4. If given the opportunity, dogs will discover they enjoy fruits and many vegetables (green leafy stuff being the exception, and apples and tomatoes perennial favourites).
Mine is nuts about celery, carrots, and bell peppers, in particular. There's a major beg-fest every time I make a salad...
I can only guess, but I imagine it's along the lines of this: If the sentence is justified by how many innocent Iraqis Saddam has killed, maybe he shouldn't be alone on the gallows. Too bad for him that he didn't have the foresight to exempt himself from international law and basic human decency beforehand.
Admins have access to everything. Or at least they should have access to virtually everything. Because who would you call if it was broken? certainly not the corner office.
But they don't have a need for access to the contents of email and other documents. Sensitive materials ought to be encrypted, but then I suppose you'd suggest that sysadmins must be able to install keyloggers on machines they administer (which of course they can).
If it were me (and I had confidential info to protect), I'd consider keeping a machine outside the corporate net and use encryption in conjunction with an external mail service. But then, I can administer my own machine without external help. That's also not practical for routine corporate documents that must be kept available to others in the organization, but then for those you're trusting other people anyway.
Bottom line is that you need to hire sysadmins the same way you hire other employees who will be trusted with sensitive information; i.e., integrity and trustworthiness are just as important as technical competence, and arguably more so.
I should think a personalized edition of Fortune magazine is going to catch your attention, and probably appeal to your vanity.
The problem is that even if you succeed at catching the attention of these key executives, there's not going to be any basis for discussion within their organizations because nobody else has seen the materials. Few, if any, CEOs make unilateral decisions based on advertising they've seen; they want their subordinates to field the ball and present the case to them if it has merit. This campaign doesn't seem to recognize how decisions are made in real organizations.
Seriously guys, if you want to get consumers to buy all-new networked home appliances then at least present us with a decent reason why.
I can give you three: (1) it will make them more expensive, (2) it will make them more fun for geeks to shop for and buy, and (3) it will create a whole new level of complexity, annoyance, and expense when they malfunction.
But will they actually make anyone's life easier? I doubt it.
The issue isn't that The Daily Show is so much better... it's that network news sucks so bad.
The big problem is that the mainstream media merely report what politicians say with a straight face, and avoid pointing out the absurdities and hypocrisies behind those statements. Why? Because to do so would make them appear "unobjective". In an environment where politics is a three-ring circus, it takes a comedy show to reveal how things really are done.
State schools are the only way that I could afford to go, and I made it through in 5 years.
That's my story as well. Two semesters off to raise money for tuition and expenses, then back into the fray, with a few loans along the way. I like to think that the taxpayers of my state made a good investment by subsidizing my education, and I'm sure you feel the same way (your writing skills look pretty decent, so it appears that they did).
Bullshit. having 10 kids versus 11 kids is not extra joy. 10 is plenty of joy. seriously.
That's a boatload of kids. Once you get much past 3 or 4 I'm thinking that maybe something else, like fatalism or a lack of timely access to contraception, might be involved. Poor and uneducated people all over the world tend to have a lot of kids regardless of whether welfare is available and rewards it. The best predictor of how many kids a couple will have is - ta da! - how educated they are. That's why you and I put together don't have 11 kids, even though the tax laws encourage it.
Meanwhile, our government is doing its damnedest to make it more difficult for the po' folks to get either contraception or education, so you'll have plenty to complain about for years to come. Would you really want it any other way?
Basically, why should I pay for that welfare mother to have another child so she can increase her welfare check?
Welfare mothers have children because they're the only joy they can look forward to in their lives, the only thing they can call their own.
If I were you, and interested in the quality of the civilization in which we live, I'd be asking what I can do to educate those children so they'll have a shot at leading productive lives themselves. But I'm sure you've never thought of it quite that way. Because their mother was on welfare, they deserve to lead miserable lives themselves, don't they?
By the way, you worked your way through college with no help from anybody, right?
Ok, cool. Now my watch will tell me what time it is and whos calling, but that still doesnt tell me where I put my damn phone.
So now you have a wristwatch to tell you what your cellphone is doing, which is really important because your cellphone is way down there in your pocket. I predict that the Next Big Thing will be a separate device - implanted in your skull, maybe - to alert you that your watch is trying to tell you something about what your cellphone is doing. Everyone on Slashdot will immediately see the value of this and want one immediately.
You're probably too young to remember, but Gilligan was once able to receive radio broadcasts through his teeth, and the Professor once made a radio out of a coconut. I guess their patents must have expired recently...
I'd be a lot more liberal if I knew people would still be responsible for their actions. But I know that's not going to be the case.
Well said. I know it really pisses me off when people who own property expect the government to protect it for them, taking our tax dollars to pay for police and stuff. Or when they make contracts with people who then breach them, they run to the government for enforcement instead of taking it upon themselves to hire a few thugs and break a leg or three.
The difference between liberals and conservatives isn't so much about whether government will perform services for its people, but rather about how privileged you need to be before you deserve the benefits of civilization.
You should have pointed out that the authorship of that document - written in the 90s - is now a Who's Who of defense policymakers in the Bush administration, and they're pretty much following that blueprint to the letter.
As I read it, I'm reminded of the similar need for lebensraum in 1930s Germany...
Condi Rice is both black and female. The Republican party wanted to ensure that she succeeds in order to increase the black vote. So, when she screwed up so badly that 3000 Americans died, the Republicans said nothing.
If she were a male American of Japanese ancestry, she would have been fired on the spot.
You clearly don't know how things work under Bush.
With all of the fuckups and disasters that have been perpetrated by this administration, how many people have actually been "fired on the spot"? Even Michael "Heckuva Job" Brown was given a fat, juicy consulting contract after he was "fired" due to public outrage. Most screw-ups get medals.
Pay attention, because here's a scoop for you: Jobs in the Bush administration are basically rewards for keeping your mouth shut. The Republican spin on this is that W is just extremely "loyal" to his people, but the truth is that there are a lot of completely inexperienced and even incompetent people who have top jobs there because they are "friends" with potentially embarrassing stories to tell. They now have positions that are beyond their wildest imaginations, and they're not going to put them in jeopardy for an interview by People Magazine. In return, nobody loses their job merely for poor (or non-) performance. That's the deal.
Ever notice that almost no one who knew Bush in his wild and crazy days before Karl Rove set him up in business and politics has anything to say about it? Does it strike you as odd that nobody who "served" with him in the Texas National Guard has any recollection of him whatsoever, even from the period when he actually showed up for duty? I'll bet you that anybody who knows anything at all is now pursuing a lucrative career in government!
As for the race issue... Colin Powell was forced out, not because he wasn't competent, but because he wasn't towing the party line on Iraq. As it turns out, he was the only guy in the house who could see what was coming.
I haven't yet read the entire text of the act, so I may be missing something, but under what law can Bush currently "disappear" people?
The determination of who is an "enemy combatant" is left solely to the President (and Rumsfeld too, I think), and is not subject to judicial review of any kind. Detainees have no right to speak to a lawyer or anyone else, nor to challenge the basis for their incarceration or even to hear the charges against them (which need not exist). Hence it doesn't matter whether you are a citizen or not, or whether you are guilty of anything or not, because there is zero legal recourse and the government (i.e., Bush) is under no obligation to inform your family or anybody else that you're in custody. As far the legal system is concerned, you cease to exist the moment the guys in the sunglasses stuff you into their big, black car.
There is no need to hold a military tribunal in the traditional sense, either. The law also provides for unspecified kinds of "tribunals" to be determined later by the President, again with no judicial or legislative oversight. So you tell me to just whom you're going to complain that you're a "citizen" and demand due process, because there simply is none.
On the plus side, the Bush administration is spared the embarrassment of ever having any more of its mistakes made public, so we do get the benefit of a "War on Terror" that at least appears successful. That seems to be enough for most conservatives I know.
It sounds stupid, but it's basically necessary because some people would define writing "I will not blow myself up in a public place" 100 times on a blackboard as torture if it met their political needs.
Yes, I'm quite certain that it's nothing more than this, really.
But did it ever occur to you that Bush et.al. and the GOP have "political needs", too? Everyone (except you, maybe) rightly decries the fact that Bush can now legally point to anyone he wants and make them disappear without a trace. In practice he won't have to do this much because the mere threat of it will be enough to coerce just about anybody to do what he wants. The more immediate importance of this bill, however, is that it makes him unaccountable to anybody, for anything he does. He'll be able to tell us that he's scoring victory after victory in the War on Terror, locking up scores of Bad Guys for the mainstream media, but we'll have no way of knowing whether he's catching real terrorists or just random hapless people off the streets of Kabul. He gets the same credit either way.
The Bush and Cheney families - as well as others in the administration - have big-time business interests in the Middle East. With the powers that they will soon have, I can tell you that I wouldn't want to be a business rival of theirs in that part of the world!
That is precisely why he can't tolerate judicial oversight, and why even conservatives hostile to the Bill of Rights should consider their positions carefully. You are being led down a path you'll regret taking some day.
A private airline has no power to detain anyone whatsoever, or to search anyone for that matter.
Heh heh... Reminds me of a trip to Hawaii back in the 80s. While renting a car at the airport, I declined the ripoff insurance they always try to sell, and was told that if there were any damage to the car we wouldn't be permitted to leave until it was paid for to their satisfaction. I looked around for the car renter jail, but couldn't find one...
Actually, it's you that are misrepresenting the post that you're replying to. It said nothing about unreasonable search and seizure, but defined habeas corpus pretty much as you do.
The bill doesn't legalize torture quite the way the poster claims, either. It legalizes some forms of torture by redefining them as not being torture.
Well I'm glad you cleared that up for us; I was beginning to worry.
If you're dead anyway, who cares if you've just had a heart attack and otherwise appear untouched, or if you've been converted entirely to plasma and been atomized? There's enough power to kill you all over the place.
I'm surprised that the Bush administration hasn't recruited you for a plum job at the Consumer Product Safety Commission yet. You have been making your political contributions, haven't you?
You're probably right about the incrementalism, but it does seem to me that there is one or more distinct biological mechanisms that drive aging, and that these exist because species that don't have them don't adapt very well and paradoxically tend to die off. If there's a mechanism, then there's the possibility that it can be discovered and interfered with in some way.
Even with biological "immortality", though, no one will live forever. Every year you live, you face some probability of dying by accident, violence, or disease. So instead of a fixed lifespan, we'll face something more like a "half-life", similar to a radionuclide. You'll be able to say that half of all people will die within X years, but there will be a few who beat the odds and live very much longer. Not only that, but if your yearly odds of survival aren't a function of your age, then you'll face the same remaining half-life no matter how old you already are!
Of course, that assumes that such a therapeutic intervention would be available to everyone. We all know that the world doesn't work that way, and that it is much more likely to be monopolized and priced so that only a few can afford it.
Slashdot Mirror
4. If given the opportunity, dogs will discover they enjoy fruits and many vegetables (green leafy stuff being the exception, and apples and tomatoes perennial favourites).
Mine is nuts about celery, carrots, and bell peppers, in particular. There's a major beg-fest every time I make a salad...
...and I'm surprised that so many of the techie gurus around here are buying it.
What do you think the Iraqis believe?
I can only guess, but I imagine it's along the lines of this: If the sentence is justified by how many innocent Iraqis Saddam has killed, maybe he shouldn't be alone on the gallows. Too bad for him that he didn't have the foresight to exempt himself from international law and basic human decency beforehand.
He told her he was on the male pill. She slapped him... That was the end of that.
She would have been taking a hell of a chance by believing him, and that is the biggest problem with it.
yes. Stick the CD in, reboot and select "Upgrade".
Sorry, that's too complicated. I need a CD that sticks itself in the slot.
Admins have access to everything. Or at least they should have access to virtually everything. Because who would you call if it was broken? certainly not the corner office.
But they don't have a need for access to the contents of email and other documents. Sensitive materials ought to be encrypted, but then I suppose you'd suggest that sysadmins must be able to install keyloggers on machines they administer (which of course they can).
If it were me (and I had confidential info to protect), I'd consider keeping a machine outside the corporate net and use encryption in conjunction with an external mail service. But then, I can administer my own machine without external help. That's also not practical for routine corporate documents that must be kept available to others in the organization, but then for those you're trusting other people anyway.
Bottom line is that you need to hire sysadmins the same way you hire other employees who will be trusted with sensitive information; i.e., integrity and trustworthiness are just as important as technical competence, and arguably more so.
I should think a personalized edition of Fortune magazine is going to catch your attention, and probably appeal to your vanity.
The problem is that even if you succeed at catching the attention of these key executives, there's not going to be any basis for discussion within their organizations because nobody else has seen the materials. Few, if any, CEOs make unilateral decisions based on advertising they've seen; they want their subordinates to field the ball and present the case to them if it has merit. This campaign doesn't seem to recognize how decisions are made in real organizations.
Seriously guys, if you want to get consumers to buy all-new networked home appliances then at least present us with a decent reason why.
I can give you three: (1) it will make them more expensive, (2) it will make them more fun for geeks to shop for and buy, and (3) it will create a whole new level of complexity, annoyance, and expense when they malfunction.
But will they actually make anyone's life easier? I doubt it.
The issue isn't that The Daily Show is so much better ... it's that network news sucks so bad.
The big problem is that the mainstream media merely report what politicians say with a straight face, and avoid pointing out the absurdities and hypocrisies behind those statements. Why? Because to do so would make them appear "unobjective". In an environment where politics is a three-ring circus, it takes a comedy show to reveal how things really are done.
Science++, Superstition--
For that you can be thankful that the Nobel is awarded in Stockholm, and not by a committee of Bush appointees...
...mod this up.
State schools are the only way that I could afford to go, and I made it through in 5 years.
That's my story as well. Two semesters off to raise money for tuition and expenses, then back into the fray, with a few loans along the way. I like to think that the taxpayers of my state made a good investment by subsidizing my education, and I'm sure you feel the same way (your writing skills look pretty decent, so it appears that they did).
Bullshit. having 10 kids versus 11 kids is not extra joy. 10 is plenty of joy. seriously.
That's a boatload of kids. Once you get much past 3 or 4 I'm thinking that maybe something else, like fatalism or a lack of timely access to contraception, might be involved. Poor and uneducated people all over the world tend to have a lot of kids regardless of whether welfare is available and rewards it. The best predictor of how many kids a couple will have is - ta da! - how educated they are. That's why you and I put together don't have 11 kids, even though the tax laws encourage it.
Meanwhile, our government is doing its damnedest to make it more difficult for the po' folks to get either contraception or education, so you'll have plenty to complain about for years to come. Would you really want it any other way?
Basically, why should I pay for that welfare mother to have another child so she can increase her welfare check?
Welfare mothers have children because they're the only joy they can look forward to in their lives, the only thing they can call their own.
If I were you, and interested in the quality of the civilization in which we live, I'd be asking what I can do to educate those children so they'll have a shot at leading productive lives themselves. But I'm sure you've never thought of it quite that way. Because their mother was on welfare, they deserve to lead miserable lives themselves, don't they?
By the way, you worked your way through college with no help from anybody, right?
Ok, cool. Now my watch will tell me what time it is and whos calling, but that still doesnt tell me where I put my damn phone.
So now you have a wristwatch to tell you what your cellphone is doing, which is really important because your cellphone is way down there in your pocket. I predict that the Next Big Thing will be a separate device - implanted in your skull, maybe - to alert you that your watch is trying to tell you something about what your cellphone is doing. Everyone on Slashdot will immediately see the value of this and want one immediately.
You're probably too young to remember, but Gilligan was once able to receive radio broadcasts through his teeth, and the Professor once made a radio out of a coconut. I guess their patents must have expired recently...
I'd be a lot more liberal if I knew people would still be responsible for their actions. But I know that's not going to be the case.
Well said. I know it really pisses me off when people who own property expect the government to protect it for them, taking our tax dollars to pay for police and stuff. Or when they make contracts with people who then breach them, they run to the government for enforcement instead of taking it upon themselves to hire a few thugs and break a leg or three.
The difference between liberals and conservatives isn't so much about whether government will perform services for its people, but rather about how privileged you need to be before you deserve the benefits of civilization.
You should have pointed out that the authorship of that document - written in the 90s - is now a Who's Who of defense policymakers in the Bush administration, and they're pretty much following that blueprint to the letter.
As I read it, I'm reminded of the similar need for lebensraum in 1930s Germany...
Condi Rice is both black and female. The Republican party wanted to ensure that she succeeds in order to increase the black vote. So, when she screwed up so badly that 3000 Americans died, the Republicans said nothing.
If she were a male American of Japanese ancestry, she would have been fired on the spot.
You clearly don't know how things work under Bush.
With all of the fuckups and disasters that have been perpetrated by this administration, how many people have actually been "fired on the spot"? Even Michael "Heckuva Job" Brown was given a fat, juicy consulting contract after he was "fired" due to public outrage. Most screw-ups get medals.
Pay attention, because here's a scoop for you: Jobs in the Bush administration are basically rewards for keeping your mouth shut. The Republican spin on this is that W is just extremely "loyal" to his people, but the truth is that there are a lot of completely inexperienced and even incompetent people who have top jobs there because they are "friends" with potentially embarrassing stories to tell. They now have positions that are beyond their wildest imaginations, and they're not going to put them in jeopardy for an interview by People Magazine. In return, nobody loses their job merely for poor (or non-) performance. That's the deal.
Ever notice that almost no one who knew Bush in his wild and crazy days before Karl Rove set him up in business and politics has anything to say about it? Does it strike you as odd that nobody who "served" with him in the Texas National Guard has any recollection of him whatsoever, even from the period when he actually showed up for duty? I'll bet you that anybody who knows anything at all is now pursuing a lucrative career in government!
As for the race issue... Colin Powell was forced out, not because he wasn't competent, but because he wasn't towing the party line on Iraq. As it turns out, he was the only guy in the house who could see what was coming.
Someone once said that academic politics is so fierce precisely because the stakes are so low. Maybe that applies in this case as well...
I haven't yet read the entire text of the act, so I may be missing something, but under what law can Bush currently "disappear" people?
The determination of who is an "enemy combatant" is left solely to the President (and Rumsfeld too, I think), and is not subject to judicial review of any kind. Detainees have no right to speak to a lawyer or anyone else, nor to challenge the basis for their incarceration or even to hear the charges against them (which need not exist). Hence it doesn't matter whether you are a citizen or not, or whether you are guilty of anything or not, because there is zero legal recourse and the government (i.e., Bush) is under no obligation to inform your family or anybody else that you're in custody. As far the legal system is concerned, you cease to exist the moment the guys in the sunglasses stuff you into their big, black car.
There is no need to hold a military tribunal in the traditional sense, either. The law also provides for unspecified kinds of "tribunals" to be determined later by the President, again with no judicial or legislative oversight. So you tell me to just whom you're going to complain that you're a "citizen" and demand due process, because there simply is none.
On the plus side, the Bush administration is spared the embarrassment of ever having any more of its mistakes made public, so we do get the benefit of a "War on Terror" that at least appears successful. That seems to be enough for most conservatives I know.
It sounds stupid, but it's basically necessary because some people would define writing "I will not blow myself up in a public place" 100 times on a blackboard as torture if it met their political needs.
Yes, I'm quite certain that it's nothing more than this, really.
But did it ever occur to you that Bush et.al. and the GOP have "political needs", too? Everyone (except you, maybe) rightly decries the fact that Bush can now legally point to anyone he wants and make them disappear without a trace. In practice he won't have to do this much because the mere threat of it will be enough to coerce just about anybody to do what he wants. The more immediate importance of this bill, however, is that it makes him unaccountable to anybody, for anything he does. He'll be able to tell us that he's scoring victory after victory in the War on Terror, locking up scores of Bad Guys for the mainstream media, but we'll have no way of knowing whether he's catching real terrorists or just random hapless people off the streets of Kabul. He gets the same credit either way.
The Bush and Cheney families - as well as others in the administration - have big-time business interests in the Middle East. With the powers that they will soon have, I can tell you that I wouldn't want to be a business rival of theirs in that part of the world!
That is precisely why he can't tolerate judicial oversight, and why even conservatives hostile to the Bill of Rights should consider their positions carefully. You are being led down a path you'll regret taking some day.
A private airline has no power to detain anyone whatsoever, or to search anyone for that matter.
Heh heh... Reminds me of a trip to Hawaii back in the 80s. While renting a car at the airport, I declined the ripoff insurance they always try to sell, and was told that if there were any damage to the car we wouldn't be permitted to leave until it was paid for to their satisfaction. I looked around for the car renter jail, but couldn't find one...
Actually, it's you that are misrepresenting the post that you're replying to. It said nothing about unreasonable search and seizure, but defined habeas corpus pretty much as you do.
The bill doesn't legalize torture quite the way the poster claims, either. It legalizes some forms of torture by redefining them as not being torture.
Well I'm glad you cleared that up for us; I was beginning to worry.
If you're dead anyway, who cares if you've just had a heart attack and otherwise appear untouched, or if you've been converted entirely to plasma and been atomized? There's enough power to kill you all over the place.
I'm surprised that the Bush administration hasn't recruited you for a plum job at the Consumer Product Safety Commission yet. You have been making your political contributions, haven't you?
You're probably right about the incrementalism, but it does seem to me that there is one or more distinct biological mechanisms that drive aging, and that these exist because species that don't have them don't adapt very well and paradoxically tend to die off. If there's a mechanism, then there's the possibility that it can be discovered and interfered with in some way.
Even with biological "immortality", though, no one will live forever. Every year you live, you face some probability of dying by accident, violence, or disease. So instead of a fixed lifespan, we'll face something more like a "half-life", similar to a radionuclide. You'll be able to say that half of all people will die within X years, but there will be a few who beat the odds and live very much longer. Not only that, but if your yearly odds of survival aren't a function of your age, then you'll face the same remaining half-life no matter how old you already are!
Of course, that assumes that such a therapeutic intervention would be available to everyone. We all know that the world doesn't work that way, and that it is much more likely to be monopolized and priced so that only a few can afford it.
May you live in interesting times...