How about just show the name of the country as the inhabitants want it shown and if China just can't live with that they can just program their fscking firewall to rewrite the pages on the fly if they just can't sleep at night any other way. Calling it China is perverted, about as wrong as listing the US as a British territory on a 19th century map of North America. Of course back then mapmakers just reflected the reality on the ground, they didn't try to shape it.
Frankly I think it is about time to hit China with the word "Evil" and see if we can end them like Reagan ended the Soviet Union with it. Sometimes speaking Truth to Power works wonders.
> The inclusion of Taiwan with an aggressive power such as China is not exactly good.
Yup, Google has violated their policy here, but they can join the long list of moral weasels on this issue. Fact: Taiwan is a soverign nation entitled to all the privledges and respect that status brings. Fact: For craven reasons mostly related to fear of upsetting trade relations with China almost no nation fully recognizes that fact. Fact: While being part craven in not extending full recognition to Taiwan and not applying the political pressure to get them seated at the UN, the continued existance of Taiwan as an independent nation state is entirely due to US policy.
> I actually agree with that. Which makes me all the more resentful of > your assertion that all global-warming-is-real arguments are based > on a "Gaian" religious dogma. That certainly doesn't describe me.
Ok, name one argument that isn't an appeal to faith or authority? The available evidence to date is mixed at best. Which is why the more serious of the greens fall back to "we can't afford to wait to be sure." which is daft to anyone who ponders for even ten seconds.
Lets take this back on topic. This hurricane season MIGHT (hasn't actually done it yet mind you) equal a record set in 1933 and this is presented as evidence of Global Warming. In what diseased imagination does this sort of (lack of) reasoning pass as science instead of comedy? If Global Warming was already underway in 1933 then we certainly lack enough accurate climate records to have any sort of baseline to even discuss the issue in the realm of science, facts and reason. If the theory is is that we are just starting to raise global temps why is potentially matching a record from so far back seen as evidence for it? If we start having hurricane seasons worse than any on record, that MIGHT be evidence, but matching historical high points?
> There's a certain pots-and-kettles irony to your rationalization, > since so much conservative and anti-environmental opinion is shaped > by the Christian Right, with their "fill the earth and subdue it" > agenda.
Except I'm an Agnostic Libertarian who gets to laugh at both the zanier antics of the Fundies and the suicidal tendencies of the religious left. That said, I much prefer the Fundies as neighbors, which is why I have no desire to live in a blue state.
And hell yea, "Earth First! We can pave the other planets later!" But seriously, a healthy selfish interest says some environmental regulation makes sense, but for most environmentalists it is beyond what is good for humans in the long run, it is a religious calling. And for a good percentage of them, humans are seen AS the problem.
Which is why serious debate on environmental issues is usually impossible. Each side has totally different base assumptions. Sane people see the problem as how best to manage the environment to our long term benefit. The ELF, Earth First!, ecofreak set sees the problem as how to solve the problem of humans despoiling Gaia. Seriously, if you offered the average activist a vial and explained it contained a genetic engineered plague that was tested and proven to be 100.000% fatal to homo sapiens and harmless to all other life on the planet at least half would start looking for the best spot to release it.
> Or is someone just trying to stir up a liberal/conservative debate?
Several forces at work here. One is religion. Global Warming is basically part of the religious beliefs of the New Age, Gaia worshiping 'progressive' crowd in charge of Slashdot editorial decisionmaking. To them, Katrina is Gaia's way of lashing out at the wickedness of Bush's Amerika. When they don't believe Bush himself conjured the storm as part of his pact with Lucifier to bring ruin and destruction to black people. Or in short, they are barking moonbats.
Another is the craving for pageviews. Pageviews equals cash. Cash keeps the lights on at slashdot. Slashdot making money is good. Evil corporations doing the same is bad. It is all WHO does it, not what they do.
IF they can get the action to work flawlessly in real living rooms. IF they can get game authors to actually exploit the advantages of a totally different controller action. IF it is reliable. If all those things are true they will redefine the console and crush their enemies.
Otherwise they are pooched. But leave it to Nintendo to pull a rabbit out of their hats instead of release a console to be doomed to #3 behind Sony & Microsoft. This way they don't just sit contentedly in last place and fade away, they either go splat or put someone else out, I'd bet Microsoft.
> Yes, this should be common software engineering methodology, but I'm > sure we all know of times when there's a deadline, the boss is angsty > and you've got to get something working to keep your job, and a decent > design document isn't what he wants to see.
And as long as customers are willing to pay for crappy code produced under those conditions we will continue to be up to our arses in it.
We need to be demanding the same quality from Software Engineering as we do from the other branches of Engineering. And the only way to get there is through liability. When a bridge falls down there is a price to pay for it, when IE takes out half the desktops on planet earth there currently isn't a price. Change that and watch quality go up. And of course the rate of release drop down. But then I'd much prefer a browser that is boring but safe instead of exciting and buggy as a roach motel.
> Exactly, and now that means that the compyters set up by these guys as > a gesture of goodwill won't help people get the relief they need.
Perhaps, perhaps not. They should try Wine. Crossover Office runs IE6 well enough for our patrons to fill out their FEMA form. Haven't tried the Free version of Wine because we have Crossover already, someone should try it though.
We sprung for Crossover because this sort of platform bigotry is all too common, so much so that we couldn't have rolled out Linux in our labs without an answer to the problem of Microsoft Only sites. Previously we used VMWare but find Crossover a more transparent solution.
> No, it probably means that they didn't take the time to test in other > browsers... It's still annoying, but very unlikely that it was > malicious.
Wrong. It specifically detects your browser and redirects you to a page telling you to go download MSIE 6, assuming that Windows PCs are the only thing on the Internet. I'd call that both intentional and fully aware of the implications of their poor coding skills.
>..if I'm ever in a disaster the size and scope of which requires me to > contact FEMA, my first thought is not going to be "Oh gee I better check > their website".
Tell that to the folks filling our public labs the last week. All I have to say is "Thank God for Crossover Office" or I'd be up to my behind in demands to load up Windows XP on our machines. Which would be exactly what Microsoft intended with this stunt. Call me paranoid, but I don't think this was an accident for a millisecond. These are the guys who throw chairs and scream "I'm goinna &$#*ing kill Google." This is exactly how they 'compete.'
Just Cringley being an Apple fanboy again
on
Has Google Peaked?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
He started out ok, made a few interesting at least observations about Google behaviour of late. But then with a lot of handwaving and not a lot of reasoning dismisses them as has beens so he can go on yet another tired rant about how Apple is going to rise from insignificance and crush it's enemies.
Didn't we all get tired of hearing this same song from the Amigans, how any day now _insert company who owns em today_ is going to come back with something wonderful and all the infidels on PCs and Macs will be wailing and gnashing their teeth?
Apple is a bit player now, will remain a bit player after Intel. In fact, after they perform this one last act for Mr. Gates (get TCPA into mainstream use, something Gates was rightly pilloried for trying under the Palladium name) I'd expect the coup de grace to finally be administered.
But leave off the last part of that collumn and it does raise an interesting question. Where does Google want to be in ten years?
> If a part advertised to run at 800MHz actually appears to run at 802MHz > we're talking about an error of only.25%. And that, sir, is a fine > margin for a consumer product, being damn near spot-on.
Not very up on electrical principles eh? Acceptable tolerances vary greatly depending on which aspect of a component is being discussed. The frequency of a PLL is very different from a resistor's tolerance. If a PLL isn't pretty much spot on it is useless. Whether it is really off based on the measurement methods employed is debatable, whether a clock specced as 800 running at 802 is acceptable isn't.
Try buying a wireless card using your "+-.25% is OK" and see if you EVER connect to an access point. It would never find the APs beacon because it would be looking in the WRONG PLACE..25% off would be the width of a whole US television channel at 2.4Ghz.
> there's no such thing as a stable consumer-grade clock.
Depends how accurate it needs to be, a wristwatch out of a child's Happy Meal is more than good enough to spot a.25% error, When talking about timekeeping.25% is a horrible error, that is off by up to nine seconds per hour, and going on two hours (1:48) per month.
Measuring timing errors on this scale is child's play, let the CPU's high resolution cycle counter run a few minutes and compare to the RTC, The builtin clock would be accurate enough for this measurement, but using an NTP disciplined clock would just hammer the point home a little forcefully or allow you to get reliable results in seconds instead of minutes.
HIde and watch. Otherwise it makes zero sense. Been here done this stuff. Remember, I make my living doing this and I do it right smack in the Buckle of the Bible Belt. There ain't no chance I'd get sacked for a patron managing to sneak past the porn filters and the idea they would go a step higher and sack my boss is laughable. Therefore there IS more to this story.
> Assuming that "leftist" here means "anti-censorship", a typical > right-wing misinterpretation of anyone who won't ban the books the > extremists want banned.
No, I mean leftist in the sense of socialist moveon.org ACORN types. I mean leftist in the sense that the Texas Library Association had Ralph Nader keynoting with a totally over the top and overtly political campaign speech to raucus standing ovations. In TEXAS in 2004. In case it still eludes you, I'm talking about FSCKING TEXAS! I was there, I saw it. If there is a definition of 'out of the mainstream' that doesn't include a room with about 75% Naderites in TEXAS then please enlighten me what that phrase means on your planet.
When I'm at library functions I'm always aware that I'm a pilgrim in a very unholy land. Of moonbats.
> But it at least it provides a forum for the Chicken Littles to scream > about the death of Free Speech, Big Brother, yadda yadda yadda,
Exactly. Like the story slashdot linked to a week or so ago on unions that once you learned the truth you could only laugh. This is just one side of the story and from another historically biased source. There is almost certainly more to this story than is being told in this article. Odds are the authorities suspect actual involvement in the crime, otherwise it just doesn't make any sense.
The ALA has always had leftist leanings, recent events have pushed them all the way into moonbat status. Which is why, although I work IT for a public library I have never considered joining ALA. But I did attend one of their conventions back in 2000 (Guest speaker on Open Source stuff) and got a first hand look. The ALA Library Store booth was proof enough. The yhad exactly three types of material, generally available useful stuff for librarians, internally produced books and leftwing propaganda. Al Franken's current (think it was the one ripping Rush) book had place of honor.
>: No, it's more like trying to put Audi parts in your VW.
Yes. But some people like OSX and if they want to put a VW's OS on their Audi that is their business.
You see, you have it exactly backwards. Apple is the VW of computers, they make a very limited lineup of mid to low end machines and sell them at a premium over what anyone else could get because of nostalgia over past glories.
Look in a Mac sometime, it's all crap that was obsolete everywhere else one to two years ago. They were still peddling PC100 memory when everyone else had moved on to DDR. Until very recently (they are getting more competitive lately) you could depend on Apple introducing new products with specs about equal to what was on the display model bargain table everywhere else. And don't even START the bullshit about the marvels of the G[45] processor being so much better than a Pentium that it made up the performace gap. You have your new marching orders from the Maximum Leader now, PPC bad; Pentium Good. As usual, a generation behind. Those in the know, know Pentium old and slow, Athlon Good.
No, the post I went off on wasn't even good trolling. Sorry, but it just came across as dumb. Your original post launching the thread was a good troll. If you don't think an AC's post is worth using as a launch pad for another GOOD troll or flamebait, just don't reply at all and save bandwidth.
Hell, I am no stranger to trolling myself. Somebody has to stir the pot around here, the slashdrone groupthink needs to be challenged after all or they will never learn to think. And anyway, us oldtimers hit the karma cap long ago and no longer worry about it. The metric I use to judge my posting success these days is post to reply ratio. I can usually keep it it better than 1-1 (your recent posts are 26 to 24 or about 1-1) and manage to hit 3-1 on the previous 24 posts for brief periods where I am on a roll.
> How about you take some time to try to prove a point instead of calling names?
Pot, meet kettle. At least you had the courage to post with a real id. One even lower than mine no less. Guess a few mental defectives managed to find this place before the hordes hit.
Try rebutting someone's ideas in a rational way next time instead of just labeling them a 'neocon freak' and expecting that to automatically end the conversation, as if everyone is supposed to think, "Oh someone called them a neocon, must be true and we ALL know neocon is the new code for 'zionist conspiracy' so nothing they said can be listened to. Even if it sounds reasonable it is just a trick by those sneaky Jews. and if a user with such a low ID called them a FREAK as well, well that settles it."
So lets see if I understand how things work in your warped world. I just hinted you are an anti-semetic racist, but of course I have to do better than hint, that would require thought to figure out. No, I hereby assert that you are a double plus ungood filthy Anti-Semetic Racist NeoNazi. And that just because someone on Slashdot has said it about you everyone else reading should just accept it (even though I have offered a hell of a lot more support for my theory than you just did) as fact and disregard everthing you write, heck, they should all mark you as a Foe, otherwise they are filthy racists as well for associating with the likes of you.
Of course the silliness above constituites a large portion of conversation on forums such as slashdot.
> Exposing kids to everything allows them to become well-rounded > adults who are aware of everything.
You didn't have to say you weren't actually a parent, that boneheaded remark was enough to tell everyone that you not only aren't one, you have zero experience with them and that you probably had a screwed up childhood yourself, so you have no reference points. Hell, you have probably never even had to teach an adult anything if you can make that statement.
Yes, children need to be exposed to all sorts of things if they are to become responsible citizens when they grow up. But at the appropriate time. Children AREN'T just small adults. The higher reasoning skills take time to develop. Some concepts need to be taught after others are fully understood.
Example. C wouln't exactly be the first choice to teach someone to program who had never done any codeing at all, but a teacher doing so would be merely odd who did so. (Might be trying a radical new technique.) But if that teacher then extected said student to figure out the hairier bits of pointers in the first week they would be zarking mad.
Same with kids. Advanced concepts in love/romance/sexuality/relationships can't be properly understood without a good foundation in both teaching and experience dealing with simpler relationships among family and friends. Not to mention that their hardware isn't properly configured (both the obvious physical changes to the external hardware and the ones you obviously have no concept of in the ol wetware) until fairly close to the modern legal adult line. Most of the readers here on slashdot, hell the whole world, are adults still trying to figure this stuff out, expecting a five year old to understand is just idiocy.
> Anything short of that, and it should be treated as a rental of the > content, not a sale of a copy. The packaging should be clearly and > visibly labeled "NOT FOR SALE - LIMITED USE ONLY" on the front and > spine of the case, and the disk should be priced accordingly.
Be careful what you as for, according to the software industry it already is the norm and the **AA on even numbered days says that CDs and DVDs aren't sold, only licensed. They just don't have the stones to spell it out on the packaging so those of us with a clue aren't bound by the EULA since the transaction is still legally a sale.
But do you think the average person (hell, 90% of the slashdot crowd would still line up if Revenge of the Sith had your warning label) would care in the least if everything in WalMart's music & video dept started sporting your disclaimer?
We know that the videophile early adopter crowd will reject dvd players that treat them like criminals, but will HD-DVD/BD-ROM's fate be decided them the tech heads this time or will they learn and roll it out to the masses and let them decide?
> yeah. like on 9-11 when we were attacked by the superior forces of the > combined armies and navies of the Russian Empire - or was it China?
Did I say that it was the only threat? No. And I saw the threat from Al Queda years ago, back when all your political philosophy could screw up the courage to do was lob a few expensive cruise missles at camels and declare terrorism a 'police' responsibility. Had we correctly seen Radical Islam as an ememy at least by the time of the 1st attempt on the World Trade Center and entered the war then, liberated Afganistan from the Taliban then, odds are they wouldn't have still been a problem, at least not one organized enough to accomplish something as complicated as 9-11.
The time to start research and development on space based offensive and defensive systems isn't AFTER we get Pearl Harbored by China suddenly knocking out most of our space based assets and invading Taiwan.
Your kind just doesn't get it. The reason WW III never became a 'hot' war wasn't because the Soviets were the 'peaceloving people' their proxies over here kept telling us they were. They were an expansionistic empire bent on world conquest, as any number of their former officials will now tell you. The reason they never actually attacked was because they never thought their odds of winning with what they considered acceptable losses were good enough. Because we built metric buttloads of highly advanced weapon systems that were never used. They would only have been used had we NOT built enough of them. Did we sometimes build too many? Perhaps, in hindsight. But Wars aren't fought with the benefit of hindsight.
You see there is a truism about War. They begin when one or both sides misestimates their relative military strength. When both sides have a true picture of things, the weaker side will make concessions to the demands of the stronger and there is no War. This continues until the power inbalance corrects itself. If the weaker force is mistaken about it's inferior strength then there is War and the strong still imposes his will. If the Aggressor isn't really the stronger side but believes it is, again there is War, the truth comes out and the roles reverse.
I know, I sound like a Warmongering militarist. No, this is reality calling, will you accept the charges? The charge is to realize that if you would have Peace, know War. Peace comes when all sides are either roughly equally powerful OR one side has both Strength and the Wisdom to prefer Peace. The second is a very rare condition and not to be depended upon. It mostly holds with the US until we are attacked.
Long term though, it would be a good thing if Europe and Asia get some military strength of their own into play. (China has defensive military power but no serious ability to project power.) Power corrupts and Absolute Power..... How long the US can retain virtually absolute power and not succumb to the temptations of Empire remain to be seen. As an American fighting to restore the old Republic of our Forefathers, Pax Americana would be a big step backwards.
They do this all the time you know. The tout a super shiny new product that will be out Real Soon Now, get all of the trade press hyped up to the point that they start doing product reviews of the vaporware against the shipping versions of the competition's stuff, to convince everyone that is pointless to buy OS/2, Netware, etc. because any day now Microsoft will be releaseing SuperShinyVaporware 1.0 which will totally 0wn the market.
Then at some point comes the Switch, when it is revealed that what they can actually ship is just another minor incremental improvement. There were features promised for the product that eventually became NT4 that still haven't shipped yet, I think the database filesystem was one of them. But the mainstream tech media fall for it every time and the slashdot crowd about half the time.
And of course you will know when Vista is about to actually ship (my money is on them targeting Xmas06 and actually hitting Mid 07.) because about six months ahead the usual suspects will start being honest about Windows XP, calling it utter rubbish, but you just wait! All those security problems they will be freely admitting (and we have either lived through personally or spent far too much time cleaning up the wreckage from for years) be fixed if you buy a new PC with Vista. (or buy an assload of hardware and upgrade you can have a reduced quality experience)
This smells exactly like the same idiotiarians who spent most of the 90's calling for a freeze by the warmongering US building more nukes on the grounds that if we stopped that the Soviets, being a peaceloving people, would stop their hellbent buildup.
Wrong. And thankfully we have RWR in charge over here to ignore em. Got news for ya. Doesn't matter whether we are stupid enough to cripple ourselves or not. For China to take Taiwan back means dealing with our naval superiority. And much of that these days depends on space based assets. If the situation in India and Pakistan deteriorates into war, they have space based assets (especially India) that will be attractive military targets. etc. etc.
Once we began putting valuable military targets into space, it was only a matter of time until someone got the idea to (while reading the initial intelligence reports on the payload most likely) destroying them and figured out the details of how to go about it.
All the calls for a unilateral US 'freeze' and all of the old Soviet Era sanctimonious crap from the UN won't change this reality.
Really. Ok, I give you a lot of the criticism of W on that idiotic Medicare drug boondoggle. I think he believes he needed to lead with that to build the credibility to do Social Security reform. Which of course earned him zero cred with his opponents and distrust from potential allies. Happens every time you try to 'compromise' with socialists. They take the 'peace offering' and then condemn you for it.
But the spending in genreral and running up the deficit part I will argue a bit on. Yes he probably should have went to bat and vetoed a few of the worse spending bills. But I think we are both realistic to understand his logic on this one. Any serious attempt to reign in spending would have ended up with enough port addicted R's jumping the aisle and voting with the enemy to 'roll back the tax cuts for the rich.' to get the money for their pet programs. And that would have meant no recovery and no shrinking deficits now. Sometimes you do have to choose the lesser evil. So yes, were I President I would have make a different choice but I'm not and he is so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt on it. After all he did have a War to worry about.
As for the initial Social Security reform being highly unoptimized, it is just like code. Get a prototype up then refine it. The big fight is about the IDEA not the implementation. Win that fight and the Democrats lose their signature welfare program, which is why they fight with such fury. Not with the first version but once the idea that it is OUR money and not Ted Kennedy's piggy bank gets established the end point is obvious, total control in the hands of the individual leading to the State seeing zero dollars in a generation or so.
> The real classical liberals would not have attacked a foreign nation > unprovoked (Iraq),
I call bullshit here and request you go read some history. Gunboat diplomancy was a staple of the great classically liberal powers, including the US of A. The classical 17th - 19th century liberals were NOT Randite libertarians; They believed unreservedly in nation states and War as the ultimate diplomacy.
And The Gulf War was still in a state of truce, no final peace had been signed. Blither all you want about "Iraq had no WMD, Bush Lied, Kids Died." Fuck all that, Saddam was NOT living up to the truce agreement and besides, he needed killin. But more importantly, smashing Afganistan would not have drained the fever swamps over there that breed Islamic radicals, a free Iraq living at peace with itself and it's neighbors under a Republican for of Government will. And if it doesn't, we repeat the lesson in Iran, Syria, Saudia Arabia, etc. until they DO get the point. Which is that invading our country and killing our people by the thousands is suicidal. Let them Hate us if they want, so long as their Fear of us is greater.
And finally you assault on the Right not respecting the 1st Amendment. Thankfully at least you aren;t one of those crying wolf over PATRIOT. (Yes some bits of PATRIOT stink. But we always give counterintel forces a little extra leeway in wartime so I'll keep my powder dry and see what happens when the Middle East is pacified.)
As for Bush not allowing the rent-a-mobs to eliminate HIS right to speak I can do no better than refer you to the Great Man himself who said "I paid for this microphone." If the unshaved and unbathed want to hold a protest they have the right to do it somewhere else. Fear not, the press will still give them equal or greater coverage.
As for objecting to tits on clear to air tv, you can make a Libertarian argument for it but you sure as hell can't find a classical liberal one for it unless you could find even ONE of the Founding Fathers who thought that way. Find ONE who could be argued to be in support of hard core sex as public discourse.
Meanwhile, while nothing Bush has said or advocated infinges my 1st Amendment right to political disent, he DID sign McCain/Feingo
> What do you mean, Goodbye Earthlink and Speakeasy? We live in a free > market. They can still lease the lines or put in their own copper.
No they can't. This ruling says the telcos no longer have to lease their copper and of course it is illegal to run your own. The incumbent telcos have a government granted MONOPOLY on running copper and now they have one on putting DSL down it. The only exception is cable companies have similar FRANCHISE agreements with local cities allowing them to run coax, which can now carry IP traffic allowing them to compete.
Yes folks, "competition" for IP traffic in the US now consists of two government granted monopolies (in areas where both a telco and a cable co exist, otherwise you get one) competing against each other. With the possibility of a third government regulated wireless carrier in the future.
So forget this talk ablout keeping the government from regulating the Internet. In 270 days it is.
Someone else already dealth with telco deregulation in a reply. Allow me to remind you how fscking expensive air travel was pre deregulation. It was a gold plated toy for the rich.
The S&L fiasco was a classic case of oversight being removed while retaining the federal government insuring all of the loans. It was an invitation to steal. If you are going to deregulate something you can't do it halfway. We saw this again with the California power 'deregulation' disaster.
Deregulation of utilities is problematic because on the one hand we talk about 'deregulation' but on the other the companies insist on retaining their government granted monopoly. Deregulation of a utility MUST include a mechanism to permit competition. This DSL deal doesn't and is thus a bad idea.
I'd like to see the baby bells broken up one more time. One company gets a monopoly on the lines but is forbidden from providing ANY other service with or without those lines. Pure utility play, nice stable dividends from a government monopoly. The other side, along with anyone else who wishes to enter the game, can lease resources from the line holder corporation and offer up any services they please. End customers would never see the line company, this means they only risk not being paid if the service providers fail to pay and escrow/insurance fixes that. They have zero risk, meaning only charging a very small premium above documented cost to maintain the wires.
To retain the monopoly they could be mandated to upgrade (and permitted to pass along the documented charges for same) to new technologies without worrying about exactly what use would actually be made of them.
Slashdot Mirror
How about just show the name of the country as the inhabitants want it shown and if China just can't live with that they can just program their fscking firewall to rewrite the pages on the fly if they just can't sleep at night any other way. Calling it China is perverted, about as wrong as listing the US as a British territory on a 19th century map of North America. Of course back then mapmakers just reflected the reality on the ground, they didn't try to shape it.
Frankly I think it is about time to hit China with the word "Evil" and see if we can end them like Reagan ended the Soviet Union with it. Sometimes speaking Truth to Power works wonders.
> The inclusion of Taiwan with an aggressive power such as China is not exactly good.
Yup, Google has violated their policy here, but they can join the long list of moral weasels on this issue. Fact: Taiwan is a soverign nation entitled to all the privledges and respect that status brings. Fact: For craven reasons mostly related to fear of upsetting trade relations with China almost no nation fully recognizes that fact. Fact: While being part craven in not extending full recognition to Taiwan and not applying the political pressure to get them seated at the UN, the continued existance of Taiwan as an independent nation state is entirely due to US policy.
> I actually agree with that. Which makes me all the more resentful of
> your assertion that all global-warming-is-real arguments are based
> on a "Gaian" religious dogma. That certainly doesn't describe me.
Ok, name one argument that isn't an appeal to faith or authority? The available evidence to date is mixed at best. Which is why the more serious of the greens fall back to "we can't afford to wait to be sure." which is daft to anyone who ponders for even ten seconds.
Lets take this back on topic. This hurricane season MIGHT (hasn't actually done it yet mind you) equal a record set in 1933 and this is presented as evidence of Global Warming. In what diseased imagination does this sort of (lack of) reasoning pass as science instead of comedy? If Global Warming was already underway in 1933 then we certainly lack enough accurate climate records to have any sort of baseline to even discuss the issue in the realm of science, facts and reason. If the theory is is that we are just starting to raise global temps why is potentially matching a record from so far back seen as evidence for it? If we start having hurricane seasons worse than any on record, that MIGHT be evidence, but matching historical high points?
> There's a certain pots-and-kettles irony to your rationalization,
> since so much conservative and anti-environmental opinion is shaped
> by the Christian Right, with their "fill the earth and subdue it"
> agenda.
Except I'm an Agnostic Libertarian who gets to laugh at both the zanier antics of the Fundies and the suicidal tendencies of the religious left. That said, I much prefer the Fundies as neighbors, which is why I have no desire to live in a blue state.
And hell yea, "Earth First! We can pave the other planets later!" But seriously, a healthy selfish interest says some environmental regulation makes sense, but for most environmentalists it is beyond what is good for humans in the long run, it is a religious calling. And for a good percentage of them, humans are seen AS the problem.
Which is why serious debate on environmental issues is usually impossible. Each side has totally different base assumptions. Sane people see the problem as how best to manage the environment to our long term benefit. The ELF, Earth First!, ecofreak set sees the problem as how to solve the problem of humans despoiling Gaia. Seriously, if you offered the average activist a vial and explained it contained a genetic engineered plague that was tested and proven to be 100.000% fatal to homo sapiens and harmless to all other life on the planet at least half would start looking for the best spot to release it.
> Or is someone just trying to stir up a liberal/conservative debate?
Several forces at work here. One is religion. Global Warming is basically part of the religious beliefs of the New Age, Gaia worshiping 'progressive' crowd in charge of Slashdot editorial decisionmaking. To them, Katrina is Gaia's way of lashing out at the wickedness of Bush's Amerika. When they don't believe Bush himself conjured the storm as part of his pact with Lucifier to bring ruin and destruction to black people. Or in short, they are barking moonbats.
Another is the craving for pageviews. Pageviews equals cash. Cash keeps the lights on at slashdot. Slashdot making money is good. Evil corporations doing the same is bad. It is all WHO does it, not what they do.
IF they can get the action to work flawlessly in real living rooms. IF they can get game authors to actually exploit the advantages of a totally different controller action. IF it is reliable. If all those things are true they will redefine the console and crush their enemies.
Otherwise they are pooched. But leave it to Nintendo to pull a rabbit out of their hats instead of release a console to be doomed to #3 behind Sony & Microsoft. This way they don't just sit contentedly in last place and fade away, they either go splat or put someone else out, I'd bet Microsoft.
> Yes, this should be common software engineering methodology, but I'm
> sure we all know of times when there's a deadline, the boss is angsty
> and you've got to get something working to keep your job, and a decent
> design document isn't what he wants to see.
And as long as customers are willing to pay for crappy code produced under those conditions we will continue to be up to our arses in it.
We need to be demanding the same quality from Software Engineering as we do from the other branches of Engineering. And the only way to get there is through liability. When a bridge falls down there is a price to pay for it, when IE takes out half the desktops on planet earth there currently isn't a price. Change that and watch quality go up. And of course the rate of release drop down. But then I'd much prefer a browser that is boring but safe instead of exciting and buggy as a roach motel.
> Exactly, and now that means that the compyters set up by these guys as
> a gesture of goodwill won't help people get the relief they need.
Perhaps, perhaps not. They should try Wine. Crossover Office runs IE6 well enough for our patrons to fill out their FEMA form. Haven't tried the Free version of Wine because we have Crossover already, someone should try it though.
We sprung for Crossover because this sort of platform bigotry is all too common, so much so that we couldn't have rolled out Linux in our labs without an answer to the problem of Microsoft Only sites. Previously we used VMWare but find Crossover a more transparent solution.
> No, it probably means that they didn't take the time to test in other
> browsers... It's still annoying, but very unlikely that it was
> malicious.
Wrong. It specifically detects your browser and redirects you to a page telling you to go download MSIE 6, assuming that Windows PCs are the only thing on the Internet. I'd call that both intentional and fully aware of the implications of their poor coding skills.
> ..if I'm ever in a disaster the size and scope of which requires me to
> contact FEMA, my first thought is not going to be "Oh gee I better check
> their website".
Tell that to the folks filling our public labs the last week. All I have to say is "Thank God for Crossover Office" or I'd be up to my behind in demands to load up Windows XP on our machines. Which would be exactly what Microsoft intended with this stunt. Call me paranoid, but I don't think this was an accident for a millisecond. These are the guys who throw chairs and scream "I'm goinna &$#*ing kill Google." This is exactly how they 'compete.'
He started out ok, made a few interesting at least observations about Google behaviour of late. But then with a lot of handwaving and not a lot of reasoning dismisses them as has beens so he can go on yet another tired rant about how Apple is going to rise from insignificance and crush it's enemies.
Didn't we all get tired of hearing this same song from the Amigans, how any day now _insert company who owns em today_ is going to come back with something wonderful and all the infidels on PCs and Macs will be wailing and gnashing their teeth?
Apple is a bit player now, will remain a bit player after Intel. In fact, after they perform this one last act for Mr. Gates (get TCPA into mainstream use, something Gates was rightly pilloried for trying under the Palladium name) I'd expect the coup de grace to finally be administered.
But leave off the last part of that collumn and it does raise an interesting question. Where does Google want to be in ten years?
> If a part advertised to run at 800MHz actually appears to run at 802MHz .25%. And that, sir, is a fine
.25% off would be the width of a whole US television channel at 2.4Ghz.
.25% error, When talking about timekeeping .25% is a horrible error, that is off by up to nine seconds per hour, and going on two hours (1:48) per month.
> we're talking about an error of only
> margin for a consumer product, being damn near spot-on.
Not very up on electrical principles eh? Acceptable tolerances vary greatly depending on which aspect of a component is being discussed. The frequency of a PLL is very different from a resistor's tolerance. If a PLL isn't pretty much spot on it is useless. Whether it is really off based on the measurement methods employed is debatable, whether a clock specced as 800 running at 802 is acceptable isn't.
Try buying a wireless card using your "+-.25% is OK" and see if you EVER connect to an access point. It would never find the APs beacon because it would be looking in the WRONG PLACE.
> there's no such thing as a stable consumer-grade clock.
Depends how accurate it needs to be, a wristwatch out of a child's Happy Meal is more than good enough to spot a
Measuring timing errors on this scale is child's play, let the CPU's high resolution cycle counter run a few minutes and compare to the RTC, The builtin clock would be accurate enough for this measurement, but using an NTP disciplined clock would just hammer the point home a little forcefully or allow you to get reliable results in seconds instead of minutes.
> Ms. Martin is NOT under police investigation.
HIde and watch. Otherwise it makes zero sense. Been here done this stuff. Remember, I make my living doing this and I do it right smack in the Buckle of the Bible Belt. There ain't no chance I'd get sacked for a patron managing to sneak past the porn filters and the idea they would go a step higher and sack my boss is laughable. Therefore there IS more to this story.
> Assuming that "leftist" here means "anti-censorship", a typical
> right-wing misinterpretation of anyone who won't ban the books the
> extremists want banned.
No, I mean leftist in the sense of socialist moveon.org ACORN types. I mean leftist in the sense that the Texas Library Association had Ralph Nader keynoting with a totally over the top and overtly political campaign speech to raucus standing ovations. In TEXAS in 2004. In case it still eludes you, I'm talking about FSCKING TEXAS! I was there, I saw it. If there is a definition of 'out of the mainstream' that doesn't include a room with about 75% Naderites in TEXAS then please enlighten me what that phrase means on your planet.
When I'm at library functions I'm always aware that I'm a pilgrim in a very unholy land. Of moonbats.
> But it at least it provides a forum for the Chicken Littles to scream
> about the death of Free Speech, Big Brother, yadda yadda yadda,
Exactly. Like the story slashdot linked to a week or so ago on unions that once you learned the truth you could only laugh. This is just one side of the story and from another historically biased source. There is almost certainly more to this story than is being told in this article. Odds are the authorities suspect actual involvement in the crime, otherwise it just doesn't make any sense.
The ALA has always had leftist leanings, recent events have pushed them all the way into moonbat status. Which is why, although I work IT for a public library I have never considered joining ALA. But I did attend one of their conventions back in 2000 (Guest speaker on Open Source stuff) and got a first hand look. The ALA Library Store booth was proof enough. The yhad exactly three types of material, generally available useful stuff for librarians, internally produced books and leftwing propaganda. Al Franken's current (think it was the one ripping Rush) book had place of honor.
>: No, it's more like trying to put Audi parts in your VW.
Yes. But some people like OSX and if they want to put a VW's OS on their Audi that is their business.
You see, you have it exactly backwards. Apple is the VW of computers, they make a very limited lineup of mid to low end machines and sell them at a premium over what anyone else could get because of nostalgia over past glories.
Look in a Mac sometime, it's all crap that was obsolete everywhere else one to two years ago. They were still peddling PC100 memory when everyone else had moved on to DDR. Until very recently (they are getting more competitive lately) you could depend on Apple introducing new products with specs about equal to what was on the display model bargain table everywhere else. And don't even START the bullshit about the marvels of the G[45] processor being so much better than a Pentium that it made up the performace gap. You have your new marching orders from the Maximum Leader now, PPC bad; Pentium Good. As usual, a generation behind. Those in the know, know Pentium old and slow, Athlon Good.
Today, I was trolling.
No, the post I went off on wasn't even good trolling. Sorry, but it just came across as dumb. Your original post launching the thread was a good troll. If you don't think an AC's post is worth using as a launch pad for another GOOD troll or flamebait, just don't reply at all and save bandwidth.
Hell, I am no stranger to trolling myself. Somebody has to stir the pot around here, the slashdrone groupthink needs to be challenged after all or they will never learn to think. And anyway, us oldtimers hit the karma cap long ago and no longer worry about it. The metric I use to judge my posting success these days is post to reply ratio. I can usually keep it it better than 1-1 (your recent posts are 26 to 24 or about 1-1) and manage to hit 3-1 on the previous 24 posts for brief periods where I am on a roll.
> How about you take some time to try to prove a point instead of calling names?
Pot, meet kettle. At least you had the courage to post with a real id. One even lower than mine no less. Guess a few mental defectives managed to find this place before the hordes hit.
Try rebutting someone's ideas in a rational way next time instead of just labeling them a 'neocon freak' and expecting that to automatically end the conversation, as if everyone is supposed to think, "Oh someone called them a neocon, must be true and we ALL know neocon is the new code for 'zionist conspiracy' so nothing they said can be listened to. Even if it sounds reasonable it is just a trick by those sneaky Jews. and if a user with such a low ID called them a FREAK as well, well that settles it."
So lets see if I understand how things work in your warped world. I just hinted you are an anti-semetic racist, but of course I have to do better than hint, that would require thought to figure out. No, I hereby assert that you are a double plus ungood filthy Anti-Semetic Racist NeoNazi. And that just because someone on Slashdot has said it about you everyone else reading should just accept it (even though I have offered a hell of a lot more support for my theory than you just did) as fact and disregard everthing you write, heck, they should all mark you as a Foe, otherwise they are filthy racists as well for associating with the likes of you.
Of course the silliness above constituites a large portion of conversation on forums such as slashdot.
> Exposing kids to everything allows them to become well-rounded
> adults who are aware of everything.
You didn't have to say you weren't actually a parent, that boneheaded remark was enough to tell everyone that you not only aren't one, you have zero experience with them and that you probably had a screwed up childhood yourself, so you have no reference points. Hell, you have probably never even had to teach an adult anything if you can make that statement.
Yes, children need to be exposed to all sorts of things if they are to become responsible citizens when they grow up. But at the appropriate time. Children AREN'T just small adults. The higher reasoning skills take time to develop. Some concepts need to be taught after others are fully understood.
Example. C wouln't exactly be the first choice to teach someone to program who had never done any codeing at all, but a teacher doing so would be merely odd who did so. (Might be trying a radical new technique.) But if that teacher then extected said student to figure out the hairier bits of pointers in the first week they would be zarking mad.
Same with kids. Advanced concepts in love/romance/sexuality/relationships can't be properly understood without a good foundation in both teaching and experience dealing with simpler relationships among family and friends. Not to mention that their hardware isn't properly configured (both the obvious physical changes to the external hardware and the ones you obviously have no concept of in the ol wetware) until fairly close to the modern legal adult line. Most of the readers here on slashdot, hell the whole world, are adults still trying to figure this stuff out, expecting a five year old to understand is just idiocy.
> Anything short of that, and it should be treated as a rental of the
> content, not a sale of a copy. The packaging should be clearly and
> visibly labeled "NOT FOR SALE - LIMITED USE ONLY" on the front and
> spine of the case, and the disk should be priced accordingly.
Be careful what you as for, according to the software industry it already is the norm and the **AA on even numbered days says that CDs and DVDs aren't sold, only licensed. They just don't have the stones to spell it out on the packaging so those of us with a clue aren't bound by the EULA since the transaction is still legally a sale.
But do you think the average person (hell, 90% of the slashdot crowd would still line up if Revenge of the Sith had your warning label) would care in the least if everything in WalMart's music & video dept started sporting your disclaimer?
We know that the videophile early adopter crowd will reject dvd players that treat them like criminals, but will HD-DVD/BD-ROM's fate be decided them the tech heads this time or will they learn and roll it out to the masses and let them decide?
> yeah. like on 9-11 when we were attacked by the superior forces of the
> combined armies and navies of the Russian Empire - or was it China?
Did I say that it was the only threat? No. And I saw the threat from Al Queda years ago, back when all your political philosophy could screw up the courage to do was lob a few expensive cruise missles at camels and declare terrorism a 'police' responsibility. Had we correctly seen Radical Islam as an ememy at least by the time of the 1st attempt on the World Trade Center and entered the war then, liberated Afganistan from the Taliban then, odds are they wouldn't have still been a problem, at least not one organized enough to accomplish something as complicated as 9-11.
The time to start research and development on space based offensive and defensive systems isn't AFTER we get Pearl Harbored by China suddenly knocking out most of our space based assets and invading Taiwan.
Your kind just doesn't get it. The reason WW III never became a 'hot' war wasn't because the Soviets were the 'peaceloving people' their proxies over here kept telling us they were. They were an expansionistic empire bent on world conquest, as any number of their former officials will now tell you. The reason they never actually attacked was because they never thought their odds of winning with what they considered acceptable losses were good enough. Because we built metric buttloads of highly advanced weapon systems that were never used. They would only have been used had we NOT built enough of them. Did we sometimes build too many? Perhaps, in hindsight. But Wars aren't fought with the benefit of hindsight.
You see there is a truism about War. They begin when one or both sides misestimates their relative military strength. When both sides have a true picture of things, the weaker side will make concessions to the demands of the stronger and there is no War. This continues until the power inbalance corrects itself. If the weaker force is mistaken about it's inferior strength then there is War and the strong still imposes his will. If the Aggressor isn't really the stronger side but believes it is, again there is War, the truth comes out and the roles reverse.
I know, I sound like a Warmongering militarist. No, this is reality calling, will you accept the charges? The charge is to realize that if you would have Peace, know War. Peace comes when all sides are either roughly equally powerful OR one side has both Strength and the Wisdom to prefer Peace. The second is a very rare condition and not to be depended upon. It mostly holds with the US until we are attacked.
Long term though, it would be a good thing if Europe and Asia get some military strength of their own into play. (China has defensive military power but no serious ability to project power.) Power corrupts and Absolute Power..... How long the US can retain virtually absolute power and not succumb to the temptations of Empire remain to be seen. As an American fighting to restore the old Republic of our Forefathers, Pax Americana would be a big step backwards.
No, Longhorn was the bait, Vista is the switch.
They do this all the time you know. The tout a super shiny new product that will be out Real Soon Now, get all of the trade press hyped up to the point that they start doing product reviews of the vaporware against the shipping versions of the competition's stuff, to convince everyone that is pointless to buy OS/2, Netware, etc. because any day now Microsoft will be releaseing SuperShinyVaporware 1.0 which will totally 0wn the market.
Then at some point comes the Switch, when it is revealed that what they can actually ship is just another minor incremental improvement. There were features promised for the product that eventually became NT4 that still haven't shipped yet, I think the database filesystem was one of them. But the mainstream tech media fall for it every time and the slashdot crowd about half the time.
And of course you will know when Vista is about to actually ship (my money is on them targeting Xmas06 and actually hitting Mid 07.) because about six months ahead the usual suspects will start being honest about Windows XP, calling it utter rubbish, but you just wait! All those security problems they will be freely admitting (and we have either lived through personally or spent far too much time cleaning up the wreckage from for years) be fixed if you buy a new PC with Vista. (or buy an assload of hardware and upgrade you can have a reduced quality experience)
This smells exactly like the same idiotiarians who spent most of the 90's calling for a freeze by the warmongering US building more nukes on the grounds that if we stopped that the Soviets, being a peaceloving people, would stop their hellbent buildup.
Wrong. And thankfully we have RWR in charge over here to ignore em. Got news for ya. Doesn't matter whether we are stupid enough to cripple ourselves or not. For China to take Taiwan back means dealing with our naval superiority. And much of that these days depends on space based assets. If the situation in India and Pakistan deteriorates into war, they have space based assets (especially India) that will be attractive military targets. etc. etc.
Once we began putting valuable military targets into space, it was only a matter of time until someone got the idea to (while reading the initial intelligence reports on the payload most likely) destroying them and figured out the details of how to go about it.
All the calls for a unilateral US 'freeze' and all of the old Soviet Era sanctimonious crap from the UN won't change this reality.
> Towards classical liberalism? Really?
Really. Ok, I give you a lot of the criticism of W on that idiotic Medicare drug boondoggle. I think he believes he needed to lead with that to build the credibility to do Social Security reform. Which of course earned him zero cred with his opponents and distrust from potential allies. Happens every time you try to 'compromise' with socialists. They take the 'peace offering' and then condemn you for it.
But the spending in genreral and running up the deficit part I will argue a bit on. Yes he probably should have went to bat and vetoed a few of the worse spending bills. But I think we are both realistic to understand his logic on this one. Any serious attempt to reign in spending would have ended up with enough port addicted R's jumping the aisle and voting with the enemy to 'roll back the tax cuts for the rich.' to get the money for their pet programs. And that would have meant no recovery and no shrinking deficits now. Sometimes you do have to choose the lesser evil. So yes, were I President I would have make a different choice but I'm not and he is so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt on it. After all he did have a War to worry about.
As for the initial Social Security reform being highly unoptimized, it is just like code. Get a prototype up then refine it. The big fight is about the IDEA not the implementation. Win that fight and the Democrats lose their signature welfare program, which is why they fight with such fury. Not with the first version but once the idea that it is OUR money and not Ted Kennedy's piggy bank gets established the end point is obvious, total control in the hands of the individual leading to the State seeing zero dollars in a generation or so.
> The real classical liberals would not have attacked a foreign nation
> unprovoked (Iraq),
I call bullshit here and request you go read some history. Gunboat diplomancy was a staple of the great classically liberal powers, including the US of A. The classical 17th - 19th century liberals were NOT Randite libertarians; They believed unreservedly in nation states and War as the ultimate diplomacy.
And The Gulf War was still in a state of truce, no final peace had been signed. Blither all you want about "Iraq had no WMD, Bush Lied, Kids Died." Fuck all that, Saddam was NOT living up to the truce agreement and besides, he needed killin. But more importantly, smashing Afganistan would not have drained the fever swamps over there that breed Islamic radicals, a free Iraq living at peace with itself and it's neighbors under a Republican for of Government will. And if it doesn't, we repeat the lesson in Iran, Syria, Saudia Arabia, etc. until they DO get the point. Which is that invading our country and killing our people by the thousands is suicidal. Let them Hate us if they want, so long as their Fear of us is greater.
And finally you assault on the Right not respecting the 1st Amendment. Thankfully at least you aren;t one of those crying wolf over PATRIOT. (Yes some bits of PATRIOT stink. But we always give counterintel forces a little extra leeway in wartime so I'll keep my powder dry and see what happens when the Middle East is pacified.)
As for Bush not allowing the rent-a-mobs to eliminate HIS right to speak I can do no better than refer you to the Great Man himself who said "I paid for this microphone." If the unshaved and unbathed want to hold a protest they have the right to do it somewhere else. Fear not, the press will still give them equal or greater coverage.
As for objecting to tits on clear to air tv, you can make a Libertarian argument for it but you sure as hell can't find a classical liberal one for it unless you could find even ONE of the Founding Fathers who thought that way. Find ONE who could be argued to be in support of hard core sex as public discourse.
Meanwhile, while nothing Bush has said or advocated infinges my 1st Amendment right to political disent, he DID sign McCain/Feingo
> What do you mean, Goodbye Earthlink and Speakeasy? We live in a free
> market. They can still lease the lines or put in their own copper.
No they can't. This ruling says the telcos no longer have to lease their copper and of course it is illegal to run your own. The incumbent telcos have a government granted MONOPOLY on running copper and now they have one on putting DSL down it. The only exception is cable companies have similar FRANCHISE agreements with local cities allowing them to run coax, which can now carry IP traffic allowing them to compete.
Yes folks, "competition" for IP traffic in the US now consists of two government granted monopolies (in areas where both a telco and a cable co exist, otherwise you get one) competing against each other. With the possibility of a third government regulated wireless carrier in the future.
So forget this talk ablout keeping the government from regulating the Internet. In 270 days it is.
Someone else already dealth with telco deregulation in a reply. Allow me to remind you how fscking expensive air travel was pre deregulation. It was a gold plated toy for the rich.
The S&L fiasco was a classic case of oversight being removed while retaining the federal government insuring all of the loans. It was an invitation to steal. If you are going to deregulate something you can't do it halfway. We saw this again with the California power 'deregulation' disaster.
Deregulation of utilities is problematic because on the one hand we talk about 'deregulation' but on the other the companies insist on retaining their government granted monopoly. Deregulation of a utility MUST include a mechanism to permit competition. This DSL deal doesn't and is thus a bad idea.
I'd like to see the baby bells broken up one more time. One company gets a monopoly on the lines but is forbidden from providing ANY other service with or without those lines. Pure utility play, nice stable dividends from a government monopoly. The other side, along with anyone else who wishes to enter the game, can lease resources from the line holder corporation and offer up any services they please. End customers would never see the line company, this means they only risk not being paid if the service providers fail to pay and escrow/insurance fixes that. They have zero risk, meaning only charging a very small premium above documented cost to maintain the wires.
To retain the monopoly they could be mandated to upgrade (and permitted to pass along the documented charges for same) to new technologies without worrying about exactly what use would actually be made of them.