The build number might be generated based on the date. So that build may have been produced on June 1st and only now are they able to call it "official". It takes a loooong time to validate any OS prior to shipping.
At the end of the day, Pickens should invest wherever he wants to invest - its his money. But he is looking out for himself, as he is an investor looking for a money-maker in energy or any other sector. If he needs to convince the market that wind is a good investment, then he has already made his investment and is looking to pump its value for his own profit.
I have to generally disagree with this statement. Not every billionaire is out to make himself money. A case in point is Bill Gates and his foundation. The charter for that organization is to invest money in developing solutions for world-wide poverty. The benefit Bill gets from that is merely philanthropic, which is not to be under-emphasized.
Now, with Pickens, he's in his 80's and he is wise enough to know that he'll die sooner rather than later. An investment like he is proposing is not something that he'll likely live to see the benefits from, but he might.
If this were merely an effort to make big-oil look pretty, then it would be proposed and implemented by corporations, not individuals.
You (and he) are both absolutely correct on several points: the USA is sweating its wealth to the world. We are a country of middle managers now. We produce nothing and we buy shit with borrowed cash -- borrowed from the Chinese or from the Fed. All the monkeys you see driving around in a Lexus or BMW and making a fraction of what you earn for a living are a direct side effect of the Fed printing extra money to delay an economic catastrophe. The end-result is ridiculously obvious to me, but not necessarily to others: If you're not already in-debt to a foreign entity, then you will be soon. Expect more shit than just the Chrystler Building being owned by foreigners. Think GM, Ford, Boeing, ExxonMobil, etc.
Their focus was primarily on security and standards. Security trumped all, however. Microsoft does not have an infinite set of resources (no company does) so they DO have to prioritize properly. If they sacrificed security for a full CSS v2.0 implementation, then everyone in this forum would be screaming foul over their lack of effort on security.
Bottom line here is that there are (mostly) two kinds of people on Slashdot: Those who hate Microsoft "just because" (e.g. no reason), and those who hate Microsoft because of something stupid they did in the past. The individuals who immediately attack Microsoft's effort to FIX security on Windows (which btw, this _IS_ a security FIX) rather than recognizing that effort is being done to improve the product are the individuals who fall into the "just because" bucket.
Either way, you need to just mellow out. Microsoft is in a difficult situation. They got bitch-smacked by the Justice Department over Netscape and ended up gutting the original IE team as a result (basically ceasing development of the browser). You should consider the release of IE7 as Microsoft's recognition that they fucked up and that they shouldn't have run with their tail between their legs because they made some bad business decisions with OEMs. Killing development for the product was a reflex response by a company whose management was to blame (as opposed to the Product).
It's a big conspiracy! The MSFT recruiters investigate every company that is on everyones resume and decide "hmmmm, this person hates MSFT, and although their resume is stellar and they appear an excellent candidate, I'll pass up my recruiting bonus for some other monkey who doesn't hate MSFT".
Are you kidding me? This is the silliest thing I've ever read on slashdot. If you're not getting a callback from MSFT, then your resume or work experience doesn't fit anywhere. If you're getting a call back and not getting an interview, then you've bulloxed the phone screen. If you get an on site interview and you don't get an offer, it means absolutely nothing unless they send you home early.
MSFT's interviewing process is refined in such a way that if there is any doubt of a candidates capabilities, they will not be hired. This is a side effect produced by the fact that it is very difficult to get rid of an under performer.
Wrong, Wrong and Wrong. They are not taxing oil consumption, they are taxing oil production. There is a HUGE difference. Taxing the production in a local economy will only screw the local economy. They will not effect the overall price per barrel of oil unless they have an extremely large share of the market. OPEC has enough trouble trying to drive prices up themselves. OPEC can only do it on a limited basis.
One of the things that drives me absolutely crazy about taxes in general is that once the government enacts a tax on something, the government becomes dependent on that income. So if this tax succeeds in reducing oil usage, then it'll create problems when they begin to lose this revenue stream and they will move towards other sources for the money. In other words, it is a burden we will be paying for long after the oil industry is defunct.
A *VERY* simple alternative would be to increase the ethanol percentage per gallon of gasoline. Not only would that make everyone's fuel "alternative in part", but it would also raise the cost of gasoline per gallon and keep money out of the government's hands. On top of this, it would help nurture the ethanol industry and reduce our energy depdendence on foreign oil. Another very interesting trait this would provide us with is the ability to buffer oil prices by altering the percentage of ethanol per gallon of gasoline. When gas prices increase, then we increase the percentage of ethanol. When gas prices drop, then we reduce the percentage (to a point). It would rob OPEC of their ability to control the market.
The problem with Ethanol however is that we only have a limited production capacity. This is fine however because we want to limit our dependency on oil by reducing its usage and increasing it's cost per gallon. Imagine if every gallon of gasoline was required to be 50% ethanol (instead of 10%) and cost $5/gallon. Yes, this would suck. Yes it would have effects on the local economy. It would also encourage mass transit systems, encourage flexibility in work environments (work from home), among other things which is what we want to happen. Taxing the production locally won't get us to that point.
This is all horse shit. I didn't read the report and I personally do not care what claims were made in it. What I know is from personal experience, which is that when I use Adsense, I have my marketing campaign money raped from bullshit clicks from bullshit webpages. Top that with the fact that not a *SINGLE* contact I have made with a customer has come from a click through via their content network and it points to a blatent flaw in their business model.
After reading all the stories on here that are right in line with my own, I am honestly concerned for Google. I had no idea other people were experiencing this like I was. It makes Google's rebuttal look like a pathetic ploy to divert attention. Maybe they're afraid their revenue numbers will be effected.
What makes you think the voters that are already at the polls are educated or informed?
What the hell are you talking about? You're confusing the influencing force that drives people to vote with whether or not people are smart enough to make a "smart" vote.
There is a reason polls are conducted during working hours in the US. The politicians know that the vast majority of people voting are senior citizens.
The last time I voted for President, I voted at 7 or 8PM. You're right though, it is a conspiracy to keep the seniors and AARP in charge.
Let's see, we rely on people who are generally uninformed or misinformed, have little remaining intellectual capacity, and generally refuse to alter their beliefs even in the face of overwhelming evidence. That sounds just like our political system, doesn't it?
This is the silliest of all your statements right here. What you mean to say is that these people refuse to alter their beliefs in favor of your own. They are uninformed or misinformed according to your standards.
Don't get me wrong here, there are plenty of stupid people in the world who subscribe to ridiculous beliefs. Our system right now limits us to two parties (generally) which I think is both good and bad. It is good because it does not allow a nut-case with a majority vote which represents a significant minority of the country get into office. It is bad because it does not provide enough diversity for political beliefs. On the other hand, the two party system does produce a significant middle ground of swing-voters who can go either way.
I always raise an eyebrow when I see someone suggest that everyone be forced to vote. My first question to them is: Why? My second question to them is: How? Then I ask them to research Latin American countries that force their entire populace to vote and fine them if they do not. Take Peru for example. Peru recently elected Alan Garcia, a former Peruvian President whom during his first administration was caught in a huge bribery scandal and managed to drive the Peruvian Sol's inflation up 2.2M% (thats 2.2 MILLION PERCENT!!). This threw the country into serious turmoil which terrorist organizations fed upon. It wasn't until Fujimori that the country stabilized, only to get thrown to the shitter again after Fujimori decided to bribe the entire Treasury dept and leave for Japan (a country that does not extradite citizens) with the entire national budget of Peru, bankrupting the country. Ironically though, Fujimori's bankrupting of the country had less of an effect on the country than Garcia's hyperinflation.
So how exactly do the Peruvian citizens elect such corrupt individuals? The answer, IMHO is that they are generally uneducated and are fined if they do not vote. So they vote for the person who has the most popular last name and promises to get him and all his buddies jobs in his government. The fine for not voting something like $50/election which is an enormous amount of money for a poor person in Peru. They have no choice but to make an uneducated decision.
Why dont you edit your front page display settings. You can select what type of articles are displayed, and who they're posted by.
Because if I did that, then I would see no articles at all because all the editors have been posting is crap. crap. crap. I feel bad trashing them, but they need to know that they are losing their readership on a large scale because they post uninteresting, boring or agenda driven articles that are all OLD news. It's sad really. This is really just my final fairwell message. RIP/.
Yet another 'Who gives a shit' article on Slashdot's front page. I didn't care about this when I read it on CNN 4 hours ago and I still don't care about it now. News for Nerds? This shit doesn't matter.
... that nobody really cares about anymore. Not only is this story not interesting, but its OLD. Nobody gives a crap about how many Futurama references you can pack into an article about a wearable chip that happens to run Linux or about the complete lack of enthusiasm or industry adoption of Novell's vaporware. This is really sad. Slashdot was never that spectacular, but its reached a point now where there might be one article a week that I am actually interested in enough to click on and read. It's not that there just aren't interesting things to read anymore, its quite simply shit editing by the editors.
I have 3 windows machines on my network. They all sit behind my router/firewall. I periodically have friends join my network with their laptops. I do not have XP firewalling turned on. I have automatic updates enabled. I run IE as administrator but I admit, I usually only browse to specific websites but I keep the security settings for the browser locked down (yeah, I know there are exploits that get around them). I have not had any performance or malware problems since I installed XP on this machine. I have an extremely difficult time believing that I am in the 10-20% of people who don't have malware because I'm lucky. There are very simple things one can do to protect their clean install. And they only need to be done once.
This conversation could no doubt continue forever, so this'll be my last post about it.
We know for a fact that one of if not the most important goals of this administration since before they even got into office was starting a war with Iraq. We know for a fact that they knew the American people wouldn't go for it. We know for a fact that they knew that it would require a "Pearl Harbor" level event to convince the American people to back the invasion.
On the contrary, we know none of these to be facts. We know that Saddam tried to assasinate Bush v1 and that Bush v2 was pissed about that, but we "know" the later only by heresay.
The idea that Bush consciously thought that the only way he could get Saddam would be as a response to a "Pearl Harbor" style attack, is quite honestly insane in nature and it suggests that you believe 9/11 was not caused by Muslim extremists, but rather was a staged event. These claims have always baffled my mind and makes me feel like everyone who wasn't there to witness the planes hitting those buildings or ditching into oblivion at 600 mph in a field in Pennsylvania merely saw 9/11 as a special TV featured event. It was real. People really flew planes into those buildings. The fire really did cause castrophic failures in the buildings. The planes really were annihilated into vapor without a trace. People really did die and it really was a surprise attack by Muslim extremists. The evidence supporting these facts are overwhelming, right down to the phone calls from passengers who said it right before they rushed the cockpit and saved the Capital over a field in PA. There is no evidence to support statements that there was some sort of Right-Wing conspiracy to kill Americans so that we could start a war with Iraq. There is no evidence that supports the idea that Bush was even considering it. The entire concept of getting Saddam was never even heard of until well after 9/11/01. Hell, we knew Al Qaida likely attacked us, but we did not know for sure until Bin Laden was caught on tape admitting it in October of 2001. The ideas that you are subscribing to are new ones based on rumors and spun by people with agendas. They were created after America lost its sensativity to 9/11. Two-thirds of the country watched 9/11 as a re-run on TV after they woke up in the morning and had their morning pee. Its really easy to forget about "live coverage" and even easier to subscribe to bogus claims of conspiracies. It's difficult to forget the smell and incessant sneezing from the dust and smoke that burned, not for days or weeks, but for months at ground zero. The sonic booms from the airforce jets circling Manhatten that would startle me awake 3 times a night. The complete lack of airplanes in the sky on an otherwise beautiful summer day. The media blitz about shark attacks from the weeks before 9/11 because the media had nothing to report on. I remember every fucking detail about the days before and after 9/11. I don't remember a single detail suggesting that Bush had anything to be glad about. Just look at his reaction when Bush was told we were under attack. It took him about 15 seconds just to grasp the concept.
Hell, Bush lied about WMDs and started a war over it, you don't think Hayden will lie over a few wiretaps?
Lets clarify something here. Bush may very well have positioned the evidence for a slam dunk case about WMDs in Iraq. We know they were/are there. We know they existed. We (USA) gave the weapons to Saddam. Saddam used them. What Bush did not do is lie by the very definition of the word. There is a potential case against him that he intentionally inflated certain intelligence reports, but that is not a 'lie' by the definintion of the word unless Bush knew that certain reports were in fact not true or if he was intentionally trying to mislead people. This by no means should be taken as an endorsement of Bush or the Iraq war. This is simply an unemotional analysis of the events pre-Iraq2. The Bush Administration did not fabricate evidence, they merely ignored the evidence that did not support their agenda. This is not lying. This is the nature of intelligence. For every report saying Yay, there is a report saying Nay. The Presidential Administration exists in part to analyze that information and make decisions. One thing to keep in mind is that the Bush Administration had no problem getting Congress to support the war. Congress was not mislead. The intelligence oversite committee has access to all the same information the Bush Administration has access to. There were no secrets in this decision.
Having said that, some good examples of lies are:
Whitewater/Blowjob Investigation: Clinton: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman; Miss Lewinsky" He did. He received multiple blowjobs and had playtime with cigars. Honestly, who gives a shit. It's not worth hundreds of millions of dollars in lawyer and court expenses.
Watergate Investigation: Nixon: "I am not a crook" He was. He was an accomplice and conspirator of a robbery in the Watergate building. A perfect example of a sociopathic personality.
Iran Contra Investigation: Regan: "I do not recall" Iran Contra: He did recall. He knew specific details about selling arms to Iran, he chose to play dumb.
This is by no means an endorsement of anyone. This is my $0.02 about why I do not subscribe to the belief that Bush intentionally mislead Congress and the American public. If blame is to be placed on anyone for the war, it should be on the NSA, CIA and Executive/Congressional branches of the government for crippling our ability to gather reliable intelligence in the field. Had 9/11 happenned during the Clinton Administration, I think this would have played out VERY similarly. Clinton does have more tact than Bush however, but tact doesn't prevent wars with mass murderers.
It's called a housing bubble, my friend. It's when a large amount of people take out negative ammortization loans or interest only loans trying to build and flip the property quickly for a profit. The construction industry booms until interest rates climb and suddenly a couple of Joes in your neighborhood need to sell their house below market value because they can't afford their variable interest rate mortgage. All it takes is for a couple people in your neighborhood to do that to tank the value of every house over night and ruin everyones "on paper" equity in their homes. Once their equity depreciates, they won't move anywhere for a few years until their equity is in the black. If nobody sells their existing house, then nobody buys new construction and there go all those beautiful unionized construction jobs. In the 80's it took the housing market about 10 years to recover. In other words, someone who bought their house in '86 couldn't sell it for a profit until '96. This pertains roughly to the North East and obviously there are exceptions.
The booming construction industry is entirely functioning on borrowed money and symbolic equity that doesn't entirely exist. There will be a correction soon (unfortunately). Every area is different so the magnitude of the adjustment will differ by geography.
This was invented, coded, utilized and eventually faded away into oblivion by a company named Dynamicsoft back in 1999. However, since Dynamicsoft did not believe in patents and insisted on open standards for everything, as well as targeting massively sized telephony operators that loved to toss them around like a dog's chew toy rather than getting decent money for enterprise solutions, they were eventually purchased by Cisco for penny's on the dollar, just days before the electricity was to be shut off.
...Or, you can use a device that is capable of browsing real world websites, such as IE Mobile on a smartphone or pocketpc. It has limitations of course, such as layout problems, but I can almost always work around those by selecting a different layout to display the page in.
He said to me condescendingly - "Microsoft is not interested in education, we just want schools to buy our software". That kind of sums up MS for me.
I'd first like to say that I think there's a significant chance that you're trolling here. Secondly, if this person really did make that statement, they should have some sort of disciplinary action taken against them (if not fired out right). My guess is that if he/she really did make that statement and you had reported it to anyone, he/she would have been shit-canned on the spot.
No, I think they are dumb comments that show Gates is completely out of touch with the realities of education in developing countries.
I don't see what Gates is saying here as being dumb. $100 computers for developing nations would be great and is incredibly important from a humanitarian stand-point. Having said that, a hand crank powered computer is beyond impractical. Its simply ludicrous. An electrical power supply is the barrier for entry into the computer world and thats not going to change, whether someone sells a bunch of crank powered computers or not. The problem is bigger than simple electrical generation. Now don't get me wrong, I think it would be simply utopia to have a bunch of school children cranking away while they use their $100 computers to write apps and do simple tasks, but there's much more to the problem at hand.
This sort of ridiculousness reminds me of Sun's disasterous failure with their Java OS/Appliance shit they tried pushing about 6 yrs ago. Its stupid to base an OS on a virtual machine architecture. The entire purpose of an OS is to offer services efficiently so that apps don't have to implement their own functionality to control devices.
Now if I can just figure out how to shoehorn it into Tomcat...
You can instantiate tomcat yourself, which means you have full control over the loading of the libraries. Just create your own classloader and inject your instructions as they're read from the JAR.
Yes, they operate on volume, but they also charge per form that needs to be filed. They are definately stupid monkeys though. I had a lady telling me that if I had donated $10,000 of my after-tax income to a charity that I would get an extra $7000 from the Federal Govt. What fucking kind of logic is that?? It's one thing if I wanted to donate that much money or if I regularly wiped my ass with $50 bills, but I don't. What a freaking ass clown she was.
So now I have an accountant. I mail him all my crap, he calls me on the phone (maybe a couple emails) and files it. Yes, he charges $300, but he's savings us thousands.
If time has many dimensions then I wonder why we perceive it to go forward only (though at different relative rates depending on relative speed).
How exactly would you perceive time as moving forwards or backwards? Time could very easily move forward and backwards, you just wouldn't be able to detect it. If you could reverse time while a person was drawing a picture, you'd see that with each reversed second that data is erased from the finished product. The perception that time moves forward for us, may simply be a side effect of the fact that we retain data about previous interactions, but have this lack of data about the future that slowly gets sketched in during the present. So time could very well move forwards and backwards, indefinately, but you would only perceive its forward motion because as a function of time, the data does not exist yet.
Slashdot Mirror
The build number might be generated based on the date. So that build may have been produced on June 1st and only now are they able to call it "official". It takes a loooong time to validate any OS prior to shipping.
At the end of the day, Pickens should invest wherever he wants to invest - its his money. But he is looking out for himself, as he is an investor looking for a money-maker in energy or any other sector. If he needs to convince the market that wind is a good investment, then he has already made his investment and is looking to pump its value for his own profit.
I have to generally disagree with this statement. Not every billionaire is out to make himself money. A case in point is Bill Gates and his foundation. The charter for that organization is to invest money in developing solutions for world-wide poverty. The benefit Bill gets from that is merely philanthropic, which is not to be under-emphasized.
Now, with Pickens, he's in his 80's and he is wise enough to know that he'll die sooner rather than later. An investment like he is proposing is not something that he'll likely live to see the benefits from, but he might.
If this were merely an effort to make big-oil look pretty, then it would be proposed and implemented by corporations, not individuals.
You (and he) are both absolutely correct on several points: the USA is sweating its wealth to the world. We are a country of middle managers now. We produce nothing and we buy shit with borrowed cash -- borrowed from the Chinese or from the Fed. All the monkeys you see driving around in a Lexus or BMW and making a fraction of what you earn for a living are a direct side effect of the Fed printing extra money to delay an economic catastrophe. The end-result is ridiculously obvious to me, but not necessarily to others: If you're not already in-debt to a foreign entity, then you will be soon. Expect more shit than just the Chrystler Building being owned by foreigners. Think GM, Ford, Boeing, ExxonMobil, etc.
We're fucked.
Their focus was primarily on security and standards. Security trumped all, however. Microsoft does not have an infinite set of resources (no company does) so they DO have to prioritize properly. If they sacrificed security for a full CSS v2.0 implementation, then everyone in this forum would be screaming foul over their lack of effort on security.
Bottom line here is that there are (mostly) two kinds of people on Slashdot: Those who hate Microsoft "just because" (e.g. no reason), and those who hate Microsoft because of something stupid they did in the past. The individuals who immediately attack Microsoft's effort to FIX security on Windows (which btw, this _IS_ a security FIX) rather than recognizing that effort is being done to improve the product are the individuals who fall into the "just because" bucket.
Either way, you need to just mellow out. Microsoft is in a difficult situation. They got bitch-smacked by the Justice Department over Netscape and ended up gutting the original IE team as a result (basically ceasing development of the browser). You should consider the release of IE7 as Microsoft's recognition that they fucked up and that they shouldn't have run with their tail between their legs because they made some bad business decisions with OEMs. Killing development for the product was a reflex response by a company whose management was to blame (as opposed to the Product).
MUAHAHAHAHAHAHH!
It's a big conspiracy! The MSFT recruiters investigate every company that is on everyones resume and decide "hmmmm, this person hates MSFT, and although their resume is stellar and they appear an excellent candidate, I'll pass up my recruiting bonus for some other monkey who doesn't hate MSFT".
Are you kidding me? This is the silliest thing I've ever read on slashdot. If you're not getting a callback from MSFT, then your resume or work experience doesn't fit anywhere. If you're getting a call back and not getting an interview, then you've bulloxed the phone screen. If you get an on site interview and you don't get an offer, it means absolutely nothing unless they send you home early.
MSFT's interviewing process is refined in such a way that if there is any doubt of a candidates capabilities, they will not be hired. This is a side effect produced by the fact that it is very difficult to get rid of an under performer.
Thanks for the laugh!
Wrong, Wrong and Wrong. They are not taxing oil consumption, they are taxing oil production. There is a HUGE difference. Taxing the production in a local economy will only screw the local economy. They will not effect the overall price per barrel of oil unless they have an extremely large share of the market. OPEC has enough trouble trying to drive prices up themselves. OPEC can only do it on a limited basis.
One of the things that drives me absolutely crazy about taxes in general is that once the government enacts a tax on something, the government becomes dependent on that income. So if this tax succeeds in reducing oil usage, then it'll create problems when they begin to lose this revenue stream and they will move towards other sources for the money. In other words, it is a burden we will be paying for long after the oil industry is defunct.
A *VERY* simple alternative would be to increase the ethanol percentage per gallon of gasoline. Not only would that make everyone's fuel "alternative in part", but it would also raise the cost of gasoline per gallon and keep money out of the government's hands. On top of this, it would help nurture the ethanol industry and reduce our energy depdendence on foreign oil. Another very interesting trait this would provide us with is the ability to buffer oil prices by altering the percentage of ethanol per gallon of gasoline. When gas prices increase, then we increase the percentage of ethanol. When gas prices drop, then we reduce the percentage (to a point). It would rob OPEC of their ability to control the market.
The problem with Ethanol however is that we only have a limited production capacity. This is fine however because we want to limit our dependency on oil by reducing its usage and increasing it's cost per gallon. Imagine if every gallon of gasoline was required to be 50% ethanol (instead of 10%) and cost $5/gallon. Yes, this would suck. Yes it would have effects on the local economy. It would also encourage mass transit systems, encourage flexibility in work environments (work from home), among other things which is what we want to happen. Taxing the production locally won't get us to that point.
how about you go feed yourself the contents of some of those containers and prove that statement...
This is all horse shit. I didn't read the report and I personally do not care what claims were made in it. What I know is from personal experience, which is that when I use Adsense, I have my marketing campaign money raped from bullshit clicks from bullshit webpages. Top that with the fact that not a *SINGLE* contact I have made with a customer has come from a click through via their content network and it points to a blatent flaw in their business model.
After reading all the stories on here that are right in line with my own, I am honestly concerned for Google. I had no idea other people were experiencing this like I was. It makes Google's rebuttal look like a pathetic ploy to divert attention. Maybe they're afraid their revenue numbers will be effected.
What makes you think the voters that are already at the polls are educated or informed?
What the hell are you talking about? You're confusing the influencing force that drives people to vote with whether or not people are smart enough to make a "smart" vote.
There is a reason polls are conducted during working hours in the US. The politicians know that the vast majority of people voting are senior citizens.
The last time I voted for President, I voted at 7 or 8PM. You're right though, it is a conspiracy to keep the seniors and AARP in charge.
Let's see, we rely on people who are generally uninformed or misinformed, have little remaining intellectual capacity, and generally refuse to alter their beliefs even in the face of overwhelming evidence. That sounds just like our political system, doesn't it?
This is the silliest of all your statements right here. What you mean to say is that these people refuse to alter their beliefs in favor of your own. They are uninformed or misinformed according to your standards.
Don't get me wrong here, there are plenty of stupid people in the world who subscribe to ridiculous beliefs. Our system right now limits us to two parties (generally) which I think is both good and bad. It is good because it does not allow a nut-case with a majority vote which represents a significant minority of the country get into office. It is bad because it does not provide enough diversity for political beliefs. On the other hand, the two party system does produce a significant middle ground of swing-voters who can go either way.
I always raise an eyebrow when I see someone suggest that everyone be forced to vote. My first question to them is: Why? My second question to them is: How? Then I ask them to research Latin American countries that force their entire populace to vote and fine them if they do not. Take Peru for example. Peru recently elected Alan Garcia, a former Peruvian President whom during his first administration was caught in a huge bribery scandal and managed to drive the Peruvian Sol's inflation up 2.2M% (thats 2.2 MILLION PERCENT!!). This threw the country into serious turmoil which terrorist organizations fed upon. It wasn't until Fujimori that the country stabilized, only to get thrown to the shitter again after Fujimori decided to bribe the entire Treasury dept and leave for Japan (a country that does not extradite citizens) with the entire national budget of Peru, bankrupting the country. Ironically though, Fujimori's bankrupting of the country had less of an effect on the country than Garcia's hyperinflation.
So how exactly do the Peruvian citizens elect such corrupt individuals? The answer, IMHO is that they are generally uneducated and are fined if they do not vote. So they vote for the person who has the most popular last name and promises to get him and all his buddies jobs in his government. The fine for not voting something like $50/election which is an enormous amount of money for a poor person in Peru. They have no choice but to make an uneducated decision.
Why dont you edit your front page display settings. You can select what type of articles are displayed, and who they're posted by.
/.
Because if I did that, then I would see no articles at all because all the editors have been posting is crap. crap. crap. I feel bad trashing them, but they need to know that they are losing their readership on a large scale because they post uninteresting, boring or agenda driven articles that are all OLD news. It's sad really. This is really just my final fairwell message. RIP
Yet another 'Who gives a shit' article on Slashdot's front page. I didn't care about this when I read it on CNN 4 hours ago and I still don't care about it now. News for Nerds? This shit doesn't matter.
... that nobody really cares about anymore. Not only is this story not interesting, but its OLD. Nobody gives a crap about how many Futurama references you can pack into an article about a wearable chip that happens to run Linux or about the complete lack of enthusiasm or industry adoption of Novell's vaporware. This is really sad. Slashdot was never that spectacular, but its reached a point now where there might be one article a week that I am actually interested in enough to click on and read. It's not that there just aren't interesting things to read anymore, its quite simply shit editing by the editors.
/. bashing rant. Be my guest and destroy my karma b/c I likely won't be needing it anymore. Insert obligatory 'I'm moving to digg because slashdot blows and is poorly maintained' comment.
Ok, I'm done with my
I have 3 windows machines on my network. They all sit behind my router/firewall. I periodically have friends join my network with their laptops. I do not have XP firewalling turned on. I have automatic updates enabled. I run IE as administrator but I admit, I usually only browse to specific websites but I keep the security settings for the browser locked down (yeah, I know there are exploits that get around them). I have not had any performance or malware problems since I installed XP on this machine. I have an extremely difficult time believing that I am in the 10-20% of people who don't have malware because I'm lucky. There are very simple things one can do to protect their clean install. And they only need to be done once.
Yeah, they're a 'genius' also.
This conversation could no doubt continue forever, so this'll be my last post about it.
We know for a fact that one of if not the most important goals of this administration since before they even got into office was starting a war with Iraq. We know for a fact that they knew the American people wouldn't go for it. We know for a fact that they knew that it would require a "Pearl Harbor" level event to convince the American people to back the invasion.
On the contrary, we know none of these to be facts. We know that Saddam tried to assasinate Bush v1 and that Bush v2 was pissed about that, but we "know" the later only by heresay.
The idea that Bush consciously thought that the only way he could get Saddam would be as a response to a "Pearl Harbor" style attack, is quite honestly insane in nature and it suggests that you believe 9/11 was not caused by Muslim extremists, but rather was a staged event. These claims have always baffled my mind and makes me feel like everyone who wasn't there to witness the planes hitting those buildings or ditching into oblivion at 600 mph in a field in Pennsylvania merely saw 9/11 as a special TV featured event. It was real. People really flew planes into those buildings. The fire really did cause castrophic failures in the buildings. The planes really were annihilated into vapor without a trace. People really did die and it really was a surprise attack by Muslim extremists. The evidence supporting these facts are overwhelming, right down to the phone calls from passengers who said it right before they rushed the cockpit and saved the Capital over a field in PA. There is no evidence to support statements that there was some sort of Right-Wing conspiracy to kill Americans so that we could start a war with Iraq. There is no evidence that supports the idea that Bush was even considering it. The entire concept of getting Saddam was never even heard of until well after 9/11/01. Hell, we knew Al Qaida likely attacked us, but we did not know for sure until Bin Laden was caught on tape admitting it in October of 2001. The ideas that you are subscribing to are new ones based on rumors and spun by people with agendas. They were created after America lost its sensativity to 9/11. Two-thirds of the country watched 9/11 as a re-run on TV after they woke up in the morning and had their morning pee. Its really easy to forget about "live coverage" and even easier to subscribe to bogus claims of conspiracies. It's difficult to forget the smell and incessant sneezing from the dust and smoke that burned, not for days or weeks, but for months at ground zero. The sonic booms from the airforce jets circling Manhatten that would startle me awake 3 times a night. The complete lack of airplanes in the sky on an otherwise beautiful summer day. The media blitz about shark attacks from the weeks before 9/11 because the media had nothing to report on. I remember every fucking detail about the days before and after 9/11. I don't remember a single detail suggesting that Bush had anything to be glad about. Just look at his reaction when Bush was told we were under attack. It took him about 15 seconds just to grasp the concept.
Hell, Bush lied about WMDs and started a war over it, you don't think Hayden will lie over a few wiretaps?
Lets clarify something here. Bush may very well have positioned the evidence for a slam dunk case about WMDs in Iraq. We know they were/are there. We know they existed. We (USA) gave the weapons to Saddam. Saddam used them. What Bush did not do is lie by the very definition of the word. There is a potential case against him that he intentionally inflated certain intelligence reports, but that is not a 'lie' by the definintion of the word unless Bush knew that certain reports were in fact not true or if he was intentionally trying to mislead people. This by no means should be taken as an endorsement of Bush or the Iraq war. This is simply an unemotional analysis of the events pre-Iraq2. The Bush Administration did not fabricate evidence, they merely ignored the evidence that did not support their agenda. This is not lying. This is the nature of intelligence. For every report saying Yay, there is a report saying Nay. The Presidential Administration exists in part to analyze that information and make decisions. One thing to keep in mind is that the Bush Administration had no problem getting Congress to support the war. Congress was not mislead. The intelligence oversite committee has access to all the same information the Bush Administration has access to. There were no secrets in this decision.
Having said that, some good examples of lies are:
Whitewater/Blowjob Investigation:
Clinton: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman; Miss Lewinsky"
He did. He received multiple blowjobs and had playtime with cigars. Honestly, who gives a shit. It's not worth hundreds of millions of dollars in lawyer and court expenses.
Watergate Investigation:
Nixon: "I am not a crook"
He was. He was an accomplice and conspirator of a robbery in the Watergate building. A perfect example of a sociopathic personality.
Iran Contra Investigation:
Regan: "I do not recall"
Iran Contra: He did recall. He knew specific details about selling arms to Iran, he chose to play dumb.
This is by no means an endorsement of anyone. This is my $0.02 about why I do not subscribe to the belief that Bush intentionally mislead Congress and the American public. If blame is to be placed on anyone for the war, it should be on the NSA, CIA and Executive/Congressional branches of the government for crippling our ability to gather reliable intelligence in the field. Had 9/11 happenned during the Clinton Administration, I think this would have played out VERY similarly. Clinton does have more tact than Bush however, but tact doesn't prevent wars with mass murderers.
It's called a housing bubble, my friend. It's when a large amount of people take out negative ammortization loans or interest only loans trying to build and flip the property quickly for a profit. The construction industry booms until interest rates climb and suddenly a couple of Joes in your neighborhood need to sell their house below market value because they can't afford their variable interest rate mortgage. All it takes is for a couple people in your neighborhood to do that to tank the value of every house over night and ruin everyones "on paper" equity in their homes. Once their equity depreciates, they won't move anywhere for a few years until their equity is in the black. If nobody sells their existing house, then nobody buys new construction and there go all those beautiful unionized construction jobs. In the 80's it took the housing market about 10 years to recover. In other words, someone who bought their house in '86 couldn't sell it for a profit until '96. This pertains roughly to the North East and obviously there are exceptions.
The booming construction industry is entirely functioning on borrowed money and symbolic equity that doesn't entirely exist. There will be a correction soon (unfortunately). Every area is different so the magnitude of the adjustment will differ by geography.
This was invented, coded, utilized and eventually faded away into oblivion by a company named Dynamicsoft back in 1999. However, since Dynamicsoft did not believe in patents and insisted on open standards for everything, as well as targeting massively sized telephony operators that loved to toss them around like a dog's chew toy rather than getting decent money for enterprise solutions, they were eventually purchased by Cisco for penny's on the dollar, just days before the electricity was to be shut off.
No, I am not bitter... ok... yes, I am bitter.
...Or, you can use a device that is capable of browsing real world websites, such as IE Mobile on a smartphone or pocketpc. It has limitations of course, such as layout problems, but I can almost always work around those by selecting a different layout to display the page in.
He said to me condescendingly - "Microsoft is not interested in education, we just want schools to buy our software". That kind of sums up MS for me.
I'd first like to say that I think there's a significant chance that you're trolling here. Secondly, if this person really did make that statement, they should have some sort of disciplinary action taken against them (if not fired out right). My guess is that if he/she really did make that statement and you had reported it to anyone, he/she would have been shit-canned on the spot.
No, I think they are dumb comments that show Gates is completely out of touch with the realities of education in developing countries.
I don't see what Gates is saying here as being dumb. $100 computers for developing nations would be great and is incredibly important from a humanitarian stand-point. Having said that, a hand crank powered computer is beyond impractical. Its simply ludicrous. An electrical power supply is the barrier for entry into the computer world and thats not going to change, whether someone sells a bunch of crank powered computers or not. The problem is bigger than simple electrical generation. Now don't get me wrong, I think it would be simply utopia to have a bunch of school children cranking away while they use their $100 computers to write apps and do simple tasks, but there's much more to the problem at hand.
This sort of ridiculousness reminds me of Sun's disasterous failure with their Java OS/Appliance shit they tried pushing about 6 yrs ago. Its stupid to base an OS on a virtual machine architecture. The entire purpose of an OS is to offer services efficiently so that apps don't have to implement their own functionality to control devices.
Now if I can just figure out how to shoehorn it into Tomcat ...
You can instantiate tomcat yourself, which means you have full control over the loading of the libraries. Just create your own classloader and inject your instructions as they're read from the JAR.
I believe its a mutation of crabs.
W. Gates
1 Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
Yes, they operate on volume, but they also charge per form that needs to be filed. They are definately stupid monkeys though. I had a lady telling me that if I had donated $10,000 of my after-tax income to a charity that I would get an extra $7000 from the Federal Govt. What fucking kind of logic is that?? It's one thing if I wanted to donate that much money or if I regularly wiped my ass with $50 bills, but I don't. What a freaking ass clown she was.
So now I have an accountant. I mail him all my crap, he calls me on the phone (maybe a couple emails) and files it. Yes, he charges $300, but he's savings us thousands.
How exactly would you perceive time as moving forwards or backwards? Time could very easily move forward and backwards, you just wouldn't be able to detect it. If you could reverse time while a person was drawing a picture, you'd see that with each reversed second that data is erased from the finished product. The perception that time moves forward for us, may simply be a side effect of the fact that we retain data about previous interactions, but have this lack of data about the future that slowly gets sketched in during the present. So time could very well move forwards and backwards, indefinately, but you would only perceive its forward motion because as a function of time, the data does not exist yet.