Wow, you read fast. It took me a week to read the Bagram report. Longer for the Abu Ghraib one... I couldn't even look up the Gonzalez memo as fast as you got through all that!
I hope you realise that just the points you conceded are enough to make my point anyway - that there are far more important issues surrounding this government's beliefs and behaviours than some probably-legal-anyway NSA spying.
My advice is to join the Republican party and stock up on ammunition.
I thought your original request for cites was remarkably intelligent, and I wouldn't have modded you down for it myself.
But now you've stated that I was "making things up". That's false. Everything I said was based on public statements made by Bush administration officials or official US government reports.
Mind you, allegations that uniformed US soldiers raped children to make their mothers reveal the locations of their terrorist-suspect fathers are unproven. But I didn't say that they were proven, I said if the executive branch thinks they can arbitrarily declare US citizens terrorists without burden of proof (Jose Padilla case) and terrorists aren't subject to prohibitions against torture (statements by Gonzalez, Bush, and Rumsfeld) then obviously by simple logic the President feels he can do whatever he wants to a US citizen without due process, and equally obviously the people assigned to do this stuff are rapists and murderers (Rumsfeld, public statements on content of Abu Ghraib CD) who are willing to knowingly abuse innocents (Dilawar, Bagram report).
You said "If there is a case of the American government taking an American citizen out of his home, revoking his citizenship, torturing and murdering him. I want to know. I'll be the first one in line to crucify someone..." but I never said there was any such case. What I said was this government is trying to set up the conditions for this to happen.
Do you disagree, now that you've independently researched the Padilla and Dilawar cases and looked up Gonzalez's memo on the Geneva convention? Please tell us all if you come to another conclusion... after you complete your study of the data, of course - we're going to want cites!
Since we aren't allowed to see all the laws governing the behaviour of the NSA, why should we assume that their spying is illegal?
Bigger Issues? How about:
This government says it can seize US citizens and subject them to secret military tribunals.
This government says it can make you not a citizen by simple declaration without evidence.
This government says it can rape, torture and murder suspected terrorists.
Now add all that up: Any US President can say you are a terrorist, kidnap your whole family in the middle of the night, and have your kids raped to death in front of your wife to make her tell where you are hiding. And Gonzalez will say it's all legal, if anyone ever finds out about it.
That's the Novus Ordo Seculorum of George W. Bush and his Congress. As Orwell predicted, a hobnailed boot stamping on a human face. Do you right-wingers seriously want to grant total power to whoever's in the White House? What about if it's your evil arch-nemesis Hillary, or some Kennedy apparatchik?
I mean, c'mon, this is an administration that consistently promotes torture and slavery. And you are suprised that these people want to find all the kiddie porn in the world, look at it, and keep copies? People, this is totally in character.
I think the point was simply to refute the belief by many Americans that they live in the best country in the world in every category of measurement. Don't take it personally, nobody can be the best in everything and it isn't unpatriotic to admit it.
Stop it, this is Slashdot! You aren't permitted to mix ideology with reality here - it's reality for technical issues, and ideology for anything concerning culture, politics, economics or religion (Note: Apple computers count as a religion). No mixing!
It also doesn't make you a terrorist for believing it
Alberto Gonzalez will be stopping by to see you soon, terrorist. He'll be bringing "equipment".
So when people tell you they'll do something, you expect them not to do it unless they explicitly say "I promise?" Or do you require some sort of pinky swear?
If they explicitly say "I promise", and I'm actively watching them, they might concievably do it.
What's that? Why yes, I do have kids. How did you know?
Well, part of that is because of my selective quoting (the entire soliloquy is a bit more balanced, since it is set in a specific time and place) but yes, Moglen takes the extreme view.
I am far more in agreement with that viewpoint than the one that says GUIs are "intuitive".
The best thing about modern GUIs is that they virtualize displays, which has nothing to do with mice and very little to do with graphics (software carousel did it with no graphics at all).
Those NEXTs you mention were very innovative machines. I liked them, although I was a VMS jockey at the time so I was basically comparing them to DECwindows (a bloatfest that reminds me of XNU).
Because energy companies have all the infrastructure in place to continue profiting off of petroleum. Switching over to alternative fuels would require massive restructuring of their operations and investment in new infrastructure.
Unless the alternative fuel is hydrogen, a'la hydrogen fuel cell.
Fool Cell Cars will use the existing infrastructure, because the hydrogen will be cracked from petrochemicals delivered by the existing tanker fleet to the existing gas station.
That's what it's all about, friends. You're being sold a bill of goods that is intended to keep the current economic and political power structures intact. If the geeks and boffins (uh, that would be us) can be sent chasing after hydrogen, then we won't be spending our time actually solving the petroleum dependency problem with destabilizing new technologies.
"Though it is not our intention to politicize the issue of the hydrogen economy, we take strong exception to the five principal foundations of the proposed Bush Hydrogen Fuel Plan:
1. Fuel cells are a proven technology
False. Fuel cells are proven to work, but the technology to reduce manufacturing cost by an order of magnitude has not been developed, nor has the reliability or durability of low-cost fuel cells been demonstrated. In addition, we do not support the prevailing view that hydrogen is the best fuel for fuel cells.
2. The (Hydrogen Fuel Plan) initiatives will overcome key technical and cost barriers for fuel cells
False. Even if fuel cell technology advances dramatically, the major cost barriers are associated with the manufacturing and distribution of hydrogen fuel itself. These issues are inexorably linked to the laws of physics and thermodynamics.
3. Hydrogen fuel will help ensure America's energy independence
False. America will consume substantially more non-renewable energy in a hydrogen economy that it consumes today. Unless our huge reserves of coal (or nuclear power) are tapped, we will be increasingly dependent on foreign energy supplies (of oil and natural gas) with each passing year
4. Fuel cells will improve air quality and dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions
False. Again, America will consume substantially more fossil energy in a hydrogen economy that it consumes today and therefore create more emissions. The public needs a much more fundamental understanding of these critical issues - as do politicians.
5. Hydrogen is the key to a clean energy future
False. As we have seen, hydrogen is quite a dirty fuel as currently manufactured. In our view, the only viable, clean, and scalable methods for producing enough energy to manufacture the huge quantities of hydrogen required are nuclear and Zero Emissions Coal. Neither of these technologies are the focus of the Bush plan.
Hmmm. We're so far off the topic it has disappeared over the horizon.
That being said, why should anyone care what you think? The point is not who said it, the point is that it is true. The GUI is a means of "dumbing down" computers, which is highly appropriate in some situations (I certainly wouldn't want to have to type in the formulas to describe a curve in order to draw one) and highly inappropriate in others (did you type in your post by selecting and dragging individual characters with your mouse? Did you draw the characters with a pen and tablet?).
Apple now supplies a powerful command line interface to their products, and they have *always* supported hot keys (much more, in fact, than windows ever has). Microsoft is now working on restoring their command line to prominence, having belatedly recognized the limitations of the GUI. They must agree with Moglen, eh?
Gee, refusing to accept the godhood of Steve Jobs is fun. It's like the time I criticised Ayn Rand, only with less death threats.
I could argue that the WWWeb was not fundamentally different from liquid gopherspace, but the web's inventors already freely acknowledge that (and besides, the Momma Gopher was a mac at one point). Or I could argue that the GUI (which comes from Xerox PARC, and was first commercially available in GEOS, I seem to remember) is actually a step backward for human-machine interaction. But Eben Moglen has already made that argument:
"What I saw in the Xerox PARC technology was the caveman interface, you point and you grunt. A massive winding down, regressing away from language, in order to address the technological nervousness of the user. Users wanted to be infantilized, to return to a pre-linguistic condition in the using of computers, and the Xerox PARC technology's primary advantage was that it allowed users to address computers in a pre-linguistic way. This was to my mind a terribly socially retrograde thing to do, and I have not changed my mind about that."
So instead I'll point out that what catapulted the PC into the business world was spreadsheets running on DOS, and what brought computers into the home was low cost (the Apple ][ was not a gui machine, it was just cheap). Jobs didn't invent EasyCalc or Lotus 1-2-3, and he didn't make PCs cheap, Wozniak and IBM did that.
Apple has done some great stuff, sure. But great stuff in the vein of http://www33.brinkster.com/iiiii/mccoy/#f10>an improved oiler and not great stuff like the powered clothes washer or the cotton gin. We need to keep some perspective, Jobs had a large influence on us computer dweebs but very little (so far) on the course of human history.
I get your point, but "How often do most people get to change the whole goddamn world? is a little over the top.
Jobs has changed an incredibly tiny piece of the world. He didn't revoke gravity or overthrow Batista or map the genome or teach Indonesian children to hate the USA and embrace terrorism. He browbeat some programmers into making some blinky lights arguably prettier and some interesting noises arguably more commonplace.
I'm betting Nick Negroponte will change the world more than Jobs, and I think that would be so even if computers had never been invented.
I want my hardware to "just work" with my OS. If that means using proprietary drivers for a particular brand of video card or printer, then so be it. I don't give a rat's ass about the licensing terms.
Nothing wrong with that. You're an end-user. There's no shame. Presumably you have some goal that you are working towards, and the computer is a tool for you to achieve that goal. Use the tools that work for you.
Linux will never overtake Windows on the desktop until and unless it can run the latest hardware as well as Windows can.
Who cares? Linux doesn't need to overtake windows. If you want to make it do that, sure, go ahead. Have fun - I mean that sincerely, it's not irony.
And I guarantee that the vast majority of PC users out there are as unconcerned with the proprietary vs open-source driver issue as I am.
Correct! And they don't need to run linux. Again, no harm, no foul, no shame.
I've tried Linux at home numerous times - I want to switch, I really do -
Why? It doesn't do what you want (yet). It's not for your purposes (yet). At this point it is a system designed to run indefinitely without crashing, serving up DNS or HTTP or running OpenOffice or some other infrastructure app. People who run it as a gaming desktop are the kind of people who polish their own cylinder heads, they are a rare breed (probably over-represented on slashdot, though).
- but I always end up going back to Windows because it has better drivers for my video card, printer, webcam, and GPS unit.
Which is where you should be, if that meets your needs. It doesn't meet my needs, but I live in a world that is too information-dense to be represented as anything but text. That stuff about a "picture being worth a thousand words" is utter bollocks.
Now I just use VMWare to play with Ubuntu from Windows.
So you are an adventurous end-user. That's good too!
But linux doesn't need your business. You can pick it up or pass it by as you please, and it will chug along just fine without you. That's the "free" in "freedom". You are free to do what works for you, and it sounds like what works for you is Windows or some other proprietary system.
LASIK works for me. Had it many years ago, when it was fairly new, and it's exactly like wearing contact lenses (only I never have to mess about with little thingies on my eyeballs any more).
The only bad thing about it was that they assured me I'd feel no pain, and when they stuck the knife in my eye, it felt EXACTLY like SOMEBODY STUCK A KNIFE IN MY EYE! After everyone calmed down they explained that less than 1% of the population has pain-sensing nerves actually in the ocular tissues, and that they'd rather I didn't scream like a wounded manatee in the operating theatre. I told 'em to stop lying to the patients (if they'd said I *might* feel pain I'd have been prepared) and everything was fine after that.
I really need your front-end alignment on this! Can you get your people on board?
My people aren't getting on board until you fix that toe-in. Your suspension has a couple of fixed points in it, so castor and camber aren't unilaterally adjustable, but you should be able to work it out on the rack.
>> If you want to do an entire volume or portion of a directory tree, I guess you could use find like so: >> >> $find . -type f | sed -n 's/\(.*\)MCVD\(.*\)JPG/mv \1MCVD\2JPG \1vacation\2jpg/p' |bash
>Try that on files/directories containing spaces...(at your own risk)...
Like I said, that regex needs to be tightened up quite a bit. In the example, none of the files that needed to be renamed contained spaces so it should be something more like \(.*\)MCVD\([^\/\ ]*\)JPG which is pretty nasty due to all the escaping.
However, if you look into it (did you do the test?) you might find there is no problem; sometimes space-infested filenames move clean in a pipeline in Real Life [tm], I suppose because they get passed through the ARG array, or because bash does its substitutions on the command line first, before execution. I didn't do the test (still lazy) so I dunno... but your warning is well made, and best heeded!
Slashdot Mirror
Flamebait and Troll mods are often a sort of backhanded compliment.
Wow, you read fast. It took me a week to read the Bagram report. Longer for the Abu Ghraib one... I couldn't even look up the Gonzalez memo as fast as you got through all that!
I hope you realise that just the points you conceded are enough to make my point anyway - that there are far more important issues surrounding this government's beliefs and behaviours than some probably-legal-anyway NSA spying.
My advice is to join the Republican party and stock up on ammunition.
Conservatives are the people alarmed by this administration's willingness to disregard traditional values and re-interpret the constitution.
It's the biggest power grab since Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, and it offends real conservatives.
Liberals are just pissed off that they aren't the ones doing it, they've always been in favor of trying new ways - that's why we call 'em liberals.
Your "quoting out of context" system is working too.
:)
Typical liberal ploy.
I thought your original request for cites was remarkably intelligent, and I wouldn't have modded you down for it myself.
But now you've stated that I was "making things up". That's false. Everything I said was based on public statements made by Bush administration officials or official US government reports.
Mind you, allegations that uniformed US soldiers raped children to make their mothers reveal the locations of their terrorist-suspect fathers are unproven. But I didn't say that they were proven, I said if the executive branch thinks they can arbitrarily declare US citizens terrorists without burden of proof (Jose Padilla case) and terrorists aren't subject to prohibitions against torture (statements by Gonzalez, Bush, and Rumsfeld) then obviously by simple logic the President feels he can do whatever he wants to a US citizen without due process, and equally obviously the people assigned to do this stuff are rapists and murderers (Rumsfeld, public statements on content of Abu Ghraib CD) who are willing to knowingly abuse innocents (Dilawar, Bagram report).
You said "If there is a case of the American government taking an American citizen out of his home, revoking his citizenship, torturing and murdering him. I want to know. I'll be the first one in line to crucify someone..." but I never said there was any such case. What I said was this government is trying to set up the conditions for this to happen.
Do you disagree, now that you've independently researched the Padilla and Dilawar cases and looked up Gonzalez's memo on the Geneva convention? Please tell us all if you come to another conclusion... after you complete your study of the data, of course - we're going to want cites!
But I've had a Prius since 2001, so I'm not too bothered by high gas prices.
Since we aren't allowed to see all the laws governing the behaviour of the NSA, why should we assume that their spying is illegal?
Bigger Issues? How about:
This government says it can seize US citizens and subject them to secret military tribunals.
This government says it can make you not a citizen by simple declaration without evidence.
This government says it can rape, torture and murder suspected terrorists.
Now add all that up: Any US President can say you are a terrorist, kidnap your whole family in the middle of the night, and have your kids raped to death in front of your wife to make her tell where you are hiding. And Gonzalez will say it's all legal, if anyone ever finds out about it.
That's the Novus Ordo Seculorum of George W. Bush and his Congress. As Orwell predicted, a hobnailed boot stamping on a human face. Do you right-wingers seriously want to grant total power to whoever's in the White House? What about if it's your evil arch-nemesis Hillary, or some Kennedy apparatchik?
Every dinosaur bone I've ever seen was fossilized, and I've seen quite a few.
Therefore fossilization can't possibly be rare, since it occurs in 100% of the fossil record, as confirmed by 100% of my sample base.
(I'm looking for a job doing science for the Bush administration, in case you were wondering.)
I mean, c'mon, this is an administration that consistently promotes torture and slavery. And you are suprised that these people want to find all the kiddie porn in the world, look at it, and keep copies? People, this is totally in character.
What's that? Why yes, I do have kids. How did you know?
Well, part of that is because of my selective quoting (the entire soliloquy is a bit more balanced, since it is set in a specific time and place) but yes, Moglen takes the extreme view.
I am far more in agreement with that viewpoint than the one that says GUIs are "intuitive".
The best thing about modern GUIs is that they virtualize displays, which has nothing to do with mice and very little to do with graphics (software carousel did it with no graphics at all).
Those NEXTs you mention were very innovative machines. I liked them, although I was a VMS jockey at the time so I was basically comparing them to DECwindows (a bloatfest that reminds me of XNU).
Fool Cell Cars will use the existing infrastructure, because the hydrogen will be cracked from petrochemicals delivered by the existing tanker fleet to the existing gas station.
That's what it's all about, friends. You're being sold a bill of goods that is intended to keep the current economic and political power structures intact. If the geeks and boffins (uh, that would be us) can be sent chasing after hydrogen, then we won't be spending our time actually solving the petroleum dependency problem with destabilizing new technologies.
From "The Hydrogen Report, Executive Summary, An Examination of the Role of Hydrogen In Achieving U.S. Energy Independence":
"Though it is not our intention to politicize the issue of the hydrogen economy, we take strong exception to the five principal foundations of the proposed Bush Hydrogen Fuel Plan:
1. Fuel cells are a proven technology
False. Fuel cells are proven to work, but the technology to reduce manufacturing cost by an order of magnitude has not been developed, nor has the reliability or durability of low-cost fuel cells been demonstrated. In addition, we do not support the prevailing view that hydrogen is the best fuel for fuel cells.
2. The (Hydrogen Fuel Plan) initiatives will overcome key technical and cost barriers for fuel cells
False. Even if fuel cell technology advances dramatically, the major cost barriers are associated with the manufacturing and distribution of hydrogen fuel itself. These issues are inexorably linked to the laws of physics and thermodynamics.
3. Hydrogen fuel will help ensure America's energy independence
False. America will consume substantially more non-renewable energy in a hydrogen economy that it consumes today. Unless our huge reserves of coal (or nuclear power) are tapped, we will be increasingly dependent on foreign energy supplies (of oil and natural gas) with each passing year
4. Fuel cells will improve air quality and dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions
False. Again, America will consume substantially more fossil energy in a hydrogen economy that it consumes today and therefore create more emissions. The public needs a much more fundamental understanding of these critical issues - as do politicians.
5. Hydrogen is the key to a clean energy future
False. As we have seen, hydrogen is quite a dirty fuel as currently manufactured. In our view, the only viable, clean, and scalable methods for producing enough energy to manufacture the huge quantities of hydrogen required are nuclear and Zero Emissions Coal. Neither of these technologies are the focus of the Bush plan.
Hmmm. We're so far off the topic it has disappeared over the horizon.
That being said, why should anyone care what you think? The point is not who said it, the point is that it is true. The GUI is a means of "dumbing down" computers, which is highly appropriate in some situations (I certainly wouldn't want to have to type in the formulas to describe a curve in order to draw one) and highly inappropriate in others (did you type in your post by selecting and dragging individual characters with your mouse? Did you draw the characters with a pen and tablet?).
Apple now supplies a powerful command line interface to their products, and they have *always* supported hot keys (much more, in fact, than windows ever has). Microsoft is now working on restoring their command line to prominence, having belatedly recognized the limitations of the GUI. They must agree with Moglen, eh?
Gee, refusing to accept the godhood of Steve Jobs is fun. It's like the time I criticised Ayn Rand, only with less death threats.
Criminy, every time I look at the computer it's "steve Jobs this, Steve Jobs that". Newspaper and TV too...
Apple has done some great stuff, sure. But great stuff in the vein of http://www33.brinkster.com/iiiii/mccoy/#f10>an improved oiler and not great stuff like the powered clothes washer or the cotton gin. We need to keep some perspective, Jobs had a large influence on us computer dweebs but very little (so far) on the course of human history.
I get your point, but "How often do most people get to change the whole goddamn world? is a little over the top.
Jobs has changed an incredibly tiny piece of the world. He didn't revoke gravity or overthrow Batista or map the genome or teach Indonesian children to hate the USA and embrace terrorism. He browbeat some programmers into making some blinky lights arguably prettier and some interesting noises arguably more commonplace.
I'm betting Nick Negroponte will change the world more than Jobs, and I think that would be so even if computers had never been invented.
But linux doesn't need your business. You can pick it up or pass it by as you please, and it will chug along just fine without you. That's the "free" in "freedom". You are free to do what works for you, and it sounds like what works for you is Windows or some other proprietary system.
The whole point is to get the user to click on the agreement without reading or understanding it.
I mean, get a clue. You think the EULA would be that hard to read if it wasn't intended to be?
LASIK works for me. Had it many years ago, when it was fairly new, and it's exactly like wearing contact lenses (only I never have to mess about with little thingies on my eyeballs any more).
The only bad thing about it was that they assured me I'd feel no pain, and when they stuck the knife in my eye, it felt EXACTLY like SOMEBODY STUCK A KNIFE IN MY EYE! After everyone calmed down they explained that less than 1% of the population has pain-sensing nerves actually in the ocular tissues, and that they'd rather I didn't scream like a wounded manatee in the operating theatre. I told 'em to stop lying to the patients (if they'd said I *might* feel pain I'd have been prepared) and everything was fine after that.
The WSJ fully acknowledges the utility of the middle class!
Who else is going to stoke the Emperor Ming's radium furnaces?
The "shit ton" is an obsolete SAE measurement, derived from the British "Imperial Arse Load".
As the USA is now on the SI system, please update your nomenclature to the currently correct "Metric Fuck Ton".
Thank you in advance for your co-operation.
--US Department of Weights and Measures
>> If you want to do an entire volume or portion of a directory tree, I guess you could use find like so:
>>
>> $find . -type f | sed -n 's/\(.*\)MCVD\(.*\)JPG/mv \1MCVD\2JPG \1vacation\2jpg/p' |bash
>Try that on files/directories containing spaces...(at your own risk)...
Like I said, that regex needs to be tightened up quite a bit. In the example, none of the files that needed to be renamed contained spaces so it should be something more like \(.*\)MCVD\([^\/\ ]*\)JPG which is pretty nasty due to all the escaping.
However, if you look into it (did you do the test?) you might find there is no problem; sometimes space-infested filenames move clean in a pipeline in Real Life [tm], I suppose because they get passed through the ARG array, or because bash does its substitutions on the command line first, before execution. I didn't do the test (still lazy) so I dunno... but your warning is well made, and best heeded!