Atheism is a belief. You believe that there is no God, and no gods. Theism is a belief that there is a God, or that there are gods. Neither position is provable. But, you demand that people believe as you do, and that the government respect your belief more than other beliefs. And, "vacuum is a gas" is a totally irrelevant non sequitur.
Best possible explanation - despite the fact that the earth is in an interglacial age, and the fact that the earth has obviously seen much greater climate changes in short periods of time in the past?
Delusions of grandeur aren't science at all. As an elementary school child in the 1960's, I was aware of the interglacial, and I was aware that the earth could be expected to grow warmer. I couldn't have possibly guessed how soon the earth might warm up, or how much - but I was already aware at that time that much of the United States was home to dinosaurs and rain forests.
No, mankind's delusions amount to religion - nothing more, and nothing less. SCIENCE says that the earth would have grown warmer with or without us.
Now, science MAY, at some point, determine that mankind helped to accelerate the earth's warming. The jury is still out. It's possible. To date, science has proven no such thing, nor do they have this supposed "preponderence of evidence" that you claim. The ignorant, unwashed masses eat that stuff up, but thinking people don't.
Some opinions see monoculture as a very serious problem, others see it as a less serious problem - but all see monocultures as a problem to some degree.
And, if Linux exploits are so good, why is no one using them to create botnets, or to harvest data? Oh yeah - market share. I haven't bought into that argument in the past, and I'm not buying it now.
Which religion? WHICH ONE? Right back at you, McFly. Read the damned sentence as it was written, not one single phrase. No laws that respect any religion, no laws that create a state religion, no laws that will favor one religion over another.
What you are demanding, is that atheism be favored over any other theism. Now, is that clear enough for you, McFly? You're a hypocrite, because you demand that government respect YOUR beliefs, instead of anyone else's beliefs.
Yeah, whatever. But, complacency allows the government to eat the children, so what's the difference? How many of our children died in Iraq? Not as many as Iraqi children, but still, plenty. All for corporate profit. Unless of course, you actually BELIEVE that Saddam had WMD. Easily disproved, even back in 2002. Do a "Who's Who" of all of Saddam's nuclear and biologic experts in 2002. See how many of them were overseas, employed by private corporations, or engaged in academic pursuits. You'll find that a couple were unaccounted for - but almost all of them were busy outside of the government's interests.
The real deal is, Americans don't have balls. Well - some of our "ladies" have balls. We've raised a couple generations of little pussies, who want someone to hold their hands, and tell them what to do. Got any idea how few Americans can stand eyeball to eyeball with a cop, and calmly, clearly, tell the cop that he is out of line, and that he will be called out in court?
"I'm going to search your car." is answered with "YES SIR!" instead of "I don't give you permission to search my car." "You were speeding." is met with whining and pleading instead of "You are mistaken, officer." And, when people go in front of a judge, it's outright groveling.
Not more than 1% of the population has ever written their congressman, the president, or any other public official who might make a difference. Only after asinine laws are passed do people bitch and whine.
No balls. Pussies. I'm ashamed, but it's true. This is what happens when life is to damned easy. There is a name for that, isn't there? Decadence? Yeah, that's it. No spine, no will, no drive. That's us.
Religiosity is not declining. Just look around here. Yes, right here on slashdot. There are millions of converts to the global warming thingy, and millions more to globalization.
Oh - you're going to tell me now that those aren't religions?
How else do you explain people's faith in a theory that is as yet untested? "We believe the earth is warming due to mankind's tampering with nature." Not, "We have found proof that the earth is warming due to mankind's activities." Just, "We believe", "We think", and "Some evidence seems to indicate".
All that stuff appeals to both humanists and to Gaiaists, and probably to animists as well. Or, are Gaiaists just a subset of animists? Whatever - you get the idea.
Thank you, Sir. It often seems that there are only about three dozen people left in this country, who are literate enough to actually READ those sentences, and understand them. It's really not that difficult. I just can't understand whether all those other people are truly illiterate, or they just hope that we aren't literate enough to understand what we read.
Of course, the possibility exists that less than a thousand living people have actually read those documents. Everyone else just believes what some liberal atheist wrote in a textbook about those documents.
No, you don't get to break one phrase out of the sentence, and set it up in it's own context. No laws in respect to religion, not "no respect for" religion. And, if you can't respect other people's religious ideas, how in HELL do you demand that they respect your petty little feelings on the matter?
You are really, really, really reaching to claim that a religion was established with that motto. If you want to twist logic in such a fashion, then I can too. It simple means that if there is a God, then we will trust him - but we don't trust any DAMNED body else.
And, BTW - there is nothing monotheistic about that phrase at all. The Romans, the Greeks, the Partheons, the Carthaginians, the Incas, ANY person from ANY time might have said those very words.
I believe that you are correct. Prostitution is indeed a crime. And, the real victims are the prostitutes and their customers. The victimizers are the self righteous fools who need to feel superior to those involved in prostitution.
You can make a really convincing argument that all women are prostitutes. I don't care how religious you are, or how loving your wife if - you cannot tell me that you have never caved in during an argument, knowing that you'd get none for a week or a month if you DID win the argument. You've also spent money on her, knowing that doing so would put her "in the mood". All relationships are based on give and take, whether that giving and taking be monetary or not.
So - some guy wants some, and some gal is willing to give him some, in exchange for a few bucks. How is this any different than your average housewife? She gives it up, in exchange for a roof over her head, food, transportation, the means to take care of her children. The prostitute settles for basically the same things - just translated more coarsely into monetary terms.
You'd be more accurate to say that there are no victimless relationships. We all use each other, after all. The kids use me, I use the kids. The wife takes advantage of me, I take advantage of her. You can measure the value of your friends according to what you get from them, just as they measure your value to them. It may get a little difficult putting a monetary value on all aspects of your relationships - but it can be done. Courts do it all the time. Judges rule that one of the partners has to pay alimony and/or child support every day.
Now, please, get off your moral high horse, and recognize the reality of the situation. Prostitution has always been there, from prehistory. No culture has ever eradicated prostitution. It's going to happen. Instead of using the courts to victimize everyone associated with the trade yet further - how 'bout we legalize it, license it, tax it, and in exchange, offer the women some protection.
Prostitutes are commonly targeted by predators BECAUSE they know the law doesn't give a shit about them. All those women that the black guy in Ohio raped, murdered, and apparently cannibalized (not necessarily in that order) were women that the law placed no value on. Had any of those women had value to the law, and/or the community, there would have been a manhunt immediately after the women disappeared.
It's a real shame that prostitutes and/or druggies can fall through the cracks, and never be missed.
And, people like you don't even realize that while you're riding that big, tall, moral horse, you've basically written off millions of women as trash, whom the predators may prey upon at will.
What is the value of human life? Stop victimizing the women. And, while you're at it, stop victimizing the customers. Some poor chump can't build a satisfying relationship, so he resorts to soliciting a prostitute - only to be hauled to jail, and branded as a sexual offender. Come on - how retarded can people get?
First - android is a modified Linux. Highly modified, in fact, by the vendors. Each device marketed by a vendor has the exact same security flaws. Crack one, you've cracked them all. This is contrary to the more general Linux distros, wherein the user decides what apps, what kernel, what development tools, even which desktop environment. In short - android is largely a monoculture, like Windows. Monocultures are dangerous, in that each individual device is susceptible to all the same exploits that all it's brethren are.
Second - perl, python, or whatever is installed by default on this or that Linux distro - but not all of them. Again, it depends on the user who sets up the distro. Even if python is installed by default on my distro - I can remove it easily enough. Unlike Android apps.
And, that market share argument? I'm not impressed. The fact is, Linux servers and Linux workstations simply aren't infected like Windows is. You can make that argument all you like, it doesn't become any more true with infinite repititions. The WORST thing I've ever seen on a Linux desktop, was a browser hijacking. I guess if I were susceptible to phishing, I would have seen much worse by now - but therein lies part of Linux' security. The braindead can't be bothered to run an OS that they might have to learn! It's so much easier to insert the Windows CD, accept all the defaults, then fire up "the browser" that was installed by default, and navigate to music, porn, movies, P2P, and all the other mindless drivel that appeals to the braindead.
You can have market share, because you get to count every braindead user in the world in your corner, LMAO
As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade. —Bill Gates
Yes, piracy is indeed part of Microsoft's business model. Other Microsoft executives have made similar comments, if you care to search them out.
The agreement is, Microsoft shouldn't have ever come to rule the computing world - or any segment of the computing world.
Reality, however, is what it is. We have an entire generation who grew up on free computers in schools, being taught by people who were basically Microsoft indoctrination agents. People know and demand Microsoft. So - since that is where we are at, we have to cooperate. It's time for all those MS-centric people who are still on XP to upgrade. If they insist that they must make monetary offerings to Microsoft in order to use a computer, then it's time to make a new offering.
Of course, I'll still be trying to show people that Microsoft is a false idol, and trying to get them to upgrade to a Unix-like operating system. Sometimes, I actually succeed!
I've looked at Bodhi in the past. Looks nice - but I demand 64 bit operating systems on my 64 bit hardware. For that reason, I've only looked at Bodhi. A similar offering, in 64 bit, is available from Sabayon: http://forum.sabayon.org/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=24632
Notice that Sabayon is available with or without any of the major desktop environments. If Bodhi appeals to you, then you'll want that E17 image. Sabayon IS somewhat different than the "average" Linux, in that it is based on Gentoo - but it's not so different that you're likely to be lost.
I'm actually running that distro on metal right now, after a disk failure borked my 3 year old Ubuntu installation.
I have heard that, and read it. I don't really see the evidence. But - I'll grant that the most popular desktop environments are memory hogs. For that reason, I wish Ubuntu had worked a bit more with the Enlightenment crowd. Fast, responsive, small memory footprint - and prettier than anything else I've ever played with.
You're a nicer person than I am. I would also have told AC that he was a blooming idiot. Even a color blind person such as myself can see that the Chinese aren't "brown".
two political parties playing chicken with government spending over debt that could be easily raised,
You say that as if raising the debt ceiling is desirable?
, budgets that could be easily put on a path to remedy and so on.
That part, I can agree with. Congress COULD create balanced budgets, if they just set their minds to it. For starters, they could roll back their own salaries to about the level of 1960, then start working on rolling back all other federal employees. Of greater importance, though, would be eliminating lobbyists - big business, small business, special interests, foreign interests. Damned congress critters should be representing the voters, no one else! Breaking the ties between the military-industrial complex and the government should be job one.
Let's imagine that you had a pretty secure operating system, to start with. And, that you employed "best practices" in deployment and operation of that operating system. Further, you employ "best practices" in your networking design, and in the operation of that network. We'll go one step further, and actually educate the users about the dangers of phishing, spearphishing, and the dangers of running untrusted executables, while at the same time setting and enforcing strict filtering rules on the network.
You will have utilized your IT department to it's fullest potential, at this point - without spending money on 3rd party "solutions" to security problems.
It's silly to purchase licenses for antivirus and other security solutions, when you can just upgrade to a Unix-like to start with.
Alright - I'm running some theories and scenarios through my head, trying to make sense of your statement. I'm not arguing, just asking.
How do defensive patent portfolios hurt innovation? Let's say that someone like Google makes it clear that they are holding a nice bag of patents "Just in case". Captain Nemo* manages to incorporate a patent or more into a new product to help him locate great whites more reliably. Nemo even makes arrangements with some small factory to produce these things, and they start marketing a few hundred units annually. At some point Nemo probably SHOULD HAVE contacted Google, and told Google that he desires a license, and Google would have made some kind of an offer - probably free, or "A dollar and other considerations".
If it's known that the patent holder is only building a portfolio for defense against patent trolls, I can't see that as a "bad thing", in and of itself.
*Please don't ask what Nemo, Great Whites, and technology have to do with each other. Maybe I've read that stupid sharks with laser beams to many times on/. ?
There's a video on Youtube, showing a horde of backhoes digging a hole, and burying the train. The government claims that it was a security measure, ie, dispose of the modern technology so that outsiders couldn't recover and examine the government secret hardware onboard the train. In the video, two bodies fall from the cars as they are being moved from the bridge and buried. While most people are shocked at the idea of bodies falling out of the cars - I point them out only to emphasize the fact that the train was disposed of in haste.
That haste makes obvious that the government didn't investigate, and that they don't WANT people to know why they crashed.
Faulty electronics may or may not be the cause of the accident. If so, then it's probably safe to assume that the government already knew that their trains have faulty electronics.
Hell, they can't even make quality steel in China, how can anyone believe that they can make quality electronics?
SUV's are nothing more than trucks. A few years ago, around the time of the oil embargo, the government decided that our 8 - 12 mpg gas guzzlers had to go. They mandated that autos would have to get over 20 mpg, and gave trucks an exemption. So, the auto makers started making autos on truck frames. Every SUV you see is a small pickup truck - with a stylish body tacked on.
I say, don't grant any exemptions, at all. I had an S-10 that averaged 22 -23 mpg. My brother in law had an Isuzu diesel pickup that got around 28 mpg. I've talked to a few other people with Toyota and Nissan pickups, and some claim to get 30 mpg. It's ridiculous that people are riding around on truck frames that weigh 1/2 ton or more. There's no NEED for them. If I can fold my six foot frame into a little Mazda 626, and get 30 mpg driving to work and back, then so can all these spoiled, pampered wenches who stand all of 5 ft tall, and weigh less than 200 pounds. Those weighing over 200 pounds probably shouldn't be permitted out in public anyway.
I think this whole discussion is sort of missing the point.
First, someone is trying to fool the world into believing that they are the other gender. So, we have an intelligence gaming the system, for whatever reasons. Fun, scamming, whatever - we have an intelligence attempting to fool all other intelligences on the web.
The average person has no idea whether this individual is actually male or female, when they meet that person online. Previously, the primary indicators were the screen name, and whatever that individual wanted you to read or hear.
With this research, you now have a few tools with which to measure your initial assumptions about this new online personality that you have just met. I wasn't aware that simply by typing "google" into a dialogue, I was giving a big hint that I am male - and most of the impersonators probably don't either. The data provided from this study isn't going to make you certain of anything - it's just data that exposes trends that may or may not validate your assumptions about other people.
This amounts to my first day in a leadership class. Instructor said, "We aren't going to turn you into leaders. We are going to provide you with a toolbox full of tools that you can use to improve your own leadership abilities." Take the tools, and use them. You still can't be certain that the hot chick tweeting at you is really a hot chick, but you might start wondering if she persists in using a half dozen male oriented terms.
Rightists and leftists are indistinguishable to me. Both sides of the aisle have bought into globalism, and both sides serve Corporate America, rather than the constituents who elect them. So - don't point fingers at the righties. The lefties are just as bad.
Slashdot Mirror
Atheism is a belief. You believe that there is no God, and no gods. Theism is a belief that there is a God, or that there are gods. Neither position is provable. But, you demand that people believe as you do, and that the government respect your belief more than other beliefs. And, "vacuum is a gas" is a totally irrelevant non sequitur.
Best possible explanation - despite the fact that the earth is in an interglacial age, and the fact that the earth has obviously seen much greater climate changes in short periods of time in the past?
Delusions of grandeur aren't science at all. As an elementary school child in the 1960's, I was aware of the interglacial, and I was aware that the earth could be expected to grow warmer. I couldn't have possibly guessed how soon the earth might warm up, or how much - but I was already aware at that time that much of the United States was home to dinosaurs and rain forests.
No, mankind's delusions amount to religion - nothing more, and nothing less. SCIENCE says that the earth would have grown warmer with or without us.
Now, science MAY, at some point, determine that mankind helped to accelerate the earth's warming. The jury is still out. It's possible. To date, science has proven no such thing, nor do they have this supposed "preponderence of evidence" that you claim. The ignorant, unwashed masses eat that stuff up, but thinking people don't.
Well, sir, that is your opinion, and you are entitled to it. But, Google offers a lot of opinions that seem to support my own.
http://dan.tobias.name/thenet/monoculture.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoculture_(computer_science)
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/fbs/publications/IEEEspMonoculture.pdf
Some opinions see monoculture as a very serious problem, others see it as a less serious problem - but all see monocultures as a problem to some degree.
And, if Linux exploits are so good, why is no one using them to create botnets, or to harvest data? Oh yeah - market share. I haven't bought into that argument in the past, and I'm not buying it now.
Which religion? WHICH ONE? Right back at you, McFly. Read the damned sentence as it was written, not one single phrase. No laws that respect any religion, no laws that create a state religion, no laws that will favor one religion over another.
What you are demanding, is that atheism be favored over any other theism. Now, is that clear enough for you, McFly? You're a hypocrite, because you demand that government respect YOUR beliefs, instead of anyone else's beliefs.
Yeah, whatever. But, complacency allows the government to eat the children, so what's the difference? How many of our children died in Iraq? Not as many as Iraqi children, but still, plenty. All for corporate profit. Unless of course, you actually BELIEVE that Saddam had WMD. Easily disproved, even back in 2002. Do a "Who's Who" of all of Saddam's nuclear and biologic experts in 2002. See how many of them were overseas, employed by private corporations, or engaged in academic pursuits. You'll find that a couple were unaccounted for - but almost all of them were busy outside of the government's interests.
The real deal is, Americans don't have balls. Well - some of our "ladies" have balls. We've raised a couple generations of little pussies, who want someone to hold their hands, and tell them what to do. Got any idea how few Americans can stand eyeball to eyeball with a cop, and calmly, clearly, tell the cop that he is out of line, and that he will be called out in court?
"I'm going to search your car." is answered with "YES SIR!" instead of "I don't give you permission to search my car." "You were speeding." is met with whining and pleading instead of "You are mistaken, officer." And, when people go in front of a judge, it's outright groveling.
Not more than 1% of the population has ever written their congressman, the president, or any other public official who might make a difference. Only after asinine laws are passed do people bitch and whine.
No balls. Pussies. I'm ashamed, but it's true. This is what happens when life is to damned easy. There is a name for that, isn't there? Decadence? Yeah, that's it. No spine, no will, no drive. That's us.
Religiosity is not declining. Just look around here. Yes, right here on slashdot. There are millions of converts to the global warming thingy, and millions more to globalization.
Oh - you're going to tell me now that those aren't religions?
How else do you explain people's faith in a theory that is as yet untested? "We believe the earth is warming due to mankind's tampering with nature." Not, "We have found proof that the earth is warming due to mankind's activities." Just, "We believe", "We think", and "Some evidence seems to indicate".
All that stuff appeals to both humanists and to Gaiaists, and probably to animists as well. Or, are Gaiaists just a subset of animists? Whatever - you get the idea.
Thank you, Sir. It often seems that there are only about three dozen people left in this country, who are literate enough to actually READ those sentences, and understand them. It's really not that difficult. I just can't understand whether all those other people are truly illiterate, or they just hope that we aren't literate enough to understand what we read.
Of course, the possibility exists that less than a thousand living people have actually read those documents. Everyone else just believes what some liberal atheist wrote in a textbook about those documents.
No, you don't get to break one phrase out of the sentence, and set it up in it's own context. No laws in respect to religion, not "no respect for" religion. And, if you can't respect other people's religious ideas, how in HELL do you demand that they respect your petty little feelings on the matter?
You are really, really, really reaching to claim that a religion was established with that motto. If you want to twist logic in such a fashion, then I can too. It simple means that if there is a God, then we will trust him - but we don't trust any DAMNED body else.
And, BTW - there is nothing monotheistic about that phrase at all. The Romans, the Greeks, the Partheons, the Carthaginians, the Incas, ANY person from ANY time might have said those very words.
Nil desperandum auspice deo
I believe that you are correct. Prostitution is indeed a crime. And, the real victims are the prostitutes and their customers. The victimizers are the self righteous fools who need to feel superior to those involved in prostitution.
You can make a really convincing argument that all women are prostitutes. I don't care how religious you are, or how loving your wife if - you cannot tell me that you have never caved in during an argument, knowing that you'd get none for a week or a month if you DID win the argument. You've also spent money on her, knowing that doing so would put her "in the mood". All relationships are based on give and take, whether that giving and taking be monetary or not.
So - some guy wants some, and some gal is willing to give him some, in exchange for a few bucks. How is this any different than your average housewife? She gives it up, in exchange for a roof over her head, food, transportation, the means to take care of her children. The prostitute settles for basically the same things - just translated more coarsely into monetary terms.
You'd be more accurate to say that there are no victimless relationships. We all use each other, after all. The kids use me, I use the kids. The wife takes advantage of me, I take advantage of her. You can measure the value of your friends according to what you get from them, just as they measure your value to them. It may get a little difficult putting a monetary value on all aspects of your relationships - but it can be done. Courts do it all the time. Judges rule that one of the partners has to pay alimony and/or child support every day.
Now, please, get off your moral high horse, and recognize the reality of the situation. Prostitution has always been there, from prehistory. No culture has ever eradicated prostitution. It's going to happen. Instead of using the courts to victimize everyone associated with the trade yet further - how 'bout we legalize it, license it, tax it, and in exchange, offer the women some protection.
Prostitutes are commonly targeted by predators BECAUSE they know the law doesn't give a shit about them. All those women that the black guy in Ohio raped, murdered, and apparently cannibalized (not necessarily in that order) were women that the law placed no value on. Had any of those women had value to the law, and/or the community, there would have been a manhunt immediately after the women disappeared.
It's a real shame that prostitutes and/or druggies can fall through the cracks, and never be missed.
And, people like you don't even realize that while you're riding that big, tall, moral horse, you've basically written off millions of women as trash, whom the predators may prey upon at will.
What is the value of human life? Stop victimizing the women. And, while you're at it, stop victimizing the customers. Some poor chump can't build a satisfying relationship, so he resorts to soliciting a prostitute - only to be hauled to jail, and branded as a sexual offender. Come on - how retarded can people get?
First - android is a modified Linux. Highly modified, in fact, by the vendors. Each device marketed by a vendor has the exact same security flaws. Crack one, you've cracked them all. This is contrary to the more general Linux distros, wherein the user decides what apps, what kernel, what development tools, even which desktop environment. In short - android is largely a monoculture, like Windows. Monocultures are dangerous, in that each individual device is susceptible to all the same exploits that all it's brethren are.
Second - perl, python, or whatever is installed by default on this or that Linux distro - but not all of them. Again, it depends on the user who sets up the distro. Even if python is installed by default on my distro - I can remove it easily enough. Unlike Android apps.
And, that market share argument? I'm not impressed. The fact is, Linux servers and Linux workstations simply aren't infected like Windows is. You can make that argument all you like, it doesn't become any more true with infinite repititions. The WORST thing I've ever seen on a Linux desktop, was a browser hijacking. I guess if I were susceptible to phishing, I would have seen much worse by now - but therein lies part of Linux' security. The braindead can't be bothered to run an OS that they might have to learn! It's so much easier to insert the Windows CD, accept all the defaults, then fire up "the browser" that was installed by default, and navigate to music, porn, movies, P2P, and all the other mindless drivel that appeals to the braindead.
You can have market share, because you get to count every braindead user in the world in your corner, LMAO
As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.
—Bill Gates
Yes, piracy is indeed part of Microsoft's business model. Other Microsoft executives have made similar comments, if you care to search them out.
I agree - and I disagree.
The agreement is, Microsoft shouldn't have ever come to rule the computing world - or any segment of the computing world.
Reality, however, is what it is. We have an entire generation who grew up on free computers in schools, being taught by people who were basically Microsoft indoctrination agents. People know and demand Microsoft. So - since that is where we are at, we have to cooperate. It's time for all those MS-centric people who are still on XP to upgrade. If they insist that they must make monetary offerings to Microsoft in order to use a computer, then it's time to make a new offering.
Of course, I'll still be trying to show people that Microsoft is a false idol, and trying to get them to upgrade to a Unix-like operating system. Sometimes, I actually succeed!
I've looked at Bodhi in the past. Looks nice - but I demand 64 bit operating systems on my 64 bit hardware. For that reason, I've only looked at Bodhi. A similar offering, in 64 bit, is available from Sabayon: http://forum.sabayon.org/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=24632
Notice that Sabayon is available with or without any of the major desktop environments. If Bodhi appeals to you, then you'll want that E17 image. Sabayon IS somewhat different than the "average" Linux, in that it is based on Gentoo - but it's not so different that you're likely to be lost.
I'm actually running that distro on metal right now, after a disk failure borked my 3 year old Ubuntu installation.
I have heard that, and read it. I don't really see the evidence. But - I'll grant that the most popular desktop environments are memory hogs. For that reason, I wish Ubuntu had worked a bit more with the Enlightenment crowd. Fast, responsive, small memory footprint - and prettier than anything else I've ever played with.
You're a nicer person than I am. I would also have told AC that he was a blooming idiot. Even a color blind person such as myself can see that the Chinese aren't "brown".
two political parties playing chicken with government spending over debt that could be easily raised,
You say that as if raising the debt ceiling is desirable?
, budgets that could be easily put on a path to remedy and so on.
That part, I can agree with. Congress COULD create balanced budgets, if they just set their minds to it. For starters, they could roll back their own salaries to about the level of 1960, then start working on rolling back all other federal employees. Of greater importance, though, would be eliminating lobbyists - big business, small business, special interests, foreign interests. Damned congress critters should be representing the voters, no one else! Breaking the ties between the military-industrial complex and the government should be job one.
Actually, the answer to the question is "YES!"
Let's imagine that you had a pretty secure operating system, to start with. And, that you employed "best practices" in deployment and operation of that operating system. Further, you employ "best practices" in your networking design, and in the operation of that network. We'll go one step further, and actually educate the users about the dangers of phishing, spearphishing, and the dangers of running untrusted executables, while at the same time setting and enforcing strict filtering rules on the network.
You will have utilized your IT department to it's fullest potential, at this point - without spending money on 3rd party "solutions" to security problems.
It's silly to purchase licenses for antivirus and other security solutions, when you can just upgrade to a Unix-like to start with.
Alright - I'm running some theories and scenarios through my head, trying to make sense of your statement. I'm not arguing, just asking.
How do defensive patent portfolios hurt innovation? Let's say that someone like Google makes it clear that they are holding a nice bag of patents "Just in case". Captain Nemo* manages to incorporate a patent or more into a new product to help him locate great whites more reliably. Nemo even makes arrangements with some small factory to produce these things, and they start marketing a few hundred units annually. At some point Nemo probably SHOULD HAVE contacted Google, and told Google that he desires a license, and Google would have made some kind of an offer - probably free, or "A dollar and other considerations".
If it's known that the patent holder is only building a portfolio for defense against patent trolls, I can't see that as a "bad thing", in and of itself.
*Please don't ask what Nemo, Great Whites, and technology have to do with each other. Maybe I've read that stupid sharks with laser beams to many times on /. ?
There's a video on Youtube, showing a horde of backhoes digging a hole, and burying the train. The government claims that it was a security measure, ie, dispose of the modern technology so that outsiders couldn't recover and examine the government secret hardware onboard the train. In the video, two bodies fall from the cars as they are being moved from the bridge and buried. While most people are shocked at the idea of bodies falling out of the cars - I point them out only to emphasize the fact that the train was disposed of in haste.
That haste makes obvious that the government didn't investigate, and that they don't WANT people to know why they crashed.
Faulty electronics may or may not be the cause of the accident. If so, then it's probably safe to assume that the government already knew that their trains have faulty electronics.
Hell, they can't even make quality steel in China, how can anyone believe that they can make quality electronics?
SUV's are nothing more than trucks. A few years ago, around the time of the oil embargo, the government decided that our 8 - 12 mpg gas guzzlers had to go. They mandated that autos would have to get over 20 mpg, and gave trucks an exemption. So, the auto makers started making autos on truck frames. Every SUV you see is a small pickup truck - with a stylish body tacked on.
I say, don't grant any exemptions, at all. I had an S-10 that averaged 22 -23 mpg. My brother in law had an Isuzu diesel pickup that got around 28 mpg. I've talked to a few other people with Toyota and Nissan pickups, and some claim to get 30 mpg. It's ridiculous that people are riding around on truck frames that weigh 1/2 ton or more. There's no NEED for them. If I can fold my six foot frame into a little Mazda 626, and get 30 mpg driving to work and back, then so can all these spoiled, pampered wenches who stand all of 5 ft tall, and weigh less than 200 pounds. Those weighing over 200 pounds probably shouldn't be permitted out in public anyway.
I read your post, and wondered how it relates to this discussion: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/07/28/2244236/Linguists-Out-Men-Impersonating-Women-On-Twitter
I thought about it for a few seconds, then realized that I may not WANT to know!
I think this whole discussion is sort of missing the point.
First, someone is trying to fool the world into believing that they are the other gender. So, we have an intelligence gaming the system, for whatever reasons. Fun, scamming, whatever - we have an intelligence attempting to fool all other intelligences on the web.
The average person has no idea whether this individual is actually male or female, when they meet that person online. Previously, the primary indicators were the screen name, and whatever that individual wanted you to read or hear.
With this research, you now have a few tools with which to measure your initial assumptions about this new online personality that you have just met. I wasn't aware that simply by typing "google" into a dialogue, I was giving a big hint that I am male - and most of the impersonators probably don't either. The data provided from this study isn't going to make you certain of anything - it's just data that exposes trends that may or may not validate your assumptions about other people.
This amounts to my first day in a leadership class. Instructor said, "We aren't going to turn you into leaders. We are going to provide you with a toolbox full of tools that you can use to improve your own leadership abilities." Take the tools, and use them. You still can't be certain that the hot chick tweeting at you is really a hot chick, but you might start wondering if she persists in using a half dozen male oriented terms.
Rightists and leftists are indistinguishable to me. Both sides of the aisle have bought into globalism, and both sides serve Corporate America, rather than the constituents who elect them. So - don't point fingers at the righties. The lefties are just as bad.