Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
-- philosopher George Carlin
The philosopher George Carlin wasn't very bright either. Half of all people are stupider that the median. "Average", while not a precise mathematical term, is generally understood if used without qualification, to refer to the arithmetic mean. This is one reason I try to avoid calling others stupid - it's very easy to embarrass yourself.
Another question that should have been asked in this poll: Are you aware that 9/11 could have been prevented if FBI headquarters had simply paid attention to reports from their field offices, and no dragnet monitoring would have been needed?
The article that you link to in the Daily Mail panders to a peculiar kind of 'stupid american' stereotype that we Brits cling to when we want to feel better about the end of empire and the decline of our military and industrial might.
I'm surprised that a majority of Slashdotters are British. The 'stupid American' thing is very popular here too.
You could replace the questions with ones of similar obscurity from British history and get a similar set of responses from a random selection of British folk. Try going out onto any street in the UK and asking the yokels about the 1689 Bill of Rights. Or get them to point to the location of the Battle of Trafalgar / Waterloo / Balaclava on a map.
IIRC I have seen such polls. Could they also have been Daily Mail stories?
P.S. I confess to not knowing about the Battle of Balaclava. It sounds confusingly like the Battle of Baklava, but everybody fights over the last piece.
I believe the poll results, but only for one reason. Because the responses were framed in the context of "to fight terrorism."
I suspect you're right. Poll results are notoriously sensitive to exactly how the questions are phrased. The other problem is that those polled might not understand the entire scope of the program, or have considered how it can be misused and how little protection against misuse there might be (or might not be - that's the charming thing about a secret court). Nevertheless I find the overall results very depressing. IIRC there have been polls from time to time asking people if they believed in the principles of the Bill of Rights (but phrased in such a way that it wasn't obvious they were talking about the Bill of Rights). Unfortunately what many (including me) consider the most important part of American law didn't fare well. Thank goodness the 1st Congress was filled with radicals.
I began to discover features, flexibility and power that make other modern operating systems seem primitive.
It frustrates me that most people these days think *nix is the be all and end all of OS'es. Other things and other approaches are possible! Don't get me wrong, I know that VMS is a lost cause (and frankly I haven't used it in many years), and I like the better modern *nixes (the ones in the 80's were awful though). However it seems like there is nothing left but Windows and various *nixes, which limits people's thinking. Okay, somewhere in the bowels of various computer rooms are also z/OS machines, but I know nothing about them!
Over 21 is old - get used to it. I'm 29 I think (my memory isn't what it used to be - is Reagan still president?). Still I admit that I'll probably be by the shuffle board court before you - but not by much!
IIRC 4.0 was a turkey. We waited until 4.1 because word had quickly gotten out about 4.0. Undoubtedly I exaggerate due to my nostalgic haze, but while DEC occasionally screwed up (e.g. 4.0) it was overall a very reliable OS. Certainly way better than any *nix variety of the day that I had the displeasure to work with.
Probably nothing changed. The US military may not have been a big enough VMS customer to justify HP maintaining it. Shame HP didn't open source it, or even turn it over to some small company that could maintain it for less money (and sell to the military, etc.).
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
Widely attributed to Benjamin Franklin on the internet, sometimes without the second sentence, it is not found in any of his known writings, and the word "lunch" is not known to have appeared anywhere in english literature until the 1820s, decades after his death.
What if the "terrorist" dials a wrong number and reaches you? Or that the "terrorist" uses the same accountant on the phone/email?
Would that make all your other connections as terrorist suspects too?
Don't worry citizen, they probably won't take it beyond two or three degrees of separation. There's only so much room at Gitmo.
There is one item of concern though. You seem to be bordering on advocating the violent overthrow of the US government. You may be committing a breach of 18 USC 2385 - Advocating overthrow of Government [cornell.edu]. I hope you don't mean that.
Its funny that you bring up warrants, since they had to go to the FISA court for authorizations as part of the program. The court was also overseeing them.
That settles it then. Who wouldn't be satisfied with the assurance that a secret court is overseeing this? I am just soooo suspicious that people won't always do the right thing, kind of like those traitors that wrote the Constitution.
Since this is becoming a major issue for young voters, it would be good for them to take the initiative.
Devoutly to be wished that younger voters are like that, but I'm skeptical. If anything they seem to be less concerned about privacy issues than their parents.
Only files that you chose to make structured were structured. Most files were flat (the only choice in Unix of course). Why did you need to open hundreds of structured files?
Forget it old timer, you and I can discuss it after the shuffle board game if I can fix my walker. Kids today think that *nix is The One True Way. They don't remember when men were men and real computers ran VMS. None of this "can't get any" geek crap either. Beautiful women would throw themselves at VMS programmers and admins until you finally had to say enough, enough!
I really, really hope that OpenVMS could be open-sourced and this codebase might serve as the base for a community-written x86 port.
Forget it. Even if HP did open source it there wouldn't be enough people willing to support it, just a few old diehards. Kids today think that in the beginning God created *nix and all else is man's blasphemy.
Just look to Windows. Just as IBM(rot -1) = HAL, VMS(rot 1) = WNT. VMS and Windows NT were both developed by Dave Cutler (who hated UNIX).
The original Windows NT (3.51?) was a pretty good OS. After the first release though it became Microsoftized. I don't know what Cutler's involvement with that was. However, the real beauty of VMS wasn't so much it's architecture (though that had a lot of good points) but the incredible quality of DEC's implementation. Bugs were for the competition.
"Cutler hated Unix" probably sounds like Neanderthal blasphemy to most Slahsdotters, but there were plenty of reasons to hate Unix in the 80's. The big split (AT&T vs. BSD style), numerous other incompatibilities (later overcome to a large extent by GNU utilities), horribly inefficient, bad security even for (largely) pre-Internet days, and practically non-existent documentation. Take it from an old fart who was there - any Unix of the last 15-20 years is definitely not your father's Unix.
Once a political view reaches a certain low percentage within a group it is almost impossible to have rational, productive discussion.
No, what you want is an echo chamber. There are plenty of libertarians posting here, but not so many that they don't have to defend their arguments. "taxes = freedom" and "government = freedom" are gross simplifications for sake of ridicule - something you can't get away with unless the vast majority already agrees with you. Agree with them or not, they're both part of reasonable arguments.
a piece of Antarctica itself. I just can't picture a large nation going to war to defend either the Antarctic Treaty or a claim to such remote and desolate land
Maybe not, but it'd make for great target practice (forget men with guns, I'm thinking bombs, artillery and missiles).
Slashdot Mirror
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that. -- philosopher George Carlin
The philosopher George Carlin wasn't very bright either. Half of all people are stupider that the median. "Average", while not a precise mathematical term, is generally understood if used without qualification, to refer to the arithmetic mean. This is one reason I try to avoid calling others stupid - it's very easy to embarrass yourself.
Another question that should have been asked in this poll: Are you aware that 9/11 could have been prevented if FBI headquarters had simply paid attention to reports from their field offices, and no dragnet monitoring would have been needed?
I probably couldn't even be considered a libertarian
But are you 14? If so I'm glad they're still teaching Americans about the Bill of Rights.
The article that you link to in the Daily Mail panders to a peculiar kind of 'stupid american' stereotype that we Brits cling to when we want to feel better about the end of empire and the decline of our military and industrial might.
I'm surprised that a majority of Slashdotters are British. The 'stupid American' thing is very popular here too.
You could replace the questions with ones of similar obscurity from British history and get a similar set of responses from a random selection of British folk. Try going out onto any street in the UK and asking the yokels about the 1689 Bill of Rights. Or get them to point to the location of the Battle of Trafalgar / Waterloo / Balaclava on a map.
IIRC I have seen such polls. Could they also have been Daily Mail stories?
P.S. I confess to not knowing about the Battle of Balaclava. It sounds confusingly like the Battle of Baklava, but everybody fights over the last piece.
+5 (insightful, not funny)
I believe the poll results, but only for one reason. Because the responses were framed in the context of "to fight terrorism."
I suspect you're right. Poll results are notoriously sensitive to exactly how the questions are phrased. The other problem is that those polled might not understand the entire scope of the program, or have considered how it can be misused and how little protection against misuse there might be (or might not be - that's the charming thing about a secret court). Nevertheless I find the overall results very depressing. IIRC there have been polls from time to time asking people if they believed in the principles of the Bill of Rights (but phrased in such a way that it wasn't obvious they were talking about the Bill of Rights). Unfortunately what many (including me) consider the most important part of American law didn't fare well. Thank goodness the 1st Congress was filled with radicals.
I began to discover features, flexibility and power that make other modern operating systems seem primitive.
It frustrates me that most people these days think *nix is the be all and end all of OS'es. Other things and other approaches are possible! Don't get me wrong, I know that VMS is a lost cause (and frankly I haven't used it in many years), and I like the better modern *nixes (the ones in the 80's were awful though). However it seems like there is nothing left but Windows and various *nixes, which limits people's thinking. Okay, somewhere in the bowels of various computer rooms are also z/OS machines, but I know nothing about them!
Over 21 is old - get used to it. I'm 29 I think (my memory isn't what it used to be - is Reagan still president?). Still I admit that I'll probably be by the shuffle board court before you - but not by much!
IIRC 4.0 was a turkey. We waited until 4.1 because word had quickly gotten out about 4.0. Undoubtedly I exaggerate due to my nostalgic haze, but while DEC occasionally screwed up (e.g. 4.0) it was overall a very reliable OS. Certainly way better than any *nix variety of the day that I had the displeasure to work with.
Probably nothing changed. The US military may not have been a big enough VMS customer to justify HP maintaining it. Shame HP didn't open source it, or even turn it over to some small company that could maintain it for less money (and sell to the military, etc.).
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
Widely attributed to Benjamin Franklin on the internet, sometimes without the second sentence, it is not found in any of his known writings, and the word "lunch" is not known to have appeared anywhere in english literature until the 1820s, decades after his death.
What if the "terrorist" dials a wrong number and reaches you? Or that the "terrorist" uses the same accountant on the phone/email? Would that make all your other connections as terrorist suspects too?
Don't worry citizen, they probably won't take it beyond two or three degrees of separation. There's only so much room at Gitmo.
There is one item of concern though. You seem to be bordering on advocating the violent overthrow of the US government. You may be committing a breach of 18 USC 2385 - Advocating overthrow of Government [cornell.edu]. I hope you don't mean that.
That's right! Careful of what you say citizen.
Its funny that you bring up warrants, since they had to go to the FISA court for authorizations as part of the program. The court was also overseeing them.
That settles it then. Who wouldn't be satisfied with the assurance that a secret court is overseeing this? I am just soooo suspicious that people won't always do the right thing, kind of like those traitors that wrote the Constitution.
Since this is becoming a major issue for young voters, it would be good for them to take the initiative.
Devoutly to be wished that younger voters are like that, but I'm skeptical. If anything they seem to be less concerned about privacy issues than their parents.
And that because of its structured filesystem.
Only files that you chose to make structured were structured. Most files were flat (the only choice in Unix of course). Why did you need to open hundreds of structured files?
VMS was no more secure than UNIX, and arguably less so (because its security and configuration was a lot more complex).
Which Unix variety are you talking about and which year(s)? It makes a big difference.
There are less illiterates than people who can't read.
No, there are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.
Forget it old timer, you and I can discuss it after the shuffle board game if I can fix my walker. Kids today think that *nix is The One True Way. They don't remember when men were men and real computers ran VMS. None of this "can't get any" geek crap either. Beautiful women would throw themselves at VMS programmers and admins until you finally had to say enough, enough!
I really, really hope that OpenVMS could be open-sourced and this codebase might serve as the base for a community-written x86 port.
Forget it. Even if HP did open source it there wouldn't be enough people willing to support it, just a few old diehards. Kids today think that in the beginning God created *nix and all else is man's blasphemy.
BLASPHEMER!
Of fsck. India ?
The real beauty of VMS was the incredible quality of its DEC implementation, so if they shipped it to India I'm glad it was euthanized.
Just look to Windows. Just as IBM(rot -1) = HAL, VMS(rot 1) = WNT. VMS and Windows NT were both developed by Dave Cutler (who hated UNIX).
The original Windows NT (3.51?) was a pretty good OS. After the first release though it became Microsoftized. I don't know what Cutler's involvement with that was. However, the real beauty of VMS wasn't so much it's architecture (though that had a lot of good points) but the incredible quality of DEC's implementation. Bugs were for the competition.
"Cutler hated Unix" probably sounds like Neanderthal blasphemy to most Slahsdotters, but there were plenty of reasons to hate Unix in the 80's. The big split (AT&T vs. BSD style), numerous other incompatibilities (later overcome to a large extent by GNU utilities), horribly inefficient, bad security even for (largely) pre-Internet days, and practically non-existent documentation. Take it from an old fart who was there - any Unix of the last 15-20 years is definitely not your father's Unix.
Once a political view reaches a certain low percentage within a group it is almost impossible to have rational, productive discussion.
No, what you want is an echo chamber. There are plenty of libertarians posting here, but not so many that they don't have to defend their arguments. "taxes = freedom" and "government = freedom" are gross simplifications for sake of ridicule - something you can't get away with unless the vast majority already agrees with you. Agree with them or not, they're both part of reasonable arguments.
a piece of Antarctica itself. I just can't picture a large nation going to war to defend either the Antarctic Treaty or a claim to such remote and desolate land
Maybe not, but it'd make for great target practice (forget men with guns, I'm thinking bombs, artillery and missiles).