If I built a spy satellite and orbitted it over the united states I would be a terrorist and bombed in seconds. Why the difference for china?
Unless your satellite held a geostationary orbit over the equator, it would be practically impossible to prevent it from eventually passing over the US. Due to the high lattitude of many parts of Russia, many Russian communications satellites have to use elliptical orbits just to reach the intended audience. I'm sure it's quite difficult for any country to discern the difference between a communications satellite and a "spy" satellite, since they are so small. Should we just ask? Think about what you are saying.
and everyone pays for a more expensive RFID-capable CD/DVD player because...?
Maybe for the same reason everyone eventually bought a VCR with Automatic Gain Control (ensuring that scrambled television channels would be useless without the cable company's box). It became illegal to buy one without it.
That depends on whether you are talking to an economist who subscribes to Keyensian economic theories or one who follows the Austrian School is a school of economic thought (such as Friedrich Hayek).
outside of the protected classes (age, race, gender, religion, etc), you can discriminate as much as you want
When it comes to employment law, almost illegal can still be dangerous. If you mess up there, you don't just get a ticket, like speeding, you get a nice lawsuit, and bad publicity. You can treat everyone you interview or hire exactly the same, but if that consistent treatment affects a protected class of people differently than it does others, you can still be in trouble, thanks to the doctrine of disparate impact.
Well, first of all, a secular dictatorship is still a dictatorship, and in the case of Iraq, a particularly nasty one at that. Though Saddam was not a religious nut himself, that didn't stop him from paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers large sums of money, nor did it keep him from riding roughshod over his people, just to name a few of his offenses.
Could you please elaborate on how you classify the new government of Iraq as inherently "Islamic?" Are you of the opinion that the people of Iraq are not able to govern themselves? Maybe they are, maybe not, but let's give them a shot at it. That's the only way to end up with a free country where people don't become desperate for better circumstances.
I'm glad they have good Quality Control now... maybe they'll apply for the ISO 9000 designation?
Microsoft frontline support (CSRs and "tech routers") attained both ISO 9000 and COPC certification a couple of years ago. It was kinda neat to be a part of it, getting my foot in the door, while working toward a more substantive role within Microsoft. Now, I am moving on to an exciting career doing property inspections in hurricaine-stricken areas of TX and/or LA.
Oh, and I don't think the Native Americans that your ancestors massacred with Smallpox were much of a threat, either. Not very likely to overthrow the US Government, so what was with the biological weapons? No, Americans HAVE carried out acts of murder and genocide for reasons that have nothing to do with self-preservation and a lot to do with xenophobia.
The first major outbreak of an infectious disease recorded on the northeastern Atlantic coast was 1616-19. The Massachusetts and other Algonquin tribes in the area were reduced from an estimated thirty thousand to three hundred (Bray). When the Pilgrims landed a year later in 1620, there was few Indians left to greet them. Many observers believe this infectious disease was smallpox.
Remember, the invention of the microscope and the discovery of microbes didn't happen until the 17th century. Sometime after this, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes advocated doctors actually starting to wash their hands between autopsies and delivering babies (imagine!)
Prior to the arrival of Europeans, various sources estimate native population in North and South America at ninety to one hundred million. In the fifteen hundreds, the American Indian population in North America has been estimated at approximately twelve million, but by the early nineteen hundreds, the population had been reduced to roughly four hundred and seventy-four thousand. It is impossible to arrive at a number for the millions of American Indians killed during this period by European diseases with smallpox the deadliest by far.
Indian Genocide is one of the most controversial issues on the internet and this site. Genocide and Holocaust are words that are easy to throw around, often to grab a reader's attention, but proving them is something else. What one group calls genocide, another group may call progress. This statement is used in the same context as the saying...one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines genocide as the systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group. Based on this definition, genocide was not carried out by the United States Government against the Indian Nation, however, based on the International legal definition of genocide used by the United Nations, (www.preventgenocide.org), genocide was carried out against the American Indians. An overall view of genocide is given by a reader below.
Government treaties, bureaucratic bungling, the Washita, Sand Creek, Wounded Knee, and Bear River massacres, along with forced relocation resulting in the Trail of Tears, created some of the darkest chapters in this country's history. However, this does not mean that the United States Government used the smallpox virus to conduct a systematic and planned extermination of the American Indians. It should also be noted that American Indians, especially East of the Mississippi, committed atrocities on the settlers as bad or worse than any that the Colonists committed on the Indians.
Maybe slowing down on the provocation and speeding up on the reconciliation might be hhelpful. Sure I don't expect Bin Laden to just shake hands and walk away, but he's only one man, and Al Quaeda is just a few. If you get the rest of the Islamic world on your side, they'll be trivially easy to defeat. But your current course of action is doing the exact opposite. It's a war that can never be won.
What level of appeasement do you propose to convert the world of Islam back to the algebra-and-trigenometry-inventing culture that it once was? Should we all just convert? Maybe that would do it.
Simply put, too much of the world of islam is ruled by those who will never be appeased. They don't even pretend to want peace. Observe the behavior between various islamic groups, sects, and countries, if you are still under the illusion that simply trying harder to not offend Islamic sensebilities will win us any brownie points. On top of that, consider that islamic law automatically classifies all non-muslims as second or third-class citizens. Looking historically at Islamic countries' dealings with others, what do you see that makes you think that the West has any chance of peaceful coexistence with the Islamic world by simply appeasing them? Hey, I wish it was possible, too, but that's a pipe dream. There are some pockets of sanity in the Muslim world, such as Turkey. They have some freedoms. That is the only path to peace (for the oppressed people of the world to live their lives under freer governments than the ones they currently live under). Appeasing tyrants won't make this happen. For all of those who think trying to spread freedom by deposing a tyrant leader is inherently wrong, I want to hear your solution (and don't suggest appeasement, becaused that only proves that you only started paying attention to world events sometime after 2001)
Regarding accent I just can not take it that it is incomprehensible.
Whether you "take it" or not, many tech support workers in India are quite incomprehensible to the Americans who are routed to them.
I transfer calls to and receive calls from Indian agents every single day, and I am exceptionally good at understanding Indian accents (there seem to be several variations within India). I have had more than one person in India ask me if I was in India, because I was literally the first American they ever heard pronounce their name exactly the same way they do (or at least the first American who bothered to). I would rather see my company offshore x number of jobs to full-time employees in India than to simply outsource the same jobs to an outfit where they pay the contracting company on a per-call basis. What is the incentive system at work there?
Having said all that, is not just the pronounciation of the words that confuses many Americans, but also the choice of words spoken that throws so many people off. For instance, "Thank you for being on hold" does not inspire confidence that this person, whose mercy you are at, is going to be able to effectively communicate very complex things to you over the phone, to fix your computer.
This December will be my 7-year mark at the Fortune 500 company I work for. Eight months after that, I should finish my bachelor's degree. I guess I will tell you then.
It all boils down to enforcing conformity. If you don't act and dress like your prescribed role, you're an evil monster and a "loser". If you have a different passtime than the category you're pegged into, you're an evil monster and a "loser".
In my opinion, Triumph the insult comic dog is funny. His humor is best taken in the context of his body of work, instead of just this clip. As his name insinuates, he makes fun of people (that's what he does). I have always been, and will always be a nerd, so I totally understand the pain of being mocked for not conforming. If this was the only spot that Triumph ever did, I might feel the same way you do, but from what I have seen, he makes fun of everyone, not just nerds.
No, his style is not suble. While dry humor is among my favorite types of humor, there is room for Triumph's style, also. Not all humor has to conform to my favorite type in order for me to enjoy it.
Think about it: if your business spends millions of dollars a year on Windows, a competitor who uses Linux will have a big advantage.
Any company big enough to spend millions on Windows is also going to be spending a comparable amount on IT staff. If it takes more people (or people who cost more) to implement, manage, and support linux, then the company using linux does not have a big advantage over a company that uses Windows. That's what the "T" means in TCO.
The key word here is "If". This study seems to substantiate one possibility. Some people here seem to doubt the credibility of the study.
It sounds like you would only give props if Microsoft did something both technologically superior AND an economic failure. Like Betamax, or something similar. I guess they have better things to do than produce an economically superior failure just to prove that they can.
I don't remember anyone saying that they are willing to pay $15.00 to the RIAA and $15.00 to the artist.
Maybe you mean that the people who are already downloading the music via P2P for free should send the money they are saving to the artists. That makes more sense. But even in that situation, it doesn't seem wise to draw attention to yourself as someone who is P2Ping music. Yes, the payment could probably be done anonymously, but it's just so much easier to at least wait & see what the supreme court says before making a decision like that. I have to admit that I didn't expect the future of P2P fileshareing to be in limbo for as long as it has, even; I expected it to go strongly one way or the other at least a year ago.
You don't even have a window in your car, or your car can't be locked, anyone can steal your backpack!
Totally leaving the accuracy of that analogy aside, there are vehicles like you describe. They are called motorcycles. Only an idiot would leave a backpack on the seat of their motorcycle, and expect it to be there when they returned.
Leaving the door of one's house unlocked sounds more accurate, but it's still not a perfect analogy, since security vulnerabilities for houses are not remotely exploitable and absolutely identical over several millions of houses, and millions of burglars do not have millisecond access to your house without having to travel an inch
Oh Yeah, and also, a burglar can't just write a piece of self-replacating code that breaks into a house, replicates itself multiple times, mutates, and then attacks your house.
Autoupdates and immediate patching aren't options for large corporate networks.
Yeah, you're totally right, so the people who make a living administrating systems would know enough to turn that feature off more readily than non-admins would know to turn it on. Right?
If the dummies had this option turned on, and the people who know better had it turned off, it would make it harder for any new virus to infect enough machines to get a critical mass
Hmmmmm... where have I heard that one before?
Oh, yeah, now I remember! They decided to give away Internet Explorer for free with Windows. Let's see, what became of that? Largest anti-trust case in the history of computing. Nope, I don't think even Microsoft would follow that up by giving away even more software. Might not be as fun the second time through.
Last time I checked, Windows' upgrades from one version to the next were not free by any definition.
Well, if (and this is a big if, because I simply don't know) Munich was comparing a Linux proposal to a Microsoft proposal that included the famous "Software Assurance" clause, then any nex version that came out during the next 3 years would, in fact, be free (or at least included as a part of the proposal already).
Also remember we're talking about flavored sugar water. Who's scamming whom?
Yeah, but it also contains caffeine, the melange of the real world. No, I am not trying to claim that there is only one source of caffeine in the world. The reason compare it to the Spice of Arrakis is because, like how melange allows the guild pilots of Dune to fold space and travel between the stars, caffeine makes certain, critical work in the real world possible, which would otherwise not be done. Imagine all the code that would have never been written, were it not for caffeine!
I thought you had it, until you said that it was the deisel to run the tractors which makes ethanol less "green" than we might imagine.
I wish I had the actual figures, because I can't remember them now, but it boils down to the fact that naturally-grown corn only yeilds x amount of corn per acre. Corn isn't grown 'naturally', though; corn today produces several times x amount of corn per acre, as it is dosed well with fertilizer, which is, you gessed it, a petroleum product. I wonder how many more forms of energy storage we can some up with, and how many more transformations we will put it through before being used? Each time energy is transformed from one form to another, some of it is lost, as no process is 100% efficient.
IBM's lawyers held the DoJ at bay for DECADES If you think that IBMs success relative to Microsoft's troubles with anti-trust is attributable only to the prowess of IBM's legal team, then you are as politically naiive as Microsoft was when its anti-trust troubles began. I need not say that Microsoft somewhat more politically connected these days than it was before the schooling it received at the hands of the DOJ of the 90s. Today, MSFT may be nearly as well connected as its enemies were back then.
This is not a bad thing. In the end, Israeli engineers may work side-by-side Iranian engineers on open source projects, and these engineers may develop personal respect for eachother. I thought there were already Israelis and Palestenians who already get along just fine. It's not the people who get along who cause the problems. It's the people who take it upon themselves to make sure that peace cannot exist who cause the problem.
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If I built a spy satellite and orbitted it over the united states I would be a terrorist and bombed in seconds. Why the difference for china?
Unless your satellite held a geostationary orbit over the equator, it would be practically impossible to prevent it from eventually passing over the US. Due to the high lattitude of many parts of Russia, many Russian communications satellites have to use elliptical orbits just to reach the intended audience. I'm sure it's quite difficult for any country to discern the difference between a communications satellite and a "spy" satellite, since they are so small. Should we just ask? Think about what you are saying.
and everyone pays for a more expensive RFID-capable CD/DVD player because...?
Maybe for the same reason everyone eventually bought a VCR with Automatic Gain Control (ensuring that scrambled television channels would be useless without the cable company's box). It became illegal to buy one without it.
Sadly, that's how economist think and work.
That depends on whether you are talking to an economist who subscribes to Keyensian economic theories or one who follows the Austrian School is a school of economic thought (such as Friedrich Hayek).
outside of the protected classes (age, race, gender, religion, etc), you can discriminate as much as you want
When it comes to employment law, almost illegal can still be dangerous. If you mess up there, you don't just get a ticket, like speeding, you get a nice lawsuit, and bad publicity.
You can treat everyone you interview or hire exactly the same, but if that consistent treatment affects a protected class of people differently than it does others, you can still be in trouble, thanks to the doctrine of disparate impact.
Well, first of all, a secular dictatorship is still a dictatorship, and in the case of Iraq, a particularly nasty one at that. Though Saddam was not a religious nut himself, that didn't stop him from paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers large sums of money, nor did it keep him from riding roughshod over his people, just to name a few of his offenses.
Could you please elaborate on how you classify the new government of Iraq as inherently "Islamic?" Are you of the opinion that the people of Iraq are not able to govern themselves? Maybe they are, maybe not, but let's give them a shot at it. That's the only way to end up with a free country where people don't become desperate for better circumstances.
I'm glad they have good Quality Control now... maybe they'll apply for the ISO 9000 designation?
Microsoft frontline support (CSRs and "tech routers") attained both ISO 9000 and COPC certification a couple of years ago. It was kinda neat to be a part of it, getting my foot in the door, while working toward a more substantive role within Microsoft.
Now, I am moving on to an exciting career doing property inspections in hurricaine-stricken areas of TX and/or LA.
Oh, and I don't think the Native Americans that your ancestors massacred with Smallpox were much of a threat, either. Not very likely to overthrow the US Government, so what was with the biological weapons? No, Americans HAVE carried out acts of murder and genocide for reasons that have nothing to do with self-preservation and a lot to do with xenophobia.
The first major outbreak of an infectious disease recorded on the northeastern Atlantic coast was 1616-19. The Massachusetts and other Algonquin tribes in the area were reduced from an estimated thirty thousand to three hundred (Bray). When the Pilgrims landed a year later in 1620, there was few Indians left to greet them. Many observers believe this infectious disease was smallpox.
Remember, the invention of the microscope and the discovery of microbes didn't happen until the 17th century. Sometime after this, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes advocated doctors actually starting to wash their hands between autopsies and delivering babies (imagine!)
From http://www.hygenius.com/history.htm> HyGenius :
Prior to the arrival of Europeans, various sources estimate native population in North and South America at ninety to one hundred million. In the fifteen hundreds, the American Indian population in North America has been estimated at approximately twelve million, but by the early nineteen hundreds, the population had been reduced to roughly four hundred and seventy-four thousand. It is impossible to arrive at a number for the millions of American Indians killed during this period by European diseases with smallpox the deadliest by far.
Indian Genocide is one of the most controversial issues on the internet and this site. Genocide and Holocaust are words that are easy to throw around, often to grab a reader's attention, but proving them is something else. What one group calls genocide, another group may call progress. This statement is used in the same context as the saying...one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines genocide as the systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group. Based on this definition, genocide was not carried out by the United States Government against the Indian Nation, however, based on the International legal definition of genocide used by the United Nations, (www.preventgenocide.org), genocide was carried out against the American Indians. An overall view of genocide is given by a reader below.
Government treaties, bureaucratic bungling, the Washita, Sand Creek, Wounded Knee, and Bear River massacres, along with forced relocation resulting in the Trail of Tears, created some of the darkest chapters in this country's history. However, this does not mean that the United States Government used the smallpox virus to conduct a systematic and planned extermination of the American Indians. It should also be noted that American Indians, especially East of the Mississippi, committed atrocities on the settlers as bad or worse than any that the Colonists committed on the Indians.
Maybe slowing down on the provocation and speeding up on the reconciliation might be hhelpful. Sure I don't expect Bin Laden to just shake hands and walk away, but he's only one man, and Al Quaeda is just a few. If you get the rest of the Islamic world on your side, they'll be trivially easy to defeat. But your current course of action is doing the exact opposite. It's a war that can never be won.
What level of appeasement do you propose to convert the world of Islam back to the algebra-and-trigenometry-inventing culture that it once was? Should we all just convert? Maybe that would do it.
Simply put, too much of the world of islam is ruled by those who will never be appeased. They don't even pretend to want peace. Observe the behavior between various islamic groups, sects, and countries, if you are still under the illusion that simply trying harder to not offend Islamic sensebilities will win us any brownie points. On top of that, consider that islamic law automatically classifies all non-muslims as second or third-class citizens. Looking historically at Islamic countries' dealings with others, what do you see that makes you think that the West has any chance of peaceful coexistence with the Islamic world by simply appeasing them? Hey, I wish it was possible, too, but that's a pipe dream. There are some pockets of sanity in the Muslim world, such as Turkey. They have some freedoms. That is the only path to peace (for the oppressed people of the world to live their lives under freer governments than the ones they currently live under). Appeasing tyrants won't make this happen. For all of those who think trying to spread freedom by deposing a tyrant leader is inherently wrong, I want to hear your solution (and don't suggest appeasement, becaused that only proves that you only started paying attention to world events sometime after 2001)
Regarding accent I just can not take it that it is incomprehensible.
Whether you "take it" or not, many tech support workers in India are quite incomprehensible to the Americans who are routed to them.
I transfer calls to and receive calls from Indian agents every single day, and I am exceptionally good at understanding Indian accents (there seem to be several variations within India). I have had more than one person in India ask me if I was in India, because I was literally the first American they ever heard pronounce their name exactly the same way they do (or at least the first American who bothered to). I would rather see my company offshore x number of jobs to full-time employees in India than to simply outsource the same jobs to an outfit where they pay the contracting company on a per-call basis. What is the incentive system at work there?
Having said all that, is not just the pronounciation of the words that confuses many Americans, but also the choice of words spoken that throws so many people off. For instance, "Thank you for being on hold" does not inspire confidence that this person, whose mercy you are at, is going to be able to effectively communicate very complex things to you over the phone, to fix your computer.
It offers little improvement to the user but does simplify maintainence and offers attractive corporate benefits.
Offers attractive corporate benefits? What timing; I was just canned! Where do I send my resume?
This December will be my 7-year mark at the Fortune 500 company I work for.
Eight months after that, I should finish my bachelor's degree. I guess I will tell you then.
It all boils down to enforcing conformity. If you don't act and dress like your prescribed role, you're an evil monster and a "loser". If you have a different passtime than the category you're pegged into, you're an evil monster and a "loser".
In my opinion, Triumph the insult comic dog is funny. His humor is best taken in the context of his body of work, instead of just this clip. As his name insinuates, he makes fun of people (that's what he does). I have always been, and will always be a nerd, so I totally understand the pain of being mocked for not conforming. If this was the only spot that Triumph ever did, I might feel the same way you do, but from what I have seen, he makes fun of everyone, not just nerds.
No, his style is not suble. While dry humor is among my favorite types of humor, there is room for Triumph's style, also. Not all humor has to conform to my favorite type in order for me to enjoy it.
Think about it: if your business spends millions of dollars a year on Windows, a competitor who uses Linux will have a big advantage.
Any company big enough to spend millions on Windows is also going to be spending a comparable amount on IT staff. If it takes more people (or people who cost more) to implement, manage, and support linux, then the company using linux does not have a big advantage over a company that uses Windows. That's what the "T" means in TCO.
The key word here is "If". This study seems to substantiate one possibility. Some people here seem to doubt the credibility of the study.
It sounds like you would only give props if Microsoft did something both technologically superior AND an economic failure.
Like Betamax, or something similar.
I guess they have better things to do than produce an economically superior failure just to prove that they can.
because too many kids get run over while waiting in the dark for the school bus if you don't change back during winter.
OK, just kidding.
\\ got nothin'
I don't remember anyone saying that they are willing to pay $15.00 to the RIAA and $15.00 to the artist.
Maybe you mean that the people who are already downloading the music via P2P for free should send the money they are saving to the artists. That makes more sense. But even in that situation, it doesn't seem wise to draw attention to yourself as someone who is P2Ping music. Yes, the payment could probably be done anonymously, but it's just so much easier to at least wait & see what the supreme court says before making a decision like that. I have to admit that I didn't expect the future of P2P fileshareing to be in limbo for as long as it has, even; I expected it to go strongly one way or the other at least a year ago.
Whose cat? Heisenberg's cat, or Shroedinger's cat? I guess we can always look & find out.
You don't even have a window in your car, or your car can't be locked, anyone can steal your backpack!
Totally leaving the accuracy of that analogy aside, there are vehicles like you describe. They are called motorcycles. Only an idiot would leave a backpack on the seat of their motorcycle, and expect it to be there when they returned.
Leaving the door of one's house unlocked sounds more accurate, but it's still not a perfect analogy, since security vulnerabilities for houses are not remotely exploitable and absolutely identical over several millions of houses, and millions of burglars do not have millisecond access to your house without having to travel an inch
Oh Yeah, and also, a burglar can't just write a piece of self-replacating code that breaks into a house, replicates itself multiple times, mutates, and then attacks your house.
Autoupdates and immediate patching aren't options for large corporate networks.
Yeah, you're totally right, so the people who make a living administrating systems would know enough to turn that feature off more readily than non-admins would know to turn it on. Right?
If the dummies had this option turned on, and the people who know better had it turned off, it would make it harder for any new virus to infect enough machines to get a critical mass
Microsoft giving away software to everyone?
Hmmmmm... where have I heard that one before?
Oh, yeah, now I remember! They decided to give away Internet Explorer for free with Windows. Let's see, what became of that? Largest anti-trust case in the history of computing. Nope, I don't think even Microsoft would follow that up by giving away even more software. Might not be as fun the second time through.
Last time I checked, Windows' upgrades from one version to the next were not free by any definition.
Well, if (and this is a big if, because I simply don't know) Munich was comparing a Linux proposal to a Microsoft proposal that included the famous "Software Assurance" clause, then any nex version that came out during the next 3 years would, in fact, be free (or at least included as a part of the proposal already).
Also remember we're talking about flavored sugar water. Who's scamming whom?
Yeah, but it also contains caffeine, the melange of the real world. No, I am not trying to claim that there is only one source of caffeine in the world. The reason compare it to the Spice of Arrakis is because, like how melange allows the guild pilots of Dune to fold space and travel between the stars, caffeine makes certain, critical work in the real world possible, which would otherwise not be done. Imagine all the code that would have never been written, were it not for caffeine!
I thought you had it, until you said that it was the deisel to run the tractors which makes ethanol less "green" than we might imagine.
I wish I had the actual figures, because I can't remember them now, but it boils down to the fact that naturally-grown corn only yeilds x amount of corn per acre. Corn isn't grown 'naturally', though; corn today produces several times x amount of corn per acre, as it is dosed well with fertilizer, which is, you gessed it, a petroleum product. I wonder how many more forms of energy storage we can some up with, and how many more transformations we will put it through before being used? Each time energy is transformed from one form to another, some of it is lost, as no process is 100% efficient.
IBM's lawyers held the DoJ at bay for DECADES
If you think that IBMs success relative to Microsoft's troubles with anti-trust is attributable only to the prowess of IBM's legal team, then you are as politically naiive as Microsoft was when its anti-trust troubles began. I need not say that Microsoft somewhat more politically connected these days than it was before the schooling it received at the hands of the DOJ of the 90s. Today, MSFT may be nearly as well connected as its enemies were back then.
This is not a bad thing. In the end, Israeli engineers may work side-by-side Iranian engineers on open source projects, and these engineers may develop personal respect for eachother.
I thought there were already Israelis and Palestenians who already get along just fine. It's not the people who get along who cause the problems. It's the people who take it upon themselves to make sure that peace cannot exist who cause the problem.