I'll be delighted if his amendment succeeds and is not subsequently removed in conference or by another amendment, but if I were a betting man, I would not bet on his effort tomorrow having any actual impact on the funding.
An unfunded NSA just means more funding hidden under "National Security Discretionary Spending." That's how most black ops get funded. That and illegally selling drugs and guns, but the US Intelligence services would never do that. (sarcasm)
Hollywood has done a few. Starship Troopers and The Puppet Masters by Heinlein, for example. But they did them... WRONG.
These books will never be turned into movies. Now Hollywood may well buy the rights to the book, but that's just to use the name recognition to save money on marketing, and paste in the same old screen play with a few changes to the character's names to match the book. Read the sad story from the original screen writer on Puppet Masters. He started by reading the book, and designing the plot around the main themes and scenes. Then the producers said to change everything. The resultant movie had nothing to do with the book. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
People have bought newspapers over the years for many reasons, and thanks to the Internet, almost all of them have dried up. I can get news from any of a hundred or more countries from the comfort of my computer.
But not local news. By local I don't mean city, but neighborhood or small town. That's the niche that newspapers will more and more fall into. Leave the big picture to the internet, but until everyone, and I mean everyone, uses internet enabled readers, paper is still the most efficient way to get the small but important stories to every person on the street.
Although faster might cause us to abandon places like New Orleans instead of moating it like the netherlands does.
No, that's exactly what we will do. Expect a gazillion dollars thrown into concrete barriers to "save the cities." And their factories, and cars, and power plants...
More than life, civilization, most of mankind and big cities are near sea level, and at coasts. And the crops that feeds most of them are not so far.
How wrong can you be grasshopper. Crops are grown along rivers, generally in flood plains. Now the rivers may rise, but that's not necessarily a bad thing for farmers.
Water rationing guarantees more cheap water for big industry. Power rationing guarantees that big industry does not need to produce more energy for the same rates. Let's not get into recycling. All these things are taken to the extreme, making normal people's lives harder, and rich people's easier. Don't take more than you need, but never feel guilted into taking less.
and make your own blog. Or use Google blogger. Or any of a thousand different ways. Why is this even news?
Because they didn't come out and say, "Starting in two months we will stop indexing any site that we think is questionable. This will give you time to move your adult material to a new site." Instead they do it without any warning whatsoever. That's a big fuck you to their customers. How many times will this do this kind of thing again in the future?
Open source is not trustworthy by default. If you download and use a somewhat obscure bit of FOSS, do you really check the code yourself for bad behaviour, or do you assume that others have?
And if you are using a binary, then checking the source code is mute. Unless you compile it yourself, who's to say what you are using. Of course, can you trust your compiler...:-)
It wouldn't surprise me if Google and Microsoft have convinced themselves that whatever they did was right.
Google and Microsoft are not people, even if they are corporations. They do not convince themselves of anything. There is no moral right, wrong, or in between. Corporations exist to crush the competition and dominate whatever market they focus on, and to convince the consumers to give the greatest part of their yearly wealth to them instead of the other corporation. Image and public relations are part of that, but please don't try to give them a moral conscience.
We should have ditched the com, net and org and just force everyone to use TLDs according to their countries. Sites like www.ebay.com would be www.ebay.us, etc.
How is that any different? Companies and people are becoming increasingly more international these days. Something more useful would be function, e.g..store,.blog,.person, etc. The only reason we have the country codes is that each country wanted to control its own primary, for whatever reason. It's time to get national borders out of the internet.
"He is a strong libertarian, privacy advocate, and long time Slashdot reader who is not happy about how the NSA and other government bodies are sticking their noses into our personal business. "
That's hilarious. Does he completely ignore that the US government is completely controlled by corporations, i.e. the richest of the rich? You know, the exact people that the Libertarians worship and wish to emulate? PRISM was not designed to keep the government in power. It was designed to keep the rich people rich, and the poor people poor. You know, the logical consequences of unrestricted corporate freedom. And if that's not the Libertarian ideal, then what is?
So then have them go through the training as well. The top military had to go through it to get where they are, so why not the top corporate?
Because the Marines are under the direct command of the government, and the corporate heads are those steering the wheels of government. What could possibly go wrong?
They recently brought PM Man Bill "I have a charity" Gates our (again) to explain why he (and they) did not have to pay Tax...You know the sort of thing that pays for Education (and Hospitals..roads...etc).
This Disgusts Me
Thanks for agreeing with me. I get voted down every time I disparage his disgusting so-called "philanthropy."
He's small time, he cheated, he got caught and made an example of. If only we could have this sort of efficiency and insight into real politicians.
I hope you're joking. This is simply publicity that will jump start his public political career. There is no such thing as bad press anymore. Morals were thrown out the window a couple of decades ago.
I can tell you that with out a PhD, your are viewed as little more than a trained chimp. Masters in both CS and Applied Math seemed to mean nothing, the fact that these so called doctors were incapable of writing more than 4 lines of intelligible code was beside the point.
It was fairly annoying, and none of my work is cited in their papers.
I had the same experience at a major national lab. Because I didn't have a PhD, i.e. Post Doc, I felt like a dog's chew toy. They had a yearly "peer" review system, where the PhD's reviewed each other, and also the rest of the staff. Needless to say they were always at the top of the review, and we lesser folks were always at the bottom.
Dark-colored clothing can increase your risk of falling victim
Type A, don't drink, any time, clean feet with socks, male, standing still, wearing any color, and I'm still a mosquito magnet. The usual ratio is 10:1 compared to anyone else in the area. So, no, they have not discovered the reason.
Zimmerman's life is changed forever because of this, too, but it will never really seem fair because he's incompetent and an idiot who definitely should have known better and got off light compared to Martin.
The whole thing is just a tragedy that didn't need to happen.
Are you kidding? He's guaranteed all the gun-lover racist political rally guest spots that he can book. I predict chief of police in some small southern town before he's old enough to retire. He is a hero to lots of people.
golden spike doesn't seem to have much going for it except a board of investors though. they could just as well end up buying the trips from spacex...
But they have a scrolling marketing blurb on their web site asking for help from interested nations. Let's hope some country with disposable income stumbles onto their site and decides to donate their whole tax return!
When Google lobbies one right winger, it's news to Slashdot? Is anyone here aware that his views are shared with a significant portion of the population?
Only because criminals like him are pushing the lies down their throats. Is this any less evil than supporting Al Capone? I suggest that it's more evil, on a much greater scale.
What exactly is the security issue that's significant enough to warrant such extreme and invasive measures? Is it such a prestigious institution that there are hoards of non-registered kids trying to sneak in? Is there a problem with rampant crime or extremely bad behaviour? What possible real reason could they have, other than, "hey, we got funding for this fancy new tech!" or conditioning them to the future of a police state?
Lawyers. Lots of lawyers and parents ready to sue over the slightest thing.
In the past, people would buy new computers because their old ones were made obsolete by new ones (so not necessarily because their old ones stopped working). This hasn't happened in a while, so why would people buy new computers that aren't an upgrade, if their old ones are still working?
And what made them obsolete? Software did. Be it more memory for Photoshop, better graphics for Doom, faster CPU for watching video, there was always that killer app that you had to run, and it didn't run on your old machine. Since the software business has been going "cloud," they haven't been pushing the envelope of PC hardware. That right there is a sign of the PC losing it's pre-eminence as the device that everyone must have.
If they are transitioning to a devices and services company that kind of means they are transitioning away from the things that have made them successful.
By gaining a monopoly through the good graces of IBM, backstabbing every partner along the way, and paying off half of congress to keep them there? That's how Microsoft became successful. Or has this all been wiped from our collective memories?
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, but methods and ideas should not be patentable. Period. It was the correct decision.
I'll be delighted if his amendment succeeds and is not subsequently removed in conference or by another amendment, but if I were a betting man, I would not bet on his effort tomorrow having any actual impact on the funding.
An unfunded NSA just means more funding hidden under "National Security Discretionary Spending." That's how most black ops get funded. That and illegally selling drugs and guns, but the US Intelligence services would never do that. (sarcasm)
See subject. Of course compact nations are going to have better connectivity than sprawling ones.
Then stop sprawling. Just stop supplying service to locations with too low density.
Waiting for the "it's our god given right to live on 10 acres in the middle of no-where and still expect all the luxuries of civilization" flames.
Hollywood has done a few. Starship Troopers and The Puppet Masters by Heinlein, for example. But they did them... WRONG.
These books will never be turned into movies. Now Hollywood may well buy the rights to the book, but that's just to use the name recognition to save money on marketing, and paste in the same old screen play with a few changes to the character's names to match the book. Read the sad story from the original screen writer on Puppet Masters. He started by reading the book, and designing the plot around the main themes and scenes. Then the producers said to change everything. The resultant movie had nothing to do with the book. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
People have bought newspapers over the years for many reasons, and thanks to the Internet, almost all of them have dried up. I can get news from any of a hundred or more countries from the comfort of my computer.
But not local news. By local I don't mean city, but neighborhood or small town. That's the niche that newspapers will more and more fall into. Leave the big picture to the internet, but until everyone, and I mean everyone, uses internet enabled readers, paper is still the most efficient way to get the small but important stories to every person on the street.
Although faster might cause us to abandon places like New Orleans instead of moating it like the netherlands does.
No, that's exactly what we will do. Expect a gazillion dollars thrown into concrete barriers to "save the cities." And their factories, and cars, and power plants...
More than life, civilization, most of mankind and big cities are near sea level, and at coasts. And the crops that feeds most of them are not so far.
How wrong can you be grasshopper. Crops are grown along rivers, generally in flood plains. Now the rivers may rise, but that's not necessarily a bad thing for farmers.
Read at 3+, mod at 0+.
I live close to the new NSA data center in Bluffdale, Utah. Currently we are under a drought with widespread municipal water restrictions, yet the NSA surveillance center requires 1.7M gallons of water daily to operate.
Water rationing guarantees more cheap water for big industry. Power rationing guarantees that big industry does not need to produce more energy for the same rates. Let's not get into recycling. All these things are taken to the extreme, making normal people's lives harder, and rich people's easier. Don't take more than you need, but never feel guilted into taking less.
and make your own blog. Or use Google blogger. Or any of a thousand different ways. Why is this even news?
Because they didn't come out and say, "Starting in two months we will stop indexing any site that we think is questionable. This will give you time to move your adult material to a new site." Instead they do it without any warning whatsoever. That's a big fuck you to their customers. How many times will this do this kind of thing again in the future?
Open source is not trustworthy by default. If you download and use a somewhat obscure bit of FOSS, do you really check the code yourself for bad behaviour, or do you assume that others have?
And if you are using a binary, then checking the source code is mute. Unless you compile it yourself, who's to say what you are using. Of course, can you trust your compiler... :-)
It wouldn't surprise me if Google and Microsoft have convinced themselves that whatever they did was right.
Google and Microsoft are not people, even if they are corporations. They do not convince themselves of anything. There is no moral right, wrong, or in between. Corporations exist to crush the competition and dominate whatever market they focus on, and to convince the consumers to give the greatest part of their yearly wealth to them instead of the other corporation. Image and public relations are part of that, but please don't try to give them a moral conscience.
We should have ditched the com, net and org and just force everyone to use TLDs according to their countries. Sites like www.ebay.com would be www.ebay.us, etc.
How is that any different? Companies and people are becoming increasingly more international these days. Something more useful would be function, e.g. .store, .blog, .person, etc. The only reason we have the country codes is that each country wanted to control its own primary, for whatever reason. It's time to get national borders out of the internet.
"He is a strong libertarian, privacy advocate, and long time Slashdot reader who is not happy about how the NSA and other government bodies are sticking their noses into our personal business. "
That's hilarious. Does he completely ignore that the US government is completely controlled by corporations, i.e. the richest of the rich? You know, the exact people that the Libertarians worship and wish to emulate? PRISM was not designed to keep the government in power. It was designed to keep the rich people rich, and the poor people poor. You know, the logical consequences of unrestricted corporate freedom. And if that's not the Libertarian ideal, then what is?
So then have them go through the training as well. The top military had to go through it to get where they are, so why not the top corporate?
Because the Marines are under the direct command of the government, and the corporate heads are those steering the wheels of government. What could possibly go wrong?
They recently brought PM Man Bill "I have a charity" Gates our (again) to explain why he (and they) did not have to pay Tax...You know the sort of thing that pays for Education (and Hospitals..roads...etc).
This Disgusts Me
Thanks for agreeing with me. I get voted down every time I disparage his disgusting so-called "philanthropy."
He's small time, he cheated, he got caught and made an example of. If only we could have this sort of efficiency and insight into real politicians.
I hope you're joking. This is simply publicity that will jump start his public political career. There is no such thing as bad press anymore. Morals were thrown out the window a couple of decades ago.
I can tell you that with out a PhD, your are viewed as little more than a trained chimp. Masters in both CS and Applied Math seemed to mean nothing, the fact that these so called doctors were incapable of writing more than 4 lines of intelligible code was beside the point.
It was fairly annoying, and none of my work is cited in their papers.
I had the same experience at a major national lab. Because I didn't have a PhD, i.e. Post Doc, I felt like a dog's chew toy. They had a yearly "peer" review system, where the PhD's reviewed each other, and also the rest of the staff. Needless to say they were always at the top of the review, and we lesser folks were always at the bottom.
So people here can stop guessing:
Mosquitos prefer blood type O
Beer drinkers beware
Watch out for the full moon
Keep your socks on
Mosquitos know if you're expecting
Running won't help you
Dark-colored clothing can increase your risk of falling victim
Type A, don't drink, any time, clean feet with socks, male, standing still, wearing any color, and I'm still a mosquito magnet. The usual ratio is 10:1 compared to anyone else in the area. So, no, they have not discovered the reason.
Zimmerman's life is changed forever because of this, too, but it will never really seem fair because he's incompetent and an idiot who definitely should have known better and got off light compared to Martin.
The whole thing is just a tragedy that didn't need to happen.
Are you kidding? He's guaranteed all the gun-lover racist political rally guest spots that he can book. I predict chief of police in some small southern town before he's old enough to retire. He is a hero to lots of people.
golden spike doesn't seem to have much going for it except a board of investors though. they could just as well end up buying the trips from spacex...
But they have a scrolling marketing blurb on their web site asking for help from interested nations. Let's hope some country with disposable income stumbles onto their site and decides to donate their whole tax return!
When Google lobbies one right winger, it's news to Slashdot? Is anyone here aware that his views are shared with a significant portion of the population?
Only because criminals like him are pushing the lies down their throats. Is this any less evil than supporting Al Capone? I suggest that it's more evil, on a much greater scale.
What exactly is the security issue that's significant enough to warrant such extreme and invasive measures? Is it such a prestigious institution that there are hoards of non-registered kids trying to sneak in? Is there a problem with rampant crime or extremely bad behaviour? What possible real reason could they have, other than, "hey, we got funding for this fancy new tech!" or conditioning them to the future of a police state?
Lawyers. Lots of lawyers and parents ready to sue over the slightest thing.
In the past, people would buy new computers because their old ones were made obsolete by new ones (so not necessarily because their old ones stopped working). This hasn't happened in a while, so why would people buy new computers that aren't an upgrade, if their old ones are still working?
And what made them obsolete? Software did. Be it more memory for Photoshop, better graphics for Doom, faster CPU for watching video, there was always that killer app that you had to run, and it didn't run on your old machine. Since the software business has been going "cloud," they haven't been pushing the envelope of PC hardware. That right there is a sign of the PC losing it's pre-eminence as the device that everyone must have.
If they are transitioning to a devices and services company that kind of means they are transitioning away from the things that have made them successful.
By gaining a monopoly through the good graces of IBM, backstabbing every partner along the way, and paying off half of congress to keep them there? That's how Microsoft became successful. Or has this all been wiped from our collective memories?