But remember the real problem with Iraq supposedly having WMD was not Iraq using them. Everyone knew that Saddam was not crazy enough to get himself nuked.
The real threat is N. Korea selling any nukes to the highest bidder, namely terrorist organizations or other countries with REAL terrorist connections, unlike Iraq.
It was just revealed earlier this week that Libya was getting nuclear material from N. Korea. If Libya can get it, why not Syria? Or better yet, Iran has a whopping bunch of money and they are interested in finishing their bomb program quickly. They might even be quicker if Team America takes out their current nuclear labs.
But lets all go back to those headlines about Prince Charles engagement.
I would have loved to have the original theatrical releases rather than GL's re-hashes. (Or at least like the release of Brazil with all three versions.)
What really bothered me was the horrible digital artifacts. In a couple of the dog fight scenes you can see the mat background of the superimposed photos of the fighters. It shows up as a slightly less black square surrounding the ships against a darker deep space. Plus the stars are blocked out.
I saw this a lot in the Star Trek series when it was digitized. Mostly anytime a shuttle left the bay.
Also there were some wierd red shadows in some of the more spectacular explosions.
The problem is that as other forms of media distribution such as cable and satellite become more prevalent, there will be a push by the same people behind this to regulate these mechanisms.
Censorship only emboldens more censorship. To paraphrase Shrub: Appeasing censors does not work.
Hmm a Google news search of Amazon and CO2 only shows a report on the space station and a prediction that global warming will dry up the Amazon rainforest in 50 years.
Can you cite the article claiming the Amazon generates CO2 at the rate you claim. (I can see it consuming an incredible amount, but generating?)
Again, most of the time this kind of honor is awarded to leaders posthumously.
As I understand it HMS stands for His/Her Magesties Service. However, this is not a cult of personality, but more a recognition of office. Along the lines of "The king is dead. God save the king."
As for impeachable offence, Regan's administration was quite clearly supporting Contra rebels in direct violation of an explicit law of Congress. He knew about it and encouraged it. Again, he had enough people around him to take the fall that a case of plausible ignorance kept him from being impeached. It was a difference of what you know verses what you can prove.
These honors still should only be accorded to people posthumously. This just looks too much like the USSR Communist Party or Suddam's Baathist Party erecting statues to their leaders to generate support for the leaders and party.
Of course their is also the point that he probably should have been impeached for Iran-Contra but had enough loyal soldiers to fall on their own swords, aka Oliver North.
Relying on the cost of technology as a way to protect your rights is a very BAD idea. Jut go ask the RIAA. 10 years ago the RIAA and the average consumer never dreamed of being able to duplicate CD quality sound for only a couple dimes. The RIAA was confident that the barrier of the cost of digital recordings was too high to threaten their "rights" or livelyhood.
In fact, I would argue just the opposite. If the only obstacle for this kind of big brother monitoring is the cost of today's technology, then you can almost bet in 5 - 10 years, it will be quite affordable and nearing ubiquitous.
Last time I installed Mandrake it took one reboot and about a half dozen screens to set up all my networking, services, security, and default applications.
Last time I installed Windows 2000 it took 3 reboots just to get to the point where I could configure the networking. It took another half dozen reboots to install my services and applications. Another for security configuration. After all that I still had less functionality than my Mandrake system and had wasted 3 times as much time.
Now which system were you saying was so bloody easy to install?
Anybody who says Windows is easier to install than Linux just hasn't done it.
Imagine how easy Linux would be if the hardware vendors actually started supporting it with drivers.
For marketing to geeks, they need to release the cards in various colors of red, orange, green and so forth to make them look like the cards they were always inserting into the computers in Star Trek.
I still find it facinating to compare some of the technology "predicted" in that series and things that are around today.
I thought patents were only enforcable for a specific length of time. 7 or 20 years are the numbers sticking in my mind. Given that Linux is over 10 years old and I believe the AT&T code which Novell and then SCO owned is even older than that, wouldn't any patent claim be in effect mute.
Copyright lasts much longer, too long at 95 years past the death of the original author. But that is already being litegated at the US Supreme Court.
If there is anything substantive about this, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft was sitting in the SCO boardroom within hours with a nice check for a billion dollars.
Homo Sapiens made extinct by virii? I doubt it as well. Homo Sapiens made extinct by some other extinction event - including global themonuclear war - very likely if such an event happens within the next couple hundred years.
Technology is a two edged sword. It allows us to accomplish and survive in amazing places. But we become more dependent on that technology in significant ways. That technology is massively integrated, but if enough of it is damaged at once, it would shatter. I don't think the millions left 10 years after the event would be the ones holding the technology. I think the ones holding the technology would be the first to die out.
My wife is from rural Spain. Hardly a third world country or anything like that. However, one thing that is obvious to me is that the generation born in the first half of the last century (many of which lived through the Spanish Civil War) know how to survive with very little technology dependence. The generation born in the second half of the century are more educated and very proficient with technology, but also no where near as self-sufficient as their parents and grand-parents. In deed the gap is expanding rapidly.
Look at the Frontier House project as a starting example. Here the people had an idea of what they were starting out with. They had some resources in that they actually had manual tools appropriate for the task of preparing to survive through the winter. Most of them were predicted to have failed to survive the winter.
If there was an extinction event, the portions of humanity with modern technology would be the worst off. The pockets that relied on simple technology would be the most likely to survive. But then you are talking about people being sent back to the Stone Age. Once you are there then things like disease can have a significant impact. Also the food sources that even these people would know how to harvest would have undergone survival pressure because of the event.
My predictions would be coastal tropical environments would be the most likely to survive 10 years or more.
Don't get me wrong I'm not anti-technology. I embrace it and push it. However, it is no protection for an extinction event. Not until there are completely self-sufficient human habitats outside of the planet would I say that homo sapiens are safe from extinction from a single event.
And by self-sufficient habitats, I don't mean little moon-base or space-station colonies. Everything even speculated for the next 100 years would be toast within a few years if they were cut-off from regualr supply ships from Earth.
Aside from issues of bio-engineering disasters, AI run-amok, George Bush causing WWIII, I think that humanity is VERY vulnurable to extinction events. We have become too dependent on technology but not developed technology far enough for it to be a real aid.
They just finalized the settlement. So now they have to go and re-design everything to hide middleware behind security protocols.
Especially with the new licensing schemes and with everyone else in the tech industry being pinched by the economy, they back off an re-trench to continue their anti-competitive business practices.
Bill: "Nah, nah. Catch us if you can, judge!"
Also I wonder if BlackCombe won't intentially be another 5 years in development, just about the time they are let out from the settlement restrictions.
This kind of censorship will ensure this thing will be one of the hottest things selling. They may not carry it in the stores, but watch their online sites. Also watch for this thing to be traded like crazy on EBay.
Of course I'm speaking from the truely informed position of someone who doesn't even own a console of any kind. (My kid is still to young to badger me for one.)
Running public machines of any type CAN be much easier than supporting desktops. I use to run Indiana University's public computing sites, which 10 years ago was a mix of about 800 Macs and PC's.
Even the unscriptable Macs were pretty easy to manage in the public sites, primarily because we didn't have to worry about user files or individual setups. In fact we gave the consultants manning the sites a floppy disk. If software wasn't working according to spec, slap the disk in and reboot. 10 minutes later you had a pristine setup all over again. If things still didn't work, report it has a hardware failure.
Supporting users who have their own machines is much more difficult, especially if they have the power to install the software themselves.
Another reason that Unix is easier to maitain than windows is that the ability to modify the system rather than just the users' environment is more clearly seperated.
Best part - REAL cost of Windows being exposed
on
AOL's new Linux PC
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It only got one line of play in the article but that fact that Wal-Mart is selling the same computer for a $100 more that includes windows is significant.
Never before has the public been offered such clear presentation of the real cost of Windows. (At least not in such a large forum.)
Always before MS has been able to hide the cost the consumer is paying. Now that Wal-Mart draws it out in black and white, users will finally have a REAL choice about what OS they want to use on their PC.
We had one poor lady in our office who was trying to install a feature of MS Office from her CD-ROM. She stuck the thing in and after about 5 seconds there was a loud bang from the computer. She nearly hit the ceiling when she jumped.
After checking signs of smoke and what not, we opened the CD tray and there was nothing but a shards. It had completely disintegrated into pieces no more than a couple cenitmeters long.
Of course the drive was completely hosed after that. It just made a jingling noise with all the shards in the unit.
Publish the source but not for free. After all you can get source code for Windows XP today. Microsoft will tell you that Windows is open.
You just have to pay a lot for that right and sign your life away for access to it. This is not a problme for consortium members, but a real problem for the next lone graduate student hacking with some software to be an OS.
An interesting idea. But I'm underwhelmed considering the pressing need to reform the health system in the U.S.
Of course, th 43 million without health insurance doesn't include those that are under insured.
It'll be interesting if this plan doesn't add to that larger number.
However, from a larger picture, it is good to see the new internet companies continuing to innovate and think outside the box. Competitive edge and something akin to a social-conscience.
Actually if they had done REAL analysis about the feasability of a modular Windows, then this analysis could be quite quick. All they would have to do is relate what this consultant did to their own study.
However, they have never actually done the analysis. (They all ready know it can be done.)
These are the same guys that are putting up witnesses claiming the state proposal is worse than the settelment, when the witnesses have never READ the settlement. "Yes, your honor, I am saying under oath that the State's proposal is worse than anything that I could read."
I love the one where the "witness" admitted that the written testimony was prepared by the lawyers. Objection! Leading the witness!
Slashdot Mirror
But remember the real problem with Iraq supposedly having WMD was not Iraq using them. Everyone knew that Saddam was not crazy enough to get himself nuked.
The real threat is N. Korea selling any nukes to the highest bidder, namely terrorist organizations or other countries with REAL terrorist connections, unlike Iraq.
It was just revealed earlier this week that Libya was getting nuclear material from N. Korea. If Libya can get it, why not Syria? Or better yet, Iran has a whopping bunch of money and they are interested in finishing their bomb program quickly. They might even be quicker if Team America takes out their current nuclear labs.
But lets all go back to those headlines about Prince Charles engagement.
Don't pay any attention to little Johnny playing with a gun over there in the corner. He's just doing that to get attention.
They can have my steering wheel when they pry my cold dead hands from it.
I would have loved to have the original theatrical releases rather than GL's re-hashes. (Or at least like the release of Brazil with all three versions.)
What really bothered me was the horrible digital artifacts. In a couple of the dog fight scenes you can see the mat background of the superimposed photos of the fighters. It shows up as a slightly less black square surrounding the ships against a darker deep space. Plus the stars are blocked out.
I saw this a lot in the Star Trek series when it was digitized. Mostly anytime a shuttle left the bay.
Also there were some wierd red shadows in some of the more spectacular explosions.
The problem is that as other forms of media distribution such as cable and satellite become more prevalent, there will be a push by the same people behind this to regulate these mechanisms.
Censorship only emboldens more censorship. To paraphrase Shrub: Appeasing censors does not work.
Reminds me of a joke:
Why did John Edward't cat stand in the middle of the road?
To get to the other side.
Thank you, thank you. Catch me on my appearance on David Letterman later this week.
Hmm a Google news search of Amazon and CO2 only shows a report on the space station and a prediction that global warming will dry up the Amazon rainforest in 50 years.
Can you cite the article claiming the Amazon generates CO2 at the rate you claim. (I can see it consuming an incredible amount, but generating?)
Me thinks you are confused.
Gee. I thought Microsoft got to be so big by building and then illegally maintaining a monopoly through FUD and unfair trading practices.
Building a quality product that people actually WANT has only occurred to them recently.
Again, most of the time this kind of honor is awarded to leaders posthumously.
As I understand it HMS stands for His/Her Magesties Service. However, this is not a cult of personality, but more a recognition of office. Along the lines of "The king is dead. God save the king."
As for impeachable offence, Regan's administration was quite clearly supporting Contra rebels in direct violation of an explicit law of Congress. He knew about it and encouraged it. Again, he had enough people around him to take the fall that a case of plausible ignorance kept him from being impeached. It was a difference of what you know verses what you can prove.
But this is off topic.
These honors still should only be accorded to people posthumously. This just looks too much like the USSR Communist Party or Suddam's Baathist Party erecting statues to their leaders to generate support for the leaders and party.
Of course their is also the point that he probably should have been impeached for Iran-Contra but had enough loyal soldiers to fall on their own swords, aka Oliver North.
Relying on the cost of technology as a way to protect your rights is a very BAD idea. Jut go ask the RIAA. 10 years ago the RIAA and the average consumer never dreamed of being able to duplicate CD quality sound for only a couple dimes. The RIAA was confident that the barrier of the cost of digital recordings was too high to threaten their "rights" or livelyhood.
In fact, I would argue just the opposite. If the only obstacle for this kind of big brother monitoring is the cost of today's technology, then you can almost bet in 5 - 10 years, it will be quite affordable and nearing ubiquitous.
Last time I installed Mandrake it took one reboot and about a half dozen screens to set up all my networking, services, security, and default applications.
Last time I installed Windows 2000 it took 3 reboots just to get to the point where I could configure the networking. It took another half dozen reboots to install my services and applications. Another for security configuration. After all that I still had less functionality than my Mandrake system and had wasted 3 times as much time.
Now which system were you saying was so bloody easy to install?
Anybody who says Windows is easier to install than Linux just hasn't done it.
Imagine how easy Linux would be if the hardware vendors actually started supporting it with drivers.
Same could be said about the Bush administration intelligence.
For marketing to geeks, they need to release the cards in various colors of red, orange, green and so forth to make them look like the cards they were always inserting into the computers in Star Trek.
I still find it facinating to compare some of the technology "predicted" in that series and things that are around today.
I thought patents were only enforcable for a specific length of time. 7 or 20 years are the numbers sticking in my mind. Given that Linux is over 10 years old and I believe the AT&T code which Novell and then SCO owned is even older than that, wouldn't any patent claim be in effect mute.
Copyright lasts much longer, too long at 95 years past the death of the original author. But that is already being litegated at the US Supreme Court.
If there is anything substantive about this, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft was sitting in the SCO boardroom within hours with a nice check for a billion dollars.
Homo Sapiens made extinct by virii? I doubt it as well. Homo Sapiens made extinct by some other extinction event - including global themonuclear war - very likely if such an event happens within the next couple hundred years.
Technology is a two edged sword. It allows us to accomplish and survive in amazing places. But we become more dependent on that technology in significant ways. That technology is massively integrated, but if enough of it is damaged at once, it would shatter. I don't think the millions left 10 years after the event would be the ones holding the technology. I think the ones holding the technology would be the first to die out.
My wife is from rural Spain. Hardly a third world country or anything like that. However, one thing that is obvious to me is that the generation born in the first half of the last century (many of which lived through the Spanish Civil War) know how to survive with very little technology dependence. The generation born in the second half of the century are more educated and very proficient with technology, but also no where near as self-sufficient as their parents and grand-parents. In deed the gap is expanding rapidly.
Look at the Frontier House project as a starting example. Here the people had an idea of what they were starting out with. They had some resources in that they actually had manual tools appropriate for the task of preparing to survive through the winter. Most of them were predicted to have failed to survive the winter.
If there was an extinction event, the portions of humanity with modern technology would be the worst off. The pockets that relied on simple technology would be the most likely to survive. But then you are talking about people being sent back to the Stone Age. Once you are there then things like disease can have a significant impact. Also the food sources that even these people would know how to harvest would have undergone survival pressure because of the event.
My predictions would be coastal tropical environments would be the most likely to survive 10 years or more.
Don't get me wrong I'm not anti-technology. I embrace it and push it. However, it is no protection for an extinction event. Not until there are completely self-sufficient human habitats outside of the planet would I say that homo sapiens are safe from extinction from a single event.
And by self-sufficient habitats, I don't mean little moon-base or space-station colonies. Everything even speculated for the next 100 years would be toast within a few years if they were cut-off from regualr supply ships from Earth.
Aside from issues of bio-engineering disasters, AI run-amok, George Bush causing WWIII, I think that humanity is VERY vulnurable to extinction events. We have become too dependent on technology but not developed technology far enough for it to be a real aid.
They just finalized the settlement. So now they have to go and re-design everything to hide middleware behind security protocols.
Especially with the new licensing schemes and with everyone else in the tech industry being pinched by the economy, they back off an re-trench to continue their anti-competitive business practices.
Bill: "Nah, nah. Catch us if you can, judge!"
Also I wonder if BlackCombe won't intentially be another 5 years in development, just about the time they are let out from the settlement restrictions.
This kind of censorship will ensure this thing will be one of the hottest things selling. They may not carry it in the stores, but watch their online sites. Also watch for this thing to be traded like crazy on EBay.
Of course I'm speaking from the truely informed position of someone who doesn't even own a console of any kind. (My kid is still to young to badger me for one.)
Running public machines of any type CAN be much easier than supporting desktops. I use to run Indiana University's public computing sites, which 10 years ago was a mix of about 800 Macs and PC's.
Even the unscriptable Macs were pretty easy to manage in the public sites, primarily because we didn't have to worry about user files or individual setups. In fact we gave the consultants manning the sites a floppy disk. If software wasn't working according to spec, slap the disk in and reboot. 10 minutes later you had a pristine setup all over again. If things still didn't work, report it has a hardware failure.
Supporting users who have their own machines is much more difficult, especially if they have the power to install the software themselves.
Another reason that Unix is easier to maitain than windows is that the ability to modify the system rather than just the users' environment is more clearly seperated.
It only got one line of play in the article but that fact that Wal-Mart is selling the same computer for a $100 more that includes windows is significant.
Never before has the public been offered such clear presentation of the real cost of Windows. (At least not in such a large forum.)
Always before MS has been able to hide the cost the consumer is paying. Now that Wal-Mart draws it out in black and white, users will finally have a REAL choice about what OS they want to use on their PC.
We had one poor lady in our office who was trying to
install a feature of MS Office from her CD-ROM. She stuck the thing in and after about 5 seconds there was a loud bang from the computer. She nearly hit the ceiling when she jumped.
After checking signs of smoke and what not, we opened the CD tray and there was nothing but a shards. It had completely disintegrated into pieces no more than a couple cenitmeters long.
Of course the drive was completely hosed after that. It just made a jingling noise with all the shards in the unit.
Yet another fine M$ product - exploding CD's.
Publish the source but not for free. After all you can get source code for Windows XP today. Microsoft will tell you that Windows is open.
You just have to pay a lot for that right and sign your life away for access to it. This is not a problme for consortium members, but a real problem for the next lone graduate student hacking with some software to be an OS.
An interesting idea. But I'm underwhelmed considering the pressing need to reform the health system in the U.S.
Of course, th 43 million without health insurance doesn't include those that are under insured.
It'll be interesting if this plan doesn't add to that larger number.
However, from a larger picture, it is good to see the new internet companies continuing to innovate and think outside the box. Competitive edge and something akin to a social-conscience.
I would not be surprised if this "third party" wasn't a sub-siderary, like Microsoft Korea.
Off-shore companies are good for things other than hiding profits.
Actually if they had done REAL analysis about the feasability of a modular Windows, then this analysis could be quite quick. All they would have to do is relate what this consultant did to their own study.
However, they have never actually done the analysis. (They all ready know it can be done.)
These are the same guys that are putting up witnesses claiming the state proposal is worse than the settelment, when the witnesses have never READ the settlement. "Yes, your honor, I am saying under oath that the State's proposal is worse than anything that I could read."
I love the one where the "witness" admitted that the written testimony was prepared by the lawyers. Objection! Leading the witness!