> oh, and about.zip files, do you have any idea how much the creation of a.zip taxes a server's CPU ? > specially when compressing files that are _already_ compressed ?
Something on the order of zero load. Since you are correct that.mp3 files won't compress enough to justify the computing overhead I'd assume an outfit as IT savvy as Amazon knows the Linux/UNIX/Posix/etc zip command takes the -0 switch to store files in a zip archive without attempting to compress them. RTFM dude.
>...they're intended to be heard in the context of other songs.
Not always. Sometimes an album is an integrated 'experience' that doesn't work as singles at all, sometimes the singles can stand alone but make more sense listened to on the album and some 'albums' are just some random unrelated songs sold as a bundle. It really just depends on the artist. Please avoid making sweeping generalizations.
All recording artists are not Pink Floyd. And even though I like a lot of Pink Floyd I still think it is good that not all music comes in such inseperable slabs.
> If the shop you bought from closes up you are in the cold the next time your hdd crashes. > DMCA be screwed, pirating is still better.
Exactly. DRM means 'your' content is only yours until the place you bought it from goes out of business or decides your content is 'obsolete'. Does anyone actually believe iTunes will exist in its current form in twenty or thirty years? Will Apple? How many technology companies live to see their tenth birthday? Apple will be truly ancient in thirty years, Steve will be in a retirement home or dead and these teens buying songs on iTunes today will be screwed. Meanwhile my vinyl and CDs bought in my misspent youth play today and will probably still play when I'm in a retirement community.
> but I for one would not want to try to walk into Best Buy with the quantity of grain equal > in value to a 52" plasma screen TV. And I definitely wouldn't want my retirement fund stored > as piles of corn.
You wouldn't. You would still have paper money, it would just have a firm value. Old money used to say on it that it could be redeemed for an equal amount of gold. The system would still work if it said it was redeemable for a specified quantity of wheat or pork bellies. Once you have made the big decision to abandon faith based fiat money and return to a fixed commodity to base the money supply on the decision of which commodity to peg the dollar to is just a practical problem. Pick one that either has a fairly stable supply or one that has the property that an increase in its supply would require approximatly the same expansion of the overall economy as the expansion of that commodity would increase the money supply.
One could even imagine a purely stock based economy. Go to Best Buy and exchange some Walmart stock or pork futures for a new Plasma TV. Sure stocks and such fluctuate but they are at least based on tangible things, unlike our current money. But the problem there is you still need a key item to demoninate all those investments in, and so long as you use the USD the value of everything changes daily with the whim of the central banks because while changes in the currency will eventually change all the other investments there seems to be variable delay times. This creates a lot of noise in the markets which only serves to keep the day traders busy.
That is an opinion. History renders another. Considering the current demand for thsi stuff I'd say it not only has value today but will likely have value into the future. The value of gold has remained fairly constant over time and the supply grows at a fairly constant rate. But again, if someone makes a case for a better benchmark commodity that wouldn't bother me. What worked in the past might not be the best option going forward.
Good example would be RAH's use of seed grain as the constant that set the value of currency on a new colony world. Obviously that works great while the economy is almost entirely based on low tech agriculture but the currency would someday have to be rebased. Perhaps it is time to consider using something other than gold if we ever return to sound currency policies. But I'm at a loss to think of a suitable replacement.
That would be my read as well, but after declaring it evil I doubt she would do anything to prevent you from doing something she though wrongheaded, stupid or even evil so long as you weren't using force (taxes) to do it.
And that is really Freedom Zero. The Right to be Wrong. Person A must be free to think/argue that person B is 'Wrong' but the second they try to enforce that choice on person B they become more wrong. Even though it doesn't fit perfectly I'll use this topic for an example.
If you believe OLPC is 'altrustic' (and believe that to be a bad thing) it is perfecly acceptable to argue the project should not be supported on those grounds in the public arena. Convince enough current supporters to abandon it and it dies, again that is perfectly ok. To even attempt to convince Congress to stomp on it crosses the line to wicked. Of course it is equally wicked to solicit Congress for any assistance on such a project, too bad THAT part is ignored every day Congress is in session.
> Cash isn't money, it has no intrinsic value - confidence in the cash is the money.
DING! Give this guy a cookie! Or at least a good upmod.
Since everyone abandoned the Gold Standard all money is 'faith based.' Which is why exchange rates fluctuate so wildly these days. I'm not a pure 'Gold Bug' in that I don't think gold is the ONLY possible basis for currency, only that sound money needs A basis in reality and that gold has performed that function well in the past. But if someone made a case for a different foundation I'd listen. This current scheme blows though.
> Right. Designed that way by the US as a way of cementing its hegemony post-WWII.
Remember who designed it. A bunch of 'progressive' one worlders who made the fatal mistake of allowing unfree countries to have more votes than free members... if you are generous enough to assume they were just too stupid to realize what they were doing. I believe they knew EXACTLY what they were doing. They knew they were building an organization where the communists (Soviet+slave states and Chicoms+slave states) could easilly build an unstoppable block with the 3rd world despots and pretty much run things, but with a shiny veneer of democratic legitimatcy.
Remember, the notion that "Socialism was the future" was pretty much universal amongst the intelligensia of the time period the UN was founded. Even most opponents were convinced they were doomed and were just valiantly fighting a rear guard action.
> There are 50 listed here. Some are a bit wishy-washy, but a few highlights:
Yea, most are fairly minor but more important din't need an organization as cumbersom as the UM.
> World Food Programme (WFP): in 2001 distributed 4.2 million tons of food to 77 million people in 82 countries.
Wow. If they keep that up they might someday match the work in that area.... just by US government donations and private religious/other NGO organizations. Yea, yea the US Government food aid is usually counted as UN. But ya get my point.
> Improving global communications - The Universal Postal Union (UPU) has maintained and regulated > international mail delivery. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has coordinated > use of the radio spectrum.
Nice try but both of those functions predate the UN by decades.
Again, what specific good came from creating the UN? I can think of a lot of bad things that can be directly laid at the UN's doorstep but not a lot of good. At best they absorbed most existing efforts at international cooperation and some didn't suffer much from the transition. But that is more a case of minimizing harm and not actually doing good.
> No world wars. That was and is the main reason for the UN. Better for bureaucrats to waste time > and money papershuffling than let machismo rule.
Yet. Because the US has been willing to play "cowboy" when needed to stamp out the fires before the blow up. Usually over the objection of the UN. And the toothless idiots at the IAEA have been more an aid to the despots trying to get nukes than any assisstance at actually stopping proliferation. And WHEN Iran (unless the US or Israel acts unilaterally yet again to stop it and gets condemmened by all 'right thinking people' in the UN mindset) nukes Israel and starts the mother of World Wars it will mostly the the UN to blame for allowing it. Ok, them and the Democrat Party here in the US.
Corrupt UN bureaucrats shuffling paper was what allowed Saddam to turn the Oil for Food program into a get out of jail free card. Never forget that either.
> Just how many more mass graves do we need before you misty eyed 'citizens of the world' realize the US > is the leading cause of mass death today. Ask the survivers in Rwanda or Darfur if they believe the UN > is a capable fo being a force for good.
And I even previewed once.... sigh. Of course that should be UN at the end of both lines but with the slashkos crowd it is probably best to make it clear.... especially in light of 25 Democrat Party Senators voting to endorse Move On's notion of the US military this afternoon.
> Absolutely! They'll be glad to crack the whip on registrars of non-countries like the Soviet Union and Taiwan.
Don't forget ending.il and replacing it with whatever the 'Palestinians want to call the place. After all, anti-semitism seems to be the preferred pasttime of the new UN "Human Rights" body..... exactly like the old UN Human Rights Commisson.
And lets not forget seating Syria on the IAEA right after they are suspected of hosting the Norks discarded Nukes.
> An international body like the UN would be a more appropriate overseer, surely?
What idiot would write such a thing in 2007? A century ago such naive faith in International organizations to settle disputes was commonplace, fifty years ago diehards still believed the inherent contradiction inherent in such organizations could be handwaved away. But now? Now that we have seen each and every International organization fall into disrepute, chaos, corruption or outright evil?
Even previously unquestioned organizations like ISO are proving to be all too easily corrupted. Others, like the UN you wish to hand the greatest achievement of Western Civilization over to, were so flawed in their design they became failed instituitions before the ink was dry on their charters.
Seriously, this isn't a troll or flamebait. Name three achivements of the UN since it's founding. Ok, you in the back that remembered the Korean War being fought under UN auspices. Yea, because the Soviets were off in a sulk for a brief period the UN managed to allow the US (with our usual allies of the UK and the Aussies along with token support from the usual suspects) to fight to a tie, but under no circumstances actually win. And we are STILL mired down there to this day.
Same for the first Gulf War, the UN grudgingly allowed the US to lead our usual allies to solve a problem for everyone else. But I don't seem to recall the UN spearheading either of those efforts, only being convinced to get the hell out of the way.
Just how many more mass graves do we need before you misty eyed 'citizens of the world' realize the US is the leading cause of mass death today. Ask the survivers in Rwanda or Darfur if they believe the UN is a capable fo being a force for good.
No, the UN is a Parliment of Tyrants. Because it was DESIGNED that way. Shocked the new UN "Human Rights" body is as corrupt as the old one? I'm not. Because Tyrants have more votes in both the General Assembly and Security Council, all works of the UN are going to be geared to aid tyranny. Hand the Internet over to China, Cuba, Iran and their ilk? Are you barking mad?
> I'm willing to bet a free program could be almost as useful, with maybe a bit more work if the thing is stolen.
No it couldn't. The software is trivial. A program that sends a web request with the serial number embedded in the url a few seconds after a network interface comes up is all that is needed. But once you know your laptop is at IP x.x.x.x that doesn't do YOU a damned bit of good. No ISP is stupid enough to give you the IP+timestamp to physical connection point mapping for liability reasons. Think it through and imagine the Pandora's Box doing that would open. That is what you are actually buying from the tracking company, their preestablished relationships with law enforcement and the ISP community. Once known and trusted as a laptop tracking company they CAN get that info into the hands of law enforcement. Although I bet for legal reasons the tracking company itself NEVER sees the phone number/node/physical address.
> I think it's a foregone conclusion that there's a reset jumper somewhere on the MacBook. You and > I not knowing where it is doesn't make it any less so.
Or not. Laptop makers have become serious about security because so many customers demanded it. Not sure what Apple is doing exactly, but if a Thinkpad has a hard drive password set the only way to defeat it is to send the whole unit along with either documentation proving ownership or LEO creds to one of a select group of data recovery houses. The drive password is stored on a chip inside the drive bubble as well as in the CMOS memory. So pulling the backup battery only gives you a brick.
Pulling the drive and trying to read it from another computer also fails, again because of the drive password kept in the drive itself. So if you don't have a passwordless guest account and properly protect the boot sequence to prevent booting from alternate media you can lock a laptop down to the point it is only a few spare parts to a thief.
That said, I can still think of ways to defeat the security but none that a typical 'gangster' kiddie could attempt.
> There was even a clause in there about selling used software - they stated that you were allowed to do it, > but it had to be for a specified amount, and they got a fee out of it.
Not really, sound pretty fair. You see, you ARE allowed to resell software and AutoDesk is going to get smacked in court but support and upgrades aren't part of the First Sale Doctrine. By your vendor specifying a procedure and fee to transfer ownership of the license along with the title to the copyrighted work it means the buyer gets upgrades, bug fixes and the same level of tech suport you have now. If the fee is reasonable it would be very fair, especially when dealing with specialized software that needs support.
> This is the "dude" that some people want to be the next President of the United States.
No, the column quoted above by the troll is by Dr. Walter Williams not Sen Obama. Obama would never make that much sense.:)
> ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into office -- he DID NOT use the Holy Bible, but instead the Koran
Again, you are so wrong you are a discredit to the Conservative side. You are confusing Senator Obama with Representitive Keith Ellison who did indeed swear his Oath of Office on a Koran. However since Rep. Ellison is openly Muslim this would be expected. Sen. Obama is a member of a bigoted African nationalist fringe church that looks for all the world like a clone of the Nation of Islam, but it IS nominally Christian, not Islamic.
> I like those Certified For Windows® Vista® stickers.
I stuck the Designed for Windows 98 sticker off of one my laptops on the front of a Sparc20 just for giggles. Yes, I realize I'm going to hell for it.:)
> Ok, joking aside - there isn't anybody out there that sells a server that doesn't have a completely > dismissive contract with it? Nobody? Not the servers running nuclear power plants, or submarines, or anything?
There is said to be a few of the small RTOS vendors who offer liability for bugs, but they tend to be the sort of companies who you can't get anything out of unless it is from a sales weasel so don't expect to find their EULA on a webpage. And you WILL pay for it. Why do you think NASA is toying with putting penguins into space, because even they are finding it harder to justify the prices and it isn't like they have to buy that many licenses for their space missions. Considering all the other things that can go wrong anyway, from physical design flaws to human data entry errors no OS could protect against, the odds of a Linux kernel bug taking out a mission isn't that bad. Most software error won't be in the OS anyway but in the actual control software. Then when one considers those niche OSes have old crappy development tools and a much smaller developer pool to hire from it is hard to justify the price.
> Think about it - "IIS, no suitability for any particular purpose, and no warranty!
Which would be a fatal flaw in their EULA....... IF anyoen else sold a software product that didn't include the exact same language. Yes, software is the only product sold with zero warranty, zero product liability, zero legal accountability. Go figure. Don't believe me? Go read the GPL, the Solaris EULA, Apple's EULA, etc. Every single one promises exactly the same thing, you (may or may not actually) get a shiny CD/DVD with some bits recorded on it, and if they won't read back correctly they will replace the media. Other than that you are on your own. If you want any sort of warranty you buy exotic products from small outfits at truly insane prices, for use in life critical applications. But even most medical equipment these days has Windows under the hood. Insane? Yup.
Even worse, it HAS already went wrong. I seem to remember us all laughing at their incompetence a week or so ago when the authentication servers at MS went wonky and declared everyone was a pirate (too bad it couldn't have been on talk like a pirate day) except there wasn't any real consequences yet. Now that there are anyone want to start a pool for when it blows again and shuts down the How many more mistakes can you make before it starts to hurt?
So long as they keep their forced bundling deals with the OEMS they can bungle forever. But now we have Dell and HP slipping the leash just a wee bit. Could get interesting, but it will probably be years before they fall below 90% ship rate. Empires the size of Microsoft take a long time to die, even when they are as incompetent as this. See IBM.
> However, the signs are present that 2007 is in fact that year. We've had Ubuntu convince users like me to give it a go..
No, you are simply projecting your conversion into a larger trend. Doesn't make it so. I converted in 1994, I'm still waiting for "The Year of Linux on the Desktop". Linux on the Server came and went already, we 0wn that now. Only idiots deploy on Windows these days.... the choice is which Linux distro or flavor of UNIX. Of course most of Corporate America are idiots......
Embassys are soverign territory of the guest country. This is an ancient and accepted rule of International Law. By attacking our embassy and seizing our nationals from said US territory, Iran did indeed commit an overt act of war. Had we been inclined we could have declared a formal state of War over the incident and been 100% compliant with all International Law and the UN would have had to just sit on the sidelines.
Personally, considering the chaos in Iran at the time I'd have cut them a small amount of slack. But once a new government was in place I'd have laid down the law, as in "Ok Khomanani[sp?] you say you are now in charge, so be it. Return our people or I swear to my God I'll have your head on a pointy stick. and your Allah won't be able to save you from my wrath."
> maybe you should go talk to General Betray Us and see how astute he is
You know, I'm actually happy as hell Move On bought that ad. Because if that wasn't 'questioning his patriotism' then I really don't know what it would take to qualify. So now that Move On has officially (buying a full page in the NYT is about as overt an act as one can imagine) declared their belief that questioning the patriotism of a highly decorated general who, to date, was 100% free of taint to his professional reputation is now fair play. I certainly can't see how they can object when we now take the obvious next step.
I now put on the table for discussion THEIR patriotism. This ragtag band of misfits, losers and socially dysfunctional turds, living in their mothers basements, blogging in their underwear that calls itself the netroots (nutroots) has more in common with UBL (did you actually READ that idiot kostard's rant?) than anything American. If you f*cking Noam Chompsky reading, Hugo Chavez lovin' socialist morons hate America so much, why don't you migrate? We are trying to build a wall on our Southern border to keep people OUT, but we certainly wouldn't try to keep yer sorry butts IN.
> He's been praising Microsoft for years, every chance he gets.
Not only that, he has yet to encounter a Microsoft technology he didn't like so much he wanted to clone it into the Free Software world and make us all dependent on it.
For years the joke was GNOME was cloned Microsoft internals with a goofy (vaguely MAc inspired treat the user as an idiot motif but without the consistency or polish of the Mac UI to make up for it) UI while KDE was cloned Microsoft UI with goofy Trolltech internals. Then Miguel hell head over heels in love with.NET and was all setto rewrite GNOME using that patenttrap. Thankfully saner heads have prevailed.... so far.
The sooner we all write off Miguel and Novell the better off we will all be. Taking any code from that camp is just inviting a lawsuit. Sooner or later, BOOM!
> And that's also the reason why people will keep on dying until we make this punishmen >t for this sort of corruption hurt like hell.
Except for one problem. Nobody died. No radiation leak, Nothing. Which make you a moron.
Looks like the greens and unions have teamed up to take that plant out, if I had to make a guess just from reading the one new account you linked, union goons were responsible for this 'accident'. News flash. There is nothing in a cooling tower that is more dangerous than steam. Which explains why they the operators weren't all that worked up over it, because they actually understand the technology they are using. The worst that could happen is what did occur, a total structural failure forcing them to drop to half generating capacity until they can repair or replace it.
> Now they lost their trust in Apple, and Steve Jobs is trying to buy it back.
No, there is some PR aspects to this deal but Apple didn't need to do this. It's a way to make sure they keep happy customers. People were lined up to drop 6 portraits of Ben Franklin for a toy. Being a phone anyone (ok, Miss Hilton probably doesn't have the brains to know better but with her money she can afford not to care) with any business in those lines should have realized the price would drop before the year was out. It's a cell phone people!
I certainly ain't no Apple fan, anyone looking at my posting history can see how many times I have rated flamebait/troll for failing to be affected by Steve's Kool-Aid, but when they do something cool I gotta be honest and say that too. And tossing half the price cut back to every buyer and the full difference to everyone who bought in the last two weeks is just high class.
Slashdot Mirror
> oh, and about .zip files, do you have any idea how much the creation of a .zip taxes a server's CPU ?
.mp3 files won't compress enough to justify the computing overhead I'd assume an outfit as IT savvy as Amazon knows the Linux/UNIX/Posix/etc zip command takes the -0 switch to store files in a zip archive without attempting to compress them. RTFM dude.
> specially when compressing files that are _already_ compressed ?
Something on the order of zero load. Since you are correct that
> ...they're intended to be heard in the context of other songs.
Not always. Sometimes an album is an integrated 'experience' that doesn't work as singles at all, sometimes the singles can stand alone but make more sense listened to on the album and some 'albums' are just some random unrelated songs sold as a bundle. It really just depends on the artist. Please avoid making sweeping generalizations.
All recording artists are not Pink Floyd. And even though I like a lot of Pink Floyd I still think it is good that not all music comes in such inseperable slabs.
> If the shop you bought from closes up you are in the cold the next time your hdd crashes.
> DMCA be screwed, pirating is still better.
Exactly. DRM means 'your' content is only yours until the place you bought it from goes out of business or decides your content is 'obsolete'. Does anyone actually believe iTunes will exist in its current form in twenty or thirty years? Will Apple? How many technology companies live to see their tenth birthday? Apple will be truly ancient in thirty years, Steve will be in a retirement home or dead and these teens buying songs on iTunes today will be screwed. Meanwhile my vinyl and CDs bought in my misspent youth play today and will probably still play when I'm in a retirement community.
It is something to think about.
> but I for one would not want to try to walk into Best Buy with the quantity of grain equal
> in value to a 52" plasma screen TV. And I definitely wouldn't want my retirement fund stored
> as piles of corn.
You wouldn't. You would still have paper money, it would just have a firm value. Old money used to say on it that it could be redeemed for an equal amount of gold. The system would still work if it said it was redeemable for a specified quantity of wheat or pork bellies. Once you have made the big decision to abandon faith based fiat money and return to a fixed commodity to base the money supply on the decision of which commodity to peg the dollar to is just a practical problem. Pick one that either has a fairly stable supply or one that has the property that an increase in its supply would require approximatly the same expansion of the overall economy as the expansion of that commodity would increase the money supply.
One could even imagine a purely stock based economy. Go to Best Buy and exchange some Walmart stock or pork futures for a new Plasma TV. Sure stocks and such fluctuate but they are at least based on tangible things, unlike our current money. But the problem there is you still need a key item to demoninate all those investments in, and so long as you use the USD the value of everything changes daily with the whim of the central banks because while changes in the currency will eventually change all the other investments there seems to be variable delay times. This creates a lot of noise in the markets which only serves to keep the day traders busy.
> What makes gold have intrinsic value?
That is an opinion. History renders another. Considering the current demand for thsi stuff I'd say it not only has value today but will likely have value into the future. The value of gold has remained fairly constant over time and the supply grows at a fairly constant rate. But again, if someone makes a case for a better benchmark commodity that wouldn't bother me. What worked in the past might not be the best option going forward.
Good example would be RAH's use of seed grain as the constant that set the value of currency on a new colony world. Obviously that works great while the economy is almost entirely based on low tech agriculture but the currency would someday have to be rebased. Perhaps it is time to consider using something other than gold if we ever return to sound currency policies. But I'm at a loss to think of a suitable replacement.
> she really did think altruism was evil
That would be my read as well, but after declaring it evil I doubt she would do anything to prevent you from doing something she though wrongheaded, stupid or even evil so long as you weren't using force (taxes) to do it.
And that is really Freedom Zero. The Right to be Wrong. Person A must be free to think/argue that person B is 'Wrong' but the second they try to enforce that choice on person B they become more wrong. Even though it doesn't fit perfectly I'll use this topic for an example.
If you believe OLPC is 'altrustic' (and believe that to be a bad thing) it is perfecly acceptable to argue the project should not be supported on those grounds in the public arena. Convince enough current supporters to abandon it and it dies, again that is perfectly ok. To even attempt to convince Congress to stomp on it crosses the line to wicked. Of course it is equally wicked to solicit Congress for any assistance on such a project, too bad THAT part is ignored every day Congress is in session.
> Cash isn't money, it has no intrinsic value - confidence in the cash is the money.
DING! Give this guy a cookie! Or at least a good upmod.
Since everyone abandoned the Gold Standard all money is 'faith based.' Which is why exchange rates fluctuate so wildly these days. I'm not a pure 'Gold Bug' in that I don't think gold is the ONLY possible basis for currency, only that sound money needs A basis in reality and that gold has performed that function well in the past. But if someone made a case for a different foundation I'd listen. This current scheme blows though.
> Right. Designed that way by the US as a way of cementing its hegemony post-WWII.
Remember who designed it. A bunch of 'progressive' one worlders who made the fatal mistake of allowing unfree countries to have more votes than free members... if you are generous enough to assume they were just too stupid to realize what they were doing. I believe they knew EXACTLY what they were doing. They knew they were building an organization where the communists (Soviet+slave states and Chicoms+slave states) could easilly build an unstoppable block with the 3rd world despots and pretty much run things, but with a shiny veneer of democratic legitimatcy.
Remember, the notion that "Socialism was the future" was pretty much universal amongst the intelligensia of the time period the UN was founded. Even most opponents were convinced they were doomed and were just valiantly fighting a rear guard action.
> There are 50 listed here. Some are a bit wishy-washy, but a few highlights:
Yea, most are fairly minor but more important din't need an organization as cumbersom as the UM.
> World Food Programme (WFP): in 2001 distributed 4.2 million tons of food to 77 million people in 82 countries.
Wow. If they keep that up they might someday match the work in that area.... just by US government donations and private religious/other NGO organizations. Yea, yea the US Government food aid is usually counted as UN. But ya get my point.
> Improving global communications - The Universal Postal Union (UPU) has maintained and regulated
> international mail delivery. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has coordinated
> use of the radio spectrum.
Nice try but both of those functions predate the UN by decades.
Again, what specific good came from creating the UN? I can think of a lot of bad things that can be directly laid at the UN's doorstep but not a lot of good. At best they absorbed most existing efforts at international cooperation and some didn't suffer much from the transition. But that is more a case of minimizing harm and not actually doing good.
> No world wars. That was and is the main reason for the UN. Better for bureaucrats to waste time
> and money papershuffling than let machismo rule.
Yet. Because the US has been willing to play "cowboy" when needed to stamp out the fires before the blow up. Usually over the objection of the UN. And the toothless idiots at the IAEA have been more an aid to the despots trying to get nukes than any assisstance at actually stopping proliferation. And WHEN Iran (unless the US or Israel acts unilaterally yet again to stop it and gets condemmened by all 'right thinking people' in the UN mindset) nukes Israel and starts the mother of World Wars it will mostly the the UN to blame for allowing it. Ok, them and the Democrat Party here in the US.
Corrupt UN bureaucrats shuffling paper was what allowed Saddam to turn the Oil for Food program into a get out of jail free card. Never forget that either.
> Just how many more mass graves do we need before you misty eyed 'citizens of the world' realize the US
> is the leading cause of mass death today. Ask the survivers in Rwanda or Darfur if they believe the UN
> is a capable fo being a force for good.
And I even previewed once.... sigh. Of course that should be UN at the end of both lines but with the slashkos crowd it is probably best to make it clear.... especially in light of 25 Democrat Party Senators voting to endorse Move On's notion of the US military this afternoon.
> Absolutely! They'll be glad to crack the whip on registrars of non-countries like the Soviet Union and Taiwan.
.il and replacing it with whatever the 'Palestinians want to call the place. After all, anti-semitism seems to be the preferred pasttime of the new UN "Human Rights" body..... exactly like the old UN Human Rights Commisson.
Don't forget ending
And lets not forget seating Syria on the IAEA right after they are suspected of hosting the Norks discarded Nukes.
> An international body like the UN would be a more appropriate overseer, surely?
What idiot would write such a thing in 2007? A century ago such naive faith in International organizations to settle disputes was commonplace, fifty years ago diehards still believed the inherent contradiction inherent in such organizations could be handwaved away. But now? Now that we have seen each and every International organization fall into disrepute, chaos, corruption or outright evil?
Even previously unquestioned organizations like ISO are proving to be all too easily corrupted. Others, like the UN you wish to hand the greatest achievement of Western Civilization over to, were so flawed in their design they became failed instituitions before the ink was dry on their charters.
Seriously, this isn't a troll or flamebait. Name three achivements of the UN since it's founding. Ok, you in the back that remembered the Korean War being fought under UN auspices. Yea, because the Soviets were off in a sulk for a brief period the UN managed to allow the US (with our usual allies of the UK and the Aussies along with token support from the usual suspects) to fight to a tie, but under no circumstances actually win. And we are STILL mired down there to this day.
Same for the first Gulf War, the UN grudgingly allowed the US to lead our usual allies to solve a problem for everyone else. But I don't seem to recall the UN spearheading either of those efforts, only being convinced to get the hell out of the way.
Just how many more mass graves do we need before you misty eyed 'citizens of the world' realize the US is the leading cause of mass death today. Ask the survivers in Rwanda or Darfur if they believe the UN is a capable fo being a force for good.
No, the UN is a Parliment of Tyrants. Because it was DESIGNED that way. Shocked the new UN "Human Rights" body is as corrupt as the old one? I'm not. Because Tyrants have more votes in both the General Assembly and Security Council, all works of the UN are going to be geared to aid tyranny. Hand the Internet over to China, Cuba, Iran and their ilk? Are you barking mad?
> I'm willing to bet a free program could be almost as useful, with maybe a bit more work if the thing is stolen.
No it couldn't. The software is trivial. A program that sends a web request with the serial number embedded in the url a few seconds after a network interface comes up is all that is needed. But once you know your laptop is at IP x.x.x.x that doesn't do YOU a damned bit of good. No ISP is stupid enough to give you the IP+timestamp to physical connection point mapping for liability reasons. Think it through and imagine the Pandora's Box doing that would open. That is what you are actually buying from the tracking company, their preestablished relationships with law enforcement and the ISP community. Once known and trusted as a laptop tracking company they CAN get that info into the hands of law enforcement. Although I bet for legal reasons the tracking company itself NEVER sees the phone number/node/physical address.
> I think it's a foregone conclusion that there's a reset jumper somewhere on the MacBook. You and
> I not knowing where it is doesn't make it any less so.
Or not. Laptop makers have become serious about security because so many customers demanded it. Not sure what Apple is doing exactly, but if a Thinkpad has a hard drive password set the only way to defeat it is to send the whole unit along with either documentation proving ownership or LEO creds to one of a select group of data recovery houses. The drive password is stored on a chip inside the drive bubble as well as in the CMOS memory. So pulling the backup battery only gives you a brick.
Pulling the drive and trying to read it from another computer also fails, again because of the drive password kept in the drive itself. So if you don't have a passwordless guest account and properly protect the boot sequence to prevent booting from alternate media you can lock a laptop down to the point it is only a few spare parts to a thief.
That said, I can still think of ways to defeat the security but none that a typical 'gangster' kiddie could attempt.
> There was even a clause in there about selling used software - they stated that you were allowed to do it,
> but it had to be for a specified amount, and they got a fee out of it.
Not really, sound pretty fair. You see, you ARE allowed to resell software and AutoDesk is going to get smacked in court but support and upgrades aren't part of the First Sale Doctrine. By your vendor specifying a procedure and fee to transfer ownership of the license along with the title to the copyrighted work it means the buyer gets upgrades, bug fixes and the same level of tech suport you have now. If the fee is reasonable it would be very fair, especially when dealing with specialized software that needs support.
> This is the "dude" that some people want to be the next President of the United States.
:)
No, the column quoted above by the troll is by Dr. Walter Williams not Sen Obama. Obama would never make that much sense.
> ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into office -- he DID NOT use the Holy Bible, but instead the Koran
Again, you are so wrong you are a discredit to the Conservative side. You are confusing Senator Obama with Representitive Keith Ellison who did indeed swear his Oath of Office on a Koran. However since Rep. Ellison is openly Muslim this would be expected. Sen. Obama is a member of a bigoted African nationalist fringe church that looks for all the world like a clone of the Nation of Islam, but it IS nominally Christian, not Islamic.
> I like those Certified For Windows® Vista® stickers.
:)
I stuck the Designed for Windows 98 sticker off of one my laptops on the front of a Sparc20 just for giggles. Yes, I realize I'm going to hell for it.
> Ok, joking aside - there isn't anybody out there that sells a server that doesn't have a completely
> dismissive contract with it? Nobody? Not the servers running nuclear power plants, or submarines, or anything?
There is said to be a few of the small RTOS vendors who offer liability for bugs, but they tend to be the sort of companies who you can't get anything out of unless it is from a sales weasel so don't expect to find their EULA on a webpage. And you WILL pay for it. Why do you think NASA is toying with putting penguins into space, because even they are finding it harder to justify the prices and it isn't like they have to buy that many licenses for their space missions. Considering all the other things that can go wrong anyway, from physical design flaws to human data entry errors no OS could protect against, the odds of a Linux kernel bug taking out a mission isn't that bad. Most software error won't be in the OS anyway but in the actual control software. Then when one considers those niche OSes have old crappy development tools and a much smaller developer pool to hire from it is hard to justify the price.
> Think about it - "IIS, no suitability for any particular purpose, and no warranty!
Which would be a fatal flaw in their EULA....... IF anyoen else sold a software product that didn't include the exact same language. Yes, software is the only product sold with zero warranty, zero product liability, zero legal accountability. Go figure. Don't believe me? Go read the GPL, the Solaris EULA, Apple's EULA, etc. Every single one promises exactly the same thing, you (may or may not actually) get a shiny CD/DVD with some bits recorded on it, and if they won't read back correctly they will replace the media. Other than that you are on your own. If you want any sort of warranty you buy exotic products from small outfits at truly insane prices, for use in life critical applications. But even most medical equipment these days has Windows under the hood. Insane? Yup.
> What happens when this goes wrong?
Even worse, it HAS already went wrong. I seem to remember us all laughing at their incompetence a week or so ago when the authentication servers at MS went wonky and declared everyone was a pirate (too bad it couldn't have been on talk like a pirate day) except there wasn't any real consequences yet. Now that there are anyone want to start a pool for when it blows again and shuts down the How many more mistakes can you make before it starts to hurt?
So long as they keep their forced bundling deals with the OEMS they can bungle forever. But now we have Dell and HP slipping the leash just a wee bit. Could get interesting, but it will probably be years before they fall below 90% ship rate. Empires the size of Microsoft take a long time to die, even when they are as incompetent as this. See IBM.
> However, the signs are present that 2007 is in fact that year. We've had Ubuntu convince users like me to give it a go..
No, you are simply projecting your conversion into a larger trend. Doesn't make it so. I converted in 1994, I'm still waiting for "The Year of Linux on the Desktop". Linux on the Server came and went already, we 0wn that now. Only idiots deploy on Windows these days.... the choice is which Linux distro or flavor of UNIX. Of course most of Corporate America are idiots......
> Iran never attacked US sovereign territory.
Embassys are soverign territory of the guest country. This is an ancient and accepted rule of International Law. By attacking our embassy and seizing our nationals from said US territory, Iran did indeed commit an overt act of war. Had we been inclined we could have declared a formal state of War over the incident and been 100% compliant with all International Law and the UN would have had to just sit on the sidelines.
Personally, considering the chaos in Iran at the time I'd have cut them a small amount of slack. But once a new government was in place I'd have laid down the law, as in "Ok Khomanani[sp?] you say you are now in charge, so be it. Return our people or I swear to my God I'll have your head on a pointy stick. and your Allah won't be able to save you from my wrath."
> maybe you should go talk to General Betray Us and see how astute he is
You know, I'm actually happy as hell Move On bought that ad. Because if that wasn't 'questioning his patriotism' then I really don't know what it would take to qualify. So now that Move On has officially (buying a full page in the NYT is about as overt an act as one can imagine) declared their belief that questioning the patriotism of a highly decorated general who, to date, was 100% free of taint to his professional reputation is now fair play. I certainly can't see how they can object when we now take the obvious next step.
I now put on the table for discussion THEIR patriotism. This ragtag band of misfits, losers and socially dysfunctional turds, living in their mothers basements, blogging in their underwear that calls itself the netroots (nutroots) has more in common with UBL (did you actually READ that idiot kostard's rant?) than anything American. If you f*cking Noam Chompsky reading, Hugo Chavez lovin' socialist morons hate America so much, why don't you migrate? We are trying to build a wall on our Southern border to keep people OUT, but we certainly wouldn't try to keep yer sorry butts IN.
> He's been praising Microsoft for years, every chance he gets.
.NET and was all setto rewrite GNOME using that patenttrap. Thankfully saner heads have prevailed.... so far.
Not only that, he has yet to encounter a Microsoft technology he didn't like so much he wanted to clone it into the Free Software world and make us all dependent on it.
For years the joke was GNOME was cloned Microsoft internals with a goofy (vaguely MAc inspired treat the user as an idiot motif but without the consistency or polish of the Mac UI to make up for it) UI while KDE was cloned Microsoft UI with goofy Trolltech internals. Then Miguel hell head over heels in love with
The sooner we all write off Miguel and Novell the better off we will all be. Taking any code from that camp is just inviting a lawsuit. Sooner or later, BOOM!
> And that's also the reason why people will keep on dying until we make this punishmen
>t for this sort of corruption hurt like hell.
Except for one problem. Nobody died. No radiation leak, Nothing. Which make you a moron.
Looks like the greens and unions have teamed up to take that plant out, if I had to make a guess just from reading the one new account you linked, union goons were responsible for this 'accident'. News flash. There is nothing in a cooling tower that is more dangerous than steam. Which explains why they the operators weren't all that worked up over it, because they actually understand the technology they are using. The worst that could happen is what did occur, a total structural failure forcing them to drop to half generating capacity until they can repair or replace it.
> Now they lost their trust in Apple, and Steve Jobs is trying to buy it back.
No, there is some PR aspects to this deal but Apple didn't need to do this. It's a way to make sure they keep happy customers. People were lined up to drop 6 portraits of Ben Franklin for a toy. Being a phone anyone (ok, Miss Hilton probably doesn't have the brains to know better but with her money she can afford not to care) with any business in those lines should have realized the price would drop before the year was out. It's a cell phone people!
I certainly ain't no Apple fan, anyone looking at my posting history can see how many times I have rated flamebait/troll for failing to be affected by Steve's Kool-Aid, but when they do something cool I gotta be honest and say that too. And tossing half the price cut back to every buyer and the full difference to everyone who bought in the last two weeks is just high class.