Why not get right to the root of the matter, then, and simply criminalize any attempt to engage in a private conversation? After all, speaking to someone face-to-face in a secure setting is functionally the same as using encryption in a remote communication. No more walks in the woods, unless you immediately file a synopsis of everything you talked about with the proper authorities...
Hmmm, need to update that a little bit. "Those who have no criticism of the government have nothing to fear."
It's worse than even that, actually. What makes you think that people inside the government won't misuse their power and access to information for purely private purposes?
For example: If you run a business and one of your competitors has an inside track to the gatekeepers of this information, I'd say it's time to start worrying...
No, what's impressive is that most gamers have been successfully brainwashed that they need a $500 video card to play a modern game, while the low range has been excellent for the past 3-4 years.
It's similar to the markets for wine and high-end audio. Enthusiasts will spend any amount of money for increments in "quality" that are miniscule at best (and often completely imaginary), just to distinguish themselves from the unwashed masses...
Unfortunately it is becoming all to common for politicians to pass legislation on subjects they know nothing about with disastrous consequences.
Maybe it's not stupidity. How many republicans blame the internet for shining a light on what they're doing and thereby raising public awareness and undermining their popularity? Maybe those "disastrous consequences" are exactly what they're trying to achieve.
Turns out the darker the roast, the longer the beans have to be roasted to become that dark. And the longer the beans are roasted, the more caffeine is destroyed in the process.
This is a true revelation. So I went running to my Merck Index, and read this about Caffeine:
Hexagonal prisms by sublimation, m.p. 238 C. Sublimes at 178 C.
I'm not sure at what temperature coffee is typically roasted at, but I'll bet it's not much less than than 178 C. If so, much of the caffeine is just wafting away...
Anyone remember the big Anthrax scare after 9/11? It was a pretty big deal; anthrax spores sent to Congress and the Supreme Court building. Is anyone even investigating that anymore? Last I heard, the spores were thought to originate at an Army biological warfare lab in Maryland. After that revelation, the story seems to have disappeared.
Anybody know what became of it, or if there's still an ongoing investigation? Or if not, why not?
he has an ideological viewpoint that is in extreme opposite of Americas/The Wests
He has a viewpoint that is the extreme opposite of the liberal West, you mean. One of the great ironies about the U.S. crusade in the Middle East is that the U.S. and Iran have found broad agreement on social issues (especially regarding health, the rights of women, and contraception) and frequently collaborate in UN agencies concerned with those matters.
And the country will vote for Jeb. And the Bushes will continue to reign supreme.
I'm less worried about who people actually vote for than about who counts the votes. Imagine how powerful the NSA and its databases (not to mention all of the secret and near-dictatorial powers that Bush claims for himself) could be during an election if they are misused for partisan purposes.
I largely agree. Linux seems to resemble Windows more and more with every release, and not all of us think that's a good thing.
That said, my mother is currently using a ten year-old machine with a malware-ridden copy of Windows 95, and I've offered to upgrade everything. All she does with it is email, web, a few games (like solitaire), and occasionally edit a church newsletter with an ancient version of MS Word.
So she's visiting the other day, and I show her what I can do with Linux (I run Fedora with Gnome). I demo replacements for everything she uses: Thunderbird, Firefox, the games that Gnome comes with, and OpenOffice Writer. We upload some pictures from her digital camera and look at them with GQview. Everything goes smoothly, but I make the mistake of using gphoto2 from the command line to upload the pictures, and doubt starts to creep in. Later, she sees me doing some of my own stuff from the shell that looks baffling to her - things that she would never be doing anyway - and by then she's back to thinking that Linux may be "too complicated" for her.
So, I'll probably end up installing WinXP on her new machine, even though she'll have to deal with a lot of change on that as well. She'll also have to deal with anti-virus and spyware issues that Linux is largely free of, and that changes the "complexity" equation quite a bit IMHO. But one benefit for me of going this way is that her friends (and my brother-in-law) will be able to help her out when she has questions or problems. If she runs Linux, I'm her sole source of support...
Yep. You've fallen into this trap if you find yourself being socially deferential to your employer on your off-time. Do you expect your plumber to kiss your ass when you pass him on the street? Then your employer shouldn't expect you to kiss his there, either.
I'm always wary of companies that tout their culture as resembling a "family". What that really means is that you, as an employee, are now a child again, and your bosses are Mommy and Daddy. A lot of people - presumably uncomfortable with their own adulthood - are actually looking for just that.
That's because the primary purpose of this program, like so many others, is to transfer vast amounts of money from the federal treasury to certain politically cooperative industries. Like Star Wars before it, I doubt that there is anyone in the Bush administration that cares one iota whether it has any real military value or even whether it ever "works" or not. The real (political) value is in the spending itself.
I've seen this happen often when attempting to view WMV files, which requires the use of a Windows DLL. I think I read somewhere that the problem is specific to RedHat/Fedora, and has to do with how the DLL is loaded at runtime. Unfortunately, I can't put my hands on the source of that info at the moment (and I'm too lazy to google it; try searching "mplayer", "WMV", and "DLL").
Also, mplayer can get ornery when it can't grab as much memory as it wants. Closing an app or two usually does the trick...
Certainly software should never be unnecessarily complex; that's just good design. But it will (and should) never be the case that all software is easily usable by everybody. You could use the same logic to proclaim that all bicycles should have training wheels, so that they're rideable by people with no biking experience. Or that all musical compositions should be simple enough to be played by non-musicians.
Lets not pursue simplicity to the point of dumbing everything down. If I wanted that, I'd be using Windows.
Then there are the people whose descisions are based on things besides rational thought.
Interesting. The other day I read an interview with Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon), and although it wasn't political at all he said something that offers a lot of insight into what some call the Republican "War on Science", and what I prefer to call their War on Reason. He said that in running a business there are two kinds of decisions: fact-based decisions, which are the products of reason, and decisions based on intuition. Fact (or Reason) based decisions tend to subvert the heirarchy, because even the lowest-level employee can prevail over a top executive if he/she can back up a position with an unassailable argument. Not so for the gut-level, intuitive decisions; in those cases you want seasoned executives with demonstrated good judgement making the calls.
The problem that Republicans have with science (and reason) is that it expands the domain of fact-based decision-making and therefore limits their power, which they demand to be as arbitrary as it is absolute. As any ruthless dictator knows, your first task toward the consolidation of power is to kill the intellectuals.
keep the bozos out and reward people who make a difference
Well, everybody does that, don't they? Even the Bush administration does that. The key is in your perception of who the bozos are, and who makes a difference...
Since even the conservatives are being sensible here, maybe we need to re-examine this whole idea that we, as parents and educators, even can regulate everything that is seen and experienced by our children. I have yet to hear even one anecdotal account of any child's life being ruined by catching a glimpse of Janet Jackson's nipple, and yet we're conditioned to get hysterical over this stuff. Does anyone really think that it is even possible to keep children completely ignorant about their sexuality until they turn 18?
Perhaps a better approach would be to educate kids about the things they're likely to run into, while giving them a more solid foundation from which to evaluate it morally and ethically.
Slashdot Mirror
Why not get right to the root of the matter, then, and simply criminalize any attempt to engage in a private conversation? After all, speaking to someone face-to-face in a secure setting is functionally the same as using encryption in a remote communication. No more walks in the woods, unless you immediately file a synopsis of everything you talked about with the proper authorities...
I wouldn't bet against you on that. I'd use MythTV (or nothing at all) over Tivo just on the privacy issue alone.
There may already be a list of suspects - er, people - who are known to access sources of information other than Fox News...
It's worse than even that, actually. What makes you think that people inside the government won't misuse their power and access to information for purely private purposes?
For example: If you run a business and one of your competitors has an inside track to the gatekeepers of this information, I'd say it's time to start worrying...
It's similar to the markets for wine and high-end audio. Enthusiasts will spend any amount of money for increments in "quality" that are miniscule at best (and often completely imaginary), just to distinguish themselves from the unwashed masses...
Maybe it's not stupidity. How many republicans blame the internet for shining a light on what they're doing and thereby raising public awareness and undermining their popularity? Maybe those "disastrous consequences" are exactly what they're trying to achieve.
This is a true revelation. So I went running to my Merck Index, and read this about Caffeine:
I'm not sure at what temperature coffee is typically roasted at, but I'll bet it's not much less than than 178 C. If so, much of the caffeine is just wafting away...
Anybody know what became of it, or if there's still an ongoing investigation? Or if not, why not?
He has a viewpoint that is the extreme opposite of the liberal West, you mean. One of the great ironies about the U.S. crusade in the Middle East is that the U.S. and Iran have found broad agreement on social issues (especially regarding health, the rights of women, and contraception) and frequently collaborate in UN agencies concerned with those matters.
I'm less worried about who people actually vote for than about who counts the votes. Imagine how powerful the NSA and its databases (not to mention all of the secret and near-dictatorial powers that Bush claims for himself) could be during an election if they are misused for partisan purposes.
Well of course that can't happen, right?
Botched? I'd call it something a little less benign than that...
Well, for one, you won't need any messy break-ins at the Watergate to bug the Democrats anymore...
I wonder if they include this in their "Total Cost of Ownership" calculations...
If they were that wide open, I'd say that these procedures were necessary anyway, and probably long overdue...
That said, my mother is currently using a ten year-old machine with a malware-ridden copy of Windows 95, and I've offered to upgrade everything. All she does with it is email, web, a few games (like solitaire), and occasionally edit a church newsletter with an ancient version of MS Word.
So she's visiting the other day, and I show her what I can do with Linux (I run Fedora with Gnome). I demo replacements for everything she uses: Thunderbird, Firefox, the games that Gnome comes with, and OpenOffice Writer. We upload some pictures from her digital camera and look at them with GQview. Everything goes smoothly, but I make the mistake of using gphoto2 from the command line to upload the pictures, and doubt starts to creep in. Later, she sees me doing some of my own stuff from the shell that looks baffling to her - things that she would never be doing anyway - and by then she's back to thinking that Linux may be "too complicated" for her.
So, I'll probably end up installing WinXP on her new machine, even though she'll have to deal with a lot of change on that as well. She'll also have to deal with anti-virus and spyware issues that Linux is largely free of, and that changes the "complexity" equation quite a bit IMHO. But one benefit for me of going this way is that her friends (and my brother-in-law) will be able to help her out when she has questions or problems. If she runs Linux, I'm her sole source of support...
I'm always wary of companies that tout their culture as resembling a "family". What that really means is that you, as an employee, are now a child again, and your bosses are Mommy and Daddy. A lot of people - presumably uncomfortable with their own adulthood - are actually looking for just that.
Because, after all, Windows comes with all of the software you'll ever need, right out of the box...
That's because the primary purpose of this program, like so many others, is to transfer vast amounts of money from the federal treasury to certain politically cooperative industries. Like Star Wars before it, I doubt that there is anyone in the Bush administration that cares one iota whether it has any real military value or even whether it ever "works" or not. The real (political) value is in the spending itself.
Also, mplayer can get ornery when it can't grab as much memory as it wants. Closing an app or two usually does the trick...
Certainly software should never be unnecessarily complex; that's just good design. But it will (and should) never be the case that all software is easily usable by everybody. You could use the same logic to proclaim that all bicycles should have training wheels, so that they're rideable by people with no biking experience. Or that all musical compositions should be simple enough to be played by non-musicians.
Lets not pursue simplicity to the point of dumbing everything down. If I wanted that, I'd be using Windows.
If you're not into gaming...
Interesting. The other day I read an interview with Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon), and although it wasn't political at all he said something that offers a lot of insight into what some call the Republican "War on Science", and what I prefer to call their War on Reason. He said that in running a business there are two kinds of decisions: fact-based decisions, which are the products of reason, and decisions based on intuition. Fact (or Reason) based decisions tend to subvert the heirarchy, because even the lowest-level employee can prevail over a top executive if he/she can back up a position with an unassailable argument. Not so for the gut-level, intuitive decisions; in those cases you want seasoned executives with demonstrated good judgement making the calls.
The problem that Republicans have with science (and reason) is that it expands the domain of fact-based decision-making and therefore limits their power, which they demand to be as arbitrary as it is absolute. As any ruthless dictator knows, your first task toward the consolidation of power is to kill the intellectuals.
Them's fightin' words! The Allman Brothers' Live at the Fillmore East remains one of the best live rock albums, ever.
Well, everybody does that, don't they? Even the Bush administration does that. The key is in your perception of who the bozos are, and who makes a difference...
Heh heh... Thanks for the laugh. Taking a day off from the War on Reason today, are we? A cerebral bunch, those repubs are...
Perhaps a better approach would be to educate kids about the things they're likely to run into, while giving them a more solid foundation from which to evaluate it morally and ethically.