Take my Mr. Paranoid comment with a grain of salt just as I do the text of the article. I generally attempt to be a little argumentative on/. just to get a rise out of readers and prompt their comments. I like to hear other points of view as well.
The reason why I don't take the article literally is because I work for a company that writes software for police/fire/ems. Often times when you see articles or press releases regarding something public safety is doing with IT, it either involved a reporter, or an officer that really didn't completely understand the technology they are using. If I tell Joe Policeman, who barely knows how to check email, that "the device will beam you its ID and you will automatically have access to all the information regarding that plate", the officer hears, "it beams you the ID and everything you needed to know about the plate."
Most of what you read online and on this site about "Big Brother" getting too much control over the average citizen is nothing more then rhetoric born from fear of the unknown. Every single thing that cops do on a criminal information system is tracked and logged. Sure, they can abuse it, but when internal affairs begins investigating them because they looked up someone for criminal background without subsequently filing the proper report indicating why they had probable cause, they lose their jobs. And yes, it does happen, but pretty rarely. It's just an uncomfortable compromise we have to accept that Joe Neighbor will step up and say, "I'll risk being shot at and endangering myself so you don't have to, but please at least give me some good tools to do the job with." The compromise falls in between an authoritarian police state (ala N. Korea or Myanmar) and total anarchy (parts of Africa). I'll personally trust my neighbor not to abuse his power so I can go buy a gallon of milk without having to carry a gun and papers on me.
It actually is far simpler than that. Everyone seems to have this idea that RFID is going to store ever little detail about them including their porno rental habbits. RFID is simply what it stands for: Radio Frequency ID. You hit it with an RF query and it in turn responds with its ID. No one anywhere said anything about it responding with anything more than that. Sure there are some more advanced tags that hold more than just an ID number, but they're not necessary here.
So Mr. Paranoid's little psychotic fear that Joe Somebody will drive by his nice car at the store and suddenly know everything about him is nothing but pure paranoid conspiracy theory. If you don't have access to the database that ties that ID to any real info, all you have is an ID...you know...kinda like your license plate number is already.
"In my opinion, it should take some real effort to track vehicles."
Uh...why? I mean, when your car gets stolen, why do you feel the police should have to take some "real effort" to find it for you. If your daughter is kidnapped by some sicko and they know the plate number of his van (why is it that they all own vans?), why should it take them "real effort" to save her life? For that matter, why should you really care if the local cops know you went through the red light in front of Albertson's at 10:37pm if you aren't doing anything wrong?
Also, guess what? I'd bet my next paycheck that you can't name a single "bureaucrat" that personally gives a damn about knowing where you are at 2am. Now, on the other hand, I'm sure you can find plenty who are currently being begged and pleaded by overworked police forces in their districts who are trying to cope with rashes of stolen vehicles, missing persons, and wanted criminals.
Besides, there are several HUNDRED MILLION cars on the road and no one is going to randomly just decide to find out where your car was unless they had a reason to look for it. It's not like cops just sit around trying to dream up ways to mess with the American people. In case you haven't noticed, they're American people too.
Well, since most folks don't understand how Utah works, here goes....
Utah can best be described as a Democratic Theocracy. This is not to say anything negative about the LDS church or indicate corruption in the government. It is simply a product of being a state where over 80% of the voting population are devout members of the church to one degree or another. While this is changing slightly with the heavy influx of population from California and Arizona, the current voting population will side with most, if not all legislation that is endorsed by the church leadership. Some would argue that this is a dangerous blurring between church and state but democracy by definition is a representative government and the majority of the citizens support laws that are in agreement with their beleifs and lifestyles. The fact that those beliefs and lifestyles are largely driven by church beleifs is irrelevant. Similar restrictive laws exist regarding alcohol and same-sex relationships. The reason why BYU is even referenced is because it is the Notre Dame of the LDS world. If you are looking for a degree in theology that specializes in the Mormon (LDS) beleifs, this is where you go.
Anyways, I think the ACLU has a valid argument. However, they are up against a very steep wall of not being able to find a majority voice to contend with Utah's propensity to legislate their moral values.
Cost is a double edged sword when you are looking at future business models. In the past 6 months, my company has been visited by big-wigs from every major wireless provider in the US desperatly seeking the killer app that will increase wireless airtime usage.
Yet, even today, I still can't whip out my mobile and easily check weather, news, or plan a trip (to include reserving tickets). All of things could be done 3 years ago in Japan. And this time it wasn't due to any magical Japanese techno glory. It was simply just that the mobile providers partnered with content providers to make the phones tools that could be used for every aspect of life.
As long as we are stuck with this crappy SMS messaging (seriously, how hard is it to have full email to a phone...it's just data), and no content to make the web browser in my phone anything more than an amusement that get's old in 5 minutes, product cycles are going to stay rediculously slow and we will remain two to three years behind Japan and Europe.
Simply put, for the younger crowd, the cell phone has got to become a status symbol due to cool features (we're starting to get there), and for the older crowd, it has got to be a tool that goes beyond just being able to make a phone call away from home. Once the carriers satisfy both of these markets, we will start to see a consumer drive to have the latest features which will in turn push competition in handset design.
The phone providers don't need a new killer app, they just need some basic organized content worth looking at.
"You get what you deserve for going to your bank via Google?"
I use google all the time if I'm on someone else's computer since my bank has a strange URL.
However, if you search for say "Chevy Chase Bank" and then click on a link where the address clearly has nothing to do with Chevy Chase...well, Darwin had some things to say about that.
"guru + MySql > idiot + Oracle any day of the week, for 99 out of 100 common cases"
If you were talking about almost any other pairing of apps, you would be correct. However, I can pretty confidently say that there's no way you could even come up with 100 data management scenarios where both Oracle and MySQL would be appropriate. I'd be impressed if you could even come up with 10.
Can you use Oracle for nickle and dime stuff like small business customer management or a bug tarcking system? Yes, but why in God's green earth would anyone ever want to go through that expense and learning curve?
Can you use MySql to manage the 2.5 million line items that support military operations in the Western Pacific (used to be a supply officer) and balance them off of the 65,000 maintenance items with respect to the 10,000 open orders related to them on any given day? And then can you make it flexible for reporting and integration with other systems? Come talk to me when MySQL's ODBC interface is actually ODBC COMPLIANT.
In the mean time, no ammount of skill on the part of an orange producer will make an apple into a better tasting orange than one that any idot could pick off a tree and hand to you.
The parent's post may have been moderated to Funny, but there is a bit of truth there.
India certainly has the developing economy and technical know how to get there, but I seriously doubt they would spend a lot of money reinventing the wheel. They will indeed outsource consulting at the very least and most likely will add some custom component manufacturing to that as well. This is great news for us because as more money flows into established companies on these programs, we will actually see innovation in the field that results in a lower cost to Joe Citizen.
Now if they decide to hold some kind of misplaced national pride (Anyone else notice the "Made in the USA" rhetoric died down after the economy tanked in 2000?) and develop Appolo era technology in country, then there's nothing really interresting there.
"Do you realize that the major investments in internet and cellular techonologies are the fixed costs, and the reason they are so profitable in these places is because with the same fixed costs, you can serve a lot more people and thus make a lot more money in Seoul than you can in Topeka."
Wrong, Wrong, Wrong and Wrong.
Why don't you actually learn something about the technology and market penetration in those countries before YOU get on a soapbox. The reason why DoCoMo has 40M subscribers isn't because there are 23M people squished into Tokyo, it's because they have a business model that doesn't involve screwing the average user. Remember what we used to buy cell phones for...emrgency use only, because they were too expensive to talk on. Well, DoCoMo and the other JP carriers tried a different approach, no charge on incoming calls. Imagine that, a cell phone as a tool where people can get in touch with you without you having to be tied to your land line. Then with i-Mode, DoCoMo attacked the younger crowd with full blown email and real web based services. Do you know you can buy a plane ticket from you phone while you're on the Train to get there?
The US and Canada suffer from the same problem. The major carriers here are constantly lobbying the gov't to bar foreign competitoin from entering the market so they can continue to sell 2nd gen worthless crap to the masses for hundreds of dollars. And some of them even have the nerve to say that their phone is the "1st to have" feature A that was already available in JP and EU two years ago.
Fortunately Vodaphone is starting to penetrate the US market which will alow it to impose a Japanese style of technology control that the US doesn't have. i.e., instead of AT&T's market being directly affected by features the handset makers offer in the handsets, the handset makers markets are directly impacted by their ability to manufacture devices that meet the carrier's standard. Hop on over to www.docomo.com and look at the specs on their phones....you will notice that they all not only look a lot alike, but they all meet a baseline of standards. You won't find any black and white displays there. Plus the phones usually run you less than $50 for new service and are often as low as 1 yen (basically $0.01)
"When will the Japanese make their phones compatable with the rest of the world?
People on Slashdot complain about the U.S. being isolationist when it comes to cell phone technology. It's worse in Japan."
No it's not!! What universe have you been living in? DoCoMo has been trying to get into the American market for years. It's our own fault for pressuring our government to impose high import tarrifs so we can hold our heads high buying 2nd gen crap "made in the USA". Why in God's green Earth would the Japanese want to downgrade their phones to be compatible with "the rest of the world". As it stands, DoCoMo's i-Mode technology is spreading quite well in parts of Europe, China, and Korea.
Also, I know for a fact that AU (I think Vodafone bought them last year) has a phone that is capable of roaming pretty much anywhere in the northern hemisphere. I'm also fairly certain that DoCoMo offered a phone with those capabilities, but I had no desire to pay the extra mony and just stuck with my D505i which STILL blows away most of the phones here in the US, even though it's 2nd Gen 2G tech in Japan. I plan on returning to Japan in 2 years and I guarantee my first act after finding a place to live will be to re-acquire a real phone.
Calling Japan isolationist when it comes to cell phones is like calling Italy isolationist when it comes to Lasagna. If you already produce the best in the world, what exactly do you need to import?
I can't help but notice the US continuing to press forward in experimental technology that will bring the world closer together, yet we are still in denial about the resulting effects of this.
The internet propelled the world rapidly into an era of global trade and communication and yet the US and most of the general populous continue to legislate and complain as though communication and trade were still a function that required a 12 hour flight, or 2 week ship ride to facilitate. Everyone is whining about globalization, WTO etc.., and then turning around and complaining when their job got outsourced to someone who would take a lower wage and not bitch about union rules and overtime. Once upon a time, this country was built on the backs of people who beleived in an honest days work to feed their families and getting the job done was a matter of personal pride, not of billable hours.
As industries continue to push the boundaries in space technologies, the day imminent where a business man will be able to fly to London, New York, Tokyo, Moscowand back home in the space of a single day. What will happen then when goods can cross the planet in a few hours. If you think illegal trade and outsourcing are bad now, wait another 5 years. I really think the US should start facing reality that it is no longer feasable to hold an economy so far above the rest of the world. Our current rhetoric about trying to secure our borders sounds alarmingly like the same thought that drove China from the World's formost superpower in science, technology, and economy in the 14th century into poverty and isolation.
All this new stuff from NASA sounds great, and I am a huge proponent of space travel. But the moment someone figures out how to do LEO flights, we are going to find that our $7 Trillion deficit and isolationist fantasy that we can still have everything "made in the USA" is going to drive us back into a 3rd world squallor.
I will freely admit to not having RTFA, but that's because I check out DoCoMo's site on a regular basis. There 506i series of phones had one model with fingerprint activiation and the next gen will likely follow that trend as DoCoMo has always done in the past. Having to finger the phone may seem like a minor annoyance, but for anyone who has frantically tried to make it through the crowds to the ticket machines when you realize your pass is your other pocket would consider this almost as eay as just reaching for your wallet with the JR pass in it. Add the ability to pay for items with the press of your finger and a single source of billing and you have a winner.
I'm counting the days til I can return to Tokyo and replace my two year old 505i (which by the way, still puts 95% of the current US phones to shame)
Poker, like coding, is a skill that is gained through research and experience. I'm sure most slashdotters have sat down at a table with friends, or hopped online for a little recreational play. And as long as you were sitting around with a bunch of people who have not studied the game, your analytical skills probably did lean the game in your favor. However, Poker is far more than just knowing the odds or keeping a stone solid expression on your face whether you just got a pair of Aces or 7-2o. Before everyone hops onto partypoker with their allowances, you should understand that if someone is sitting at the table who also knows how to play on button position and player identification (i.e. calling stations, recreational gambler, etc..), they could get dealt 7-2o all night long and still walk away with all of your money.
Then again, what am I saying!! Everyone hop onto partypoker with all your money and find kryond at the NL single table touneys. I suck really bad...honest, I do!
I hate to bust the bubbles of all the SCO hating zealots out there, but if you actually READ the article, you see one of the principle reasons why this suit has gone on this long. SCO has defintely not played the role of the innocent victem here. And attacking the community that has helped drive the very product they want to make a profit on is outright suicide. However, IBM's actions in court are also not the actions of an innocent company either. Claiming you can't find source code is one of the most rediculous things I've ever heard. I would bet money that if their power users suddenly experienced a bug relating to AIX, that code would suddenly appear and get patched before they lost customers to a competitor.
As much as I want to see Darl's legal battleship sink, one has to begin wondering that it may have remained afloat in court this long because some of the arguments actually hold water.
You are all welcome to flame me on this, but I would first ask you to hop on over to IBM's website and pass on a friendly WTF to their feedback page. My company was once threatened to be sued by a competitor and our first action was to open our doors and files to both sides to let them go through them. If one truly has nothing to hide, discovery should not have taken this long.
...I doubt it'll take long for a domestic carrier to pick up on this hot new toy
Uhhh....where have you been for say, the entire history of the wireless world? Japan and South Korea have consistantly been about two years ahead of the US in this technology. The blame almost surely rests on the shoulders of the carriers, with about 25% of that being the consumers fault. Why would Motorola spend big dollars licensing that tech when consumers are still perfectly happy shelling out $300 for phones with 0.3MP camera's in them? The same argument applies to the rest of the market.
We, the consumers are locked into a rut where we don't quite have the money to start pushing the 6 month product cycle. Until we start upgrading our phone everytime a new model comes out, the carriers are still going to maintain high prices with slow product upgrades. Right now the mentality is that the average cell user signs a year contract and then never upgrades the phone during that year. With no drive to upgrade, there is no drive to innovate. With no innovation, there is no competition. With no competition, prices will stay rediculously high. And we, the consumer, will keep paying $300 for 2 year old technology.
...that the digital representation of that painting is not a "thing" (because it can e.g. be copied at will, something which "things" cannot).
uhhh....once upon a time, with a good laser printer, $20 bills could be copied at will. I mean, as long as you returned the original $20 to the owner, and/or compensated him/her with currency of equal value, you haven't deprived them of property. But federal law considers that to be a felony because you are devaluing the currency and thus directly infringing on the rights of others who have lost spending power because of your actions. Having been a professional musician in the past, and now a software developer - two professions which people feel it's perfectly OK to burn copies of products without compensating the creators; I would argue that by obtaining, and worse, proliferating digital copies of my melodious trombone playing, or my latest rendition of GLPong without compensating me devalues my work to produce them and would ultimately encourage me to stop if my income became so low it wasn't worth the effort. The argument that they are already overpaid holds zero water in my book.
As to the whole point of this story in general, South Korea is a representation of a possible future market in the US when real broadband (i.e. 10MBit+, not this 1.4MBit DSL crap) allows us to subscribe to streaming music services at a reasonable price. I was just in S.K. last year and almost every club I went to was paying ~$20/mo. to excite.com's South Korea portal for hi bandwidth streaming music. A hell of a lot cheaper than hiring a DJ who buys real CD's.
Sorry, but all respect disappeared the moment he used the term frankenfood. He rattled on and on about current policies being racist, but then he turns to GM food and suddenly drops to the level of a 5 year old by calling it names. This is almost always the sign of someone feabily assaulting something they don't understand and have just been convinced they are not supposed to like it.
I'm not saying I'm for or against GM food, but a candidate for the presidency of the united states could have produced a more intelligent argument aginst it than just calling it "frankenfood"
"Let's just hope that the space-flights stimulate some competition, unlike Concorde, because then the next goal would quickly become 'lunar city'..."
Fortunately for you, the Japanese have been eying this industry for quite some time. And quite frankly, I'm putting my money on the culture that presently makes: The world's fastest super computer, the most reliable cars, the most advanced communication technology, etc...
These guys are in it to win and Virgin won't be able to charge $190K because the Japanese will be there offering $185K, or some other competitive number that would make it cheaper to fly vial JAL to Tokyo instead of Virgin to London.
Re:Nobody has a legitimate reason for 2 GB of RAM
on
Assault Weapons Ban
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Look buddy,
It's people like you that make everyone else who is literate on the planet look bad. I hate to break this to you, but the soldiers you talk about....they're your friends and family ass hole. If you seriously think average Americans, most of which just joined the military for college money, are just going to suddenly turn on everyone they know and support a stalanistic lifestyle because some idiot who knows how to kiss babies told them to, then you need to check yourself into a psych ward.
The situation that existed when the second amendment was written was during a colonial period where your "government" was a monarchy that was 4000 miles away. If you seriously beleive that anyone is capable of reverting America back to a monarchy or dictatorship, once again, seek professional help.
All I have to say is #1 learn how to read, and #2 why don't you actually talk to someone who has served before running your mouth about something you quite clearly don't understand.
Point: This is an article by a commercial news source on a topic that is controversial and easy to sell. If you don't pay attention to subtle differences in wording and apparent differences in context I could easily take plenty of quotes from [insert public figure] and make them seem like the biggest liar on the planet.
Let's examine Take 1->The words "his" and "medals" were both written by the Globe, not included in his quotes. There is no quote in take one of Kerry actually claiming what he was holding were indeed HIS medals.
Let's examine Take 2->Again, nothing quotable from Kerry regarding whether he actually was tossing HIS medals. As far as the numbers tossed, he was likely including less noteworthy items such as National Defense, Combat Action, Navy Achievement, Overseas Service, etc...
Let's examine Take 3->If you concur that Takes 1 and 2 in fact do not hold evidence beyond a reasonable doubt whether they were HIS medals, then this actually supports his statements.
Let's examine Take 4->Here is exactly what I mean about paying attention to subtle differences. The quoted word of "medals" never actually appears in any quote from Kerry. The article claims there is a disparity because he gives two different reasons for not throwing his own medals. However, this does not constitute evidence of a lie since the two reasons don't conflict. Whether or not someone has time for things is largely based on priorities. If he was in disagreement at the time whether or not he would toss his own medals, why would he take time out of his schedule to go get them. Even if he later decided his medals should have been tossed, he had already factored time into not getting them. Now, the next thing the Globe does is subtly shift his quoted word of "interchangable" to "identicle". Anyone who has ever served know that symbolically ribbons and medals are indeed interchangable, but they are most certainly not identicle. Medals hold more value for multiple reasons, most signifigantly due to the presentation of the award. Just as there is a Congressional Medal of Honor, there is also a ribbon that represents that medal. During my ten years in the service I went through more ribbons than I can count, often gifting them to cute girls to win their favor. Medals I was awarded on the other hand, were kept in a jewelry case and polished on a regular basis if they weren't annodized. However, Kerry is 100% correct in stating that during the protest, THERE WAS NO DISTINCTION because it was the symbol of military recognition of their service that was being trashed in protest.
Have I been harsh on you? yes. You can't just sit there and inhale media spin without applying your own brain to it. BTW, a quick check of the Navy Awards Manual (OPNAV 1650 avail online) would expose the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth as being the real liars. You don't get a bronze star for plucking people out of the water and putting out a fire on a boat. In the Navy, that's just part of the job description. Now, if you happen to be under enemy fire, or some other extreme situation, then that would be a different story.
You are talking about attacking the character of a man and bold face labeling him a liar when you have no incontrovertable evidence. I'm not endorsing Kerry by any means, I'm just saying you can't attack a fellow man like that. How would you feel is someone took quotes from you out of context from 33 years ago and called you a liar on National television. I personally would get pretty pissed.
"For example, the concept "freedom of religion" is derived from Christianity. Other religious traditions have no such belief."
Sorry to bust your bubble, but MOST religious traditions (Buddism, Shinto, Wiccan, Naturalists, Fillial, etc..) not only have practiced a live and let live standing with other religions for thousands of years, but are also even compatible and intermixed. While I will grant that there are isolated instances in history where particularly imposing regimes have perverted religious devotion as a drive to support their wars, none of them will ever come close to the centuries of hate and intollerance driven by the "Thou shalt have no other God before me" drive of Christianity. It was one of the primary desires for people to move to America in the 16th and 17th century to escape religious persecution because they held slightly different beliefs about "God's message". Even today, the Catholics and Protestants are still bickering on a violent level.
The parent of this whole misguided rant was trying to point out that education should not promote OR DISCOURAGE any religion except to where it would actively impinge on the beliefs of others. There is nothing wrong with praying in school. There is, however, something basically discriminating when a teacher makes the act of prayer part of the class when it is not a belief shared by all the students.
You are partially correct. I was not taught about the event in general because of my points above. I confused Perry's 20+ days of sitting in the Harbor with all guns pointed at the shore and threatening to shell the hell out of the harbor if they didn't open trade because I'm still hung over from the weekend. My point remains valid. We F***ed with them first.
"Once again, Europe has us beat in this area. Just do what the most advanced countries in Europe do, and it will undoubtedly be twice as good as what we do."
That must be why 6 out of the top 10 graduates of my high school were Asians! It's that fine European education system....oh wait...that's right, they don't use the European system. My bad. The only thing I learned about Asia in school was that we kicked Japan's @ss in the war and that they deserved it for bombing Pearl Harbor. It took travelling abroad and educating myself to learn that we pulled into Yokohama Harbor 100 years earlier and shelled the hell out of it until they agreed to open trade with us.
Is it just me, or might we need to find that missing chapter in our world History books that actually talks about other countries besides England, France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Germany.
I would tend to concur with this. Not only is the simple task of understanding resource management easily put forth in these games, but so far every RTS game I have played has held true with historical warfare in the fact that, whoever controls the primary trade routes, will eventually become the global superpower. In the context of history, this implies sea control. Things get a little more hairy when you add aviation to the picture, but contolling the skies also hold a powerful advantage.
FPS games are also very valuable in how they can put forward the very realistic dangers lurking en every corner in an urban combat environment.
Slashdot Mirror
Take my Mr. Paranoid comment with a grain of salt just as I do the text of the article. I generally attempt to be a little argumentative on /. just to get a rise out of readers and prompt their comments. I like to hear other points of view as well.
The reason why I don't take the article literally is because I work for a company that writes software for police/fire/ems. Often times when you see articles or press releases regarding something public safety is doing with IT, it either involved a reporter, or an officer that really didn't completely understand the technology they are using. If I tell Joe Policeman, who barely knows how to check email, that "the device will beam you its ID and you will automatically have access to all the information regarding that plate", the officer hears, "it beams you the ID and everything you needed to know about the plate."
Most of what you read online and on this site about "Big Brother" getting too much control over the average citizen is nothing more then rhetoric born from fear of the unknown. Every single thing that cops do on a criminal information system is tracked and logged. Sure, they can abuse it, but when internal affairs begins investigating them because they looked up someone for criminal background without subsequently filing the proper report indicating why they had probable cause, they lose their jobs. And yes, it does happen, but pretty rarely. It's just an uncomfortable compromise we have to accept that Joe Neighbor will step up and say, "I'll risk being shot at and endangering myself so you don't have to, but please at least give me some good tools to do the job with." The compromise falls in between an authoritarian police state (ala N. Korea or Myanmar) and total anarchy (parts of Africa). I'll personally trust my neighbor not to abuse his power so I can go buy a gallon of milk without having to carry a gun and papers on me.
It actually is far simpler than that. Everyone seems to have this idea that RFID is going to store ever little detail about them including their porno rental habbits. RFID is simply what it stands for: Radio Frequency ID. You hit it with an RF query and it in turn responds with its ID. No one anywhere said anything about it responding with anything more than that. Sure there are some more advanced tags that hold more than just an ID number, but they're not necessary here.
So Mr. Paranoid's little psychotic fear that Joe Somebody will drive by his nice car at the store and suddenly know everything about him is nothing but pure paranoid conspiracy theory. If you don't have access to the database that ties that ID to any real info, all you have is an ID...you know...kinda like your license plate number is already.
"In my opinion, it should take some real effort to track vehicles."
Uh...why? I mean, when your car gets stolen, why do you feel the police should have to take some "real effort" to find it for you. If your daughter is kidnapped by some sicko and they know the plate number of his van (why is it that they all own vans?), why should it take them "real effort" to save her life? For that matter, why should you really care if the local cops know you went through the red light in front of Albertson's at 10:37pm if you aren't doing anything wrong?
Also, guess what? I'd bet my next paycheck that you can't name a single "bureaucrat" that personally gives a damn about knowing where you are at 2am. Now, on the other hand, I'm sure you can find plenty who are currently being begged and pleaded by overworked police forces in their districts who are trying to cope with rashes of stolen vehicles, missing persons, and wanted criminals.
Besides, there are several HUNDRED MILLION cars on the road and no one is going to randomly just decide to find out where your car was unless they had a reason to look for it. It's not like cops just sit around trying to dream up ways to mess with the American people. In case you haven't noticed, they're American people too.
Well, since most folks don't understand how Utah works, here goes....
Utah can best be described as a Democratic Theocracy. This is not to say anything negative about the LDS church or indicate corruption in the government. It is simply a product of being a state where over 80% of the voting population are devout members of the church to one degree or another. While this is changing slightly with the heavy influx of population from California and Arizona, the current voting population will side with most, if not all legislation that is endorsed by the church leadership. Some would argue that this is a dangerous blurring between church and state but democracy by definition is a representative government and the majority of the citizens support laws that are in agreement with their beleifs and lifestyles. The fact that those beliefs and lifestyles are largely driven by church beleifs is irrelevant. Similar restrictive laws exist regarding alcohol and same-sex relationships. The reason why BYU is even referenced is because it is the Notre Dame of the LDS world. If you are looking for a degree in theology that specializes in the Mormon (LDS) beleifs, this is where you go.
Anyways, I think the ACLU has a valid argument. However, they are up against a very steep wall of not being able to find a majority voice to contend with Utah's propensity to legislate their moral values.
" The problem with alternate versions is cost."
Cost is a double edged sword when you are looking at future business models. In the past 6 months, my company has been visited by big-wigs from every major wireless provider in the US desperatly seeking the killer app that will increase wireless airtime usage.
Yet, even today, I still can't whip out my mobile and easily check weather, news, or plan a trip (to include reserving tickets). All of things could be done 3 years ago in Japan. And this time it wasn't due to any magical Japanese techno glory. It was simply just that the mobile providers partnered with content providers to make the phones tools that could be used for every aspect of life.
As long as we are stuck with this crappy SMS messaging (seriously, how hard is it to have full email to a phone...it's just data), and no content to make the web browser in my phone anything more than an amusement that get's old in 5 minutes, product cycles are going to stay rediculously slow and we will remain two to three years behind Japan and Europe.
Simply put, for the younger crowd, the cell phone has got to become a status symbol due to cool features (we're starting to get there), and for the older crowd, it has got to be a tool that goes beyond just being able to make a phone call away from home. Once the carriers satisfy both of these markets, we will start to see a consumer drive to have the latest features which will in turn push competition in handset design.
The phone providers don't need a new killer app, they just need some basic organized content worth looking at.
"You get what you deserve for going to your bank via Google?"
I use google all the time if I'm on someone else's computer since my bank has a strange URL.
However, if you search for say "Chevy Chase Bank" and then click on a link where the address clearly has nothing to do with Chevy Chase...well, Darwin had some things to say about that.
"guru + MySql > idiot + Oracle any day of the week, for 99 out of 100 common cases"
If you were talking about almost any other pairing of apps, you would be correct. However, I can pretty confidently say that there's no way you could even come up with 100 data management scenarios where both Oracle and MySQL would be appropriate. I'd be impressed if you could even come up with 10.
Can you use Oracle for nickle and dime stuff like small business customer management or a bug tarcking system? Yes, but why in God's green earth would anyone ever want to go through that expense and learning curve?
Can you use MySql to manage the 2.5 million line items that support military operations in the Western Pacific (used to be a supply officer) and balance them off of the 65,000 maintenance items with respect to the 10,000 open orders related to them on any given day? And then can you make it flexible for reporting and integration with other systems? Come talk to me when MySQL's ODBC interface is actually ODBC COMPLIANT.
In the mean time, no ammount of skill on the part of an orange producer will make an apple into a better tasting orange than one that any idot could pick off a tree and hand to you.
The parent's post may have been moderated to Funny, but there is a bit of truth there.
India certainly has the developing economy and technical know how to get there, but I seriously doubt they would spend a lot of money reinventing the wheel. They will indeed outsource consulting at the very least and most likely will add some custom component manufacturing to that as well. This is great news for us because as more money flows into established companies on these programs, we will actually see innovation in the field that results in a lower cost to Joe Citizen.
Now if they decide to hold some kind of misplaced national pride (Anyone else notice the "Made in the USA" rhetoric died down after the economy tanked in 2000?) and develop Appolo era technology in country, then there's nothing really interresting there.
"Do you realize that the major investments in internet and cellular techonologies are the fixed costs, and the reason they are so profitable in these places is because with the same fixed costs, you can serve a lot more people and thus make a lot more money in Seoul than you can in Topeka."
Wrong, Wrong, Wrong and Wrong.
Why don't you actually learn something about the technology and market penetration in those countries before YOU get on a soapbox. The reason why DoCoMo has 40M subscribers isn't because there are 23M people squished into Tokyo, it's because they have a business model that doesn't involve screwing the average user. Remember what we used to buy cell phones for...emrgency use only, because they were too expensive to talk on. Well, DoCoMo and the other JP carriers tried a different approach, no charge on incoming calls. Imagine that, a cell phone as a tool where people can get in touch with you without you having to be tied to your land line. Then with i-Mode, DoCoMo attacked the younger crowd with full blown email and real web based services. Do you know you can buy a plane ticket from you phone while you're on the Train to get there?
The US and Canada suffer from the same problem. The major carriers here are constantly lobbying the gov't to bar foreign competitoin from entering the market so they can continue to sell 2nd gen worthless crap to the masses for hundreds of dollars. And some of them even have the nerve to say that their phone is the "1st to have" feature A that was already available in JP and EU two years ago.
Fortunately Vodaphone is starting to penetrate the US market which will alow it to impose a Japanese style of technology control that the US doesn't have. i.e., instead of AT&T's market being directly affected by features the handset makers offer in the handsets, the handset makers markets are directly impacted by their ability to manufacture devices that meet the carrier's standard. Hop on over to www.docomo.com and look at the specs on their phones....you will notice that they all not only look a lot alike, but they all meet a baseline of standards. You won't find any black and white displays there. Plus the phones usually run you less than $50 for new service and are often as low as 1 yen (basically $0.01)
"When will the Japanese make their phones compatable with the rest of the world?
People on Slashdot complain about the U.S. being isolationist when it comes to cell phone technology. It's worse in Japan."
No it's not!! What universe have you been living in? DoCoMo has been trying to get into the American market for years. It's our own fault for pressuring our government to impose high import tarrifs so we can hold our heads high buying 2nd gen crap "made in the USA". Why in God's green Earth would the Japanese want to downgrade their phones to be compatible with "the rest of the world". As it stands, DoCoMo's i-Mode technology is spreading quite well in parts of Europe, China, and Korea.
Also, I know for a fact that AU (I think Vodafone bought them last year) has a phone that is capable of roaming pretty much anywhere in the northern hemisphere. I'm also fairly certain that DoCoMo offered a phone with those capabilities, but I had no desire to pay the extra mony and just stuck with my D505i which STILL blows away most of the phones here in the US, even though it's 2nd Gen 2G tech in Japan. I plan on returning to Japan in 2 years and I guarantee my first act after finding a place to live will be to re-acquire a real phone.
Calling Japan isolationist when it comes to cell phones is like calling Italy isolationist when it comes to Lasagna. If you already produce the best in the world, what exactly do you need to import?
I can't help but notice the US continuing to press forward in experimental technology that will bring the world closer together, yet we are still in denial about the resulting effects of this.
The internet propelled the world rapidly into an era of global trade and communication and yet the US and most of the general populous continue to legislate and complain as though communication and trade were still a function that required a 12 hour flight, or 2 week ship ride to facilitate. Everyone is whining about globalization, WTO etc.., and then turning around and complaining when their job got outsourced to someone who would take a lower wage and not bitch about union rules and overtime. Once upon a time, this country was built on the backs of people who beleived in an honest days work to feed their families and getting the job done was a matter of personal pride, not of billable hours.
As industries continue to push the boundaries in space technologies, the day imminent where a business man will be able to fly to London, New York, Tokyo, Moscowand back home in the space of a single day. What will happen then when goods can cross the planet in a few hours. If you think illegal trade and outsourcing are bad now, wait another 5 years. I really think the US should start facing reality that it is no longer feasable to hold an economy so far above the rest of the world. Our current rhetoric about trying to secure our borders sounds alarmingly like the same thought that drove China from the World's formost superpower in science, technology, and economy in the 14th century into poverty and isolation.
All this new stuff from NASA sounds great, and I am a huge proponent of space travel. But the moment someone figures out how to do LEO flights, we are going to find that our $7 Trillion deficit and isolationist fantasy that we can still have everything "made in the USA" is going to drive us back into a 3rd world squallor.
I will freely admit to not having RTFA, but that's because I check out DoCoMo's site on a regular basis. There 506i series of phones had one model with fingerprint activiation and the next gen will likely follow that trend as DoCoMo has always done in the past. Having to finger the phone may seem like a minor annoyance, but for anyone who has frantically tried to make it through the crowds to the ticket machines when you realize your pass is your other pocket would consider this almost as eay as just reaching for your wallet with the JR pass in it. Add the ability to pay for items with the press of your finger and a single source of billing and you have a winner.
I'm counting the days til I can return to Tokyo and replace my two year old 505i (which by the way, still puts 95% of the current US phones to shame)
Poker, like coding, is a skill that is gained through research and experience. I'm sure most slashdotters have sat down at a table with friends, or hopped online for a little recreational play. And as long as you were sitting around with a bunch of people who have not studied the game, your analytical skills probably did lean the game in your favor. However, Poker is far more than just knowing the odds or keeping a stone solid expression on your face whether you just got a pair of Aces or 7-2o. Before everyone hops onto partypoker with their allowances, you should understand that if someone is sitting at the table who also knows how to play on button position and player identification (i.e. calling stations, recreational gambler, etc..), they could get dealt 7-2o all night long and still walk away with all of your money.
Then again, what am I saying!! Everyone hop onto partypoker with all your money and find kryond at the NL single table touneys. I suck really bad...honest, I do!
I hate to bust the bubbles of all the SCO hating zealots out there, but if you actually READ the article, you see one of the principle reasons why this suit has gone on this long. SCO has defintely not played the role of the innocent victem here. And attacking the community that has helped drive the very product they want to make a profit on is outright suicide. However, IBM's actions in court are also not the actions of an innocent company either. Claiming you can't find source code is one of the most rediculous things I've ever heard. I would bet money that if their power users suddenly experienced a bug relating to AIX, that code would suddenly appear and get patched before they lost customers to a competitor.
As much as I want to see Darl's legal battleship sink, one has to begin wondering that it may have remained afloat in court this long because some of the arguments actually hold water.
You are all welcome to flame me on this, but I would first ask you to hop on over to IBM's website and pass on a friendly WTF to their feedback page. My company was once threatened to be sued by a competitor and our first action was to open our doors and files to both sides to let them go through them. If one truly has nothing to hide, discovery should not have taken this long.
...I doubt it'll take long for a domestic carrier to pick up on this hot new toy
Uhhh....where have you been for say, the entire history of the wireless world? Japan and South Korea have consistantly been about two years ahead of the US in this technology. The blame almost surely rests on the shoulders of the carriers, with about 25% of that being the consumers fault. Why would Motorola spend big dollars licensing that tech when consumers are still perfectly happy shelling out $300 for phones with 0.3MP camera's in them? The same argument applies to the rest of the market.
We, the consumers are locked into a rut where we don't quite have the money to start pushing the 6 month product cycle. Until we start upgrading our phone everytime a new model comes out, the carriers are still going to maintain high prices with slow product upgrades. Right now the mentality is that the average cell user signs a year contract and then never upgrades the phone during that year. With no drive to upgrade, there is no drive to innovate. With no innovation, there is no competition. With no competition, prices will stay rediculously high. And we, the consumer, will keep paying $300 for 2 year old technology.
...that the digital representation of that painting is not a "thing" (because it can e.g. be copied at will, something which "things" cannot).
uhhh....once upon a time, with a good laser printer, $20 bills could be copied at will. I mean, as long as you returned the original $20 to the owner, and/or compensated him/her with currency of equal value, you haven't deprived them of property. But federal law considers that to be a felony because you are devaluing the currency and thus directly infringing on the rights of others who have lost spending power because of your actions. Having been a professional musician in the past, and now a software developer - two professions which people feel it's perfectly OK to burn copies of products without compensating the creators; I would argue that by obtaining, and worse, proliferating digital copies of my melodious trombone playing, or my latest rendition of GLPong without compensating me devalues my work to produce them and would ultimately encourage me to stop if my income became so low it wasn't worth the effort. The argument that they are already overpaid holds zero water in my book.
As to the whole point of this story in general, South Korea is a representation of a possible future market in the US when real broadband (i.e. 10MBit+, not this 1.4MBit DSL crap) allows us to subscribe to streaming music services at a reasonable price. I was just in S.K. last year and almost every club I went to was paying ~$20/mo. to excite.com's South Korea portal for hi bandwidth streaming music. A hell of a lot cheaper than hiring a DJ who buys real CD's.
Sorry, but all respect disappeared the moment he used the term frankenfood. He rattled on and on about current policies being racist, but then he turns to GM food and suddenly drops to the level of a 5 year old by calling it names. This is almost always the sign of someone feabily assaulting something they don't understand and have just been convinced they are not supposed to like it.
I'm not saying I'm for or against GM food, but a candidate for the presidency of the united states could have produced a more intelligent argument aginst it than just calling it "frankenfood"
"Let's just hope that the space-flights stimulate some competition, unlike Concorde, because then the next goal would quickly become 'lunar city'..."
Fortunately for you, the Japanese have been eying this industry for quite some time. And quite frankly, I'm putting my money on the culture that presently makes: The world's fastest super computer, the most reliable cars, the most advanced communication technology, etc...
These guys are in it to win and Virgin won't be able to charge $190K because the Japanese will be there offering $185K, or some other competitive number that would make it cheaper to fly vial JAL to Tokyo instead of Virgin to London.
Look buddy,
It's people like you that make everyone else who is literate on the planet look bad. I hate to break this to you, but the soldiers you talk about....they're your friends and family ass hole. If you seriously think average Americans, most of which just joined the military for college money, are just going to suddenly turn on everyone they know and support a stalanistic lifestyle because some idiot who knows how to kiss babies told them to, then you need to check yourself into a psych ward.
The situation that existed when the second amendment was written was during a colonial period where your "government" was a monarchy that was 4000 miles away. If you seriously beleive that anyone is capable of reverting America back to a monarchy or dictatorship, once again, seek professional help.
All I have to say is #1 learn how to read, and #2 why don't you actually talk to someone who has served before running your mouth about something you quite clearly don't understand.
Point: This is an article by a commercial news source on a topic that is controversial and easy to sell. If you don't pay attention to subtle differences in wording and apparent differences in context I could easily take plenty of quotes from [insert public figure] and make them seem like the biggest liar on the planet.
Let's examine Take 1->The words "his" and "medals" were both written by the Globe, not included in his quotes. There is no quote in take one of Kerry actually claiming what he was holding were indeed HIS medals.
Let's examine Take 2->Again, nothing quotable from Kerry regarding whether he actually was tossing HIS medals. As far as the numbers tossed, he was likely including less noteworthy items such as National Defense, Combat Action, Navy Achievement, Overseas Service, etc...
Let's examine Take 3->If you concur that Takes 1 and 2 in fact do not hold evidence beyond a reasonable doubt whether they were HIS medals, then this actually supports his statements.
Let's examine Take 4->Here is exactly what I mean about paying attention to subtle differences. The quoted word of "medals" never actually appears in any quote from Kerry. The article claims there is a disparity because he gives two different reasons for not throwing his own medals. However, this does not constitute evidence of a lie since the two reasons don't conflict. Whether or not someone has time for things is largely based on priorities. If he was in disagreement at the time whether or not he would toss his own medals, why would he take time out of his schedule to go get them. Even if he later decided his medals should have been tossed, he had already factored time into not getting them. Now, the next thing the Globe does is subtly shift his quoted word of "interchangable" to "identicle". Anyone who has ever served know that symbolically ribbons and medals are indeed interchangable, but they are most certainly not identicle. Medals hold more value for multiple reasons, most signifigantly due to the presentation of the award. Just as there is a Congressional Medal of Honor, there is also a ribbon that represents that medal. During my ten years in the service I went through more ribbons than I can count, often gifting them to cute girls to win their favor. Medals I was awarded on the other hand, were kept in a jewelry case and polished on a regular basis if they weren't annodized. However, Kerry is 100% correct in stating that during the protest, THERE WAS NO DISTINCTION because it was the symbol of military recognition of their service that was being trashed in protest.
Have I been harsh on you? yes. You can't just sit there and inhale media spin without applying your own brain to it. BTW, a quick check of the Navy Awards Manual (OPNAV 1650 avail online) would expose the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth as being the real liars. You don't get a bronze star for plucking people out of the water and putting out a fire on a boat. In the Navy, that's just part of the job description. Now, if you happen to be under enemy fire, or some other extreme situation, then that would be a different story.
You are talking about attacking the character of a man and bold face labeling him a liar when you have no incontrovertable evidence. I'm not endorsing Kerry by any means, I'm just saying you can't attack a fellow man like that. How would you feel is someone took quotes from you out of context from 33 years ago and called you a liar on National television. I personally would get pretty pissed.
"For example, the concept "freedom of religion" is derived from Christianity. Other religious traditions have no such belief."
Sorry to bust your bubble, but MOST religious traditions (Buddism, Shinto, Wiccan, Naturalists, Fillial, etc..) not only have practiced a live and let live standing with other religions for thousands of years, but are also even compatible and intermixed. While I will grant that there are isolated instances in history where particularly imposing regimes have perverted religious devotion as a drive to support their wars, none of them will ever come close to the centuries of hate and intollerance driven by the "Thou shalt have no other God before me" drive of Christianity. It was one of the primary desires for people to move to America in the 16th and 17th century to escape religious persecution because they held slightly different beliefs about "God's message". Even today, the Catholics and Protestants are still bickering on a violent level.
The parent of this whole misguided rant was trying to point out that education should not promote OR DISCOURAGE any religion except to where it would actively impinge on the beliefs of others. There is nothing wrong with praying in school. There is, however, something basically discriminating when a teacher makes the act of prayer part of the class when it is not a belief shared by all the students.
You are partially correct. I was not taught about the event in general because of my points above. I confused Perry's 20+ days of sitting in the Harbor with all guns pointed at the shore and threatening to shell the hell out of the harbor if they didn't open trade because I'm still hung over from the weekend. My point remains valid. We F***ed with them first.
FIRST DEMOCRATIC POST!
"Once again, Europe has us beat in this area. Just do what the most advanced countries in Europe do, and it will undoubtedly be twice as good as what we do."
That must be why 6 out of the top 10 graduates of my high school were Asians! It's that fine European education system....oh wait...that's right, they don't use the European system. My bad. The only thing I learned about Asia in school was that we kicked Japan's @ss in the war and that they deserved it for bombing Pearl Harbor. It took travelling abroad and educating myself to learn that we pulled into Yokohama Harbor 100 years earlier and shelled the hell out of it until they agreed to open trade with us.
Is it just me, or might we need to find that missing chapter in our world History books that actually talks about other countries besides England, France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Germany.
I would tend to concur with this. Not only is the simple task of understanding resource management easily put forth in these games, but so far every RTS game I have played has held true with historical warfare in the fact that, whoever controls the primary trade routes, will eventually become the global superpower. In the context of history, this implies sea control. Things get a little more hairy when you add aviation to the picture, but contolling the skies also hold a powerful advantage.
FPS games are also very valuable in how they can put forward the very realistic dangers lurking en every corner in an urban combat environment.