It's my understanding (is this true?) that there are significant POLITICAL boundries, in China, to starting a business, or purchasing any significant manufacturing capacity - that much of this end of the Capitalistic spectrum is tightly controlled by the Communist party, and their cronies. (this is what a Chinese exchange student told me - his dad "owned a factory" - but apparently, he had to pay a significant chunk in what sounded to me like bribes, to certain government officials, in order to get around some inspection problems) - sounds like they use regulation as a tool to extort bribes, and the governmental system prevents anyone from complaining about it.
However, when talking about Democracy - there's also kind of a conflating-of-terms going on. Nobody would want to live in a "pure" democracy. That's Mob Rule. That's why we have a Constitution. To be more precise; from a "good-bad" perspective; pure democracy bad. Constitutional democracy good. (where the US is technically, a Constitutional Democratic Republic - the "Republic" part stemming from our Constitution).
Any comments from experienced digital photographers on the Carl Zeiss lenses? Sony seems to have an exclusive deal; but when I buy a camera with the "Carl Zeiss" name stamped on the lens - what am I getting, exactly? I know that Carl Zeiss had a great reputation in the 1970's - but I'm not sure if that means anything today. . . (fwiw, I have 3 Sony cameras; including the dsc-h5, which seems to take pretty good pictures despite lack of RAW capability).
The original goal - as outlined by M. Albright in 1998, was "Regime Change" - ie. toppling Hussein.
Feature-creep included talking about Democracy, and WMD, realignment of oil interests, etc.
But the real reason was mostly to get rednecks in the US fired up to re-elect Bush. (and to make Halliburton a ton of money, not to mention the CPA folks who were hired on based on no qualifications other than party affiliation - and a desire to steal over $8 Billion in reconstruction funds which "disappeared" over there, and are now very likely in Swiss or Carribean bank accounts owned by former CPA officials).
I'm working with a developer right now, who just learned "the hard way" that NTFS paths can't exceed 256 characters in length. (oh, they can EXCEED that length, you just can't DO anything to them with any tools; like explorer.exe, or dir, etc.) - not being a fan of Windows to begin with, this poor guy was pretty steamed. I had a laugh - but I'm a little surprised that Microsoft hasn't fixed this problem yet, since I remembered it back from the NT 4.0 days.
Its simply a tool that can be used for both good and evil. Unfortunately many use it for the latter while many others use it for the former, you must be careful to avoid the latter. Most clueless people simply aren't informed enough to efficiently avoid the latter.
Well, that's been true about human use of tools since the first caveman set a forest fire to flush out game.
I mean, tell me, who's never used a screwdriver as a prybar?
Never mind that for every "You SHALL use Open Source. . . " requirement out there, there's another "You SHALL use Microsoft or... " directive. You see these all over the place. At the end of the day - the integrator's going to either use what works, or fail. These kinds of directives are seldom heeded.
But given Apple's history of deprecating old stuff at every generational change (recent example: Classic is gone since the x86 migration) - if I were developing a new Mac application today, I'd either use a web-services-based approach (like Ruby on Rails, etc.) or I'd use the pure Objective-C/Cocoa, and I'd stay the hell away from Carbon. Because you know damn well, that Carbon is the next thing to go away.
Apple's got some great support for things like Perl, and Python, and PHP, RoR, and especially Java. So it's not like Apple is developer-hostile. I wouldn't say that at all. But after 10+ years using and developing on Macs, you learn to tell which way the wind is blowing.
Um - even Halliburton's CEO said that the job was too big for his company.
That's what subcontractors are for.
The argument that Halliburton was the only company big enough for the job is so completely bogus, it's laughable. That's the ignorant Sunday afternoon talkshow talking point.
The Pentagon could have farmed it out to a number of smaller contractors, with anyone else being a primary, and the rest a sub, or they could have split it up to a smaller number of contracts with multiple primaries. This no-bid contract was pure war-profiteering. Nothing more. The proof is in the result. The amount of fraud and waste in this deal is the worst in history. And that was determined under a regime of very unusually relaxed bookkeeping rules that Congressional Republicans pushed strongly for.
Actually, a better example of what a "pure democracy" would vote for is: A majority would vote to enslave a minority.
As happened in the South. Which is why we fought the Civil War. We fought this war, to prevent the popular will of the people of Southern states, to be enshrined into law.
The Constitution in general, and the Bill of Rights in particular, are the components of our government intended to counteract and limit Democracy. Sure; Democracy is fine and dandy, but if everyone could have what they would vote for, we'd all vote for Ice Cream and A Pony, now, wouldn't we? And then this country would be deeply in debt.
This is because, to institutional investors, a Layoff is a signal that a company is willing to cut fat and take profits. This triggers a near-reflexive BUY response, and often causes a jump in share price. Past a certain increase, the execs get an extra percent or two on their bonus. Hell, half the time, they don't even actually have to lay anyone off - they just have to announce it. (same goes for outsourcing).
Nothing more than whores applying makeup for the evening walk.
It was anti-Chavez SNIPERS, who were not on the street, but up in high-rise buildings, shooting at pro-Chavez demonstrators. Go download a copy of "The Revolution Will Not be Televised" and watch. The TV station tried to say that it was the pro-Chavez demonstrators who started shooting - but there were no anti-Chavez demonstrators to shoot at. People just started going down, with head wounds, and a couple of them pulled guns, and tried to shoot back at where they heard the shots coming from. RCTV totally misrepresented the situation.
Slashdot Mirror
Only on Slashdot, can it be ambiguous when something THIS Funny, is stamped Insightful.
Wow.
Single-point-of-failure, anyone?
I wonder why they didn't all die, though.
What if your silicon contains a significant percentage of radioisotopes (as most matter does)?
Then, over time, radioactive decay will change the mass, without changing the number of atoms, OR the chemical makeup.
The isotopic makeup is a wildcard. Maybe not a significant one - but a wildcard, nonetheless.
It's my understanding (is this true?) that there are significant POLITICAL boundries, in China, to starting a business, or purchasing any significant manufacturing capacity - that much of this end of the Capitalistic spectrum is tightly controlled by the Communist party, and their cronies. (this is what a Chinese exchange student told me - his dad "owned a factory" - but apparently, he had to pay a significant chunk in what sounded to me like bribes, to certain government officials, in order to get around some inspection problems) - sounds like they use regulation as a tool to extort bribes, and the governmental system prevents anyone from complaining about it.
Good write-up;
However, when talking about Democracy - there's also kind of a conflating-of-terms going on. Nobody would want to live in a "pure" democracy. That's Mob Rule. That's why we have a Constitution. To be more precise; from a "good-bad" perspective; pure democracy bad. Constitutional democracy good. (where the US is technically, a Constitutional Democratic Republic - the "Republic" part stemming from our Constitution).
Any comments from experienced digital photographers on the Carl Zeiss lenses? Sony seems to have an exclusive deal; but when I buy a camera with the "Carl Zeiss" name stamped on the lens - what am I getting, exactly? I know that Carl Zeiss had a great reputation in the 1970's - but I'm not sure if that means anything today. . . (fwiw, I have 3 Sony cameras; including the dsc-h5, which seems to take pretty good pictures despite lack of RAW capability).
The original goal - as outlined by M. Albright in 1998, was "Regime Change" - ie. toppling Hussein.
Feature-creep included talking about Democracy, and WMD, realignment of oil interests, etc.
But the real reason was mostly to get rednecks in the US fired up to re-elect Bush. (and to make Halliburton a ton of money, not to mention the CPA folks who were hired on based on no qualifications other than party affiliation - and a desire to steal over $8 Billion in reconstruction funds which "disappeared" over there, and are now very likely in Swiss or Carribean bank accounts owned by former CPA officials).
Naw; Genius Economist Alan Greenspan solved this problem.
Just jack-up the interest rates!
Well; thanks for that info.
There WILL be killer apps delivered for iPhone.
They just won't be delivered by third party vendors.
Or (thank goodness) by spammers and skript-kiddies.
What good is snapshotting on a read-only file system?
heh.
I'm working with a developer right now, who just learned "the hard way" that NTFS paths can't exceed 256 characters in length. (oh, they can EXCEED that length, you just can't DO anything to them with any tools; like explorer.exe, or dir, etc.) - not being a fan of Windows to begin with, this poor guy was pretty steamed. I had a laugh - but I'm a little surprised that Microsoft hasn't fixed this problem yet, since I remembered it back from the NT 4.0 days.
If this is true;
(and I don't believe it for one second. You gotta be shitting me.)
. . . then this is the single most significant Apple-related announcement I can recall since I first switched to the platform in 1994.
. . . let me calculate how much time I'm going to waste on my Mac. . .
I know it's a tired and old cliche, but;
If Security Research is outlawed, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL DO SECURITY RESEARCH.
And that's not a desirable state of affairs, when you think about it, really.
If you're not fighting it already, you haven't been paying attention.
Nope - oddly enough, that would be "Dyscalcula", not Dyslexia.
Its simply a tool that can be used for both good and evil. Unfortunately many use it for the latter while many others use it for the former, you must be careful to avoid the latter. Most clueless people simply aren't informed enough to efficiently avoid the latter.
Well, that's been true about human use of tools since the first caveman set a forest fire to flush out game.
I mean, tell me, who's never used a screwdriver as a prybar?
No.
The number one great thing about the internet is:
DIS-INTER-MEDIATION.
The violent death and destruction via obsolescence of the greatest evil man has ever known: The Middleman.
(unfortunately: only to be replaced by other middlemen)
Never mind that for every "You SHALL use Open Source. . . " requirement out there, there's another "You SHALL use Microsoft or ... " directive. You see these all over the place. At the end of the day - the integrator's going to either use what works, or fail. These kinds of directives are seldom heeded.
Heh. Right on. Two words: Gun Safety.
Carbon looks like a safe bet today.
But given Apple's history of deprecating old stuff at every generational change (recent example: Classic is gone since the x86 migration) - if I were developing a new Mac application today, I'd either use a web-services-based approach (like Ruby on Rails, etc.) or I'd use the pure Objective-C/Cocoa, and I'd stay the hell away from Carbon. Because you know damn well, that Carbon is the next thing to go away.
Apple's got some great support for things like Perl, and Python, and PHP, RoR, and especially Java. So it's not like Apple is developer-hostile. I wouldn't say that at all. But after 10+ years using and developing on Macs, you learn to tell which way the wind is blowing.
Um - even Halliburton's CEO said that the job was too big for his company.
That's what subcontractors are for.
The argument that Halliburton was the only company big enough for the job is so completely bogus, it's laughable. That's the ignorant Sunday afternoon talkshow talking point.
The Pentagon could have farmed it out to a number of smaller contractors, with anyone else being a primary, and the rest a sub, or they could have split it up to a smaller number of contracts with multiple primaries. This no-bid contract was pure war-profiteering. Nothing more. The proof is in the result. The amount of fraud and waste in this deal is the worst in history. And that was determined under a regime of very unusually relaxed bookkeeping rules that Congressional Republicans pushed strongly for.
Actually, a better example of what a "pure democracy" would vote for is:
A majority would vote to enslave a minority.
As happened in the South. Which is why we fought the Civil War. We fought this war, to prevent the popular will of the people of Southern states, to be enshrined into law.
The Constitution in general, and the Bill of Rights in particular, are the components of our government intended to counteract and limit Democracy. Sure; Democracy is fine and dandy, but if everyone could have what they would vote for, we'd all vote for Ice Cream and A Pony, now, wouldn't we? And then this country would be deeply in debt.
This is because, to institutional investors, a Layoff is a signal that a company is willing to cut fat and take profits. This triggers a near-reflexive BUY response, and often causes a jump in share price. Past a certain increase, the execs get an extra percent or two on their bonus. Hell, half the time, they don't even actually have to lay anyone off - they just have to announce it. (same goes for outsourcing).
Nothing more than whores applying makeup for the evening walk.
It was anti-Chavez SNIPERS, who were not on the street, but up in high-rise buildings, shooting at pro-Chavez demonstrators. Go download a copy of "The Revolution Will Not be Televised" and watch. The TV station tried to say that it was the pro-Chavez demonstrators who started shooting - but there were no anti-Chavez demonstrators to shoot at. People just started going down, with head wounds, and a couple of them pulled guns, and tried to shoot back at where they heard the shots coming from. RCTV totally misrepresented the situation.