israel seems to get on reasonably with Egypt and Jordan, after both agreed to make peace with Israel. But the rest of the Arab/muslim nations including the Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel and they want to eliminate Israel.
So why is anyone surprised when Israel does not want to loosen their chokehold on the Palestinians?
See this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict#Camp_David_Summit_.282000.29
In July 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton convened a peace summit between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Barak reportedly offered the Palestinian leader approximately 95% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem,[13] and that 69 Jewish settlements (which comprise 85% of the West Bank's Jewish settlers) would be ceded to Israel. He also proposed "temporary Israeli control" indefinitely over another 10% of the West Bank territory--an area including many more Jewish settlements. According to Palestinian sources, the remaining area would be under Palestinian control, yet certain areas would be broken up by Israeli bypass roads and checkpoints. Depending on how the security roads would be configured, these Israeli roads might impede free travel by Palestinians throughout their proposed nation and reduce the ability to absorb Palestinian refugees.
Arafat rejected this offer. President Clinton reportedly requested that Arafat make a counter-offer, but he proposed none. Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami who kept a diary of the negotiations said in an interview in 2001, when asked whether the Palestinians made a counterproposal: "No. And that is the heart of the matter. Never, in the negotiations between us and the Palestinians, was there a Palestinian counterproposal."
They rejected that offer. Why don't they make a counterproposal? The Palestinians don't really want to make peace with Israel. To them peace = Israel wiped out.
Hamas certainly don't want peace with Israel, as long as they follow their own charter, any peace they make with Israel can only be temporary: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
Yes it's pretty nasty what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, slowly strangling someone is nasty. But what should they do? The Palestinians themselves don't really want to make peace with Israel (as long as killing Jews is considered part of your religion, go figure how long that peace will last).
As for the USA, sure they give aid to Israel (3 billion a year). But guess what, they also give Egypt about a billion a year too (they also give Jordan some money). You can say it's unfair that the USA gives Israel more money, but go visit both Israel and Egypt, compare how well each has been managing their resources, people and wealth.
From a secular perspective being a citizen of Israel would be better than being a citizen of "Greater Palestine" ruled by Hamas (assuming Israel is gone). Plenty of evidence - this "arrested for heresy" story is just one.
But it doesn't look like most Palestinians see it that way, they'd rather wipe out Israel and be ruled/oppressed by Hamas or similar. That is their dream.
That "country" is oppressed because that "country" is at war with Israel and these sort of people given more freedoms would be wiping the Israelis out with even greater enthusiasm than wiping out their own heretics.
If you think they're just going change and be so nice to Jews, Christians and pagans you should take a really close look at the history of Islam.
If they don't change their popular core beliefs you will always have problems with them:
http://www.tawfikhamid.com/abcs-test-for-radical-islam/
I guess you'd prefer this one? http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/10/03/1945228/Brooklyn-Father-And-Son-Launch-Homemade-Spacecraft
Maybe those in need of karma can start copying the +5 comments from that story to here. I'm sure most would still apply... :)
The scenario I'm talking about is that you've managed to get "root" privileges in the virtual machine (presumably via some other exploit), and the only thing between you and pwning the Host is:
a) A VM config issue ( can talk to the host)
b) A bug in the VM software
c) A bug in the CPU or other hardware.
Whether this "Debug Mode" is equivalent to c) is what I'm talking about.
You need "strong" AI first before you get Terminator.
Otherwise Ironman - man = suit.
To me the amazing achievement in the Ironman movies that nobody seems to notice is the Jarvis AI he's got.
Say you own the OS but it is in a virtual machine.
If flipping the processor into a new mode allows you to get out of the virtual machine and pwn the Host too, then yes it makes a difference.
Just curious does that mean you can only get the Slashdot login form via http? If that's true, it's funny :).
My point still stands: "zillions" of sites don't support https.
And a number of the ones that do, like Slashdot, do it half-assed.
Is it legal and viable for a lawyer to do stuff like:
"My client never laid eyes on the victim of this horrible crime; but even if he did, he was not at the scene of the murder at the time of the killing; but even if he was, he's not the shooter; but even if he was, he was insane; and if he wasn't, then it was clearly self-defense."
Some of those games are quite realistic nowadays.
http://www.gizmag.com/lucas-ordoez-the-first-virtual-to-real-race-driver/11623/
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/from-virtual-racing-champion-to-real-world-race-winner-iracingcom-driver-wyatt-gooden-takes-volkswagen-jetta-tdi-cup-race-at-mid-ohio-97071469.html