...The embargo applies only to American companies,...
What American companies? Are there any left? Haven't they all either moved, or outsourced most of their labor to China?
I mean - WTF is the point of an embargo anymore?
Castro's an asshole, but there are far worse assholes in the world, with whom we (the US) do plenty of business.
The "embargo" on Cuba is nothing more than pandering to the Cuban-American vote in Florida, and a few powerful and embittered sugar-cane and tobacco magnates, who lost assets to a thieving dictator 50+ years ago.
When CC went from commission to non-commissoned sales they gave their old employees one HELL of a deal.
So, the upper management that made that deal, made a mistake. And they're now punishing the beneficiaries of the deal. Instead of the upper management that made the mistake.
And - it's not a "deal" if you later pull the rug out from under these guys. They had an incentive to perform well, they did perform well. That linkage was taken away, so it's hardly surprising that maybe in some cases, the performance went away too. Now they're going to offer these guys lower pay, with no commission - that's a "deal" that's guaranteed to give them the same low performance they're getting now (if that's the case).
This is a really, really stupid plan.
It's probably true, that CC salesmen are superfluous - because people will comparison shop on the internet, and if it's something they need right away, they'll probably run out to CC and buy it instead of ordering online. I suspect that's the case in a lot of situations. That just goes to show that this intermediate situation of the "deal" was very, very stupid. And the folks who came up with and approved that idea should have been fired.
But my guess is that they're probably getting bonuses. And it's easy to guess where that money came from.
Just because Bush SAYS he's Born Again, does not mean squat.
All it means is: Bush's campaign manager is a cunning salesman. And. Religious people are, by nature, gullible.
The "Religious Movement" in this country over the past 10-15 years is a sophisticated marketing campaign by people interested in power and money. Not much more than that.
Locker rooms through Jr. High were absolute fucking hell I wish I could forget.
I'm completely normal (physiologically) - one might say "average". And I wasn't happy about the locker-room situation either.
In fact, my son doesn't like that either.
The truth is, we have a very sick society. It's harder on some (like you) than others. It's a damn shame that medical "science" hasn't figured out what to do about a significant and naturally-occurring percentage of our human biology, and instead, still clings to the remnants of prehistoric notions trying to explain our world (day/night, male/female, etc.) in simpler terms. It's made particularly worse, as your story confirms, when medical decisions (and very personal ones) are turned over to accountants.
I agree that sexual reassignment surgery is barbaric, and should never be done on an infant;
I think that victims should not be haunted or troubled about the way that they have been reassigned. There's a lot of angst about it - but there's also a lot of evidence that sexuality, including the ability to reach climax, and the quality of the climax, is largely psychological. True - the damage to (or removal of) tissue with large amounts of nerve endings can be crippling. And the longings that one has for partners of a certain gender, and the social trauma that can cause, are not negotiable for most people. But there are also cases where paraplegics, and quadraplegics, can experience satisfying sex-lives, including intimate coupling and climax. I think we're only starting to learn about this now. If a quadraplegic can do it, psychologically, I bet that a gender-reassigned person can probably do a lot as well.
There's also a lot of examples of people who; physically, have no problems with sexual function, but because of how they were raised, they have bad attitudes about sex, and are not able to have a happy sex life either. Psychology is a huge component. More than most people realize.
But I do agree - the knife is a terrible solution. If I were intersexed, and a victim of this (reassignment surgery); I would try to view it as a horrible accident, you know, like I was in a car wreck due to another negligent driver, and now, parts of me are missing. Try to make the best of what I had left, and move on. Certainly advocate against the practice.
Water has a naturally hexagon shape. The angle between the two oxygens, across the hydrogen vertex, is 120 degrees. Ice crystals form a hexagonal geometry. This is apparent (and obvious) when looking at snowflakes under magnification.
How that could possibly translate to a dish of water, or cloud formations on Saturn, I have no freaking idea.
Can you give me a good reason we should prop up an obsolete business model besides nostalgia or personal preference?
Not everyone is on line. There will NEVER be a time, where everyone is on line. Internet service has come down quite a bit, but it is a luxury service. Owning a computer is a luxury. There will always be a significant chunk at the bottom end of the economic spectrum who will have either no, or limited internet access. That's just the way it is.
Also, look at the demographics of WHO is on line, and you'll see; the vast, overwhelming majority are white, upper-middle class. We tend to think of the internet, and blogging as the great equalizer, the technological tool of power-to-the-people, and in many ways, it pits the middle and upper middle against the super rich upper upper class, and gives them a leg up. But it's not helping the bottom quintile much, as far as power or influence in politics.
Ironic that the pro-free-market, pro-business, pro-monopoly forces, NEVER bring up corporate bankruptcy as a HUGE form of government subsidy.
Look at the ill effects that came from the Enron fallout. And yet, this company STILL exists, is STILL in business, and while a few scapegoats have been whipped, and while tons of workers were booted out on the streets - Enron is still able to influence the political process (California Governor), and pervert the justice system, and operate its business. In a few years, they'll be permitted to operate in the US again, and it will be business as usual.
The other thing is; A lot of businesses do not reward the "pure techie" track. Everywhere I've gone, I am pushed, shoved, encouraged, and even intimidated into taking on a more managerial role. Jobs are less (financially) rewarding, and most importantly less secure, when you shun the managerial track.
The best role to get into, IMO, to avoid this, is the "tech leadership" role. You get the power to manage technical direction of projects (ie. avoid stupidity that a non-technical manager might make) - but you don't have to be a "manager". You still have the responsibility for planning, schedule, and budget, and task delegation, but from a technical angle.
Unfortunately, few businesses seem to realize that they need people to fill these roles; they don't seem to be a facet of most org structures I've seen.
It's true that you can complain about Monoculture; But if you have 100 different computers, and they're all configured differently, what you have is an UNKNOWN configuration - and you can't tell your boss "every known vulnerability has been shut down".
If you shut down all known vulnerabilities on those 100 computers, you don't have 100 secure computers. You have 100 computers, with zero known vulnerabilities, and some unspecified number of unknown vulnerabilities. Those unknowns are there, whether you've controlled the configuration and accomplished a monoculture, or not.
The weaknesses of monoculture become apparent when a new vulnerability is discovered, and the mechanism that enforces the monoculture gets in the way of patching the vulnerability quickly, and repeatably, on all 100 machines. (The "mechanism" being this common configuration spec, and the rules that enforce it - and the government rules dictating when and whether someone can be paid to actually do the work). In theory, if you have a mechanism that allows necessary changes in a timely and consistent manner, and doesn't permit unnecessary changes - that's the best design of all possible designs).
Now - there's a CHANCE, that if you pay the costs of say; having 50 of those boxes Windows, and 50 of those boxes Linux - that any unknown vulnerabilities will only impact half of your network. But what if one of those 50 is a critical component, like, maybe you chose Linux for your web server, and Windows for your desktops, and what if, the unknown vulnerability leads to a loss of your Linux webserver? Guess what? Your entire system STILL goes down.
I'm not advocating picking one platform for the benefit of saving costs (on training, development expertise, supply-chain management). But advocating mixing platforms solely to avoid monoculture is similarly stupid. Of course, you want interoperability, and you want the platform that performs a given function best. That's where you want to base your Linux or Windows decision.
The big problem I see with this "mandated configuration" approach, is the insistence on a common desktop configuration, and its enforcement through Active Directory. This forces an integrator to turn on services and open ports on a desktop that would not ordinarily need to be opened - purely to amuse Microsoft's centralized management scheme. Additional services like Distributed Transaction Coordinator, Remote Registry Service, Server Service (which exposes the IPC$ share - you can't shut this off anymore), Microsoft Installer, Task Scheduler (which has a long and sordid history of unpatched vulnerabilities), Automatic Updates, Background Intelligent Transfer Service, Computer Browser service, DCOM Server Process Launcher, Error Reporting Service - etc. the list goes on and on. You can shut off most of this crap on a Workgroup machine. A Domain member needs to have a lot of these turned on - and that exposes a lot more surface area to attack. The expertise to determine which services support which functionality; what you can turn off and still get done - is not cheap or easy. Most of these services, you can't google on and get a meaningful answer, nor is Microsoft's documentation always clear.
What would BE nice, is more choice; on the Windows Side, of LDAP solutions that can provide the kinds of services and features that Windows Administrators have come to expect from Active Directory. And ways to take advantage of those services and features without opening you entire network to more risk. IMO - this battle was lost when Novell's NDS was essentially crushed by Microsoft in 1999-2002. And this facet was completely ignored by the MS v DoJ trial.
Young and black, and "clean, and articulate" - etc. are what's being used as an argument on the nation's talk shows. Like it or not (I sure as hell don't), they're a pretty influential source of opinion in America.
It's not his inexperience that worries me - directly. It's that I'm afraid that makes him MORE vulnerable to special interests. He's got a lot of high-powered consultants holding his hands and guiding him through this process. THAT'S who I'm afraid of. The bait-and-switch here is on; they're framing this candidate as the "escape from politics as usual" candidate. Same exact thing they did for Schwartzenegger in CA. How did that work out? (actually, not bad - but his first two years were a fucking disaster). - Schwartzenegger is finally standing up for what he really believes in. But in the first couple of years, he had to "pay off his barons" - the people who put him in office. The worst offense, of course, was dropping the Enron lawsuit, and putting the bill on a Credit Card. The worst sort of "borrow-n-spend" Republican policy. Now, the taxpayers (and electricity rate-payers, and frankly, anyone who borrows money at the elevated interest rates) have to pay for the price-fixing and market manipulation, with no legal recourse.
Look very carefully at who Obama's getting his money from. And wonder why his position on issues is not well known. The word on Gun Control is being very carefully hidden. Only those who are paying attention know. His opinion on the war is the only thing that's well known.
Except, rather than a $150 fine, you can get a $150,000 fine. Ouch.
Well, the Romans had a better idea for keeping an orderly society, and bolstering law enforcement. Stiffer penalties. Like slavery. Crucifixion. Forced entertainment (being the star of the weekly "Feed the Lions" show at the coliseum). $150,000 isn't enough to deter these violators. We need some real penalties. After all, the stiff penalties the Romans used worked out so well for them.
There is a lot of frustration among Democratic voters right now, about the crappy selection of presidential candidates. We felt like we got railroaded with Dukkakis in '88, and while Clinton was a pleasant surprise in '92, there was a lot of consternation about Lieberman in 2000 (and it should be clear by now, that Lieberman did more harm to Gore's campaign than Nader could ever dream to) - and Kerry in '04.
Democratic voters feel their principles have been betrayed. That their party is beholden to monied special interests (especially the mafIAA). Is it any wonder that a stooge like Bush can win?
I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with Obama as a candidate (his views on Gun Control are pretty wacky - the NRA will slaughter him, even with the weak field of Republican candidates). I'd rather see the Democratic Party take someone like Bill Richardson a lot more seriously. He has a lot more experience, and his views are a lot closer to the mainstream of America. Plus, he *is* a minority; but he doesn't use that status as a political tool, like Clinton and Obama do.
This Obama staffer made a bad move. It was a clear, ethical, conflict of interest, and possibly a violation of campaign finance law. But he made a damn important point. Is anyone at the DNC (and especially, the DLC) listening?
Yeah - for a while, it seemed as if DLT would fix a lot of the reliability (and capacity) issues we were seeing with helical-scan-type drives, like DAT and 8mm. The tape, itself seemed bullet-proof back in 1997. But after a couple years of success, when the format started to get really-well established, the drive manufacturers started releasing really - lower quality, cheaply-made drives, that; while they cost the same, they were just as crappy as the cheap-ass 4mm/8mm drives that were out there.
The software's another story.
I watched as three different tape backup programs were axed; (Palindrome Network Archivist, NetBackup, and the ill-named "Client Exec"), through mergers and takeovers. No regulators had any problem as a thriving, competing industry consolidated from something like 20 players down to - what is it today, 3 (Symantec, IBM, CA)? A lot of good products were knifed in the crib.
It's not that these applications were perfect - they weren't. But they were working on solving some of the usability, interoperability, and architectural problems that were endemic in the industry. They were killed, often for political reasons, and their technically deficient brothers replaced them.
Dealer salesman confirmed: These batteries are not failing at 5, 7, 8 years as critics claimed.
They seem to have a failure mode when a user drives the car on an empty tank of gas, and discharges the battery completely. But under normal usage - they go and go. No transmission. Very little brake wear. No timing belt.
Let's start a big BS war in the Middle East, and while we're doing that, we can bomb the crap out of the oil producing infrastructure, and use the most depraved and inhuman tactics against the people we're fighting. This will piss them off enough to spark a massive insurgency effort, which will be bombing pipelines and hijacking trucks for decades.
This will prevent the Middle East from EVER reaching peak oil production. This is a supply-side solution, and will moderate demand on it's own through price spikes. This way, we'll not only extend the oil peak out by 10-20 years, but we'll also increase the profitability of oil extraction.
It would suck to be a consumer though. And also a person living in the Middle East would probably be miserable too.
They need a pretty diverse diet to stay healthy. (including bugs, grass, etc.)
I used to raise chickens, and my biggest problem was that they started eating their own eggs, I couldn't get to them before they did. They were well-fed with grain and supplements.
You only feed chickens corn if you're raising them in a box and preventing them from foraging.
The hardware; is extremely expensive. And the software ain't cheap (if you expect any degree of automation or features).
This extortion racket is precisely why most people don't do backups, and of the few that do do backups, they do not test them. (but you've spent the money - never really understood that).
I have memories of ten years of sob stories; guys who were calling in to tech support because they were about to lose their jobs because they were poor stewards of their employers' data. Sometimes it was our fault (software bugs, poor documentation) - sometimes it was the hardware vendors' fault (bad firmware, defective lots of tape, etc.), sometimes it was the OS vendors' fault (interoperability standards between file systems, network protocols, etc.) - sometimes, it was just bad luck. But more often than not, it was ignorance and laziness, and above all - CHEAPNESS. Some MIS hack didn't want to spring for a quality backup drive, or didn't want to take the time to test-restore data, or didn't want to hire a college intern to inspect error logs regularly for backup problems.
It just KILLS me to see folks suffer because they weren't careful with their data.
But at home? Screw it. I don't backup. I'm cheap. You've got to be able to separate valuable data from stuff you can re-install or re-download.
Well, maybe I'm underestimating the mechanics needed for "storage of compressed engine-braking discharge". We don't have to store ALL the air. I *do* believe that if you're downshifting, and don't have your foot on the gas pedal, that what is coming out of the engine is just compressed air. Is it pure enough to breathe? Probably not. Pure enough for an engine to breathe? As a supplement to the normal air intake? yeah. You'd get a turbo boost (temporarily, while the stored air supply held up), without the "drag" caused by backpressure in the exhaust stream (you'd shut your waste-gate off for the duration of the venting of "stored" energy).
But is it any more efficient to add a completely separate drive-mechanism (electric) and storage (batteries) to gain the benefits of regenerative braking?
Don't get me wrong - I'm all for regenerative braking, and electric car technology. I'm just questioning why a single car needs two separate energy storage and conversion mechanisms to take advantage of it.
(Frankly - I'm pretty sure that the future of cars is pure-electrics; we're just not there yet on batteries. But if you had told me in 1990, that we'd have batteries with the characteristics of Lithium Ion in ten years, I'd say you were smoking something, and after you convinced me you weren't, I'd have said that the electric-car problem was solved. Sad to see that here we are in 2007, we have really great batteries, and a lot of promising new technologies, and we're still not there. Someday - I'm going to drive a car that I'll never have to change the oil, never have to have it smog-tested, never have a muffler rust-out on me, never have to make sure the timing belt isn't worn out on pain of "destroyed engine" - possibly never have to worry about a burnt-out clutch or release bearing. Change batteries every 5-7 years? THAT would be automotive nirvana.)
With a manual transmission, you could do regenerative braking of an internal combustion engine, through the use of engine-braking (downshifting).
Store the compressed exhaust gas (with a properly-controlled injection system, you're talking about nothing but hot-air here) - in a tank. The energy from engine-braking simply cycles air through the cylinders, and vents the compressed product out the exhaust as "waste heat". So store it in a tank, and use it to boost intake pressure during a later acceleration.
This is the same principle as a turbocharger, only you're tapping exhaust pressure to boost intake manifold pressure. In fact, you'd probably just use an existing turbocharger for this - with an additional valve in the intake manifold to divert the pressure from the cylinders to storage during engine braking. For engine braking, you need a storage mechanism for that energy that would otherwise be wasted. A 5-gallon aluminum tank would be sufficient.
If God is outside of (or external to) spacetime - then what happens when we (in spacetime) die? Do our souls also leave spacetime to join God in Heaven (external to spacetime)? Relative to people IN spacetime then, when a person dies - they simply cease to exist. And therefore, an Atheist's description of death would indeed, be accurate.
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In a drought, the poor go thirsty while the rich water their golf courses. In a famine, the poor starve while the rich put biodiesel into their SUVs.
Really?
What happens in a revolution?
...The embargo applies only to American companies, ...
What American companies? Are there any left? Haven't they all either moved, or outsourced most of their labor to China?
I mean - WTF is the point of an embargo anymore?
Castro's an asshole, but there are far worse assholes in the world, with whom we (the US) do plenty of business.
The "embargo" on Cuba is nothing more than pandering to the Cuban-American vote in Florida, and a few powerful and embittered sugar-cane and tobacco magnates, who lost assets to a thieving dictator 50+ years ago.
When CC went from commission to non-commissoned sales they gave their old employees one HELL of a deal.
So, the upper management that made that deal, made a mistake.
And they're now punishing the beneficiaries of the deal. Instead of the upper management that made the mistake.
And - it's not a "deal" if you later pull the rug out from under these guys. They had an incentive to perform well, they did perform well. That linkage was taken away, so it's hardly surprising that maybe in some cases, the performance went away too. Now they're going to offer these guys lower pay, with no commission - that's a "deal" that's guaranteed to give them the same low performance they're getting now (if that's the case).
This is a really, really stupid plan.
It's probably true, that CC salesmen are superfluous - because people will comparison shop on the internet, and if it's something they need right away, they'll probably run out to CC and buy it instead of ordering online. I suspect that's the case in a lot of situations. That just goes to show that this intermediate situation of the "deal" was very, very stupid. And the folks who came up with and approved that idea should have been fired.
But my guess is that they're probably getting bonuses. And it's easy to guess where that money came from.
Please.
Just because Bush SAYS he's Born Again, does not mean squat.
All it means is: Bush's campaign manager is a cunning salesman. And. Religious people are, by nature, gullible.
The "Religious Movement" in this country over the past 10-15 years is a sophisticated marketing campaign by people interested in power and money. Not much more than that.
Locker rooms through Jr. High were absolute fucking hell I wish I could forget.
I'm completely normal (physiologically) - one might say "average".
And I wasn't happy about the locker-room situation either.
In fact, my son doesn't like that either.
The truth is, we have a very sick society. It's harder on some (like you) than others. It's a damn shame that medical "science" hasn't figured out what to do about a significant and naturally-occurring percentage of our human biology, and instead, still clings to the remnants of prehistoric notions trying to explain our world (day/night, male/female, etc.) in simpler terms. It's made particularly worse, as your story confirms, when medical decisions (and very personal ones) are turned over to accountants.
I agree that sexual reassignment surgery is barbaric, and should never be done on an infant;
I think that victims should not be haunted or troubled about the way that they have been reassigned. There's a lot of angst about it - but there's also a lot of evidence that sexuality, including the ability to reach climax, and the quality of the climax, is largely psychological. True - the damage to (or removal of) tissue with large amounts of nerve endings can be crippling. And the longings that one has for partners of a certain gender, and the social trauma that can cause, are not negotiable for most people. But there are also cases where paraplegics, and quadraplegics, can experience satisfying sex-lives, including intimate coupling and climax. I think we're only starting to learn about this now. If a quadraplegic can do it, psychologically, I bet that a gender-reassigned person can probably do a lot as well.
There's also a lot of examples of people who; physically, have no problems with sexual function, but because of how they were raised, they have bad attitudes about sex, and are not able to have a happy sex life either. Psychology is a huge component. More than most people realize.
But I do agree - the knife is a terrible solution.
If I were intersexed, and a victim of this (reassignment surgery); I would try to view it as a horrible accident, you know, like I was in a car wreck due to another negligent driver, and now, parts of me are missing. Try to make the best of what I had left, and move on. Certainly advocate against the practice.
Water has a naturally hexagon shape. The angle between the two oxygens, across the hydrogen vertex, is 120 degrees. Ice crystals form a hexagonal geometry. This is apparent (and obvious) when looking at snowflakes under magnification.
How that could possibly translate to a dish of water, or cloud formations on Saturn, I have no freaking idea.
Can you give me a good reason we should prop up an obsolete business model besides nostalgia or personal preference?
Not everyone is on line.
There will NEVER be a time, where everyone is on line. Internet service has come down quite a bit, but it is a luxury service. Owning a computer is a luxury. There will always be a significant chunk at the bottom end of the economic spectrum who will have either no, or limited internet access. That's just the way it is.
Also, look at the demographics of WHO is on line, and you'll see; the vast, overwhelming majority are white, upper-middle class. We tend to think of the internet, and blogging as the great equalizer, the technological tool of power-to-the-people, and in many ways, it pits the middle and upper middle against the super rich upper upper class, and gives them a leg up. But it's not helping the bottom quintile much, as far as power or influence in politics.
Ironic that the pro-free-market, pro-business, pro-monopoly forces, NEVER bring up corporate bankruptcy as a HUGE form of government subsidy.
Look at the ill effects that came from the Enron fallout. And yet, this company STILL exists, is STILL in business, and while a few scapegoats have been whipped, and while tons of workers were booted out on the streets - Enron is still able to influence the political process (California Governor), and pervert the justice system, and operate its business. In a few years, they'll be permitted to operate in the US again, and it will be business as usual.
The other thing is;
A lot of businesses do not reward the "pure techie" track. Everywhere I've gone, I am pushed, shoved, encouraged, and even intimidated into taking on a more managerial role. Jobs are less (financially) rewarding, and most importantly less secure, when you shun the managerial track.
The best role to get into, IMO, to avoid this, is the "tech leadership" role. You get the power to manage technical direction of projects (ie. avoid stupidity that a non-technical manager might make) - but you don't have to be a "manager". You still have the responsibility for planning, schedule, and budget, and task delegation, but from a technical angle.
Unfortunately, few businesses seem to realize that they need people to fill these roles; they don't seem to be a facet of most org structures I've seen.
It's true that you can complain about Monoculture;
But if you have 100 different computers, and they're all configured differently, what you have is an UNKNOWN configuration - and you can't tell your boss "every known vulnerability has been shut down".
If you shut down all known vulnerabilities on those 100 computers, you don't have 100 secure computers. You have 100 computers, with zero known vulnerabilities, and some unspecified number of unknown vulnerabilities. Those unknowns are there, whether you've controlled the configuration and accomplished a monoculture, or not.
The weaknesses of monoculture become apparent when a new vulnerability is discovered, and the mechanism that enforces the monoculture gets in the way of patching the vulnerability quickly, and repeatably, on all 100 machines. (The "mechanism" being this common configuration spec, and the rules that enforce it - and the government rules dictating when and whether someone can be paid to actually do the work). In theory, if you have a mechanism that allows necessary changes in a timely and consistent manner, and doesn't permit unnecessary changes - that's the best design of all possible designs).
Now - there's a CHANCE, that if you pay the costs of say; having 50 of those boxes Windows, and 50 of those boxes Linux - that any unknown vulnerabilities will only impact half of your network. But what if one of those 50 is a critical component, like, maybe you chose Linux for your web server, and Windows for your desktops, and what if, the unknown vulnerability leads to a loss of your Linux webserver? Guess what? Your entire system STILL goes down.
I'm not advocating picking one platform for the benefit of saving costs (on training, development expertise, supply-chain management). But advocating mixing platforms solely to avoid monoculture is similarly stupid. Of course, you want interoperability, and you want the platform that performs a given function best. That's where you want to base your Linux or Windows decision.
The big problem I see with this "mandated configuration" approach, is the insistence on a common desktop configuration, and its enforcement through Active Directory. This forces an integrator to turn on services and open ports on a desktop that would not ordinarily need to be opened - purely to amuse Microsoft's centralized management scheme. Additional services like Distributed Transaction Coordinator, Remote Registry Service, Server Service (which exposes the IPC$ share - you can't shut this off anymore), Microsoft Installer, Task Scheduler (which has a long and sordid history of unpatched vulnerabilities), Automatic Updates, Background Intelligent Transfer Service, Computer Browser service, DCOM Server Process Launcher, Error Reporting Service - etc. the list goes on and on. You can shut off most of this crap on a Workgroup machine. A Domain member needs to have a lot of these turned on - and that exposes a lot more surface area to attack. The expertise to determine which services support which functionality; what you can turn off and still get done - is not cheap or easy. Most of these services, you can't google on and get a meaningful answer, nor is Microsoft's documentation always clear.
What would BE nice, is more choice; on the Windows Side, of LDAP solutions that can provide the kinds of services and features that Windows Administrators have come to expect from Active Directory. And ways to take advantage of those services and features without opening you entire network to more risk. IMO - this battle was lost when Novell's NDS was essentially crushed by Microsoft in 1999-2002. And this facet was completely ignored by the MS v DoJ trial.
Young and black, and "clean, and articulate" - etc. are what's being used as an argument on the nation's talk shows. Like it or not (I sure as hell don't), they're a pretty influential source of opinion in America.
It's not his inexperience that worries me - directly. It's that I'm afraid that makes him MORE vulnerable to special interests. He's got a lot of high-powered consultants holding his hands and guiding him through this process. THAT'S who I'm afraid of. The bait-and-switch here is on; they're framing this candidate as the "escape from politics as usual" candidate. Same exact thing they did for Schwartzenegger in CA. How did that work out? (actually, not bad - but his first two years were a fucking disaster). - Schwartzenegger is finally standing up for what he really believes in. But in the first couple of years, he had to "pay off his barons" - the people who put him in office. The worst offense, of course, was dropping the Enron lawsuit, and putting the bill on a Credit Card. The worst sort of "borrow-n-spend" Republican policy. Now, the taxpayers (and electricity rate-payers, and frankly, anyone who borrows money at the elevated interest rates) have to pay for the price-fixing and market manipulation, with no legal recourse.
Look very carefully at who Obama's getting his money from. And wonder why his position on issues is not well known. The word on Gun Control is being very carefully hidden. Only those who are paying attention know. His opinion on the war is the only thing that's well known.
- Obama went to a madrasa in Indonesia in his youth. He hid this fact before it was brought to light.
Obama did not hide this fact - because it was never a fact. He went to a private school; one that was NOT a madrasa in any sense of the word.
- Though he claimed to be a Christian now, how come no muslim want his head like they did with the Afghan guy who converted out of Islam?
Because he was never a muslim?
- He claimed to be an Israeli supporter but he said Palestinians are the most oppressed people on Earth (Darfur anyone?)
Support of Israel means turning a blind eye to human rights violations?
One can support Israel, and still care about innocent Palestinians caught in the middle in this conflict.
One can also support Palestinians without supporting the terrorist tactics of a radical minority.
Darfur is a tragedy. But the US is not supplying the Sudanese government with $3 Billion in military aid each year. Now tell me who is more oppressed.
Except, rather than a $150 fine, you can get a $150,000 fine. Ouch.
Well, the Romans had a better idea for keeping an orderly society, and bolstering law enforcement. Stiffer penalties. Like slavery. Crucifixion. Forced entertainment (being the star of the weekly "Feed the Lions" show at the coliseum). $150,000 isn't enough to deter these violators. We need some real penalties. After all, the stiff penalties the Romans used worked out so well for them.
There is a lot of frustration among Democratic voters right now, about the crappy selection of presidential candidates. We felt like we got railroaded with Dukkakis in '88, and while Clinton was a pleasant surprise in '92, there was a lot of consternation about Lieberman in 2000 (and it should be clear by now, that Lieberman did more harm to Gore's campaign than Nader could ever dream to) - and Kerry in '04.
Democratic voters feel their principles have been betrayed. That their party is beholden to monied special interests (especially the mafIAA). Is it any wonder that a stooge like Bush can win?
I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with Obama as a candidate (his views on Gun Control are pretty wacky - the NRA will slaughter him, even with the weak field of Republican candidates). I'd rather see the Democratic Party take someone like Bill Richardson a lot more seriously. He has a lot more experience, and his views are a lot closer to the mainstream of America. Plus, he *is* a minority; but he doesn't use that status as a political tool, like Clinton and Obama do.
This Obama staffer made a bad move. It was a clear, ethical, conflict of interest, and possibly a violation of campaign finance law. But he made a damn important point. Is anyone at the DNC (and especially, the DLC) listening?
Yeah - for a while, it seemed as if DLT would fix a lot of the reliability (and capacity) issues we were seeing with helical-scan-type drives, like DAT and 8mm. The tape, itself seemed bullet-proof back in 1997. But after a couple years of success, when the format started to get really-well established, the drive manufacturers started releasing really - lower quality, cheaply-made drives, that; while they cost the same, they were just as crappy as the cheap-ass 4mm/8mm drives that were out there.
The software's another story.
I watched as three different tape backup programs were axed; (Palindrome Network Archivist, NetBackup, and the ill-named "Client Exec"), through mergers and takeovers. No regulators had any problem as a thriving, competing industry consolidated from something like 20 players down to - what is it today, 3 (Symantec, IBM, CA)? A lot of good products were knifed in the crib.
It's not that these applications were perfect - they weren't. But they were working on solving some of the usability, interoperability, and architectural problems that were endemic in the industry. They were killed, often for political reasons, and their technically deficient brothers replaced them.
Test-drove a Prius today.
Dealer salesman confirmed: These batteries are not failing at 5, 7, 8 years as critics claimed.
They seem to have a failure mode when a user drives the car on an empty tank of gas, and discharges the battery completely. But under normal usage - they go and go. No transmission. Very little brake wear. No timing belt.
I've got a great plan!
Let's start a big BS war in the Middle East, and while we're doing that, we can bomb the crap out of the oil producing infrastructure, and use the most depraved and inhuman tactics against the people we're fighting. This will piss them off enough to spark a massive insurgency effort, which will be bombing pipelines and hijacking trucks for decades.
This will prevent the Middle East from EVER reaching peak oil production. This is a supply-side solution, and will moderate demand on it's own through price spikes. This way, we'll not only extend the oil peak out by 10-20 years, but we'll also increase the profitability of oil extraction.
It would suck to be a consumer though. And also a person living in the Middle East would probably be miserable too.
Oh well. Better them than me.
Chickens will eat fucking anything.
Including other chickens.
They need a pretty diverse diet to stay healthy. (including bugs, grass, etc.)
I used to raise chickens, and my biggest problem was that they started eating their own eggs, I couldn't get to them before they did. They were well-fed with grain and supplements.
You only feed chickens corn if you're raising them in a box and preventing them from foraging.
I used to work for a backup software company.
The hardware; is extremely expensive. And the software ain't cheap (if you expect any degree of automation or features).
This extortion racket is precisely why most people don't do backups, and of the few that do do backups, they do not test them. (but you've spent the money - never really understood that).
I have memories of ten years of sob stories; guys who were calling in to tech support because they were about to lose their jobs because they were poor stewards of their employers' data. Sometimes it was our fault (software bugs, poor documentation) - sometimes it was the hardware vendors' fault (bad firmware, defective lots of tape, etc.), sometimes it was the OS vendors' fault (interoperability standards between file systems, network protocols, etc.) - sometimes, it was just bad luck. But more often than not, it was ignorance and laziness, and above all - CHEAPNESS. Some MIS hack didn't want to spring for a quality backup drive, or didn't want to take the time to test-restore data, or didn't want to hire a college intern to inspect error logs regularly for backup problems.
It just KILLS me to see folks suffer because they weren't careful with their data.
But at home? Screw it. I don't backup. I'm cheap.
You've got to be able to separate valuable data from stuff you can re-install or re-download.
Well, maybe I'm underestimating the mechanics needed for "storage of compressed engine-braking discharge". We don't have to store ALL the air. I *do* believe that if you're downshifting, and don't have your foot on the gas pedal, that what is coming out of the engine is just compressed air. Is it pure enough to breathe? Probably not. Pure enough for an engine to breathe? As a supplement to the normal air intake? yeah. You'd get a turbo boost (temporarily, while the stored air supply held up), without the "drag" caused by backpressure in the exhaust stream (you'd shut your waste-gate off for the duration of the venting of "stored" energy).
But is it any more efficient to add a completely separate drive-mechanism (electric) and storage (batteries) to gain the benefits of regenerative braking?
Don't get me wrong - I'm all for regenerative braking, and electric car technology. I'm just questioning why a single car needs two separate energy storage and conversion mechanisms to take advantage of it.
(Frankly - I'm pretty sure that the future of cars is pure-electrics; we're just not there yet on batteries. But if you had told me in 1990, that we'd have batteries with the characteristics of Lithium Ion in ten years, I'd say you were smoking something, and after you convinced me you weren't, I'd have said that the electric-car problem was solved. Sad to see that here we are in 2007, we have really great batteries, and a lot of promising new technologies, and we're still not there. Someday - I'm going to drive a car that I'll never have to change the oil, never have to have it smog-tested, never have a muffler rust-out on me, never have to make sure the timing belt isn't worn out on pain of "destroyed engine" - possibly never have to worry about a burnt-out clutch or release bearing. Change batteries every 5-7 years? THAT would be automotive nirvana.)
With a manual transmission, you could do regenerative braking of an internal combustion engine, through the use of engine-braking (downshifting).
Store the compressed exhaust gas (with a properly-controlled injection system, you're talking about nothing but hot-air here) - in a tank. The energy from engine-braking simply cycles air through the cylinders, and vents the compressed product out the exhaust as "waste heat". So store it in a tank, and use it to boost intake pressure during a later acceleration.
This is the same principle as a turbocharger, only you're tapping exhaust pressure to boost intake manifold pressure. In fact, you'd probably just use an existing turbocharger for this - with an additional valve in the intake manifold to divert the pressure from the cylinders to storage during engine braking. For engine braking, you need a storage mechanism for that energy that would otherwise be wasted. A 5-gallon aluminum tank would be sufficient.
So you bring your digital camera. Now where do you offload your pictures when the memory card starts filling up?
Buy new memory cards, mail the old ones home. Or offload them to a CD ROM at WalMart (euro equivalent).
I would even strongly urge you to not buy an expensive camera - because it will be stolen. Count on it. You'll be lucky to keep your watch.
All good advice.
But I don't think this guy is wilderness-backpacking.
He's getting a Eurail Pass, and bopping from Youth Hostel-to-Youth Hostel.
He'll have access to grocery stores, public restrooms, and drinking fountains. I don't think he'd even need a tent.
My advice to him:
My sister did this when she got out of college. (1980's). She had 3 cameras stolen. I'd worry about bringing a laptop. Seriously.
Well, then the real question is;
If God is outside of (or external to) spacetime - then what happens when we (in spacetime) die? Do our souls also leave spacetime to join God in Heaven (external to spacetime)? Relative to people IN spacetime then, when a person dies - they simply cease to exist. And therefore, an Atheist's description of death would indeed, be accurate.