This is a really, really, really big one. It should be in the newspapers. Microsoft has claimed some time ago (free karma to the one who posts a link) that closed source, for-profit software and operating systems are more secure because the company can actually *hire* people to do security audits of the source code, whereas open source developers aren't motivated to do it because it's really boring, and there's no glory in it.
Now, we all know that OpenBSD has proved them wrong, by proving not only that open source developers *want* to do hardcore security audits of the source code, but that doing hardcore security audits on source code prevents security holes from being released into the wild. OpenBSD hasn't had a remotely exploitable security hole in the default install in FOUR YEARS! Windows XP has been in release for for all of about two months, and already there's a major security exploit found.
This proves by Microsoft's OWN ADMISSION, either they do not hire people to do the hardcore security audits they say they can, or if they do, they can't do it as well as the volunteers who "obviously" don't do it at all because there's no monetary motivation to do so.
With lies like this, Microsoft couldn't get into a Better Business Beurau if they paid each of its members a billion dollars.
Customers of such projects tend to want to see how it will work when it's done (often in mid-project). They want a mock-up. The problem with a mock-up is that it's extremely hard to make a mock-up that doesn't actually do anything, especially when the best way to do the coding and Making It All Work At All is by building the back-end first and then doing the front end. (like building a house, you put up the framework and do the wiring and plumbing before you put up the gyproc and paint it, covering up the ugliness that makes it all work) In essence, what the customers of software want is to have their house built with the gyproc first, so they can see what it will look like and how well it can be used before the kitchen sink and the dishwasher go in.
But you're very right. We could and should take the analogy the other way, and have a real designer do real design work that gets finalized before the builders even start their work. Unfortunately, this is pretty rare in the real world of programming.
Alan Cooper wrote a whole book [amazon.com] about how letting computer nerds design computer programs is wrong and stupid.
That is until you realize that, like designing a house, if you don't know what you're doing the whole thing is going to fall apart the instant you look at it funny.
The really interesting thing is that computer programs are quite often designed by People Who Aren't Computer nerds. They're called "customers." Often, these "customers" come by to meddle with the design during its building phase. If this were done during the construction of a house, you would have spaghetti for plumbing, electrical wiring that wouldn't pass inspection, and it would probably float in the air by magic. And this is often exactly what happens to software when you go through a few "design changes" as you make attempts to show the customer what you're spending his hard-earned (or maybe not-so-hard-earned in the case of some companies) cash on during the coding phase of the software. And what they believe to be "minor interface adjustments" typically turn out to be major overhauls that require an almost total rewrite because of how it was originally programmed. The problem is that it needs to be finished in a week, because that was "the last of the changes." If you've ever wondered why programmers don't sleep in that last week of development, that's why.
Don't fool yourself. You wouldn't let a bridge be designed by Joe Average, now would you? Coding's at least as complex.
When in fact, it simply takes the same old tired "plot" (and I use the term quite loosely) devices and takes their obviousness above and beyond what is normally done? It sounds to me like the same writers who write the kind of dreck the movie is trying to spoof just turned around and made it even more obvious, banal, and raunchy. So all they're really doing is taking the same content to a new level. It's hardly "achey breaky song" type spoofing, that's for sure.
Actually, I think that if you send out an e-mail virus that patches IE automatically and then propogates itself, that would work quite well, despite the fact that you've been screaming and shouting for people never to open e-mail attachments. Just remember to use a subject line like "free porn!";)
Wow. A whole slew of fallacies all in one sentence.
It can remove cheap energy and transportation sources for billions of people, maintaining or increasing rates of poverty and starvation around the globe.
Burning fossil fuels isn't cheap. At best, you'll notice that the price of gasoline is pretty high per unit of energy obtained. Also, burning gasoline is hardly the most efficient method of extracting the energy from it. And burning it is also not the most efficient method of changing the energy into something useful. Most of the energy contained in gasoline is wasted as heat. As an added bonus, the mining, extraction, and refining of gasoline from petroleum is a complicated and expensive process.
The machines that allow us to exploit the energy released by burning gasoline are also not cheap. In fact, they are horribly expensive. When you bought your last car, did you already have the money you needed in the bank, or did you have to borrow that money? And when you take into consideration that you belong to the wealthiest 10% of the world's population, where does that leave the other 90%? If you didn't have the cash to buy this piece of machinery, what does that mean for everyone else?
I have news for you. We've had fossil fuels for a "cheap" source of energy for the past 150 years, and it hasn't done the world's poor a good goddamn bit of good. If anything, it's perpetuated empires that have stomped the world's poor into the dust.
This should be glaringly obvious, but the author clearly didn't want the facts to get in the way of a good story.
1) This happens every year anyway. The martian atmosphere gets thicker every year as a result of its less-than-circular orbit. Every year, there are times when Mars is closer to the sun than the rest of the year, which allows the planet to absorb more solar energy, melting more of the carbon dioxide in the ice caps and adding to the atmosphere. This might actually snowball if it weren't for the fact that there are other times of the year where the CO2 starts to freeze out, snowballing in the other direction.
2) While it might be exciting and all that in a million years, you *might* not need a spacesuit to walk on the surface of mars, more than likely it's just a statistical anomaly because it was slightly warmer this year than last. As if we never see that sort of thing on earth or anything. The author saves this little tidbit of information for last, because otherwise there's not much of a story here at all. (and of course, there really isn't.)
3) This is, if anything, simply proof that some years the sun is hotter than others, which might be a much easier explanation for an increase in the average surface temperature of the earth in recent years over the theory that the media likes to push that we're all to blame. The media likes this theory simply because scaring people is good for business. As in this article, it's not the actual facts that matter as much as an exciting story.
What about people without the use of their hands, or features for the deaf, and so on?
Well, considering that the deaf people I've known have a better time communicating with the outside world using a computer than without one, I would say that there aren't many software features that a deaf person can't use, with the exception of winamp.
To me saying that we need operating system features for the deaf is like saying we need features for people without legs, or lower back spinal cord injuries. These just aren't disabilities that impede the use of a computer.
There's doubtless a law that says "expenditures always grow to meet income" or some such, and this applies very well to computer technology as well. Better battery technology has never meant that you'll ever see a laptop with an 8 hour battery life, it just means that manufacturers make laptops that consume all that extra battery power in two hours with bigger sharper displays, DVD players, faster harddrives and more ram and CPU cycles. Most of which is just junk that some VP or VC uses to show off to everyone who can't afford it, rather than to let real people do real work while they're on a flight.
And of course, this development doesn't mean that Intel will make their processors run cool enough to run without a fan again, just that they'll pack transistors into them until you can roast marshmallows over your processor. Oh well. Speed is good.
What are you complaining about? Andromeda is utter crap. It looks more like Conan the Barbarian in space. A bunch of big tough guys with rediculously large weapons who're followed around by a not-so-tough-but-cool guy and throw in a few hot chicks dressed in leather and lots of cleavage? Tell me again how removing the "continuity" of this show will make it worse, because I'm having trouble with how it could possibly get worse.
I did tech support for two years at a small ISP, and after I burned out at that job and found out that programming was really kind of neat, I took up a degree in CS. I spent two years getting my first year done (I didn't take physics or math 12 in high school and I needed both for prereq's, which totally screwed me up) before I found out that while I'm pretty good at Algebra, your algebra needs to be perfect to do Calculus. (ie, I flunked out of Calculus 102) I also found out in the course of this that I would really rather be tinkering with computers than doing mathematics. Unfortunately, mathematics is about half of a CS degree these days (they changed the requirement for physics during the time I was in college. Thank you.)
So after I dropped out of college, I went larval with FreeBSD and an ADSL connection for about a month or two. It was probably the best education I ever had. After spending three months desperately trying to look for work, a programmer friend of mine went to his boss and said "since we're going to need a new sysadmin Real Soon Now, please hire Ernie. Oh, and if you don't, I'm going to quit."
By this time, I had actually gained enough knowledge to pass as a sysadmin, and after being in the job for about 9 months (dot com, and this all happened about a year and a half ago) I had learned enough about learning to be able to adapt to anything that was to come my way.
Now I'm working in another tiny ISP where everyone is doing everything. I get to answer phones, sysadmin, do tech support, and data entry. So does the boss, so we're all working hard to make it happen. It's not a perfect sysadmin job, but it certainly will be as the company grows.
Oh and by the way, I love this job. It's the closest thing to playing with computers that I've experienced.:)
A little bit of perspective.
on
Poor NASA
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I recall reading that one of the mars missions (failed or not) cost about $100 million. The laymen then gasp "A hundred million dollars! My god! That money should be spent elsewhere! What a waste for just a few pictures!"
There are about 150 million taxpayers in the United States. That means that each and every one of those taxpayers paid $0.66 for that mission. This is about the price of a can of Coke or a chocolate bar, and most of these taxpayers spend more money for both of those in a year than they do in money sent to NASA. NASA at least does real science - stuff that benefits humanity. What does Coca Cola Bottling Inc do? They sell fizzy sugar water. If you want to bitch about how much of your hard-earned NASA "wastes", maybe you should take a look at how much of that same money you waste yourself.
This actually sounds like a *good* idea. Both I and my employer (or his clients, who may be paying $100 an hour for our time) would love it if I could whip together an Apache/MySQL/ModPerl/PostgreSQL/CVS server in an *hour* rather than a *day.* (if things go nicely)
Of course, don't ever take away the guru tools, because automation is nothing without them. Idiot installs aren't just for the idiots, but for the people who actually know how to get things done. It just saves a whole lot of time for the people in the latter group, while making it possible for the former.
Woohoo! Thanks dude!
on
Mozilla 0.9.5
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
You would n't believe how much more snappier it makes mozilla run
Actually, yes I would, because Mozilla's performance on my machine (K6-2 400) leaves *much* to be desired under Unix, while it runs as fast or faster than Exploiter under windows. (albeit very unstable... that might have had something to do with how unstable windows was on my machine before I "replaced" it shortly after buggering my drives)
How can volunteer work on a project such as this be killed by layoffs? If anything, it will increase development efforts as the people laid off now have more time on their hands.;) The very nature of any such project is that people are doing this in their spare time, for the living hell of it or to scratch some itch, or "because it's there." Linux is the same way. Even if you shot all the developers, more people would come by and continue where they left off, just because they want to, and because the license lets them.
FreeBSD will live on, through thick and thin, even if it's just held together by a few guys on a weblog...
Credit card transactions aren't paid for on a per-transaction basis in no small part because 1) the vendor pays one and 2) credit card companies make their money elsewhere - namely in the 20% interest lots and lots of people pay on the unpaid balances on their cards.
Transactions made on debit/bank cards are different though. The user directly pays for the transaction at a rate of about $0.25 to $0.50 per transaction, and then on top of that, the vendor also pays an untold amount of money.
However, the money you and the vendor pay in each of these transactions pays for a system that is inherently secure. The vendor does not have to worry about bringing the money you gave him to the night deposit box at 10 pm. This is instead handled by the bank, using appropriate security measures. The same is true of the consumer, who does not have to worry about cash being stolen or lost. The bank also provides measures that help you keep track of your spending, like internet banking, as well as other services like purchase insurance and such.
So long as banks have competition between each other for customers, they cannot raise the tax on debit and credit card transactions to rediculous levels, since their customers would simply take their money somewhere else.
Or, alternatively, you could simply STOP BEING THE "GREAT SATAN!" This is a much cheaper - not to mention humane - solution instead of exterminating a good quarter of the earth's total population. The solution itself also has some excellent side benefits. By not declaring war on every heavily cratered, third-world country in sight, or imposing crushing economic sanctions that keeps said countries from feeding their populace like some kind of wicked god smiting the common people for pure entertainment, I think you might find that the people in these countries will lose their will to fight. They will actually acieve some semblance of happiness. They won't be blaming all their problems on the bastards that rightly deserve the blame.
Most of the world hates the US. And it's certainly not because you're number one, that you're living high on the hog and they're not, as you commonly claim. Do you hear about terrorist bombings in Germany? (with the exception of American military bases there) Or Italy? Or Britain? Or even Canada, who you blame repeatedly for letting the terrorist in? These countries are all among the seven richest countries in the world, each with a standard of living easily rivaling America's. The reason they're not being labelled as "The Great Satan" is because they don't use their armies to chastise bad little countries that don't do what Daddy tells them to.
It's time for America to put away its paternal feelings towards the rest of the world. It is not the Father Of All That Is Goodness And Light.It is not the world's policeman. It is not the protector of the Free World(tm), and there is no evil domino effect ready to snatch it up if Canada turns communist. So if you don't mind so much, could you kindly stop meddling with the internal affairs of other countries and let us get on with our lives? Thank you.
Even though I'm an atheist myself, I know that railing against religion in general isn't a good idea. I would never force my own beliefs on someone else, since it is something that I find repulsive in certain sects of Christianity and as a result, against my own morality. I expect everyone to give me my rights to my own religion (or lack thereof) by demonstrating my own tolerance for other people's religion.
And like he says, prayer isn't restricted to any one religion -- it's common to most. Just becuase the only exposure you've had to prayer has been in a Christian setting doesn't mean that only Christians pray, or that when a Christian asks you to pray, he doesn't necessarily mean to their God.
Well, it's in no small part because religion isn't about crusades and blowing stuff up. That's not the way it's supposed to be.
"Supposed to be" and "are" are two different things of course. Religion sometimes becomes a justification for slaughter, but it's never really the root cause, just an excuse.
The entire point of terrorism is to create a reaction that perpetuates itself, in an effort to destablize the entire population and cause the collapse of government or civilization. An excellent example is how the IRA has traditionally operated in Ireland, attacking civilians in such a way that it promotes Catholics to start witch hunts against Protestants and vice versa. The same kind of witch hunt that Bush proposes in order to find the perpetrators of this crime "as soon as possible," and the same kind of witch hunts that will invariably happen in the wake of such an event among the civilian populace - ignorant people beating up and killing visible minorities as if they were somehow responsible as an act of revenge.
Let's say that the American government responds by invading the West Bank in an effort to find the man responsible for all this. This action would cause outrage towards the US in the international community, among other things. As an added bonus, the group they seek either does not operate there, or has moved to Libya. The same terrorist group (now very well-funded by numerous ouraged oil sheiks) smuggles a nuclear weapon into Chicago and detonates it in outrage over the invasion which killed a million people, half of which were civilians.
In reaction to such a disaster, the US closes its borders to keep foreigners out and puts soldiers on every street corner to keep the nation safe from such future attacks. Then it nukes Libya as "appropriate retaliation." You can imagine what might happen after that.
All this because the American public and their president demands revenge for an act that was likely an act of revenge for some other percieved attack. Vengence is futile because it only breeds further vengence and it's not at all unlike a nuclear war between enemies that could easily wipe each other off the face of the earth. It is a lose-lose situation and the only way to win is not to play at all.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a really, really, really big one. It should be in the newspapers. Microsoft has claimed some time ago (free karma to the one who posts a link) that closed source, for-profit software and operating systems are more secure because the company can actually *hire* people to do security audits of the source code, whereas open source developers aren't motivated to do it because it's really boring, and there's no glory in it.
Now, we all know that OpenBSD has proved them wrong, by proving not only that open source developers *want* to do hardcore security audits of the source code, but that doing hardcore security audits on source code prevents security holes from being released into the wild. OpenBSD hasn't had a remotely exploitable security hole in the default install in FOUR YEARS! Windows XP has been in release for for all of about two months, and already there's a major security exploit found.
This proves by Microsoft's OWN ADMISSION, either they do not hire people to do the hardcore security audits they say they can, or if they do, they can't do it as well as the volunteers who "obviously" don't do it at all because there's no monetary motivation to do so.
With lies like this, Microsoft couldn't get into a Better Business Beurau if they paid each of its members a billion dollars.
Customers of such projects tend to want to see how it will work when it's done (often in mid-project). They want a mock-up. The problem with a mock-up is that it's extremely hard to make a mock-up that doesn't actually do anything, especially when the best way to do the coding and Making It All Work At All is by building the back-end first and then doing the front end. (like building a house, you put up the framework and do the wiring and plumbing before you put up the gyproc and paint it, covering up the ugliness that makes it all work) In essence, what the customers of software want is to have their house built with the gyproc first, so they can see what it will look like and how well it can be used before the kitchen sink and the dishwasher go in.
But you're very right. We could and should take the analogy the other way, and have a real designer do real design work that gets finalized before the builders even start their work. Unfortunately, this is pretty rare in the real world of programming.
Alan Cooper wrote a whole book [amazon.com] about how letting computer nerds design computer programs is wrong and stupid.
That is until you realize that, like designing a house, if you don't know what you're doing the whole thing is going to fall apart the instant you look at it funny.
The really interesting thing is that computer programs are quite often designed by People Who Aren't Computer nerds. They're called "customers." Often, these "customers" come by to meddle with the design during its building phase. If this were done during the construction of a house, you would have spaghetti for plumbing, electrical wiring that wouldn't pass inspection, and it would probably float in the air by magic. And this is often exactly what happens to software when you go through a few "design changes" as you make attempts to show the customer what you're spending his hard-earned (or maybe not-so-hard-earned in the case of some companies) cash on during the coding phase of the software. And what they believe to be "minor interface adjustments" typically turn out to be major overhauls that require an almost total rewrite because of how it was originally programmed. The problem is that it needs to be finished in a week, because that was "the last of the changes." If you've ever wondered why programmers don't sleep in that last week of development, that's why.
Don't fool yourself. You wouldn't let a bridge be designed by Joe Average, now would you? Coding's at least as complex.
When in fact, it simply takes the same old tired "plot" (and I use the term quite loosely) devices and takes their obviousness above and beyond what is normally done? It sounds to me like the same writers who write the kind of dreck the movie is trying to spoof just turned around and made it even more obvious, banal, and raunchy. So all they're really doing is taking the same content to a new level. It's hardly "achey breaky song" type spoofing, that's for sure.
Actually, I think that if you send out an e-mail virus that patches IE automatically and then propogates itself, that would work quite well, despite the fact that you've been screaming and shouting for people never to open e-mail attachments. Just remember to use a subject line like "free porn!" ;)
It's worth noting that pure water doesn't harm the environment, so it's no great sin to just dump it overboard, now is it? :)
What a silly question.
Hehe. At the same time, Dihydrogen Monoxide is also an inhalation hazard. :) It takes easily less than 100ml to kill you if inhaled.
:)
But then, your lungs aren't terribly resilient to much of anything when you inhale any number of substances, are they?
Heh. That's because in 1992, spammers didn't mine Usenet for e-mail addresses yet. You know, like they do to slashdot every day now.
Wow. A whole slew of fallacies all in one sentence.
It can remove cheap energy and transportation sources for billions of people, maintaining or increasing rates of poverty and starvation around the globe.
Burning fossil fuels isn't cheap. At best, you'll notice that the price of gasoline is pretty high per unit of energy obtained. Also, burning gasoline is hardly the most efficient method of extracting the energy from it. And burning it is also not the most efficient method of changing the energy into something useful. Most of the energy contained in gasoline is wasted as heat. As an added bonus, the mining, extraction, and refining of gasoline from petroleum is a complicated and expensive process.
The machines that allow us to exploit the energy released by burning gasoline are also not cheap. In fact, they are horribly expensive. When you bought your last car, did you already have the money you needed in the bank, or did you have to borrow that money? And when you take into consideration that you belong to the wealthiest 10% of the world's population, where does that leave the other 90%? If you didn't have the cash to buy this piece of machinery, what does that mean for everyone else?
I have news for you. We've had fossil fuels for a "cheap" source of energy for the past 150 years, and it hasn't done the world's poor a good goddamn bit of good. If anything, it's perpetuated empires that have stomped the world's poor into the dust.
This should be glaringly obvious, but the author clearly didn't want the facts to get in the way of a good story.
1) This happens every year anyway. The martian atmosphere gets thicker every year as a result of its less-than-circular orbit. Every year, there are times when Mars is closer to the sun than the rest of the year, which allows the planet to absorb more solar energy, melting more of the carbon dioxide in the ice caps and adding to the atmosphere. This might actually snowball if it weren't for the fact that there are other times of the year where the CO2 starts to freeze out, snowballing in the other direction.
2) While it might be exciting and all that in a million years, you *might* not need a spacesuit to walk on the surface of mars, more than likely it's just a statistical anomaly because it was slightly warmer this year than last. As if we never see that sort of thing on earth or anything. The author saves this little tidbit of information for last, because otherwise there's not much of a story here at all. (and of course, there really isn't.)
3) This is, if anything, simply proof that some years the sun is hotter than others, which might be a much easier explanation for an increase in the average surface temperature of the earth in recent years over the theory that the media likes to push that we're all to blame. The media likes this theory simply because scaring people is good for business. As in this article, it's not the actual facts that matter as much as an exciting story.
Well, considering that the deaf people I've known have a better time communicating with the outside world using a computer than without one, I would say that there aren't many software features that a deaf person can't use, with the exception of winamp.
To me saying that we need operating system features for the deaf is like saying we need features for people without legs, or lower back spinal cord injuries. These just aren't disabilities that impede the use of a computer.
Is this life imitating art, or is it fiction making accurate predictions about science?
;)
I am of course, talking about The Matrix. I just hope that when they start making bioelectric power plants, they use cows instead of people.
There's doubtless a law that says "expenditures always grow to meet income" or some such, and this applies very well to computer technology as well. Better battery technology has never meant that you'll ever see a laptop with an 8 hour battery life, it just means that manufacturers make laptops that consume all that extra battery power in two hours with bigger sharper displays, DVD players, faster harddrives and more ram and CPU cycles. Most of which is just junk that some VP or VC uses to show off to everyone who can't afford it, rather than to let real people do real work while they're on a flight.
And of course, this development doesn't mean that Intel will make their processors run cool enough to run without a fan again, just that they'll pack transistors into them until you can roast marshmallows over your processor. Oh well. Speed is good.
What are you complaining about? Andromeda is utter crap. It looks more like Conan the Barbarian in space. A bunch of big tough guys with rediculously large weapons who're followed around by a not-so-tough-but-cool guy and throw in a few hot chicks dressed in leather and lots of cleavage? Tell me again how removing the "continuity" of this show will make it worse, because I'm having trouble with how it could possibly get worse.
I did tech support for two years at a small ISP, and after I burned out at that job and found out that programming was really kind of neat, I took up a degree in CS. I spent two years getting my first year done (I didn't take physics or math 12 in high school and I needed both for prereq's, which totally screwed me up) before I found out that while I'm pretty good at Algebra, your algebra needs to be perfect to do Calculus. (ie, I flunked out of Calculus 102) I also found out in the course of this that I would really rather be tinkering with computers than doing mathematics. Unfortunately, mathematics is about half of a CS degree these days (they changed the requirement for physics during the time I was in college. Thank you.)
:)
So after I dropped out of college, I went larval with FreeBSD and an ADSL connection for about a month or two. It was probably the best education I ever had. After spending three months desperately trying to look for work, a programmer friend of mine went to his boss and said "since we're going to need a new sysadmin Real Soon Now, please hire Ernie. Oh, and if you don't, I'm going to quit."
By this time, I had actually gained enough knowledge to pass as a sysadmin, and after being in the job for about 9 months (dot com, and this all happened about a year and a half ago) I had learned enough about learning to be able to adapt to anything that was to come my way.
Now I'm working in another tiny ISP where everyone is doing everything. I get to answer phones, sysadmin, do tech support, and data entry. So does the boss, so we're all working hard to make it happen. It's not a perfect sysadmin job, but it certainly will be as the company grows.
Oh and by the way, I love this job. It's the closest thing to playing with computers that I've experienced.
I recall reading that one of the mars missions (failed or not) cost about $100 million. The laymen then gasp "A hundred million dollars! My god! That money should be spent elsewhere! What a waste for just a few pictures!"
There are about 150 million taxpayers in the United States. That means that each and every one of those taxpayers paid $0.66 for that mission. This is about the price of a can of Coke or a chocolate bar, and most of these taxpayers spend more money for both of those in a year than they do in money sent to NASA. NASA at least does real science - stuff that benefits humanity. What does Coca Cola Bottling Inc do? They sell fizzy sugar water. If you want to bitch about how much of your hard-earned NASA "wastes", maybe you should take a look at how much of that same money you waste yourself.
This actually sounds like a *good* idea. Both I and my employer (or his clients, who may be paying $100 an hour for our time) would love it if I could whip together an Apache/MySQL/ModPerl/PostgreSQL/CVS server in an *hour* rather than a *day.* (if things go nicely)
Of course, don't ever take away the guru tools, because automation is nothing without them. Idiot installs aren't just for the idiots, but for the people who actually know how to get things done. It just saves a whole lot of time for the people in the latter group, while making it possible for the former.
Actually, yes I would, because Mozilla's performance on my machine (K6-2 400) leaves *much* to be desired under Unix, while it runs as fast or faster than Exploiter under windows. (albeit very unstable... that might have had something to do with how unstable windows was on my machine before I "replaced" it shortly after buggering my drives)
I thank you very much for the tip. :)
How can volunteer work on a project such as this be killed by layoffs? If anything, it will increase development efforts as the people laid off now have more time on their hands. ;) The very nature of any such project is that people are doing this in their spare time, for the living hell of it or to scratch some itch, or "because it's there." Linux is the same way. Even if you shot all the developers, more people would come by and continue where they left off, just because they want to, and because the license lets them.
FreeBSD will live on, through thick and thin, even if it's just held together by a few guys on a weblog...
Credit card transactions aren't paid for on a per-transaction basis in no small part because 1) the vendor pays one and 2) credit card companies make their money elsewhere - namely in the 20% interest lots and lots of people pay on the unpaid balances on their cards.
Transactions made on debit/bank cards are different though. The user directly pays for the transaction at a rate of about $0.25 to $0.50 per transaction, and then on top of that, the vendor also pays an untold amount of money.
However, the money you and the vendor pay in each of these transactions pays for a system that is inherently secure. The vendor does not have to worry about bringing the money you gave him to the night deposit box at 10 pm. This is instead handled by the bank, using appropriate security measures. The same is true of the consumer, who does not have to worry about cash being stolen or lost. The bank also provides measures that help you keep track of your spending, like internet banking, as well as other services like purchase insurance and such.
So long as banks have competition between each other for customers, they cannot raise the tax on debit and credit card transactions to rediculous levels, since their customers would simply take their money somewhere else.
Or, alternatively, you could simply STOP BEING THE "GREAT SATAN!" This is a much cheaper - not to mention humane - solution instead of exterminating a good quarter of the earth's total population. The solution itself also has some excellent side benefits. By not declaring war on every heavily cratered, third-world country in sight, or imposing crushing economic sanctions that keeps said countries from feeding their populace like some kind of wicked god smiting the common people for pure entertainment, I think you might find that the people in these countries will lose their will to fight. They will actually acieve some semblance of happiness. They won't be blaming all their problems on the bastards that rightly deserve the blame.
Most of the world hates the US. And it's certainly not because you're number one, that you're living high on the hog and they're not, as you commonly claim. Do you hear about terrorist bombings in Germany? (with the exception of American military bases there) Or Italy? Or Britain? Or even Canada, who you blame repeatedly for letting the terrorist in? These countries are all among the seven richest countries in the world, each with a standard of living easily rivaling America's. The reason they're not being labelled as "The Great Satan" is because they don't use their armies to chastise bad little countries that don't do what Daddy tells them to.
It's time for America to put away its paternal feelings towards the rest of the world. It is not the Father Of All That Is Goodness And Light.It is not the world's policeman. It is not the protector of the Free World(tm), and there is no evil domino effect ready to snatch it up if Canada turns communist. So if you don't mind so much, could you kindly stop meddling with the internal affairs of other countries and let us get on with our lives? Thank you.
Even though I'm an atheist myself, I know that railing against religion in general isn't a good idea. I would never force my own beliefs on someone else, since it is something that I find repulsive in certain sects of Christianity and as a result, against my own morality. I expect everyone to give me my rights to my own religion (or lack thereof) by demonstrating my own tolerance for other people's religion.
And like he says, prayer isn't restricted to any one religion -- it's common to most. Just becuase the only exposure you've had to prayer has been in a Christian setting doesn't mean that only Christians pray, or that when a Christian asks you to pray, he doesn't necessarily mean to their God.
Well, it's in no small part because religion isn't about crusades and blowing stuff up. That's not the way it's supposed to be.
"Supposed to be" and "are" are two different things of course. Religion sometimes becomes a justification for slaughter, but it's never really the root cause, just an excuse.
The entire point of terrorism is to create a reaction that perpetuates itself, in an effort to destablize the entire population and cause the collapse of government or civilization. An excellent example is how the IRA has traditionally operated in Ireland, attacking civilians in such a way that it promotes Catholics to start witch hunts against Protestants and vice versa. The same kind of witch hunt that Bush proposes in order to find the perpetrators of this crime "as soon as possible," and the same kind of witch hunts that will invariably happen in the wake of such an event among the civilian populace - ignorant people beating up and killing visible minorities as if they were somehow responsible as an act of revenge.
Let's say that the American government responds by invading the West Bank in an effort to find the man responsible for all this. This action would cause outrage towards the US in the international community, among other things. As an added bonus, the group they seek either does not operate there, or has moved to Libya. The same terrorist group (now very well-funded by numerous ouraged oil sheiks) smuggles a nuclear weapon into Chicago and detonates it in outrage over the invasion which killed a million people, half of which were civilians.
In reaction to such a disaster, the US closes its borders to keep foreigners out and puts soldiers on every street corner to keep the nation safe from such future attacks. Then it nukes Libya as "appropriate retaliation." You can imagine what might happen after that.
All this because the American public and their president demands revenge for an act that was likely an act of revenge for some other percieved attack. Vengence is futile because it only breeds further vengence and it's not at all unlike a nuclear war between enemies that could easily wipe each other off the face of the earth. It is a lose-lose situation and the only way to win is not to play at all.
It does. They've released version 1.01 and they're selling it for $50 a copy. Whether it's going to be profitable has yet to be seen.