Right, but no assholes have gotten fucked in Iraq. The American military contractors got an orgasm, and the country just got AIDS.// continuing the metaphor
I hope they find out who did it, determine their motivations and the trade-offs that have resulted from their actions, and then decide whether to honor them or execute them.
I hope "they" here is an impartial third party with no connection to the US Government.
We know how to solve that problem. The drones don't have to know anything about military secrets -- they just have to encrypt something. Why would bog-standard public key crypto not work here?
The intelligence analysis of Iraq's WMD capability was clear: they didn't have one. CIA didn't fuck this one up. Bush told Richard Clarke's counterterrorism people to do a study on Iraq's WMD capability, and they came back and said "They don't have one."
If you can't wage war from the moral high ground, you should look yourself in the mirror long and hard and ask if you should be waging it in the first place.
Re:My experience with Apple...
on
The Apple Two
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
but never once have I felt the need to buy anything by Apple because there's nothing they make that cannot already be done cheaper and better than the stuff I currently have.
That's the point. Why pay $$$$ for an iPad when you can get an eeepc for less? If you really want it to talk to a cell tower you can do that.
You can also run Olympus Studio on it and take timelapse pictures out in the forest. Did Asus intend that? Of course not -- but they intended to sell a computer, a device that can do anything, rather than an "appliance" that can do what they want you to do and not much else.
Re:My experience with Apple...
on
The Apple Two
·
· Score: 1
I see you're having fun trolling today. Just for shits and grins:
iTunes, at least the version I downloaded 4 years ago (and why should I need an app that's dozens of MB to copy files) wasn't trivial to use for simple tasks. Sure, it has a library function which might be nice if you want to use it to organize your music collection, but sorting through all of that isn't terribly relevant to the simple task of copying shit to a device.
Good software should make trivial tasks trivial and complicated tasks possible. iTunes does not make trivial tasks trivial (at least that old version; like I said, I have no clue what it does now).
I have a perfectly "easy" music application already -- actually, several, of which I use Winamp and Audacious the most. Why do I need another one to use a particular piece of hardware?
I have a digital camera. I plug it into my computer, and the files on it show up on a block device. I can do whatever the hell I want with them. That's good design since it lets the user decide how to use their device.
Now imagine a digital camera that can only copy pictures to your computer via Picasa. Less useful, huh? That's bad design.
If you'd bothered to read my post before breaking out your troll-stick, you'd have seen that "drag and drop" (to copy files to the device) was exactly what I did -- and it didn't work. It helps if you read the post you're responding to first; I know it takes you a while, but not doing so sort of makes you look like an idiot.
Re:Computers are not for Computer People Anymore
on
The Apple Two
·
· Score: 1
By "real computer" I mean "a machine capable of arbitrary information processing limited only by engineering capability". Y'know, kind of what Turing had in mind. The computer I'm typing on and the eeepc in the other room are Real Computers. I can make them compute pi to a thousand digits, play Tetris, compute Fourier transforms of fart recordings, or troll Slashdot.
The iPhone and iPad and iWhateverElse can't do these things. Or, rather, it can, but Apple won't let you. It's not a general-purpose computer as far as the user is concerned. Neither are your TV or car.
Re:Computers are not for Computer People Anymore
on
The Apple Two
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The idea that you need to be able to program a computer to make use of the ability to program a computer is a fallacy.
I don't need to know how to write a program to be able to make use of somebody else's program. The difference between iShit and a real computer is that on a real computer, I can put whatever I want on it, even if I didn't write it myself.
My experience with Apple...
on
The Apple Two
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
So, through a convoluted series of events, I was offered a free iPod Nano.
"Cool", I thought, "I can play mp3's in my car without hauling around my laptop." So I plug the thing into my computer, and it shows up as a block device. Welp, it's an mp3 player, I'm supposed to copy mp3's to it, right?
I do this, and try to play them, and they're not listed. Huh? I plug the thing back into my computer, and they're there, but I can't play them. WTF?
After some Googling I discover that you can't just copy mp3's to the iStick -- you have to fire up Apple's software, which is labyrinthine and ridiculous, and jump through hoops to transfer them.
Fuck this -- if they can't make a device that works in the easiest way possible, but involves doing things the hard way since they're just trying to pimp their other iShit, I want nothing to do with them. Haven't touched anything else Apple since then, except for that Mac the music library has as a public computer. Turns out OSX sucks, too, although at least it comes with an X server and ssh client.
Darwin Awards are given to people who die doing stupid things.
Pointing things at gunships -- especially those flown by trigger-happy Americans -- is a good way to get shot. But it is also a good way to document current events, and some people think that this is worth the risk.
Y'know that free press thing? Some folks actually believe it.
"To me the difference between a murderer and a soldier is that a murderer wants to kill."
Well said.
In my former church-attending days, I met a fellow who was a retired colonel in the artillery who was a deacon of the church I attended. His job was to blow up Russians by the thousands if he had to. He once said that nobody hates and fears war more than a real soldier... and when Iraq started, he was on the street corners with the crowd every Saturday protesting.
I'd hazard a guess that expensive photographic equipment sells for a lot on the black market, and in a country as blatantly lawless as Iraq, if you're going to haul it around and operate it in public, you might want some hired guards?
The point is that ugly shit happens in wars, and that the only way to make ugly shit not happen is to not go to war if you can avoid it. We could have avoided it, and helicopters blowing away children is the consequence. Not necessarily because the people in the helicopter were negligent, but because war sucks.
This happened before Nikon released a true professional camera, so it's 90% likely that the "big zoom lens" was bright shiny white -- all of Canon's high-end long lenses are.
Wars are ugly. Even if the Apache crew weren't murderous airborne psychopathic killers, they are airborne killers. People die in wars, and because of the confusion sometimes you kill people you wish you hadn't. But wishing you hadn't killed them after the fact doesn't make them less dead.
Wars are ugly, desperate, and expensive as hell. This is why you don't fight them unless you have to -- something forgotten or ignored by Bush/Wolfowitz/Cheney/Rove/etc.
You can kill a few journalists with an Apache, but you can't kill all of wikileaks, the EFF, cryptome, freenet, al-Jazeera, innumerable torrent hosts and ftp servers, and the Stile Project.
Pointing a 300mm lens at a military helicopter that might be up to no good shouldn't earn you a Darwin award in a civilized society; it should earn you a medal.
Slashdot Mirror
That's if Apple approves your app, as I understand it.
So you can't make your iPad do anything, really -- you can only get Apple's permission to make it do things.
Don't you mean "half-breed muslin?"
Wikileaks.
Right, but no assholes have gotten fucked in Iraq. The American military contractors got an orgasm, and the country just got AIDS. // continuing the metaphor
I hope they find out who did it, determine their motivations and the trade-offs that have resulted from their actions, and then decide whether to honor them or execute them.
I hope "they" here is an impartial third party with no connection to the US Government.
We know how to solve that problem. The drones don't have to know anything about military secrets -- they just have to encrypt something. Why would bog-standard public key crypto not work here?
The intelligence analysis of Iraq's WMD capability was clear: they didn't have one. CIA didn't fuck this one up. Bush told Richard Clarke's counterterrorism people to do a study on Iraq's WMD capability, and they came back and said "They don't have one."
Bush said "Wrong answer, do it again."
If you can't wage war from the moral high ground, you should look yourself in the mirror long and hard and ask if you should be waging it in the first place.
but never once have I felt the need to buy anything by Apple because there's nothing they make that cannot already be done cheaper and better than the stuff I currently have.
That's the point. Why pay $$$$ for an iPad when you can get an eeepc for less? If you really want it to talk to a cell tower you can do that.
You can also run Olympus Studio on it and take timelapse pictures out in the forest. Did Asus intend that? Of course not -- but they intended to sell a computer, a device that can do anything, rather than an "appliance" that can do what they want you to do and not much else.
I see you're having fun trolling today. Just for shits and grins:
iTunes, at least the version I downloaded 4 years ago (and why should I need an app that's dozens of MB to copy files) wasn't trivial to use for simple tasks. Sure, it has a library function which might be nice if you want to use it to organize your music collection, but sorting through all of that isn't terribly relevant to the simple task of copying shit to a device.
Good software should make trivial tasks trivial and complicated tasks possible. iTunes does not make trivial tasks trivial (at least that old version; like I said, I have no clue what it does now).
I have a perfectly "easy" music application already -- actually, several, of which I use Winamp and Audacious the most. Why do I need another one to use a particular piece of hardware?
I have a digital camera. I plug it into my computer, and the files on it show up on a block device. I can do whatever the hell I want with them. That's good design since it lets the user decide how to use their device.
Now imagine a digital camera that can only copy pictures to your computer via Picasa. Less useful, huh? That's bad design.
If you'd bothered to read my post before breaking out your troll-stick, you'd have seen that "drag and drop" (to copy files to the device) was exactly what I did -- and it didn't work. It helps if you read the post you're responding to first; I know it takes you a while, but not doing so sort of makes you look like an idiot.
By "real computer" I mean "a machine capable of arbitrary information processing limited only by engineering capability". Y'know, kind of what Turing had in mind. The computer I'm typing on and the eeepc in the other room are Real Computers. I can make them compute pi to a thousand digits, play Tetris, compute Fourier transforms of fart recordings, or troll Slashdot.
The iPhone and iPad and iWhateverElse can't do these things. Or, rather, it can, but Apple won't let you. It's not a general-purpose computer as far as the user is concerned. Neither are your TV or car.
The idea that you need to be able to program a computer to make use of the ability to program a computer is a fallacy.
I don't need to know how to write a program to be able to make use of somebody else's program. The difference between iShit and a real computer is that on a real computer, I can put whatever I want on it, even if I didn't write it myself.
So, through a convoluted series of events, I was offered a free iPod Nano.
"Cool", I thought, "I can play mp3's in my car without hauling around my laptop." So I plug the thing into my computer, and it shows up as a block device. Welp, it's an mp3 player, I'm supposed to copy mp3's to it, right?
I do this, and try to play them, and they're not listed. Huh? I plug the thing back into my computer, and they're there, but I can't play them. WTF?
After some Googling I discover that you can't just copy mp3's to the iStick -- you have to fire up Apple's software, which is labyrinthine and ridiculous, and jump through hoops to transfer them.
Fuck this -- if they can't make a device that works in the easiest way possible, but involves doing things the hard way since they're just trying to pimp their other iShit, I want nothing to do with them. Haven't touched anything else Apple since then, except for that Mac the music library has as a public computer. Turns out OSX sucks, too, although at least it comes with an X server and ssh client.
Darwin Awards are given to people who die doing stupid things.
Pointing things at gunships -- especially those flown by trigger-happy Americans -- is a good way to get shot. But it is also a good way to document current events, and some people think that this is worth the risk.
Y'know that free press thing? Some folks actually believe it.
"To me the difference between a murderer and a soldier is that a murderer wants to kill."
Well said.
In my former church-attending days, I met a fellow who was a retired colonel in the artillery who was a deacon of the church I attended. His job was to blow up Russians by the thousands if he had to. He once said that nobody hates and fears war more than a real soldier... and when Iraq started, he was on the street corners with the crowd every Saturday protesting.
I'd hazard a guess that expensive photographic equipment sells for a lot on the black market, and in a country as blatantly lawless as Iraq, if you're going to haul it around and operate it in public, you might want some hired guards?
Cite a bona fide example of how large-scale actions of the US military have protected you recently, please.
Honest question: where do you set the balance between type I and type II error?
How many excess civilian casualties should be inflicted (on average) per US military casualty (on average) prevented?
The point is that ugly shit happens in wars, and that the only way to make ugly shit not happen is to not go to war if you can avoid it. We could have avoided it, and helicopters blowing away children is the consequence. Not necessarily because the people in the helicopter were negligent, but because war sucks.
This happened before Nikon released a true professional camera, so it's 90% likely that the "big zoom lens" was bright shiny white -- all of Canon's high-end long lenses are.
I imagine most AK-47's aren't painted white.
My tax money is financing an unjust war.
Wars are ugly. Even if the Apache crew weren't murderous airborne psychopathic killers, they are airborne killers. People die in wars, and because of the confusion sometimes you kill people you wish you hadn't. But wishing you hadn't killed them after the fact doesn't make them less dead.
Wars are ugly, desperate, and expensive as hell. This is why you don't fight them unless you have to -- something forgotten or ignored by Bush/Wolfowitz/Cheney/Rove/etc.
What does "winning" consist of in your analysis, and what is your goal?
You can kill a few journalists with an Apache, but you can't kill all of wikileaks, the EFF, cryptome, freenet, al-Jazeera, innumerable torrent hosts and ftp servers, and the Stile Project.
The impact on the average American of the war is huge, financially. The cost of the Iraq war is a nice shiny new car for every American adult.
Put in those terms it is huge, but nobody puts it in those terms.
Pointing a 300mm lens at a military helicopter that might be up to no good shouldn't earn you a Darwin award in a civilized society; it should earn you a medal.