YES! Jail! and the next time I seen them damn kids dropping flyers on my front porch.. I'll be waiting with my shotgun. Spam is annoying for me just as it is for the next person, but you still have to carry those flyers from the mailbox to the recycling bin (or put a recycling bin at my front door saying "Yes Flyers Please!") but that'd hardly the point.. I think jail-time would be somewhat extreme
That's just a terrible analogy. It's more like someone hacking into your print server and making all of your printers print advertisements for their products. Or maybe it's more like fax advertising. It has a real cost for the receiver.
In addition, not everyone can throw out 50 tons of trash every week. I live on a small, populous island with only one remaining landfill. Trash disposal costs me about $60/month for one 50-gallon trash can, and the recyclables need to be separately bagged inside of the can. Junk mail costs me real money to receive, even though its postage was paid by the advertisers.
Spam is even worse, because the advertisers usually steal/hack the "postage". They exploit security holes in other systems to send their spam, then they usually direct the recipients to hacked or rooted web servers. And don't even get me started about the zombie nets they've used.
I am Dutch too and am getting tired of this self-loathing argument. The language is no harder than English, Swedish, Norwegian or heck, Indonesian. I've seen _many_ immigrants who picked it up (and got fluent) within a year.
That's funny, I'm getting really tired of this "let's rank languages by difficulty while ignoring the important variables" game. Dutch is one of the easiest languages to learn if you are a native speaker of a Germanic language, such as English or.. German. Dutch is also going to be one of th hardest languages for a native speaker of, say, Japanese.
In the first case you have very similar languages, where most of the grammar and word order is fairly similar when not identical.
When you start learning radically different languages, it gets much more difficult. You have to learn to not only recognize, distinguish, and differentiate between, but pronounce entirely different sounds and/or tones. The grammar seems highly illogical and vastly different from your current way of thinking. You have to learn to think, read, and write in a new alphabet without trying to convert any of the characters in your head. Hell, if you're learning Chinese you really just have to start memorize entire "words" visually rather than having an alphabet to build from. This is extremely difficult for anyone.
So, I say again, everyone please quit whining about languages being easier or harder for "everyone" to learn. Not even taking into account culture or aptitude, some people are going to have more or less difficulty with a different language based on the differences between the two, especially if it's their first foreign language.
All citizens should have the right to know what their leaders know. Anything less isn't fair. The only reason for secrecy is perhaps during times of war, when and where the next attack will occur. Doing anything to get an upper hand against an enemy is naturally sought, but a government isn't or shouldn't be at war with it's citizens. Hiding truths only slows the progress of intelligence and breeds ignorance.
I'm amazed this passes for "Insightful" these days. Let's start out with an imaginary scenario to prove why this is harmful, with the assumption that, when 260 million people know something, it's not going to remain an international secret.
-The Petorian embassy uses secure telephones called PETOs. -Petoria sells their encryption technology to several other imaginary countries which share similar hostile attitudes against the United States. -Petoria is beginning to assume a hostile posture towards the United States and is assessed to be on the verge of launching an attack. -The NSA manages to find a flaw in their encryption. -The NSA is using this, in conjunction with an undetectable wiretap, to monitor the supposedly secure, encrypted communications of the ambassador. -The government shares this knowledge with the public, inherently disclosing their ability to break Petoria's PETO encryption. This may or may not stop Petoria from launching their attack. -Every country using Petorian encryption technology switches to a more secure means of communication, eliminating the NSA's ability to protect the country with this method.
The above may be an extreme example, but a lot of classified information really could be a threat to national security, or would have been back when it was classified.
Even if the NSA simply shared their [imaginary] amazing 100% secure encryption technology that required only 20 flops to encrypt anything, it'd be a threat to security because everyone else would switch to this technology, rendering the US incapable of monitoring any communications.
I've always been fascinated by encryption and signals intelligence, so I've read at least one book on every war I know if it being used in. That being said, it's been extremely beneficial and saved our asses in nearly every war. If you read some of the recently-declassified spy work done during the cold war, you'll be amazed it's not still classified. You can easily see how it would have been dangerous for that kind of information to be released. I wouldn't want the US to sacrifice whatever abilities it has just to help Joe Sixpack make sure his wife can't read his emails to his mistress.
I think you've watched too many movies about the NSA/CIA/TLAs being at war with Americans.
I meant starting with a survival ability in german, you can become at least a level 2 by the US Government standard in about 6 months. Sorry, I should've been more clear.
It seems crazy to you, but it comes naturally for them. And God forbid you have to learn certain "rules" when learning a language.
Obviously the wackiness and difficulty of a language is dependent on the native tongue of the person attempting to learn a language. I've never really cared what god forbade or allowed, but I am familiar with learning "rules" in the process of learning a language. Not that I like them.
It appears that even the Wikipedia articles cannot verify with certainty that one borrowed from another. You should've started your rant with "IMO", IMHO.
I don't see why I have to preface my post with "in my opinion". It is quite obviously my opinion, and it's fairly easy to tell the difference between a fact and an opinion in my writing. I'm sorry if it confused you. I didn't mean to imply that I was relying on an internationally accepted standard of wackiness. Of course I think most people would assign Korean a 9 or 10 on a 1-10 wackiness scale, with 10 being the wackiest. Native speakers of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean would likely place Korean around the 2-3 rating and English at the 9-10 end of the scale. These things are subjective, although somewhat scientific. Any serious institution that teaches multiple languages can show you trend data that, over time, certain languages are more readily learned by native speakers of certain languages.
No, they are not "changing" thousands of hanja into hangul, they are translating them.
Ok, I apologize. They aren't, as I quite simply and obviously paraphrased it "changing hanja into hangul". They are changing their use from one alphabet to the other, in an attempt to remove the chinese background but still retaining the use of the previous alphabet therefor requiring the use of both, and simultaneously using both alphabets interchangeably. Of course, you knew that, and so did I, and the article I linked to clearly states that, but if you want to pick apart my paraphrasing I'll just have to be a little more verbose.
Oh, and about switching on and off from hanja and hangul freely, Japanese does that also... but with 3 different scripting types, as opposed to 2 in Korean. So, I don't see why you're making a big stink over it.
And I admit Japanese is rather wacky. I further admit that it is quite likely that Japanese and Korean have both "borrowed" from one another for a long time. I'll admit that kanji are a pain in the butt to memorize, but katakana and hiragana aren't all that hard to learn. I can see why you would say that "3 instead of 2" makes Japanese more difficult. Obviously I still feel that Korean is the harder between the two. I am a native english speaker, and Japanese has proven extremely difficult for me to learn. It is damned difficult. I just feel Korean is goofier, wackier, and even more difficult.
Can someone please mod parent -1, Troll?
Please do. Let's metamod their mod points away. You may disagree with me, but you'd be wrong to call me a troll. Perhaps your emotional reaction is because you're oversensitive and emotional, but it's not because I am trying to troll people. I am just stating my opinion, some facts, and a link to find more facts. If it makes you happy, I'll link to Japanese_Language on wikipedia next time as well.
I have. Of course that was with a limited knowledge of grammar and vocabulary to start with, but survival level ability at most. Languages can be picked up easily when you don't spend the whole time banding together with other people who speak the same language as you do.
Try Korean if you think Japanese is wacky. Throw in a bunch of Japanese, change some of it a bit, then claim it as your own and deny any similarities. Borrow most of the grammatical rules from Japanese, and further claim that they are not related or that the Japanese stole the ideas. Proceed to throw in Chinese characters and words while denying all claims of similarity. Add in some crazy rules about honorifics and speech level, then make them thoroughly embedded into the language so that you must constantly keep them in mind while learning. When you're done with that, change the thousands of hanja that used to be used for the written language (chinese written characters), and replace them with a 24 character Korean alphabet, Hangul. When writing, use either the hanja or hangul, even within a sentence you are free to switch off.
The language is so jacked up that linguists don't even know what it should be categorized as. It'll probably end up just being listed as a language isolate.
I do have to agree with you about German, though. It's an extremely logical and simple language in many ways. The grammar is very logical and has few exceptions compared to other languages. Once you learn the grammar the pronunciation and vocabulary are likewise consistent. It can be easily learned by an English speaker in 6 months of immersion.
Yeah, that was it. It's a great idea and it definitely solves my problem. I just forgot all about it while I was testing the capabilities of the site. So many good terms to search for:).
I'm holding out for: "Your copy of Windows is genuine/pirate"...with the volume set to XXX-loud if it's pirate.
The "Your copy of Windows is pirate" would just make people laugh and brag about it. What they really need is a "Hello. I'm watching GAY PORN! MEN HAVING SEX WITH MEN! IN THE BUTT!" sound played extremely loud. They could blackmail people into actually buying legit copies, especially if they syngergized by incorporating text-to-speech technology with the search history saving functionality of Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Genuine Advantage Automatic Updater and used the startup sounds to effectively communicate interesting search histories to anyone in the room. "Hello. I'm a pirated copy of Windows Vista. I was used to search WebMD for 'penile discharge' last night. Please contact Microsoft Legal Department in order to have your startup sound changed."
Hmm, I'm tempted to write a little proof of concept program for my own pirated copy just to see how it works... The hard part would be getting it to find the juicy stuff on its own.
Adherance to HR's policies is usually a contractual obligation, after all; and they all frown upon dating co-workers.
Especially if it's the boss's daughter. Even more so if she's just a summer intern. Even more so if she's just a summer intern from the local high school.
All of that being said, "I'm not asking you out on a date, but a bunch of the guys are going to the pub tonight. We thought you might want to come along so we can all get to know each other" is pretty innocent and hard to misconstrue. I think the confusion arrives when you're stuttering, tripping over yourself, and gawking at her tits while trying to ask her if she "umm maybe uhh you know wants to kinda go to the uhh pub with uhhhh us tonight".
There are also some more complicated issues involved in sexual harassment. Please see this Sexual Harassment Training Video for more information.
On the contrary, there have been a good many studies that have shown just that; the problem is that there have also been a lot of studies that have shown the opposite. About the best you can say is that the jury is still out on the matter.
Perhaps that's because it's essentially illegal to research, or even access other scientists' research, the medicinal benefits of marijuana. Not that it matters. We already know alcohol and tobacco are worse than marijuana. The only reason MJ is illegal and alcohol and tobacco are legal is because of the public outcry and outrage that would accompany the banning of our favorite vices. The situation will remain like this because, as part of the indoctrination in our schools, children are taught that marijuana is an evil gateway drug that'll make you into a cocaine-snorting crackwhore who will orally please anyone for some drugs. Hell, when I went to school they tried to force me to sign a pledge that I would never do drugs (to include tobacco and alcohol). They almost managed to stop me from graduating elementary school because I refused to sign such a pledge.
I also noticed you said "a good many studies" instead of "many good studies". I am highly skeptical of any studies sponsored by the current government which declare marijuana to be a dangerous, evil thing. Unfortunately, we'll never be able to verify their results since nobody is allowed to access them anymore, let alone duplicate their results.
2) elite desert units that were to run a rescue mission prior to the election somehow 'forgot' to put sand filters over the engine intakes of their choppers
Congratulations! That's the stupidest attempt to rewrite the history of desert one and operation eagle claw that I've ever seen. I hope you were joking...
If not, what really happened is that it was a giant clusterfuck. Not all of the choppers were able to make it, mainly due to human error but also due to dust storms and mechanical failures. Once they decided to evacuate the area and cancel the mission, the story splits. Either some rotorhead flew himself into a 130's main stabilizer or, if you ask the rotorheads, some fucking air force guy told him he was clear to taxi and directed him in the wrong direction. We'll never know what really happened since the people who could tell us are dead. Either way, eight great men were killed. Five USAF, three USMC. They failed in an embarassing catastrophe, but they were all heros. Not a single one of them would've knowingly done anything to endanger the mission or their colleagues. The 8th SOS, delta, the marines, and the navy all did a great job. The mission was just too complex and too many obstacles were thrown in their way.
RIP: Richard Bakke, USAF Harold Lewis, USAF Lyn McIntosh, USAF Charles McMillan, USAF Joel Mayo, USAF Dewey Johnson, USMC John Harvey, USMC George Holmes, USMC
Since 9-11, soon thereafter, the US no longer maintains extensive bases in saudi arabia. They were "invited to leave" by the royal government there, and did so, even though they didn't want to of course.
coincidence?
Of course not. These bases were created in response to the threat Iraq posed to American interests in the region (read: Kuwaiti oil fields). With the elimination of the threat of Iraq invading a major supplier of oil, these bases were no longer needed. In addition, new ones were being built in Iraq that were going to be much larger than the ones in Saudi, and likely with more favorable leases for the US Government.
The safest rule is: "One man, one woman, one lifetime together in marriage" If this moral law were followed, much sickness, waste of tax money and other society problems would be averted.
Right. And if people would quit sharing needles, engaging in dangerous activities, being mean to one another, and think only of the betterment of society much sickness, waste of tax money and other societal problems would be averted. Surely this is the society which all christians claim we should have...
Of course, I disagree. I would never be happy with only one partner for my entire life, and I don't think I'd ever want one who would be. Your vision of America also makes the future look rather bleak for all homo and bi-sexual people, on top of all the swingers and polygamists out there.
Personally, I'm more worried about ending violent crime, hate, and bigotry than I am about enforcing a moral code of "one man, one woman, one lifetime together in marriage".
A man happily married is not likely to go to a bar to get drunk and get into fights.
A happy man is not likely to go to a bar to get drunk and get into fights. Marriage has nothing to do with it. On top of that, many happily married men have gotten into bar fights. I've gone to plenty of bars to have a beer with my father. Even in christianity there's nothing immoral about going to a bar, having a beer, and playing a game of pool. I was in a bar, drinking my first beer, playing pool when a drunk came up to me and tried to pick a fight. Luckily his friends came and held him back. If I had to fight him in self-defense, I would no longer be worrying about his health. Between the two of us, which one is more likely to cause serious bodily damage? One of his friends later told me that he did this regularly and lost the fights nearly every time. Had I known that, I might've broken his jaw in an attempt to knock some sense into him.
I certainly wasn't doing anything immoral or putting myself into a situation that should be dangerous.
No no no. Think laterally. Tape it without her knowing. If she tries to do you in after the fact, well it's hard to argue against video evidence. Not to mention the payback of leaking it on the internet once the case is thrown out... and if it all stays good, just archive it for a rainy day...
As brilliant as this is, it's important to remember that taping and releasing videos like this without the consent of the other party is illegal in most places. Unless they're celebrities, then you can do whatever you want, even if you weren't involved in the actual sex act.
NOTE: In many cases, this technique also boosts the career of the "victim" of a released sex tape.
Part of the reason public schools don't work well for him is that he needs more supervision to keep him working than they can provide.
Excuse me, sir, but I believe you may have misspelled ass-kicking. Seriously, though, it's likely he has some sort of emotional need (needs more love from parents, gets too much love from parents, bored off his ass at school) which isn't being met. It's usually the ass-kicking one, but for me it was a combination of inadequate ass-kicking and boredom. I didn't do my work in school because it was stupid, pointless, repetitive, and never challenged me. The biggest challenge seemed to be of the "How long can you write while your fingers are sore from holding the pencil?" variety. That didn't change until I got some excellent teachers and took AP courses which required me to at least read the book to pass the tests.
Don't take this as a parenting insult or me telling you how your kids should be raised, just try to think about if it might be one of those issues that's holding your child back.
Like any american he has the right to the pursuit of liberty and the freedom to believe in whatever he deems his pursuit of happiness.
I'm sorry, but it looks like the educational system failed you as well. You're making a great reference to the declaration of independence, which never actually made it into the constitution, let alone the American legal system. While you have many rights, depriving a child, even yours, of an education is not one of them.
The same argument that applies to keeping god out of school, applies to science that is not necesarrily proven.
Why? Science can't be proven, by definition. Religion doesn't have any supporting evidence, by definition. So you're saying the argument is, or should be, that neither should be taught in school? Or that nothing as concrete as 2+2=4 should be taught in school?
When a religious parent is convinced that 1/0 is possible, then science can be mandatory.
What does the division of one by zero have to do with evolution or science? I may not be able to convince you that 2+2=4, but I'm going to raise hell if my kids don't learn it in school.
The argument against teaching evolution in schools is currently "We don't like it and you're not going to convince us otherwise. And we're not going to let you teac^H^H^H^Hbrainwash our kids to believe otherwise!" I'm sorry, but that doesn't cut it. Not even if 99% of Americans believe it's the right thing to do. The Theory of Evolution is one of the most researched, documented, and supported theories in science. I feel it's understood better than gravity at this point in time. If we're going to quit teaching the grand unified theory of biology in schools because of political pressure from religious lobbyists, we may as well surrender and have the church resume its role in totalitarian governance.
The evolution debate is the greatest page-view generator since abortion. Slashdot is just milking it for all it's worth.
Debate?! There is no debate. There's a flamewar between people who deny evolution and the people who understand it. There's an argument over whether or not it should be taught in schools. As always, there are religious leaders trying to take control of the government. But to imply that there is actually a real debate about evolution is just disgusting. You've been around for a long time and are a subscriber. I'm sure you didn't intend to imply that, but please use different terminology...
In addition, I'm sure slashdot doesn't intend to generate flamewars every time they post an article relating to it. But it certainly is science-related and major news that all nerds should be concerned about. I can't think of anything more pressing than ensuring there is a well-educated generation of nerds to succeed us. The problem is that, just like you'll observe with any post that mentions a republican or democrat these days, there are some very passionate, upset people on both sides of the argument. They use every chance they get to raise their voices and argue about it. It's really all they see.
Well that & it would be to smart, you know, using these laptops in school the same way they are going to in Thailand, no more need for books when they can have all of their assignments, books and what not right there in an easy to carry laptop instead of 80lbs of books.
Last I saw, obesity was a major problem facing american schoolchildren. I say we make them carry the laptops and a UPS in addition to the books, not instead of them. And let's take away the schoolbuses and cars, too. I would like to be the first to suggest the "$100 Bicycle for Every Child" project.
Seriously, though, I wish the media and publishing conglomerates would allow digital copies of the books to be distributed instead. It would've made my education at least slightly better, although it makes it harder to do your homework on the way to school.
Your powers of comprehension are underwhelming. The parent to my post never said The Daily Show was a news station. He said it must have BEEN The Daily Show he was watching as he hasn't really watched any NEWS STATIONS, so he would not have seen what he was talking about on one of them.
Your powers of logic and insult are indeed underwhelming. He said, quite clearly "it must have been the daily show since I don't watch any OTHER news stations anymore". The "other" in there implies that the daily show is the only news station he watches.
I wasn't trolling, and I wasn't attacking the daily show. I just think it's worth noting that it's not actually a news station, nor should it be considered a reliable news source. I personally love the show, but if it was my only source of news I'd have no idea about what was going on in the world or in the states.
Now if you can find us a youtube link or something similar, we can both go back to maybe actually adding something to this conversation.
By the way, it's generally considered polite to turn off your karma and/or subscriber bonuses for side conversations like this that nobody else reading the thread will care to read.
Since I barely watch other news stations anymore it must of been,
You aren't imaginign things. I saw the same episode.
Actually, he is imagining things. The Daily Show is not, and never will be, an actual "news station". It's on Comedy Central. I'm not saying that all designated news shows are actually truthful, honest, and unbiased informers, but the Daily Show doesn't even pretend to be.
Because this isn't about being practical. This is about jobs for the families of our elite. Do you really think they want to live in an icebox? Follow the money and you will see where the money goes. It isn't from Alaska and if it was, it sure isn't going back there.
I can't believe you got modded insightful. I'll be looking out for it while metamodding. You're either a damned good troll that's managed to stick it out in this place for a long time, or you really, honestly believe that load of rubbish. There are millions of government jobs for the families of our elite. There are millions more in various utility and semi-government corporations throughout the country. You really wouldn't believe all the places they manage to hide and get paid more than their lives will ever be worth.
All of that being said, the NSA is not one of those places. While you may argue about the morality of their participation in supposed spying on citizens or about the morality of current or past military, political, and diplomatic conquests they've aided, you can't argue that they aren't absolutely the top tier of their profession in the world. I don't know of a single more experienced, qualified, or intelligent collection of mathemiticians and computer pros in the world, and that's not an appeal to ignorance. They've found and fixed mistakes in common products such as linux and PGP that have gone undetected by the rest of the population for decades, and they've done it in their free time as a hobby.
Bitch and moan about the politics all you want, but have the professional courtesy and respect to acknowledge skilled professionals wherever they are. The CIA and KGB never got along well, but you'll find they both speak highly of each other. That's the mark of a professional, my friend.
Oh my, how to deconstruct this...there are so many places to start. Going for some low hanging fruit (bullets make me look so cool):
You claim that his argument implies that cause and effect don't mean anything. This is not just a typical straw man argument, it's an obvious one.
He said "Everything is not simple"
You counter-argued "Granted that not everything is simple, that doesn't mean that nothing is simple". A slight, but serious, rephrasing. You are now arguing against your own words instead of his.
Granted "Everything is not simple", "not everything is simple" would be a true statement, but so would "nothing is simple". Hence it does, quite boldly, mean that your implication that this doesn't preclude things from being simple is false at best.
I'm not sure what the label for the logical fallacy of invoking and defeating a similar phrase is, but it's rather similar to equivocation. If there is not currently a term for this, I hereby propose the term "MarkusQism"
You implied that you have a better argument than your attempts to attack his logic. I would love to see this high hanging fruit of which you speak.
You make a great appeal to fear and appeal to emotion to support your causes because we all know how bad those evil republicans are! But this doesn't change his statement that something other than the actions of our politicians is causing the hate aimed at westerners and/or non-muslims. Your argument is weak and the fact that you constantly attempt to change the discussions on/. to republican vs. democrat arguments further reduces your credibility.
nd what buying the inexpensive version *really* meant, (i.e. it would wipe any existing installation, and probably cause difficulty in getting it exchanged for a more capable, expensive version later). M$ certainly doesn't put much effort in clarifying the situation for the consumer's, here in Amsterdam, the nation's capitol.
I'm really not sure what you're ranting about. Microsoft's base OEM install CD is identical in functionality to a retail version. OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer. The OEM, the company you buy the computer from, then customizes their own OEM Windows install CDs to make the customers feel like it's special. Or to screw the customers over. They slipstream nifty things in there, like all of the drivers for your hardware, and put their own interface on the install. Sometimes they disable things like repairing and replace them with things like "format and restore original install", but that has absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft.
An original Microsoft "not for retail sale" OEM CD has the exact same functionality as a retail CD. I've used them to do full repairs, full reinstalls over existing installations without formatting, and command line repairs from the recovery console. A Sony/Dell/HP/Compaq "OEM Windows Installer/System Recovery" CD may or may not.
Slashdot Mirror
That's just a terrible analogy. It's more like someone hacking into your print server and making all of your printers print advertisements for their products. Or maybe it's more like fax advertising. It has a real cost for the receiver.
In addition, not everyone can throw out 50 tons of trash every week. I live on a small, populous island with only one remaining landfill. Trash disposal costs me about $60/month for one 50-gallon trash can, and the recyclables need to be separately bagged inside of the can. Junk mail costs me real money to receive, even though its postage was paid by the advertisers.
Spam is even worse, because the advertisers usually steal/hack the "postage". They exploit security holes in other systems to send their spam, then they usually direct the recipients to hacked or rooted web servers. And don't even get me started about the zombie nets they've used.
That's funny, I'm getting really tired of this "let's rank languages by difficulty while ignoring the important variables" game. Dutch is one of the easiest languages to learn if you are a native speaker of a Germanic language, such as English or.. German. Dutch is also going to be one of th hardest languages for a native speaker of, say, Japanese.
In the first case you have very similar languages, where most of the grammar and word order is fairly similar when not identical.
When you start learning radically different languages, it gets much more difficult. You have to learn to not only recognize, distinguish, and differentiate between, but pronounce entirely different sounds and/or tones. The grammar seems highly illogical and vastly different from your current way of thinking. You have to learn to think, read, and write in a new alphabet without trying to convert any of the characters in your head. Hell, if you're learning Chinese you really just have to start memorize entire "words" visually rather than having an alphabet to build from. This is extremely difficult for anyone.
So, I say again, everyone please quit whining about languages being easier or harder for "everyone" to learn. Not even taking into account culture or aptitude, some people are going to have more or less difficulty with a different language based on the differences between the two, especially if it's their first foreign language.
I'm amazed this passes for "Insightful" these days. Let's start out with an imaginary scenario to prove why this is harmful, with the assumption that, when 260 million people know something, it's not going to remain an international secret.
-The Petorian embassy uses secure telephones called PETOs.
-Petoria sells their encryption technology to several other imaginary countries which share similar hostile attitudes against the United States.
-Petoria is beginning to assume a hostile posture towards the United States and is assessed to be on the verge of launching an attack.
-The NSA manages to find a flaw in their encryption.
-The NSA is using this, in conjunction with an undetectable wiretap, to monitor the supposedly secure, encrypted communications of the ambassador.
-The government shares this knowledge with the public, inherently disclosing their ability to break Petoria's PETO encryption. This may or may not stop Petoria from launching their attack.
-Every country using Petorian encryption technology switches to a more secure means of communication, eliminating the NSA's ability to protect the country with this method.
The above may be an extreme example, but a lot of classified information really could be a threat to national security, or would have been back when it was classified.
Even if the NSA simply shared their [imaginary] amazing 100% secure encryption technology that required only 20 flops to encrypt anything, it'd be a threat to security because everyone else would switch to this technology, rendering the US incapable of monitoring any communications.
I've always been fascinated by encryption and signals intelligence, so I've read at least one book on every war I know if it being used in. That being said, it's been extremely beneficial and saved our asses in nearly every war. If you read some of the recently-declassified spy work done during the cold war, you'll be amazed it's not still classified. You can easily see how it would have been dangerous for that kind of information to be released. I wouldn't want the US to sacrifice whatever abilities it has just to help Joe Sixpack make sure his wife can't read his emails to his mistress.
I think you've watched too many movies about the NSA/CIA/TLAs being at war with Americans.
I meant starting with a survival ability in german, you can become at least a level 2 by the US Government standard in about 6 months. Sorry, I should've been more clear.
Obviously the wackiness and difficulty of a language is dependent on the native tongue of the person attempting to learn a language. I've never really cared what god forbade or allowed, but I am familiar with learning "rules" in the process of learning a language. Not that I like them.
I don't see why I have to preface my post with "in my opinion". It is quite obviously my opinion, and it's fairly easy to tell the difference between a fact and an opinion in my writing. I'm sorry if it confused you. I didn't mean to imply that I was relying on an internationally accepted standard of wackiness. Of course I think most people would assign Korean a 9 or 10 on a 1-10 wackiness scale, with 10 being the wackiest. Native speakers of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean would likely place Korean around the 2-3 rating and English at the 9-10 end of the scale. These things are subjective, although somewhat scientific. Any serious institution that teaches multiple languages can show you trend data that, over time, certain languages are more readily learned by native speakers of certain languages.
Ok, I apologize. They aren't, as I quite simply and obviously paraphrased it "changing hanja into hangul". They are changing their use from one alphabet to the other, in an attempt to remove the chinese background but still retaining the use of the previous alphabet therefor requiring the use of both, and simultaneously using both alphabets interchangeably. Of course, you knew that, and so did I, and the article I linked to clearly states that, but if you want to pick apart my paraphrasing I'll just have to be a little more verbose.
And I admit Japanese is rather wacky. I further admit that it is quite likely that Japanese and Korean have both "borrowed" from one another for a long time. I'll admit that kanji are a pain in the butt to memorize, but katakana and hiragana aren't all that hard to learn. I can see why you would say that "3 instead of 2" makes Japanese more difficult. Obviously I still feel that Korean is the harder between the two. I am a native english speaker, and Japanese has proven extremely difficult for me to learn. It is damned difficult. I just feel Korean is goofier, wackier, and even more difficult.
Please do. Let's metamod their mod points away. You may disagree with me, but you'd be wrong to call me a troll. Perhaps your emotional reaction is because you're oversensitive and emotional, but it's not because I am trying to troll people. I am just stating my opinion, some facts, and a link to find more facts. If it makes you happy, I'll link to Japanese_Language on wikipedia next time as well.
I have. Of course that was with a limited knowledge of grammar and vocabulary to start with, but survival level ability at most. Languages can be picked up easily when you don't spend the whole time banding together with other people who speak the same language as you do.
Try Korean if you think Japanese is wacky. Throw in a bunch of Japanese, change some of it a bit, then claim it as your own and deny any similarities. Borrow most of the grammatical rules from Japanese, and further claim that they are not related or that the Japanese stole the ideas. Proceed to throw in Chinese characters and words while denying all claims of similarity. Add in some crazy rules about honorifics and speech level, then make them thoroughly embedded into the language so that you must constantly keep them in mind while learning. When you're done with that, change the thousands of hanja that used to be used for the written language (chinese written characters), and replace them with a 24 character Korean alphabet, Hangul. When writing, use either the hanja or hangul, even within a sentence you are free to switch off.
The language is so jacked up that linguists don't even know what it should be categorized as. It'll probably end up just being listed as a language isolate.
I do have to agree with you about German, though. It's an extremely logical and simple language in many ways. The grammar is very logical and has few exceptions compared to other languages. Once you learn the grammar the pronunciation and vocabulary are likewise consistent. It can be easily learned by an English speaker in 6 months of immersion.
Yeah, that was it. It's a great idea and it definitely solves my problem. I just forgot all about it while I was testing the capabilities of the site. So many good terms to search for :).
Well, all I can say after searching through that site for a while is "what were we talking about again?"
Great site, though, thanks.
The "Your copy of Windows is pirate" would just make people laugh and brag about it. What they really need is a "Hello. I'm watching GAY PORN! MEN HAVING SEX WITH MEN! IN THE BUTT!" sound played extremely loud. They could blackmail people into actually buying legit copies, especially if they syngergized by incorporating text-to-speech technology with the search history saving functionality of Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Genuine Advantage Automatic Updater and used the startup sounds to effectively communicate interesting search histories to anyone in the room. "Hello. I'm a pirated copy of Windows Vista. I was used to search WebMD for 'penile discharge' last night. Please contact Microsoft Legal Department in order to have your startup sound changed."
Hmm, I'm tempted to write a little proof of concept program for my own pirated copy just to see how it works... The hard part would be getting it to find the juicy stuff on its own.
Especially if it's the boss's daughter. Even more so if she's just a summer intern. Even more so if she's just a summer intern from the local high school.
All of that being said, "I'm not asking you out on a date, but a bunch of the guys are going to the pub tonight. We thought you might want to come along so we can all get to know each other" is pretty innocent and hard to misconstrue. I think the confusion arrives when you're stuttering, tripping over yourself, and gawking at her tits while trying to ask her if she "umm maybe uhh you know wants to kinda go to the uhh pub with uhhhh us tonight".
There are also some more complicated issues involved in sexual harassment. Please see this Sexual Harassment Training Video for more information.
Perhaps that's because it's essentially illegal to research, or even access other scientists' research, the medicinal benefits of marijuana. Not that it matters. We already know alcohol and tobacco are worse than marijuana. The only reason MJ is illegal and alcohol and tobacco are legal is because of the public outcry and outrage that would accompany the banning of our favorite vices. The situation will remain like this because, as part of the indoctrination in our schools, children are taught that marijuana is an evil gateway drug that'll make you into a cocaine-snorting crackwhore who will orally please anyone for some drugs. Hell, when I went to school they tried to force me to sign a pledge that I would never do drugs (to include tobacco and alcohol). They almost managed to stop me from graduating elementary school because I refused to sign such a pledge.
I also noticed you said "a good many studies" instead of "many good studies". I am highly skeptical of any studies sponsored by the current government which declare marijuana to be a dangerous, evil thing. Unfortunately, we'll never be able to verify their results since nobody is allowed to access them anymore, let alone duplicate their results.
Congratulations! That's the stupidest attempt to rewrite the history of desert one and operation eagle claw that I've ever seen. I hope you were joking...
If not, what really happened is that it was a giant clusterfuck. Not all of the choppers were able to make it, mainly due to human error but also due to dust storms and mechanical failures. Once they decided to evacuate the area and cancel the mission, the story splits. Either some rotorhead flew himself into a 130's main stabilizer or, if you ask the rotorheads, some fucking air force guy told him he was clear to taxi and directed him in the wrong direction. We'll never know what really happened since the people who could tell us are dead. Either way, eight great men were killed. Five USAF, three USMC. They failed in an embarassing catastrophe, but they were all heros. Not a single one of them would've knowingly done anything to endanger the mission or their colleagues. The 8th SOS, delta, the marines, and the navy all did a great job. The mission was just too complex and too many obstacles were thrown in their way.
RIP:
Richard Bakke, USAF
Harold Lewis, USAF
Lyn McIntosh, USAF
Charles McMillan, USAF
Joel Mayo, USAF
Dewey Johnson, USMC
John Harvey, USMC
George Holmes, USMC
Of course not. These bases were created in response to the threat Iraq posed to American interests in the region (read: Kuwaiti oil fields). With the elimination of the threat of Iraq invading a major supplier of oil, these bases were no longer needed. In addition, new ones were being built in Iraq that were going to be much larger than the ones in Saudi, and likely with more favorable leases for the US Government.
Right. And if people would quit sharing needles, engaging in dangerous activities, being mean to one another, and think only of the betterment of society much sickness, waste of tax money and other societal problems would be averted. Surely this is the society which all christians claim we should have...
Of course, I disagree. I would never be happy with only one partner for my entire life, and I don't think I'd ever want one who would be. Your vision of America also makes the future look rather bleak for all homo and bi-sexual people, on top of all the swingers and polygamists out there.
Personally, I'm more worried about ending violent crime, hate, and bigotry than I am about enforcing a moral code of "one man, one woman, one lifetime together in marriage".
A happy man is not likely to go to a bar to get drunk and get into fights. Marriage has nothing to do with it. On top of that, many happily married men have gotten into bar fights. I've gone to plenty of bars to have a beer with my father. Even in christianity there's nothing immoral about going to a bar, having a beer, and playing a game of pool. I was in a bar, drinking my first beer, playing pool when a drunk came up to me and tried to pick a fight. Luckily his friends came and held him back. If I had to fight him in self-defense, I would no longer be worrying about his health. Between the two of us, which one is more likely to cause serious bodily damage? One of his friends later told me that he did this regularly and lost the fights nearly every time. Had I known that, I might've broken his jaw in an attempt to knock some sense into him.
I certainly wasn't doing anything immoral or putting myself into a situation that should be dangerous.
As brilliant as this is, it's important to remember that taping and releasing videos like this without the consent of the other party is illegal in most places. Unless they're celebrities, then you can do whatever you want, even if you weren't involved in the actual sex act.
NOTE: In many cases, this technique also boosts the career of the "victim" of a released sex tape.
Excuse me, sir, but I believe you may have misspelled ass-kicking. Seriously, though, it's likely he has some sort of emotional need (needs more love from parents, gets too much love from parents, bored off his ass at school) which isn't being met. It's usually the ass-kicking one, but for me it was a combination of inadequate ass-kicking and boredom. I didn't do my work in school because it was stupid, pointless, repetitive, and never challenged me. The biggest challenge seemed to be of the "How long can you write while your fingers are sore from holding the pencil?" variety. That didn't change until I got some excellent teachers and took AP courses which required me to at least read the book to pass the tests.
Don't take this as a parenting insult or me telling you how your kids should be raised, just try to think about if it might be one of those issues that's holding your child back.
I'm sorry, but it looks like the educational system failed you as well. You're making a great reference to the declaration of independence, which never actually made it into the constitution, let alone the American legal system. While you have many rights, depriving a child, even yours, of an education is not one of them.
Why? Science can't be proven, by definition. Religion doesn't have any supporting evidence, by definition. So you're saying the argument is, or should be, that neither should be taught in school? Or that nothing as concrete as 2+2=4 should be taught in school?
What does the division of one by zero have to do with evolution or science? I may not be able to convince you that 2+2=4, but I'm going to raise hell if my kids don't learn it in school.
The argument against teaching evolution in schools is currently "We don't like it and you're not going to convince us otherwise. And we're not going to let you teac^H^H^H^Hbrainwash our kids to believe otherwise!" I'm sorry, but that doesn't cut it. Not even if 99% of Americans believe it's the right thing to do. The Theory of Evolution is one of the most researched, documented, and supported theories in science. I feel it's understood better than gravity at this point in time. If we're going to quit teaching the grand unified theory of biology in schools because of political pressure from religious lobbyists, we may as well surrender and have the church resume its role in totalitarian governance.
Debate?! There is no debate. There's a flamewar between people who deny evolution and the people who understand it. There's an argument over whether or not it should be taught in schools. As always, there are religious leaders trying to take control of the government. But to imply that there is actually a real debate about evolution is just disgusting. You've been around for a long time and are a subscriber. I'm sure you didn't intend to imply that, but please use different terminology...
In addition, I'm sure slashdot doesn't intend to generate flamewars every time they post an article relating to it. But it certainly is science-related and major news that all nerds should be concerned about. I can't think of anything more pressing than ensuring there is a well-educated generation of nerds to succeed us. The problem is that, just like you'll observe with any post that mentions a republican or democrat these days, there are some very passionate, upset people on both sides of the argument. They use every chance they get to raise their voices and argue about it. It's really all they see.
Last I saw, obesity was a major problem facing american schoolchildren. I say we make them carry the laptops and a UPS in addition to the books, not instead of them. And let's take away the schoolbuses and cars, too. I would like to be the first to suggest the "$100 Bicycle for Every Child" project.
Seriously, though, I wish the media and publishing conglomerates would allow digital copies of the books to be distributed instead. It would've made my education at least slightly better, although it makes it harder to do your homework on the way to school.
Your powers of logic and insult are indeed underwhelming. He said, quite clearly "it must have been the daily show since I don't watch any OTHER news stations anymore". The "other" in there implies that the daily show is the only news station he watches.
I wasn't trolling, and I wasn't attacking the daily show. I just think it's worth noting that it's not actually a news station, nor should it be considered a reliable news source. I personally love the show, but if it was my only source of news I'd have no idea about what was going on in the world or in the states.
Now if you can find us a youtube link or something similar, we can both go back to maybe actually adding something to this conversation.
By the way, it's generally considered polite to turn off your karma and/or subscriber bonuses for side conversations like this that nobody else reading the thread will care to read.
Actually, he is imagining things. The Daily Show is not, and never will be, an actual "news station". It's on Comedy Central. I'm not saying that all designated news shows are actually truthful, honest, and unbiased informers, but the Daily Show doesn't even pretend to be.
I can't believe you got modded insightful. I'll be looking out for it while metamodding. You're either a damned good troll that's managed to stick it out in this place for a long time, or you really, honestly believe that load of rubbish. There are millions of government jobs for the families of our elite. There are millions more in various utility and semi-government corporations throughout the country. You really wouldn't believe all the places they manage to hide and get paid more than their lives will ever be worth.
All of that being said, the NSA is not one of those places. While you may argue about the morality of their participation in supposed spying on citizens or about the morality of current or past military, political, and diplomatic conquests they've aided, you can't argue that they aren't absolutely the top tier of their profession in the world. I don't know of a single more experienced, qualified, or intelligent collection of mathemiticians and computer pros in the world, and that's not an appeal to ignorance. They've found and fixed mistakes in common products such as linux and PGP that have gone undetected by the rest of the population for decades, and they've done it in their free time as a hobby.
Bitch and moan about the politics all you want, but have the professional courtesy and respect to acknowledge skilled professionals wherever they are. The CIA and KGB never got along well, but you'll find they both speak highly of each other. That's the mark of a professional, my friend.
You implied that you have a better argument than your attempts to attack his logic. I would love to see this high hanging fruit of which you speak.
You make a great appeal to fear and appeal to emotion to support your causes because we all know how bad those evil republicans are! But this doesn't change his statement that something other than the actions of our politicians is causing the hate aimed at westerners and/or non-muslims. Your argument is weak and the fact that you constantly attempt to change the discussions on
I'm really not sure what you're ranting about. Microsoft's base OEM install CD is identical in functionality to a retail version. OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer. The OEM, the company you buy the computer from, then customizes their own OEM Windows install CDs to make the customers feel like it's special. Or to screw the customers over. They slipstream nifty things in there, like all of the drivers for your hardware, and put their own interface on the install. Sometimes they disable things like repairing and replace them with things like "format and restore original install", but that has absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft.
An original Microsoft "not for retail sale" OEM CD has the exact same functionality as a retail CD. I've used them to do full repairs, full reinstalls over existing installations without formatting, and command line repairs from the recovery console. A Sony/Dell/HP/Compaq "OEM Windows Installer/System Recovery" CD may or may not.