Represents the views of an approximate half of the population last time each office was up for reelection. Sort of.
Not even. One of the interesting bits of political science research is that the majority of Bush supporters at the time of the last election disagreed with him on every major issue.
American voters don't vote on the basis of actual policy or prior record. They primarily vote based on which person has the most likeable personality and demeanor, and secondarily based on what the person says. What he actually does is almost totally irrelevant.
The sooner you understand that, the sooner you can understand US politics.
You'll notice that nowhere in that writeup does it account for the positive effects of increasing energy efficiency. Specifically, more spending on new technology, creating jobs. It assumes that everyone keeps driving a Hummer but can't afford to travel any more. In reality, it's more likely that people will switch to hybrids, stimulating the (currently stagnant) auto industry.
Think about this: The richest billionaire in China isn't an oil industry exec; he's a guy who makes solar panels.
Timber is theoretically a renewable resource. However, in practice there are two big problems. The first is that it may take centuries to grow a tree similar to the one that has been cut down. The second is that many trees only grow in particular ecosystems; if you clearcut the rainforest, you can't just plant a bunch of rainforest trees in the empty fields and expect them to grow into a new rainforest.
Actually, I have mileage data for the entire life of the car. I could easily upload the data, but you'd just dismiss it as made up, so what's the point?
You have provided no more data than I have provided, and your attempts to smokescreen are pretty transparent.
Why don't people just store the data as a Unix time_t timestamp?
a) Doesn't let you store time zones. b) Doesn't work for dates before 1970. c) Doesn't let you store times in the future with 1-second precision, because the dates of leap seconds aren't determined more than a few years in advance. d) Not human-readable.
As far as you're concerned, the secret encounter type of blackmail wouldn't do it. How about drugs, alcohol, or gambling? Crime?
Drugs? I inhaled. Not a secret.
Alcohol? Can't drink for medical reasons.
Gambling? I've written about my trips to Vegas and my total lack of interest in gambling due to my knowledge of statistics and probability, and I have witnesses from the trips who saw me totally ignore the opportunity to gamble.
Crime? Well, it's pretty easy to establish from system logs that I'm in my home office working most weekdays during the day, most of the rest of the time my wife is nearby. So I don't really get the opportunity, and I also lack the motivation since I'm quite content with my current lifestyle.
So no, I really think it would be tough to blackmail me.
As a side note, anyone interested in this debate should read "The Transparent Society" by David Brin.
One of IBM's more recent tricks is to overwhelm litigators by the quantity of documents supplied, many of which are stored on computers in full text form. To give you an idea of the humongous magnitudes involved, some figures came up in litigation with Sanders Associates. Sanders, suing IBM, asked IBM how many documents IBM had that were 'pertinent' to the case. The reply: "Active files, approximately 906,054,000 pages; inactive files, approximately 421,660,000 pages." (Datamation, July '75, p.129.)
These days, you don't even have to do something embarrassing, as long as the blackmailers can get someone you care about to think you did something.
Ah, but the more open you are, the harder it's going to be for a blackmailer to convince people that you have some guilty secret. If you tried to convince my friends that I'd had a secret encounter in a truck stop, they'd be liable to say "Uh, he's openly bisexual, why would he do that secretly?"
This is why security services (NSA etc) do their up-front interrogations of new employees. If they already know all your secrets, you can't be blackmailed into revealing theirs.
If you're new to Windows, and you want to do something but can't remember the name of the program you're supposed to use, just look around in your Start menu or Programs directory.
Same with Linux. My menu says things like "Akregator (Web feed reader)", "GIMP (Image editor)", "Kooka (Scan and OCR program)".
Standard Kubuntu.
And it's not like the most popular Windows applications all have sensible names. ICQ? Limewire? DivX? Nero? Trillian? Ares Galaxy? (All from the top 50 at download.com.)
Sure, you can brick an N800 by screwing up a firmware install. You can brick anything by screwing up a firmware install. In regular use, however, the N800 beats my Palm device which it replaced.
I've tried pretty much all mediacenter packages out there, and NONE (even the commercial alternatives) are even within shouting distance of MCE when it comes to ease of installation, stability and user friendliness.
And compared to those things, actually obeying you and recording what you tell it to record is a mere detail, right?
This doesn't rule out the smaller, local sources, but there can be a longevity issue there, as well as priority. Who says he can be there tomorrow with a replacement part in hand to get you back up and running?
On the other hand, if you go with a local vendor who builds the machines, the spare parts will always be available because they'll be industry standard parts. Whereas if you go with HP or Dell, you might find your spare part uses a non-standard connector or is a slightly different size. (Particularly true of HP/Compaq.)
It's censorship because when people are punished for saying something in what they were told was an "uncensored" area, it has a chilling effect. Other people start to self-censor so that they will not be punished similarly.
Watch Comedy Central just about any evening and you'll hear jokes about people being raped in prison. Read any Slashdot thread about someone being found guilty of a crime and you'll see the same jokes.
Slashdot Mirror
Not even. One of the interesting bits of political science research is that the majority of Bush supporters at the time of the last election disagreed with him on every major issue.
American voters don't vote on the basis of actual policy or prior record. They primarily vote based on which person has the most likeable personality and demeanor, and secondarily based on what the person says. What he actually does is almost totally irrelevant.
The sooner you understand that, the sooner you can understand US politics.
You'll notice that nowhere in that writeup does it account for the positive effects of increasing energy efficiency. Specifically, more spending on new technology, creating jobs. It assumes that everyone keeps driving a Hummer but can't afford to travel any more. In reality, it's more likely that people will switch to hybrids, stimulating the (currently stagnant) auto industry.
Think about this: The richest billionaire in China isn't an oil industry exec; he's a guy who makes solar panels.
Yeah, in a completely artificial statistic (GDP per ton of CO2). If you look at tons of CO2 per capita, the US pollutes more per person than China.
Timber is theoretically a renewable resource. However, in practice there are two big problems. The first is that it may take centuries to grow a tree similar to the one that has been cut down. The second is that many trees only grow in particular ecosystems; if you clearcut the rainforest, you can't just plant a bunch of rainforest trees in the empty fields and expect them to grow into a new rainforest.
You're the first person to say anything about starving to death. He just said "starvation". Look it up.
Actually, I have mileage data for the entire life of the car. I could easily upload the data, but you'd just dismiss it as made up, so what's the point?
You have provided no more data than I have provided, and your attempts to smokescreen are pretty transparent.
a) Doesn't let you store time zones.
b) Doesn't work for dates before 1970.
c) Doesn't let you store times in the future with 1-second precision, because the dates of leap seconds aren't determined more than a few years in advance.
d) Not human-readable.
Other than that, great idea.
Have they fixed the lack of time zones on date/time stamps? That'd be nice.
Well, yours gives me a totally blank page, because I have JavaScript turned off by default. So it's not clear to me that yours is a big improvement...
Drugs? I inhaled. Not a secret.
Alcohol? Can't drink for medical reasons.
Gambling? I've written about my trips to Vegas and my total lack of interest in gambling due to my knowledge of statistics and probability, and I have witnesses from the trips who saw me totally ignore the opportunity to gamble.
Crime? Well, it's pretty easy to establish from system logs that I'm in my home office working most weekdays during the day, most of the rest of the time my wife is nearby. So I don't really get the opportunity, and I also lack the motivation since I'm quite content with my current lifestyle.
So no, I really think it would be tough to blackmail me.
As a side note, anyone interested in this debate should read "The Transparent Society" by David Brin.
(Opinions Ted Nelson's, not mine or IBM's.)
Ah, but the more open you are, the harder it's going to be for a blackmailer to convince people that you have some guilty secret. If you tried to convince my friends that I'd had a secret encounter in a truck stop, they'd be liable to say "Uh, he's openly bisexual, why would he do that secretly?"
This is why security services (NSA etc) do their up-front interrogations of new employees. If they already know all your secrets, you can't be blackmailed into revealing theirs.
The hard drive thing is different, though. Hard drives are exactly the size claimed. The problem there was that the people complaining were using non-standard definitions of the units in question for historical reasons.
Same with Linux. My menu says things like "Akregator (Web feed reader)", "GIMP (Image editor)", "Kooka (Scan and OCR program)".
Standard Kubuntu.
And it's not like the most popular Windows applications all have sensible names. ICQ? Limewire? DivX? Nero? Trillian? Ares Galaxy? (All from the top 50 at download.com.)
You know, if I was a teacher and my name was "Mong", I would change my damn name.
Similarly, do not go into teaching under your original name if your name is "Tard", "Spaz" or "Ho".
Wow, the PSP really is following in the footsteps of the N-Gage. It's as popular, and now it has the phone functionality.
TV causes ocular cancer? Neat.
I notice that the Royal Liverpool Ocular Oncology Centre boasts that their beds each have a TV. Must be good for business.
http://www.eyetumour.com/hospital_facilities.php
7 real studies have been done.
5 5v1
The "electrosensitive" crackpots couldn't detect a mobile phone signal even after 50 minutes of continuous exposure.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/bmj.38765.519850.
It could be psychosomatic, it could be some other mental or physical illness, but it isn't EM radiation that's making them ill.
Sure, you can brick an N800 by screwing up a firmware install. You can brick anything by screwing up a firmware install. In regular use, however, the N800 beats my Palm device which it replaced.
And compared to those things, actually obeying you and recording what you tell it to record is a mere detail, right?
On the other hand, if you go with a local vendor who builds the machines, the spare parts will always be available because they'll be industry standard parts. Whereas if you go with HP or Dell, you might find your spare part uses a non-standard connector or is a slightly different size. (Particularly true of HP/Compaq.)
It's censorship because when people are punished for saying something in what they were told was an "uncensored" area, it has a chilling effect. Other people start to self-censor so that they will not be punished similarly.
You must be new here.
Watch Comedy Central just about any evening and you'll hear jokes about people being raped in prison. Read any Slashdot thread about someone being found guilty of a crime and you'll see the same jokes.
I don't see Sony or Nintendo making an out-and-out effort to destroy the free software community.
Any number of enterprise customers, who purchase SuSE Linux Enterprise Server or Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
In fact, in many cases they are paying for software that's more than a year out of date.