The problem with voting machines and ballots in general is they are operated by people and institutions who have a vested interest in the outcome of the election.
I'm still waiting on Cairo!!! Come on Bill, my Win 3.11 For Workgroups is getting a bit long in the tooth. But seriously, I doubt MS has ever shipped a major OS revision on time. So I won't be holding my breath for Win 8.
The leak highlights the high numbers of civilian, military, and Iraqi casualties. If the war in Iraq had been worth it, then maybe none of this would be so bad. But I have yet to see one political leader, including the former President Bush, explain why the war in Iraq was necessary or worth it. My advice to future Presidents is if you're Generals and pollsters are advising you to go to war, ask yourselves this question. "Are we all willing to send our own children out on the first wave?" If the answer is no, then the war is probably not worth it and we should stick to diplomatic means.
I am an American and a veteran who served in Iraq. I was personally all for invading Iraq. The American people wanted to invade Iraq, and President Bush did what at the time was a very popular thing. Now every one wants to criticize the last President for doing that they themselves advocated. Some day America needs to come to terms with this. Or will America just ignore the lesson and blame it all on Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. and bumble on to the next mistake? Americans are not famous for self reflection, so I expect America to just blame the Bushies and move on.
You basically answered your own question when you wrote, "The fact that most other nations, if they had our power, would do worse than we do is irrelevant." Right now, the US is saying that it is legal to use UAVs to strike and kill enemies in third countries, without that country's permission. This sets a dangerous precedent, because if it is legal for the U.S., then it will also be legal for Iran, China, Russia, or Israel to do the same thing. All of those countries are developing or have their own armed UAVs. I am not saying that the US should not employ drones. But what I am saying is that the way their presently being employed is creating a bad legal and moral precedent that could eventually make the world less secure. I have a much deeper opinion about this topic, but it won't fit in a/. post.
You're obviously smarter than I am. The information leaked was from the SIPR Net. The SIPR Net is basically an encrypted VPN. You need a security clearance to get a SIPR Net login. SIPR Net computers are in a secure area, requiring an ID check to get into or a key combination. The USB ports are disabled. The only way to send a SIPR document as an email attachment to a 'friend' would be to burn it to CD or floppy, remove the CD from the designated area, and load the CD on a regular internet machine. If people are doing this, that's 'news' to this 'veteran,' because during my time in the service, everyone took classified information seriously.
I'm a military veteran and I may have authored some of the documents that were leaked. But pretty much all of the information was already publicly available in some form or another. We all knew Pakistan was playing a double game. We all knew that the CIA was operating secret drones along the boarder - who else could it be, the Mongolians? If you drop a bomb on somebody, you can keep it secret from the press, but everybody on the ground will know about it. It just takes a little investigative journalism to get at the truth.
The main problem the Pentagon has is one of credibility. The fact that a low level intelligence clerk could smuggle out many GBs of classified documents while lip syncing to Lady Gaga makes the military and the entire chain of command look like a bunch of incompetent boobs. It just goes to show that WallMart has better protection against shoplifters than the military has against internal leaks. So the initial reaction is one of self-preservation. "If you leak this, people will die." Which is another way of saying, we royally screwed up and we're placing the blame on you because we don't want to be the ones getting busted over this. I am no longer in the military, so I can speak my mind on this. I still think Julian Assange is an idiot, but that's another topic.
As a long-time Apple investor, I am not terribly surprised that Apple has finally cracked the $300 dollar barrier. The reason I am bullish on Apple and have been for over ten years is that Apple has repeatedly shown it has the ability to find a technical product or market, analyze what is wrong with the current offerings and make a ground breaking product that basically redefines that market. That was the reason the original Apple 2 was successful. You didn't have to know how to wield a soldering iron to have an affordable home computer. The Macintosh again redefined the market by making a mouse-based graphical user interface widely available. Sure others went there first with the Altair proceeding the Apple 2, or the Xerox Alto proceeding the Macintosh, but both products had technical or cost flaws that crippled their chances in the market. This is the same basic formula that Steve Jobs applied to mp3 music players, online music and video sales, cell phones, and most recently tablets. He wasn't the first one to invent these things, but he was the one who was able to see where the short comings were and come up with a better product. Technical users can trash talk Apples products all they want and rant about how brand x's offering can do so much more and costs so much less, but the proof is in the sales. Apple only makes 30 or so products, so they can focus on each product with laser-beam intensity and make it the best in its market. I can't even count how many products Sony, Dell or HP make. Some are great, others are trash. People like Apple's products and keep buying them as fast as Apple can make them. So as long as Apple is able to continue with this business model, I will remain bullish on Apple.
NeXTSTEP's Installer.app had a working package uninstaller. To uninstall a package, you just clicked on its receipt and selected uninstall. For some reason this was dropped in Mac OS X 1.0 and was never reinstated. I have used all versions of NeXT/OS X from NeXTSTEP 2.3 to OS X 10.6 over the past 20 years, and it seems Apple commonly removes random features from time to time only to possibly reinstate them at some future release.
It's like the quote from Bud Tribble, "Well, just because he (Steve) tells you something is awful or great, it doesn't necessarily mean he'll feel that way tomorrow." Maybe Steve has a bad day and decides to throw out some feature he feels is bloated. Who knows... I think lately Steve has decided Color and Title Bars are a distraction, as evidenced by iTunes 10. It reminds me of NeXTSTEP 2.3's interface guidelines... but I digress. (ok I'm a fan boy and I admit it.)
I agree both DarwinPorts and Fink suck, I refuse to use either one. For me, the app either has a.app bundle for it, or I run it under Linux.
Re:Wish Apple put some work on OSX
on
The Hackintosh Guide
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Apple puts development work into OS X to support the current generation of Macintosh computers. Because Apple only has to support a very small slice of hardware, they can concentrate their development work on building features and improving the OS. Sorry for not supporting third party hardware. That's their business model and it works for them.
At least citizens of most countries including South Korea can speak out against their governments without having themselves and their entire families and dependents for three generations thrown into a gulag system. I disagree with many things that the US does and has done, but at least I have the right to speak out about those abuses. That is why I consider North Korea to be a criminal state. Just because something is legal in your country, doesn't mean you're above international law. The Nürnberg Trials established this fact. Just because it was legal to kill Jews in the Third Reich, it was still a violation of international law.
North Korea, or the "Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea" as they like to call themselves is a criminal state that murders its own citizens while denying them even the most basic human rights such as freedom of movement. The only North Koreans who will be blogging or communicating on these web sites will be ones from the Propaganda and Agitation ministries. North Korea has lost a lot of face over abducting Japanese and South Korean citizens, shooting down a Korean airliner, sinking a Korean destroyer, and the mass starvation after the collapse of the Soviet Union. North Korea wouldn't even exist if it weren't for external support from the Soviet Union, and later on China and South Korea. The only legitimate government on the Korean peninsula is the Republic of Korea. The regime in North Korea are a bunch of criminals and they maintain the largest prison in the world. Hopefully one day it will all end peacefully the same way that East Germany dissolved as soon as the Soviets refused to crush the crowds of demonstrators with their tanks.
I don't think Microsoft ever profitably merged/acquired another company. Often Microsoft uses mergers to shut down competitors. But Adobe doesn't compete directly against Microsoft in Microsoft's only two profitable businesses: Windows and Office. Adobe does compete against Microsoft with Flash, but Silverlight is more of a hobby for Microsoft anyway. Acquiring Adobe is bound to be expensive, and if Microsoft has any business sense, they would continue improving Adobe's profitable product lines, including Photoshop for Macintosh. Otherwise, Microsoft is just wasting the share holder's money. I think as a share holder, I will join the calls for Steve Ballmer's removal if he blows a few tens of billions on this.
Why are there so many people trying to blame the end of the shuttle on the Democrats. The space shuttle has been operational for 30 years across both Republican and Democratic administrations. It was mostly developed during the Ford and Carter administrations. The timing of the space shuttle retirement has nothing to do with the party in power. I get the feeling if there's an earthquake in China Republicans will blame it on Mr. Obama. Maybe its payback for all the flattering films Michael Moore made about Mr. Bush. Can't we all just get along? Both parties are equally inept and corrupt.
I feel bad for the engineers who stayed on with the shuttle until the very end. Many probably could have left earlier for a more secure job. But they stayed on in order to ensure the safety of the final flight. I hope NASA and the government take care of these people and ease their transitions into other jobs. Call me a softie. I have been sacked from a job and I have a family, so I know what it's like. It could happen to anyone.
Even if this asteroid did impact the earth, the impact would still be smaller than the yield of the 50 megaton blast produced by Tsar Bomba in 1961. So as long as it doesn't impact any populated areas, we should be fine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
My first engineering job out of college was as an avionics engineer at McDonnell Douglas in 1996. We were designing avionics using a Highly Reliable Industrial (HRIP) M68000 CPU downclocked to a couple of MHz. The reason for this CPU choice was that it did exactly what was required for building an embedded system. Also the M68000 had/has a very long production cycle and would be around for many years to come, which is important if you need spare parts in the future. We used the minimum clock setting required to achieve the required performance and to reduce power consumption and thermal cooling requirements. Modern general-purpose desktop CPUs normally aren't good choices for single-task embedded systems because of their power consumption, short product life spans, and general feature overkill. You do not need a particularly fast CPU to perform basic guidance and control tasks or to run avionics computers. The PowerPC has been adapted for imbedded MILSPEC systems for example and it's about 10 years behind the "state of the art."
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The problem with voting machines and ballots in general is they are operated by people and institutions who have a vested interest in the outcome of the election.
I'm still waiting on Cairo!!! Come on Bill, my Win 3.11 For Workgroups is getting a bit long in the tooth. But seriously, I doubt MS has ever shipped a major OS revision on time. So I won't be holding my breath for Win 8.
The leak highlights the high numbers of civilian, military, and Iraqi casualties. If the war in Iraq had been worth it, then maybe none of this would be so bad. But I have yet to see one political leader, including the former President Bush, explain why the war in Iraq was necessary or worth it. My advice to future Presidents is if you're Generals and pollsters are advising you to go to war, ask yourselves this question. "Are we all willing to send our own children out on the first wave?" If the answer is no, then the war is probably not worth it and we should stick to diplomatic means. I am an American and a veteran who served in Iraq. I was personally all for invading Iraq. The American people wanted to invade Iraq, and President Bush did what at the time was a very popular thing. Now every one wants to criticize the last President for doing that they themselves advocated. Some day America needs to come to terms with this. Or will America just ignore the lesson and blame it all on Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. and bumble on to the next mistake? Americans are not famous for self reflection, so I expect America to just blame the Bushies and move on.
Apple buying FaceBook sounds a lot like the AOL Time Warner fiasco a few years back. I think FaceBook will be a one hit wonder.
You basically answered your own question when you wrote, "The fact that most other nations, if they had our power, would do worse than we do is irrelevant." Right now, the US is saying that it is legal to use UAVs to strike and kill enemies in third countries, without that country's permission. This sets a dangerous precedent, because if it is legal for the U.S., then it will also be legal for Iran, China, Russia, or Israel to do the same thing. All of those countries are developing or have their own armed UAVs. I am not saying that the US should not employ drones. But what I am saying is that the way their presently being employed is creating a bad legal and moral precedent that could eventually make the world less secure. I have a much deeper opinion about this topic, but it won't fit in a /. post.
You're obviously smarter than I am. The information leaked was from the SIPR Net. The SIPR Net is basically an encrypted VPN. You need a security clearance to get a SIPR Net login. SIPR Net computers are in a secure area, requiring an ID check to get into or a key combination. The USB ports are disabled. The only way to send a SIPR document as an email attachment to a 'friend' would be to burn it to CD or floppy, remove the CD from the designated area, and load the CD on a regular internet machine. If people are doing this, that's 'news' to this 'veteran,' because during my time in the service, everyone took classified information seriously.
I'm a military veteran and I may have authored some of the documents that were leaked. But pretty much all of the information was already publicly available in some form or another. We all knew Pakistan was playing a double game. We all knew that the CIA was operating secret drones along the boarder - who else could it be, the Mongolians? If you drop a bomb on somebody, you can keep it secret from the press, but everybody on the ground will know about it. It just takes a little investigative journalism to get at the truth. The main problem the Pentagon has is one of credibility. The fact that a low level intelligence clerk could smuggle out many GBs of classified documents while lip syncing to Lady Gaga makes the military and the entire chain of command look like a bunch of incompetent boobs. It just goes to show that WallMart has better protection against shoplifters than the military has against internal leaks. So the initial reaction is one of self-preservation. "If you leak this, people will die." Which is another way of saying, we royally screwed up and we're placing the blame on you because we don't want to be the ones getting busted over this. I am no longer in the military, so I can speak my mind on this. I still think Julian Assange is an idiot, but that's another topic.
As a long-time Apple investor, I am not terribly surprised that Apple has finally cracked the $300 dollar barrier. The reason I am bullish on Apple and have been for over ten years is that Apple has repeatedly shown it has the ability to find a technical product or market, analyze what is wrong with the current offerings and make a ground breaking product that basically redefines that market. That was the reason the original Apple 2 was successful. You didn't have to know how to wield a soldering iron to have an affordable home computer. The Macintosh again redefined the market by making a mouse-based graphical user interface widely available. Sure others went there first with the Altair proceeding the Apple 2, or the Xerox Alto proceeding the Macintosh, but both products had technical or cost flaws that crippled their chances in the market. This is the same basic formula that Steve Jobs applied to mp3 music players, online music and video sales, cell phones, and most recently tablets. He wasn't the first one to invent these things, but he was the one who was able to see where the short comings were and come up with a better product. Technical users can trash talk Apples products all they want and rant about how brand x's offering can do so much more and costs so much less, but the proof is in the sales. Apple only makes 30 or so products, so they can focus on each product with laser-beam intensity and make it the best in its market. I can't even count how many products Sony, Dell or HP make. Some are great, others are trash. People like Apple's products and keep buying them as fast as Apple can make them. So as long as Apple is able to continue with this business model, I will remain bullish on Apple.
NeXTSTEP's Installer.app had a working package uninstaller. To uninstall a package, you just clicked on its receipt and selected uninstall. For some reason this was dropped in Mac OS X 1.0 and was never reinstated. I have used all versions of NeXT/OS X from NeXTSTEP 2.3 to OS X 10.6 over the past 20 years, and it seems Apple commonly removes random features from time to time only to possibly reinstate them at some future release. It's like the quote from Bud Tribble, "Well, just because he (Steve) tells you something is awful or great, it doesn't necessarily mean he'll feel that way tomorrow." Maybe Steve has a bad day and decides to throw out some feature he feels is bloated. Who knows... I think lately Steve has decided Color and Title Bars are a distraction, as evidenced by iTunes 10. It reminds me of NeXTSTEP 2.3's interface guidelines... but I digress. (ok I'm a fan boy and I admit it.) I agree both DarwinPorts and Fink suck, I refuse to use either one. For me, the app either has a .app bundle for it, or I run it under Linux.
Apple puts development work into OS X to support the current generation of Macintosh computers. Because Apple only has to support a very small slice of hardware, they can concentrate their development work on building features and improving the OS. Sorry for not supporting third party hardware. That's their business model and it works for them.
At least citizens of most countries including South Korea can speak out against their governments without having themselves and their entire families and dependents for three generations thrown into a gulag system. I disagree with many things that the US does and has done, but at least I have the right to speak out about those abuses. That is why I consider North Korea to be a criminal state. Just because something is legal in your country, doesn't mean you're above international law. The Nürnberg Trials established this fact. Just because it was legal to kill Jews in the Third Reich, it was still a violation of international law.
North Korea, or the "Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea" as they like to call themselves is a criminal state that murders its own citizens while denying them even the most basic human rights such as freedom of movement. The only North Koreans who will be blogging or communicating on these web sites will be ones from the Propaganda and Agitation ministries. North Korea has lost a lot of face over abducting Japanese and South Korean citizens, shooting down a Korean airliner, sinking a Korean destroyer, and the mass starvation after the collapse of the Soviet Union. North Korea wouldn't even exist if it weren't for external support from the Soviet Union, and later on China and South Korea. The only legitimate government on the Korean peninsula is the Republic of Korea. The regime in North Korea are a bunch of criminals and they maintain the largest prison in the world. Hopefully one day it will all end peacefully the same way that East Germany dissolved as soon as the Soviets refused to crush the crowds of demonstrators with their tanks.
I don't think Microsoft ever profitably merged/acquired another company. Often Microsoft uses mergers to shut down competitors. But Adobe doesn't compete directly against Microsoft in Microsoft's only two profitable businesses: Windows and Office. Adobe does compete against Microsoft with Flash, but Silverlight is more of a hobby for Microsoft anyway. Acquiring Adobe is bound to be expensive, and if Microsoft has any business sense, they would continue improving Adobe's profitable product lines, including Photoshop for Macintosh. Otherwise, Microsoft is just wasting the share holder's money. I think as a share holder, I will join the calls for Steve Ballmer's removal if he blows a few tens of billions on this.
Why are there so many people trying to blame the end of the shuttle on the Democrats. The space shuttle has been operational for 30 years across both Republican and Democratic administrations. It was mostly developed during the Ford and Carter administrations. The timing of the space shuttle retirement has nothing to do with the party in power. I get the feeling if there's an earthquake in China Republicans will blame it on Mr. Obama. Maybe its payback for all the flattering films Michael Moore made about Mr. Bush. Can't we all just get along? Both parties are equally inept and corrupt. I feel bad for the engineers who stayed on with the shuttle until the very end. Many probably could have left earlier for a more secure job. But they stayed on in order to ensure the safety of the final flight. I hope NASA and the government take care of these people and ease their transitions into other jobs. Call me a softie. I have been sacked from a job and I have a family, so I know what it's like. It could happen to anyone.
Even if this asteroid did impact the earth, the impact would still be smaller than the yield of the 50 megaton blast produced by Tsar Bomba in 1961. So as long as it doesn't impact any populated areas, we should be fine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
My first engineering job out of college was as an avionics engineer at McDonnell Douglas in 1996. We were designing avionics using a Highly Reliable Industrial (HRIP) M68000 CPU downclocked to a couple of MHz. The reason for this CPU choice was that it did exactly what was required for building an embedded system. Also the M68000 had/has a very long production cycle and would be around for many years to come, which is important if you need spare parts in the future. We used the minimum clock setting required to achieve the required performance and to reduce power consumption and thermal cooling requirements. Modern general-purpose desktop CPUs normally aren't good choices for single-task embedded systems because of their power consumption, short product life spans, and general feature overkill. You do not need a particularly fast CPU to perform basic guidance and control tasks or to run avionics computers. The PowerPC has been adapted for imbedded MILSPEC systems for example and it's about 10 years behind the "state of the art."