to an open source product, regardless if it's 'free.' I'll tell you my story just as an example of what open source has to face. I've used Word since version 1.0 when it came on two floppies and included a mouse in the box. I've used every single version up through 2003. I'm a writer. I was one of the first to use word processing with programs that no longer exist, like Zardax for the Apple ][. I've had a computer since 1979. I'm not as smart as all of you, of course, but I used to be famous for putting together a computer from pieces with only a Swiss Army knife at trade shows.
I write book-length manuscripts in Word, making extensive use of multiple indexes, tables of contents, and tables themselves. I don't have Word exactly memorized the way I still have Lotus 123 memorized (It won't leave my brain), but I have a good working journeyman level knowledge of it. It can be frustrating at times, but by and large I can get it to do what I need to have done.
Being a bit of a dabbler I once downloaded and installed Open Office to see what it could do. Looked fine at the outset. I had no problem with the menus or the look of it, so I loaded in one of my manuscripts. One look through it and I discovered it would not render tables properly. The tables were a mess. So I erased Open Office from my system and have never looked back since.
Why? Because I don't have time for this shit. Maybe they fixed it. Probably they did, but I can't be constantly checking back to see how it has improved. It slows me down and time is money. Word, for all its faults I'm sure you all can point out with great gusto, is a functional program. It works. I and my publisher see it as a known quantity. At a corporate level I can get Word so cheaply that it is not cost-effective to consider a 'free' program.
Proselytizers who have an axe to grind with evil M$ will make some inroads when they have enough power to force an organization to switch, just as they do with Linux on the desktop, which has a similar problem. But overall, the ecological niche for word processing is filled by Word, and it will take more than a few Linux geeks to dislodge it. Those who do use Word will use Word until they are dead.
The USSR killed a number of cosmonauts that you never heard about, including at least one woman. I'm not really a fan of conspiracy theories, and I know this is considered one by some. I remember as a kid seeing a banner headline on this in a newspaper of afairly large city, then the next day--nothing. It was if the story had never been printed. There are a couple of Italian brothers who managed to pick up the telemetry of some of these flights. (I used to have it bookmarked.) Google dead cosmonauts for lots of info, pro and con, on this issue.
I agree on the cost issue, though. Instead of spending a million bucks to develop a space pen that writes in zero-G, The Ruskies used pencils. Duh.
Of course not. That's silly, but I could believe a birth announcement was put in in case questions arose as to his citizenship later on, put in by his maternal grandmother. I don't know that that is true, but it's plausible. I also recall an 'original' birth certificate on his web site during the campaign that was analyzed by three different document experts and found to be an alteration of his sister's birth certificate. This has been removed in favor of the 'certificate that a certificate exists.'
I also wonder why we have no records of any school grades at Occidental, Columbia, or Harvard, no idea of how he paid for Harvard, what passport he used to travel to Pakistan, etc. We know of Bush's DUI and HIS college grades (C+, IIRC), but somehow the record of this man's life has been deemed 'off-limits.' Why?
The thing is, this issue could be solved so easily if he would just show the damned original certificate. End of story. Case over. Move along. Nothing to see here. I could EASILY accept that, but he won't do it. Why not?
Sure. I use all three, hence the overlap. I use Firefox most of the time, MSIE when I want to load faster, do pics, or use the built in RSS feed. Firefox is slower to load (by far. I've benchmarked it with a stop watch.) and much slower to load pics, but it renders more pages better more often and rarely hangs up.
No, that's not true. His mother was under-age when he was born. IF he actually was born in Kenya, he is NOT a natural born citizen according to the laws in effect at the time. The birth certificate he has released isn't an actual certificate, but is a computer-produced certification that a certificate exists, which in most cases is completely valid. There are some other certificates floating around the purport to prove he was born in Kenya. Some of them have been proven forgeries. Perhaps they all are. I don't know one way or another.
I am not arguing that Obama is or is not 'natural born' at all. I'm simply stating that your contention that his mother's citizenship is enough to make him so automatically is not true.
like shelving 'Life of an Iceberg' under biographies, but by and large they strive to be and are correct. If they mess up, some other library will fix the error. Libraries' cataloging data is usually centralized by OCLC so that the data is uniform throughput the country as other libraries pull from this central source for their own catalogs. Libraries also use a recognized and standardized subject scheme with a controlled vocabulary, not just a bunch of meta tags. Cataloging librarians are a rare and little-recognized breed of people who spend their entire professional lives trying to make it easier to gain access to material. The result is an organized body of knowledge--not just a heap of books on the floor in no particular order, like the Internet--and Google. For Google to blame libraries for their troubles is like blaming the Machinist Mates on the Titanic for crashing the ship into an iceberg. There, full circle. How did that happen?
they'd realize that a lot of the efforts to restrict firearm ownership really only affect a minority of gun nuts who don't have a valid reason for needing the fire power.
The Second Amendment is a RIGHT, not a privilege. I don't have to give a 'valid reason' for having 'firepower.' The Second Amendment IS the valid reason. Just because I have a gun doesn't make me a 'gun nut.' As for 'restricting firearms,' this is what has happened elsewhere:
WORLDWIDE HISTORY OF GUN CONFISCATION
In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, a total of 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
China established gun control in 1935. From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
Guatemala established gun control in 1964. From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
Cambodia established gun control in 1956. From 1975 to 1977, one million educated people, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
Unfortunately, the word 'assault weapon' is vastly over-used by reporters and citizens who have no idea what they are talking about. You can take the exact same guts of a semi-automatic rifle. On one put a wooden stock and a straight barrel. Show it to the average Joe and he says, "Oh, look! A hunting rifle." Now take the EXACT same innards, put a telescoping stock made of black plastic, and a fancy looking barrel on it, show it to the same guy, and he says, "Oh, my God! It's an assault weapon! Ban it!" A very good example is the AR-15. "AR" must stand for 'Assault rifle,' right?
No, it stands for "Armalite Model 15." Surprise. It may 'look mean,' but it does nothing a wooden stock 'rifle' can't do. Most of them fire a.223 round, which is fairly small compared to something like a 30-06. The way they operate is EXACTLY the same. All 'semi-automatic' means is that firing a round moves the next round 'automatically' into position. It still fires only one round at a time.
Now, if you're talking a real AK-47 or an M-15, OK. They're made for 'assault.' But what most people call 'assault weapons' are far from the case. And thus our debate about 'banning' such weapons continues based on this absurdity.
and concealed carry. In fact, it is a 'will issue' state meaning the local PD MUST issue a concealed carry permit within 60 days unless the background check reveals an issue. But the issue is a little more complex. This is how a Police Lieutenant explained it to me when I was taking a gun safety class here: Although 'Open Carry' is specifically allowed in Washington for anyone not otherwise prohibited from owning guns (such as felons), any other citizen can claim 'feeling intimidated' and call 911. If this happens, the PD MUST investigate and MUST send a report to the prosecutor, period. In fact, this Lt. reports being harassed by citizens for open carry when he was 'out of uniform' (meaning he had on a sweater and his badge was on a chain around his neck in full view, which is an authorized uniform in this jurisdiction.) If these people only knew. He carries three guns at once: One Glock in a holster, another mid-back, and a third J-frame.38 in his pocket (A J-frame is a fairly small revolver. The Glocks are, of course, semi-automatics.) The last two you'll never see unless he needs it.
The bottom line here is that a gun-o-phobic populace can claim 'intimidation' because they 'feel frightened' if someone else is simply carrying a gun and lodge a complaint that must be 'investigated.' In this case people cannot be expected to know that a) the gun wasn't real and b) that it was not an automatic, which is PROBABLY illegal here (Lots of rules for this kind of firearm.) How the investigation was carried out is another matter, but here it had to get to that point.
How to Live on Mars: A Trusty Guidebook to Surviving and Thriving on the Red Planet, by Robert Zubrin, Three Rivers Press (2008), Paperback, 224 pages, ISBN: 978-0307407184.
Once again, Zubrin delights and informs like no other. This concise, easy-reading, laugh-out-loud, little volume is packed with more solid scientific and engineering information about Mars, Mars exploration and settlement than even "The Case for Mars." Whereas the latter was informative and interesting, but fairly straight-laced, Zubrin here takes a decidedly more lighthearted approach, creating a fictional, early 22nd century guide to surviving and thriving on the new frontier.
As usual, Zubrin's strongest suit is his ability to turn his caustic wit against the foolish, timid, bureaucratic, cowardly, thoughtless paralysis which presently cripples the aerospace establishment, and indeed, Zubrin suggests, the entirety of terrestrial "civilization" (if what we have down here still merits the term.) Perhaps my favorite example is the following passage detailing water reclamation from the exhaust of a space suit's methanol/oxygen fuel-cell (used to provide electric power) in order to extend the endurance of Martians on EVA.
"The water you obtain will include a significant quantity of carbon dioxide in solution, which is why NASA has banned systems that plumb fuel-cell wastewater directly back to the suit canteen. However, despite the claimed medical problem, it is a fact that in the twentieth century, many people chose to drink carbonated water as a matter of preference."
I do not hold with those who regard Zubrin's political asides as an interruption of an otherwise interesting presentation of scientific or engineering information. Zubrin's ability to decisively skewer folly of all sorts, technical, medical, political, social, is the primary reason that he has always impressed me, and in my opinion, constitutes the single best feature of this particular book.
Zubrin's brutal and sustained critique of bureaucracy toward the end of "How to Live on Mars" is positively brilliant. If it doesn't make you yearn to give up the soul-destroying stagnation and conformity of Earth to live on a planet full of misfits, outcasts and rugged individualists, then there's just simply no trace of idealism, romance, nobility or heroism left in your black, flabby, little heart.
I'm pleased to see Zubrin take such a radical turn, or maybe simply to more openly embrace the radicalism which he has never been able to entirely prevent from seeping into his work. This one is not going to win Zubrin any friends in high places, but I suspect it will contribute to the immortality he achieves when the Martians (descended from pioneers who will make the first crossings in Mars-Direct inspired spacecraft) finally throw off their tyrannical Earthling overlords and establish a truly civilized branch of humanity for the first time in far too long.
in libraries. Older non-automated circulation systems tracked you better and more permanently than automated systems do today. One system was a 'signature' system where you signed for books and showed ID. Those signature sheets were kept in back room filing cabinets for years. In theory you could find a person on a signature sheet, track the corresponding numbers on the books' permanent record card, and find out which books had been checked out years ago.
Another system used library card numbers written into a slip attached to the book itself. These slips stayed in the book until they were filled up. It would be a trivial matter to look inside the cover of the book, note the library card numbers, and look them up.
Modern library circulation systems have been written to comply with librarian-written RFPs. I have never seen such an RFP that did NOT contain a statement very much like this: "Upon check-in of material any link between patron and item shall be permanently erased." The only time a history of check-outs is kept is for Outreach patrons, generally disabled and elderly library patrons who are personally served by library employees. These people tend to be voracious readers who can easily 'read out' a given section of books. A reading record is kept to ensure these employees do not re-send a book that has already been read, though frankly, may of them would not know nor care if that happened.
These automation systems are now pervasive in libraries. When the authorities come in to ask about reading records, which they do, the librarians simply say, 'We do not have such information available and we cannot help you.' There are normally policies in place passed by a Board of Trustees that spell out the fact that librarians SHOULD NOT do so, but this is backed up by the automation systems that make it so they CANNOT do so.
The only way you could get at historical information would be to restore a back-up. These will generally be overwritten over time. I've run many such systems. My back-up strategy was: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday-1 through Friday-5. The 5th Friday allowed about a three month window before it was overwritten. Since every backup was a frozen moment in time, the likelihood of pinning a particular patron's reading is slim. Further, doing so would completely disrupt current library operations. The FBI or whomever would have to enlist the cooperation of the library or manage to duplicate the exact state of the system elsewhere. I'd like to see them do that.
Of course, you still have to deal with the paranoid among us. Even with RFID systems there are folks who maintain that the FBI COULD stand outside the library with a portable recorder, scan everyone walking out of the library, and therefore, mysteriously, find out what books people were reading by looking up the books. As a result, libraries have eliminated indexes by barcode (the only ID on the RFID device, and even gone so far as to disguise the barcode in such a way as to NOT identify the library it came from.
For the record, library barcodes are normally in Codabar format. The first number "2" denotes a patron barcode; a "3" denotes an item. A "1" is a 'command' and is archaic. The next four numbers denote the library itself, so '9068' denotes Kitsap Regional Library system in Bremerton, Washington. 9,999 other library systems can have similar formats. The next 8 numbers give you 10 million item numbers. The last number is a check digit. If you disguise the '9068' then the barcode is not unique and could be from any of 10,000 libraries and belong to any of 10,000 items.
There are always people who will insinuate that the vendors of library automation systems are secretly embedding tracking technology without the libraries' knowledge, that their systems have been hacked by the NSA, or that libraries are not 'doing enough' to protect patrons' privacy. As far as I'm concerned, libraries have; and if you don't like the current system, we can always return to a non-automated system which will abs
Thank you for the clariication, I think. It just happens that the plural verb and the 'subjunctive case' are exactly the same word and are indistinguishable exceot in theory. When I read about subjunctive case, it makes my head hurt, yet I can do it without thinking the same way my dog can catch every ball I throw, yet neither of us can come up with the trigonometric equation that 'proves' it. I think that begs the question of what 'knowledge' is. I hope I'm not being pedantic, which I almost accused you of being.:-)
:-) Actually, your phrase brought back memories. I had to memorize the 'helping verbs' in junior high (1960?) "is be am are was were been has have had do does did may might can could shall should will would must." Of course, I can't remember yesterday.
Correct English uses a plural verb after a conditional statement. For example, correct grammar is to say, "If I were an optimist, I'd blah blah." "If I WAS an optimist..." is incorrect. The word "if" triggers the plural verb. "Whether" is another example. In English vulgate people often use the latter form simply because they don't know any better. You'd probably find it in a descriptive dictionary, but you'd never find it in a prescriptive dictionary, such as Webster's Second.
and I've had the opposite experience of the OP. Word processing has increased my typing speed by 50% over typewriters. (I type with three or four fingers at 60wpm, too fast to consider learning the right way.) I've become a better speller because I get instant feedback when I screw up. I've learned not to use 'white out' on the screen. Grammar? Nothing is going to help you if you can't get your words in the right places or understand to use a plural verb after a conditional. SURELY you don't rely on 'grammar checker' to bitch at you for using passive voice. It's useless.
You've said that twice now. I don't see it, myself. It's pretty good for basic unchallenged facts like geography, for example. But as soon as you get into anything that even remotely touches on politics and ideologies it turns into a rat's nest of disinformation and dissent. Look at any Wikipedia entry involving the paranormal, UFOs, etc. and you'll see, inevitably, the 'psedoscience' label applied to people or ideas. It's a very clear bias and makes it feel like you're watching a Larry King show where the 'opposing point of view' is brought in to provide 'fair and balanced' reporting, with the effect that the idea is ridiculed and shut down. Maybe it deserves to be, but the point is, it's biased.
In academic circles, Wikipedia is not well thought of--even to the point of banning using Wikipedia as a source. Is this academic elitism? Oh, probably, just like Will Durant is not considered a 'real' historian, but if you sneak in his ideas without citing him, history professors think you are brilliant. I realize that has its own problems, but my point is that the reputation counts.
I am quite aware that 'studies have shown' that Wikipedia is as or more accurate than more standard works such as Britannica, but, IMO, if you are using Wikipedia for anything but a quick look-me-up to get an idea of the issue, then, just like a/. poll, you're insane.
For him, maybe. But I doubt the majority of the populace is going to switch to a wiki any time soon. Having started with some unremembered text editor for the Apple ][, the switched to Zardax (Does ANY one remember Zardax?) and flirted with Wordstar I finally settled on Word 1.0, when it came on two 5.25" disks and was shipped with a mouse. I haven't looked back since. It has become way too bloated with way too many features, IMO, but the fact is it is a journey-level program that I could not imagine being without. I know the MS bashers are already pointing out that Open Office and others are Word's equal in every way. I have to politely disagree. Try doing tables and indexes on a book length manuscript and you'll see what I mean.
Maybe the others HAVE changed for the better, but at a certain point it becomes a productivity issue. I can't afford to slow down and learn a different system any more than I can afford to learn how to type 'correctly' with more than two fingers. I type 60 wpm with two. Why would I want to slow myself down? 60 is functional. That's what I need.
I also notice that when another program is discussed, it's always couched in terms of Word. The MS basher will say, 'Open Office is every bit as good as Word.' In other words, Word is the benchmark by which others are measured. The nerd can certainly sit down and tell me feature for feature why something else is 'better,' but in the time he takes to do that I can have several chapters written.
In any case, the original article is talking about word processing in general and is using Word as the example. It could just as well be Open Office. Word and all its wannabes are 'Wordish' in their approach, so perhaps the argument shouldn't be about Word itself, the MS program, but about Wordish programs in general. Does his argument have any greater merit then?
I don't think so. The fact is that Wordish gives you nearly complete control of the appearance of your document. These other alternatives, from wiki to blogspot, from html to css, impose style upon you that is difficult to 'correct.' You wind up accepting the default simply because it is too hard to fight it. I think it's kind of funny to hear people complain about the monoculture of Word (they mean Wordish), and then claim wiki or Wordpress are their choices. You're kidding me, right? If you want versatility and choices, Wordish is your guy.
This fellow lives in a very web centric environment and perhaps for him his choice is correct, but that does not equate to the world in general. Most people using Wordish don't know Ars Technica exists or why. They don't like to read from the screen, and they don't live on slashdot either, which is why his argument is faulty.
Really. He GPL'd it. End of story. Not everything is a morality tale. You've already wasted a lot of time staring at the navel of the thing. And good luck to you.
This is not so much a Windows issue as it is a browser issue. Secunia reports MSIE7, Mozilla, Chrome, and Opera ALL insecure for browsing for the same reasons: Flash, Adobe Reader, and Sun Java being the consistently prime culprits, but it also reports MSIE 7 and Mozilla as unsecure all by themselves.
Secunia is an interesting program in many ways, but it reports 'vulnerabilities' as soon as anyone releases a new version of anything. Suddenly, you are 'insecure.'
using a simple Access database for many years. One table for hardware, one for software, tied together. Every time I'd get a group of licenses for software I'd bang them in there, then gradually assign the software to machines. The software table had fields to invoice numbers and dates, so I could always prove, in an instant, that any given copy was legit.
The commercial stuff, especially for your size, is really overkill. I tried some over the years and they were just too complex for what is a fairly simple task.
My mortgage was with them. I paid it off. Rather than release the title to me, they 're-conveyed' the trustee from the loan department to the pay-off department, complete with a filing to my County, then the pay-off department re-conveyed the title to me. WTF? When I called to ask what was going on, they didn't know! Finally I got together with my county auditor who explained to me what happened. I DO have clear title----I think.
Because they were delusional? Why would the followers of Jim Jones drink the kool-aid? Why would the followers of Heaven's Gate commit suicide to join an alien in a space ship behind the Hale-Bopp comet? Millions of people 'believe,' but that has absolutely nothing to do with the objective truth behind their belief. They are all fucking bat shit insane.
Slashdot Mirror
of course. Musta been a bureaucrat who thought up the day.
to an open source product, regardless if it's 'free.' I'll tell you my story just as an example of what open source has to face. I've used Word since version 1.0 when it came on two floppies and included a mouse in the box. I've used every single version up through 2003. I'm a writer. I was one of the first to use word processing with programs that no longer exist, like Zardax for the Apple ][. I've had a computer since 1979. I'm not as smart as all of you, of course, but I used to be famous for putting together a computer from pieces with only a Swiss Army knife at trade shows.
I write book-length manuscripts in Word, making extensive use of multiple indexes, tables of contents, and tables themselves. I don't have Word exactly memorized the way I still have Lotus 123 memorized (It won't leave my brain), but I have a good working journeyman level knowledge of it. It can be frustrating at times, but by and large I can get it to do what I need to have done.
Being a bit of a dabbler I once downloaded and installed Open Office to see what it could do. Looked fine at the outset. I had no problem with the menus or the look of it, so I loaded in one of my manuscripts. One look through it and I discovered it would not render tables properly. The tables were a mess. So I erased Open Office from my system and have never looked back since.
Why? Because I don't have time for this shit. Maybe they fixed it. Probably they did, but I can't be constantly checking back to see how it has improved. It slows me down and time is money. Word, for all its faults I'm sure you all can point out with great gusto, is a functional program. It works. I and my publisher see it as a known quantity. At a corporate level I can get Word so cheaply that it is not cost-effective to consider a 'free' program.
Proselytizers who have an axe to grind with evil M$ will make some inroads when they have enough power to force an organization to switch, just as they do with Linux on the desktop, which has a similar problem. But overall, the ecological niche for word processing is filled by Word, and it will take more than a few Linux geeks to dislodge it. Those who do use Word will use Word until they are dead.
The USSR killed a number of cosmonauts that you never heard about, including at least one woman. I'm not really a fan of conspiracy theories, and I know this is considered one by some. I remember as a kid seeing a banner headline on this in a newspaper of afairly large city, then the next day--nothing. It was if the story had never been printed. There are a couple of Italian brothers who managed to pick up the telemetry of some of these flights. (I used to have it bookmarked.) Google dead cosmonauts for lots of info, pro and con, on this issue.
I agree on the cost issue, though. Instead of spending a million bucks to develop a space pen that writes in zero-G, The Ruskies used pencils. Duh.
Of course not. That's silly, but I could believe a birth announcement was put in in case questions arose as to his citizenship later on, put in by his maternal grandmother. I don't know that that is true, but it's plausible. I also recall an 'original' birth certificate on his web site during the campaign that was analyzed by three different document experts and found to be an alteration of his sister's birth certificate. This has been removed in favor of the 'certificate that a certificate exists.'
I also wonder why we have no records of any school grades at Occidental, Columbia, or Harvard, no idea of how he paid for Harvard, what passport he used to travel to Pakistan, etc. We know of Bush's DUI and HIS college grades (C+, IIRC), but somehow the record of this man's life has been deemed 'off-limits.' Why?
The thing is, this issue could be solved so easily if he would just show the damned original certificate. End of story. Case over. Move along. Nothing to see here. I could EASILY accept that, but he won't do it. Why not?
Sure. I use all three, hence the overlap. I use Firefox most of the time, MSIE when I want to load faster, do pics, or use the built in RSS feed. Firefox is slower to load (by far. I've benchmarked it with a stop watch.) and much slower to load pics, but it renders more pages better more often and rarely hangs up.
No, that's not true. His mother was under-age when he was born. IF he actually was born in Kenya, he is NOT a natural born citizen according to the laws in effect at the time. The birth certificate he has released isn't an actual certificate, but is a computer-produced certification that a certificate exists, which in most cases is completely valid. There are some other certificates floating around the purport to prove he was born in Kenya. Some of them have been proven forgeries. Perhaps they all are. I don't know one way or another.
I am not arguing that Obama is or is not 'natural born' at all. I'm simply stating that your contention that his mother's citizenship is enough to make him so automatically is not true.
like shelving 'Life of an Iceberg' under biographies, but by and large they strive to be and are correct. If they mess up, some other library will fix the error. Libraries' cataloging data is usually centralized by OCLC so that the data is uniform throughput the country as other libraries pull from this central source for their own catalogs. Libraries also use a recognized and standardized subject scheme with a controlled vocabulary, not just a bunch of meta tags. Cataloging librarians are a rare and little-recognized breed of people who spend their entire professional lives trying to make it easier to gain access to material. The result is an organized body of knowledge--not just a heap of books on the floor in no particular order, like the Internet--and Google. For Google to blame libraries for their troubles is like blaming the Machinist Mates on the Titanic for crashing the ship into an iceberg. There, full circle. How did that happen?
they'd realize that a lot of the efforts to restrict firearm ownership really only affect a minority of gun nuts who don't have a valid reason for needing the fire power.
The Second Amendment is a RIGHT, not a privilege. I don't have to give a 'valid reason' for having 'firepower.' The Second Amendment IS the valid reason. Just because I have a gun doesn't make me a 'gun nut.' As for 'restricting firearms,' this is what has happened elsewhere:
WORLDWIDE HISTORY OF GUN CONFISCATION
In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, a total of 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
China established gun control in 1935. From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
Guatemala established gun control in 1964. From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
Cambodia established gun control in 1956. From 1975 to 1977, one million educated people, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
So, good luck to you!
Unfortunately, the word 'assault weapon' is vastly over-used by reporters and citizens who have no idea what they are talking about. You can take the exact same guts of a semi-automatic rifle. On one put a wooden stock and a straight barrel. Show it to the average Joe and he says, "Oh, look! A hunting rifle." Now take the EXACT same innards, put a telescoping stock made of black plastic, and a fancy looking barrel on it, show it to the same guy, and he says, "Oh, my God! It's an assault weapon! Ban it!" A very good example is the AR-15. "AR" must stand for 'Assault rifle,' right?
No, it stands for "Armalite Model 15." Surprise. It may 'look mean,' but it does nothing a wooden stock 'rifle' can't do. Most of them fire a .223 round, which is fairly small compared to something like a 30-06. The way they operate is EXACTLY the same. All 'semi-automatic' means is that firing a round moves the next round 'automatically' into position. It still fires only one round at a time.
Now, if you're talking a real AK-47 or an M-15, OK. They're made for 'assault.' But what most people call 'assault weapons' are far from the case. And thus our debate about 'banning' such weapons continues based on this absurdity.
and concealed carry. In fact, it is a 'will issue' state meaning the local PD MUST issue a concealed carry permit within 60 days unless the background check reveals an issue. But the issue is a little more complex. This is how a Police Lieutenant explained it to me when I was taking a gun safety class here: Although 'Open Carry' is specifically allowed in Washington for anyone not otherwise prohibited from owning guns (such as felons), any other citizen can claim 'feeling intimidated' and call 911. If this happens, the PD MUST investigate and MUST send a report to the prosecutor, period. In fact, this Lt. reports being harassed by citizens for open carry when he was 'out of uniform' (meaning he had on a sweater and his badge was on a chain around his neck in full view, which is an authorized uniform in this jurisdiction.) If these people only knew. He carries three guns at once: One Glock in a holster, another mid-back, and a third J-frame .38 in his pocket (A J-frame is a fairly small revolver. The Glocks are, of course, semi-automatics.) The last two you'll never see unless he needs it.
The bottom line here is that a gun-o-phobic populace can claim 'intimidation' because they 'feel frightened' if someone else is simply carrying a gun and lodge a complaint that must be 'investigated.' In this case people cannot be expected to know that a) the gun wasn't real and b) that it was not an automatic, which is PROBABLY illegal here (Lots of rules for this kind of firearm.) How the investigation was carried out is another matter, but here it had to get to that point.
How to Live on Mars: A Trusty Guidebook to Surviving and Thriving on the Red Planet, by Robert Zubrin, Three Rivers Press (2008), Paperback, 224 pages, ISBN: 978-0307407184.
Once again, Zubrin delights and informs like no other. This concise, easy-reading, laugh-out-loud, little volume is packed with more solid scientific and engineering information about Mars, Mars exploration and settlement than even "The Case for Mars." Whereas the latter was informative and interesting, but fairly straight-laced, Zubrin here takes a decidedly more lighthearted approach, creating a fictional, early 22nd century guide to surviving and thriving on the new frontier.
As usual, Zubrin's strongest suit is his ability to turn his caustic wit against the foolish, timid, bureaucratic, cowardly, thoughtless paralysis which presently cripples the aerospace establishment, and indeed, Zubrin suggests, the entirety of terrestrial "civilization" (if what we have down here still merits the term.) Perhaps my favorite example is the following passage detailing water reclamation from the exhaust of a space suit's methanol/oxygen fuel-cell (used to provide electric power) in order to extend the endurance of Martians on EVA.
"The water you obtain will include a significant quantity of carbon dioxide in solution, which is why NASA has banned systems that plumb fuel-cell wastewater directly back to the suit canteen. However, despite the claimed medical problem, it is a fact that in the twentieth century, many people chose to drink carbonated water as a matter of preference."
I do not hold with those who regard Zubrin's political asides as an interruption of an otherwise interesting presentation of scientific or engineering information. Zubrin's ability to decisively skewer folly of all sorts, technical, medical, political, social, is the primary reason that he has always impressed me, and in my opinion, constitutes the single best feature of this particular book.
Zubrin's brutal and sustained critique of bureaucracy toward the end of "How to Live on Mars" is positively brilliant. If it doesn't make you yearn to give up the soul-destroying stagnation and conformity of Earth to live on a planet full of misfits, outcasts and rugged individualists, then there's just simply no trace of idealism, romance, nobility or heroism left in your black, flabby, little heart.
I'm pleased to see Zubrin take such a radical turn, or maybe simply to more openly embrace the radicalism which he has never been able to entirely prevent from seeping into his work. This one is not going to win Zubrin any friends in high places, but I suspect it will contribute to the immortality he achieves when the Martians (descended from pioneers who will make the first crossings in Mars-Direct inspired spacecraft) finally throw off their tyrannical Earthling overlords and establish a truly civilized branch of humanity for the first time in far too long.
Review by Eli J. Harman, stolen with impunity.
Shoulda put it in the previous post.
Good Lord! Send older astronauts. Send enough MREs and/or technology to sprout seeds. Die a NATURAL death. Sign me up!
in libraries. Older non-automated circulation systems tracked you better and more permanently than automated systems do today. One system was a 'signature' system where you signed for books and showed ID. Those signature sheets were kept in back room filing cabinets for years. In theory you could find a person on a signature sheet, track the corresponding numbers on the books' permanent record card, and find out which books had been checked out years ago.
Another system used library card numbers written into a slip attached to the book itself. These slips stayed in the book until they were filled up. It would be a trivial matter to look inside the cover of the book, note the library card numbers, and look them up.
Modern library circulation systems have been written to comply with librarian-written RFPs. I have never seen such an RFP that did NOT contain a statement very much like this: "Upon check-in of material any link between patron and item shall be permanently erased." The only time a history of check-outs is kept is for Outreach patrons, generally disabled and elderly library patrons who are personally served by library employees. These people tend to be voracious readers who can easily 'read out' a given section of books. A reading record is kept to ensure these employees do not re-send a book that has already been read, though frankly, may of them would not know nor care if that happened.
These automation systems are now pervasive in libraries. When the authorities come in to ask about reading records, which they do, the librarians simply say, 'We do not have such information available and we cannot help you.' There are normally policies in place passed by a Board of Trustees that spell out the fact that librarians SHOULD NOT do so, but this is backed up by the automation systems that make it so they CANNOT do so.
The only way you could get at historical information would be to restore a back-up. These will generally be overwritten over time. I've run many such systems. My back-up strategy was: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday-1 through Friday-5. The 5th Friday allowed about a three month window before it was overwritten. Since every backup was a frozen moment in time, the likelihood of pinning a particular patron's reading is slim. Further, doing so would completely disrupt current library operations. The FBI or whomever would have to enlist the cooperation of the library or manage to duplicate the exact state of the system elsewhere. I'd like to see them do that.
Of course, you still have to deal with the paranoid among us. Even with RFID systems there are folks who maintain that the FBI COULD stand outside the library with a portable recorder, scan everyone walking out of the library, and therefore, mysteriously, find out what books people were reading by looking up the books. As a result, libraries have eliminated indexes by barcode (the only ID on the RFID device, and even gone so far as to disguise the barcode in such a way as to NOT identify the library it came from.
For the record, library barcodes are normally in Codabar format. The first number "2" denotes a patron barcode; a "3" denotes an item. A "1" is a 'command' and is archaic. The next four numbers denote the library itself, so '9068' denotes Kitsap Regional Library system in Bremerton, Washington. 9,999 other library systems can have similar formats. The next 8 numbers give you 10 million item numbers. The last number is a check digit. If you disguise the '9068' then the barcode is not unique and could be from any of 10,000 libraries and belong to any of 10,000 items.
There are always people who will insinuate that the vendors of library automation systems are secretly embedding tracking technology without the libraries' knowledge, that their systems have been hacked by the NSA, or that libraries are not 'doing enough' to protect patrons' privacy. As far as I'm concerned, libraries have; and if you don't like the current system, we can always return to a non-automated system which will abs
Thank you for the clariication, I think. It just happens that the plural verb and the 'subjunctive case' are exactly the same word and are indistinguishable exceot in theory. When I read about subjunctive case, it makes my head hurt, yet I can do it without thinking the same way my dog can catch every ball I throw, yet neither of us can come up with the trigonometric equation that 'proves' it. I think that begs the question of what 'knowledge' is. I hope I'm not being pedantic, which I almost accused you of being. :-)
:-) Actually, your phrase brought back memories. I had to memorize the 'helping verbs' in junior high (1960?) "is be am are was were been has have had do does did may might can could shall should will would must." Of course, I can't remember yesterday.
Correct English uses a plural verb after a conditional statement. For example, correct grammar is to say, "If I were an optimist, I'd blah blah." "If I WAS an optimist..." is incorrect. The word "if" triggers the plural verb. "Whether" is another example. In English vulgate people often use the latter form simply because they don't know any better. You'd probably find it in a descriptive dictionary, but you'd never find it in a prescriptive dictionary, such as Webster's Second.
and I've had the opposite experience of the OP. Word processing has increased my typing speed by 50% over typewriters. (I type with three or four fingers at 60wpm, too fast to consider learning the right way.) I've become a better speller because I get instant feedback when I screw up. I've learned not to use 'white out' on the screen. Grammar? Nothing is going to help you if you can't get your words in the right places or understand to use a plural verb after a conditional. SURELY you don't rely on 'grammar checker' to bitch at you for using passive voice. It's useless.
You've said that twice now. I don't see it, myself. It's pretty good for basic unchallenged facts like geography, for example. But as soon as you get into anything that even remotely touches on politics and ideologies it turns into a rat's nest of disinformation and dissent. Look at any Wikipedia entry involving the paranormal, UFOs, etc. and you'll see, inevitably, the 'psedoscience' label applied to people or ideas. It's a very clear bias and makes it feel like you're watching a Larry King show where the 'opposing point of view' is brought in to provide 'fair and balanced' reporting, with the effect that the idea is ridiculed and shut down. Maybe it deserves to be, but the point is, it's biased.
In academic circles, Wikipedia is not well thought of--even to the point of banning using Wikipedia as a source. Is this academic elitism? Oh, probably, just like Will Durant is not considered a 'real' historian, but if you sneak in his ideas without citing him, history professors think you are brilliant. I realize that has its own problems, but my point is that the reputation counts.
I am quite aware that 'studies have shown' that Wikipedia is as or more accurate than more standard works such as Britannica, but, IMO, if you are using Wikipedia for anything but a quick look-me-up to get an idea of the issue, then, just like a /. poll, you're insane.
and all these responses. OK, sorta cool, I guess. But I don't understand how someone is going to make money on this.
For him, maybe. But I doubt the majority of the populace is going to switch to a wiki any time soon. Having started with some unremembered text editor for the Apple ][, the switched to Zardax (Does ANY one remember Zardax?) and flirted with Wordstar I finally settled on Word 1.0, when it came on two 5.25" disks and was shipped with a mouse. I haven't looked back since. It has become way too bloated with way too many features, IMO, but the fact is it is a journey-level program that I could not imagine being without. I know the MS bashers are already pointing out that Open Office and others are Word's equal in every way. I have to politely disagree. Try doing tables and indexes on a book length manuscript and you'll see what I mean.
Maybe the others HAVE changed for the better, but at a certain point it becomes a productivity issue. I can't afford to slow down and learn a different system any more than I can afford to learn how to type 'correctly' with more than two fingers. I type 60 wpm with two. Why would I want to slow myself down? 60 is functional. That's what I need.
I also notice that when another program is discussed, it's always couched in terms of Word. The MS basher will say, 'Open Office is every bit as good as Word.' In other words, Word is the benchmark by which others are measured. The nerd can certainly sit down and tell me feature for feature why something else is 'better,' but in the time he takes to do that I can have several chapters written.
In any case, the original article is talking about word processing in general and is using Word as the example. It could just as well be Open Office. Word and all its wannabes are 'Wordish' in their approach, so perhaps the argument shouldn't be about Word itself, the MS program, but about Wordish programs in general. Does his argument have any greater merit then?
I don't think so. The fact is that Wordish gives you nearly complete control of the appearance of your document. These other alternatives, from wiki to blogspot, from html to css, impose style upon you that is difficult to 'correct.' You wind up accepting the default simply because it is too hard to fight it. I think it's kind of funny to hear people complain about the monoculture of Word (they mean Wordish), and then claim wiki or Wordpress are their choices. You're kidding me, right? If you want versatility and choices, Wordish is your guy.
This fellow lives in a very web centric environment and perhaps for him his choice is correct, but that does not equate to the world in general. Most people using Wordish don't know Ars Technica exists or why. They don't like to read from the screen, and they don't live on slashdot either, which is why his argument is faulty.
Really. He GPL'd it. End of story. Not everything is a morality tale. You've already wasted a lot of time staring at the navel of the thing. And good luck to you.
This is not so much a Windows issue as it is a browser issue. Secunia reports MSIE7, Mozilla, Chrome, and Opera ALL insecure for browsing for the same reasons: Flash, Adobe Reader, and Sun Java being the consistently prime culprits, but it also reports MSIE 7 and Mozilla as unsecure all by themselves.
Secunia is an interesting program in many ways, but it reports 'vulnerabilities' as soon as anyone releases a new version of anything. Suddenly, you are 'insecure.'
Regardless, Secunia is well worth taking a look at. http://www.secunia.com/
using a simple Access database for many years. One table for hardware, one for software, tied together. Every time I'd get a group of licenses for software I'd bang them in there, then gradually assign the software to machines. The software table had fields to invoice numbers and dates, so I could always prove, in an instant, that any given copy was legit.
The commercial stuff, especially for your size, is really overkill. I tried some over the years and they were just too complex for what is a fairly simple task.
My mortgage was with them. I paid it off. Rather than release the title to me, they 're-conveyed' the trustee from the loan department to the pay-off department, complete with a filing to my County, then the pay-off department re-conveyed the title to me. WTF? When I called to ask what was going on, they didn't know! Finally I got together with my county auditor who explained to me what happened. I DO have clear title----I think.
Because they were delusional? Why would the followers of Jim Jones drink the kool-aid? Why would the followers of Heaven's Gate commit suicide to join an alien in a space ship behind the Hale-Bopp comet? Millions of people 'believe,' but that has absolutely nothing to do with the objective truth behind their belief. They are all fucking bat shit insane.