Hello? Ah, Mr Victim, I'm glad to say that I've got the go-ahead to lend you the money you require. Yes, of course we will want as security the deeds of your house, of your aunt's house, of your second cousin's house, of your wife's parents' house, and of your granny's bungalow, and we will in addition need a controlling interest in your new company, unrestricted access to your private bank account, the deposit in our vaults of your three children as hostages and a full legal indemnity against any acts of embezzlement carried out against you by any members of our staff during the normal course of their duties... no, I'm afraid we couldn't accept your dog instead of your youngest child, we would like to suggest a brand new scheme of ours under which 51% of both your dog and your wife pass to us in the event of your suffering a serious accident. Fine. No, not at all, nice to do business with you. (puts the phone down, speaks on intercom) Miss Godfrey, could you send in Mr Ford please. (to himself) Now where's that dictionary. Ah yes, here we are... "inner life"... "inner life"...
Call me a crazy fool, but once I verified the e-mail address was really his, I decided to risk sending him $10 without seeing a complete set of double entry financial accounts. I guess I'm just not as much of a merchant banker as you are.
In all seriousness, I used to spend a lot of time on Flight Simulator trying to fly my plane between the two towers of the World Trade Center. It's a lot harder than you might think. Hitting the corner of one of the towers head on must be even harder.
The fact that government investments in military projects sometimes benefit the general population does not demonstrate that the motivation behind the investments is benefitting the general population.
Now imagine a company with 100% engineers, which spend 5% of their time doing 'management' , it would still work and turn out a product, see google and apple.
Yes, and now look at some of the disastrously bad decisions made by the engineer-managers at Apple. Starting with refusing to license the Mac OS in 1985.
A private sector company can't be expected to invest in research that pays off in ten years; there are too many uncertainties in business to ask investors to shoulder that.
The local recycling center won't take glossy cardboard, only brown corrugated. If it's not a big deal to recycle glossy cardboard, perhaps you could tell me where?
A quick search reveals plenty of places where only non-glossy cardboard can be recycled.
False dichotomy. I'm not saying Apple under Jobs is worse than Dell, I'm saying they're worse than Apple was before Jobs returned.
Look at the packaging for a PowerBook, and compare with the packaging for a MacBook. The PowerBook was all recycled brown cardboard and acid-free paper; the MacBook is all glossy-coated cardboard.
I was on Orkut during the Brazilian invasion. They made a concerted attempt to take over the service, posting in Portuguese everywhere, even on communities that were marked as English language. The English-speaking users left by the thousands, and Orkut basically became a Brazilian system. I haven't logged in in months; last time I did I got a bunch of Brazilian spam and that was it.
Maybe you were joking, but it's a serious issue, and I've mentioned it to RMS. Since any distinctive graphical appearance can be trademarked, a company could easily build a piece of software entirely using GPL code, release the code, but not give anyone permission to use the trademark.
In fact, the use of trademark law to encumber GPL software and make it non-redistributable is something I've been predicting for a while; I recently wrote about it and sent a note to RMS suggesting that protective measures be considered for GPL v3.
RMS replied that he doesn't have a problem with what the Mozilla folks have done, but that there could clearly be a problem down the line when the loophole gets widened.
I guess all the Windows users at Slashdot who've suddenly discovered the Mac won't remember, but for years Apple used to ship all their machines in unbleached recycled cardboard boxes. They would put a flyer inside explaining why the computer was in a brown box.
Then Jobs returned to Apple, and suddenly everything had to be in glossy boxes, so it looked cool.
So yeah, I believe that Apple under Jobs has a bad environmental record.
Well, I assume you're reducing the image to 256 colors before writing it as PNG, to get a sensible comparison to GIF.
Maybe your graphics program only writes badly-compressed PNGs? There's a program called pngcrush which will losslessly optimize PNGs written by crap software.
Follow the links I already posted, and you'll see news articles in reputable newspapers quoting UN inspectors stating that Saddam was complying with UN resolutions to get rid of WMDs, before the latest Iraq war started.
What really keeps most nations from building and using nuclear weapons is neither that UN disagree (hah) nor that it's too hard technically, It's the fact that most of their territory would turn to glass soon after.
Meanwhile in reality, the message is quite different.
North Korea announce they're building nuclear weapons. Nothing happens, the USA makes some saber-rattling noises but doesn't act.
Pakistan announce they're building nuclear weapons, and carry out tests. Nothing happens.
India announce they're building nuclear weapons too, and carry out tests. Nothing happens.
China announce they're building nuclear weapons, and carry out tests. Nothing happens.
Iran announce that they're building nuclear processing facilities. Nothing happens. The US makes saber-rattling noises again, but doesn't act.
Iraq promises not to build any nuclear weapons, and submits to UN inspections to ensure that they don't. The USA bombs the crap out of them, invades and occupies them.
Given recent history, if I were in charge of a country, I'd be working towards getting some nuclear weapons as soon as possible, just to protect against US invasion.
There's a ton of material out there about Reagan's links to Pat Robertson and the Millennial Dispensationalist movement. Do some research. The joke (which we knew was a joke) just unintentionally illustrated his mindset and got a lot of memorable mainstream media airplay.
That is quite revisionist, but that is understandable given that the war has become extremely political. There is an argument for saying the war was a mistake, but irrational, no. At the time of the invasion there was a rational belief that Saddam still had WMD.
I disagree, but even if it was true that US intelligence thought Saddam might have WMDs, it's irrelevant. Under international law, you don't just march in and start a war because you think someone you don't like might have weapons you don't like.
As to whether it was right for them to think that... Like it or not, the UN inspection teams reported that Saddam was complying with restrictions, and that they could find no evidence that he had WMDs. Saddam's brother-in-law defected to the west and told us Saddam had no WMDs.
So it wasn't "rational", it was a decision made by disregarding available factual reports from informed people, and going entirely with gut instinct and speculation.
Slashdot Mirror
Obligatory Monty Python sketch:
Call me a crazy fool, but once I verified the e-mail address was really his, I decided to risk sending him $10 without seeing a complete set of double entry financial accounts. I guess I'm just not as much of a merchant banker as you are.
It's true, Uranus really is full of methane gas. Look it up.
In all seriousness, I used to spend a lot of time on Flight Simulator trying to fly my plane between the two towers of the World Trade Center. It's a lot harder than you might think. Hitting the corner of one of the towers head on must be even harder.
You might get a few people who don't know that Bonjour is simply multicast DNS used to provide chat on your local network.
Did anyone say they wanted to see it, though? I saw a lot of people mocking it, but I didn't see any non-ironic expressions of enthusiasm.
The fact that government investments in military projects sometimes benefit the general population does not demonstrate that the motivation behind the investments is benefitting the general population.
And why did the government fund DARPA? For the benefit of regular people? I think not. It was a military project. Illustrates the point once again.
Yes, and now look at some of the disastrously bad decisions made by the engineer-managers at Apple. Starting with refusing to license the Mac OS in 1985.
I'm glad nobody's told IBM that.
The local recycling center won't take glossy cardboard, only brown corrugated. If it's not a big deal to recycle glossy cardboard, perhaps you could tell me where?
A quick search reveals plenty of places where only non-glossy cardboard can be recycled.
Here's some more information showing what a good job they've been doing keeping us safe from terrorists:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/meta404/252520628/
There's another kind?
False dichotomy. I'm not saying Apple under Jobs is worse than Dell, I'm saying they're worse than Apple was before Jobs returned.
Look at the packaging for a PowerBook, and compare with the packaging for a MacBook. The PowerBook was all recycled brown cardboard and acid-free paper; the MacBook is all glossy-coated cardboard.
I was on Orkut during the Brazilian invasion. They made a concerted attempt to take over the service, posting in Portuguese everywhere, even on communities that were marked as English language. The English-speaking users left by the thousands, and Orkut basically became a Brazilian system. I haven't logged in in months; last time I did I got a bunch of Brazilian spam and that was it.
Maybe you were joking, but it's a serious issue, and I've mentioned it to RMS. Since any distinctive graphical appearance can be trademarked, a company could easily build a piece of software entirely using GPL code, release the code, but not give anyone permission to use the trademark.
In fact, the use of trademark law to encumber GPL software and make it non-redistributable is something I've been predicting for a while; I recently wrote about it and sent a note to RMS suggesting that protective measures be considered for GPL v3.
RMS replied that he doesn't have a problem with what the Mozilla folks have done, but that there could clearly be a problem down the line when the loophole gets widened.
I guess all the Windows users at Slashdot who've suddenly discovered the Mac won't remember, but for years Apple used to ship all their machines in unbleached recycled cardboard boxes. They would put a flyer inside explaining why the computer was in a brown box.
Then Jobs returned to Apple, and suddenly everything had to be in glossy boxes, so it looked cool.
So yeah, I believe that Apple under Jobs has a bad environmental record.
Well, I assume you're reducing the image to 256 colors before writing it as PNG, to get a sensible comparison to GIF.
Maybe your graphics program only writes badly-compressed PNGs? There's a program called pngcrush which will losslessly optimize PNGs written by crap software.
Follow the links I already posted, and you'll see news articles in reputable newspapers quoting UN inspectors stating that Saddam was complying with UN resolutions to get rid of WMDs, before the latest Iraq war started.
Meanwhile in reality, the message is quite different.
North Korea announce they're building nuclear weapons. Nothing happens, the USA makes some saber-rattling noises but doesn't act.
Pakistan announce they're building nuclear weapons, and carry out tests. Nothing happens.
India announce they're building nuclear weapons too, and carry out tests. Nothing happens.
China announce they're building nuclear weapons, and carry out tests. Nothing happens.
Iran announce that they're building nuclear processing facilities. Nothing happens. The US makes saber-rattling noises again, but doesn't act.
Iraq promises not to build any nuclear weapons, and submits to UN inspections to ensure that they don't. The USA bombs the crap out of them, invades and occupies them.
Given recent history, if I were in charge of a country, I'd be working towards getting some nuclear weapons as soon as possible, just to protect against US invasion.
There's a ton of material out there about Reagan's links to Pat Robertson and the Millennial Dispensationalist movement. Do some research. The joke (which we knew was a joke) just unintentionally illustrated his mindset and got a lot of memorable mainstream media airplay.
You might find my little graph amusing, in a sick kind of way.
I disagree, but even if it was true that US intelligence thought Saddam might have WMDs, it's irrelevant. Under international law, you don't just march in and start a war because you think someone you don't like might have weapons you don't like.
As to whether it was right for them to think that... Like it or not, the UN inspection teams reported that Saddam was complying with restrictions, and that they could find no evidence that he had WMDs. Saddam's brother-in-law defected to the west and told us Saddam had no WMDs.
So it wasn't "rational", it was a decision made by disregarding available factual reports from informed people, and going entirely with gut instinct and speculation.
How much of a gaffe is it to mis-spell "gaffe" in the title of your article?
Go read the GPL v3 discussion from a couple of days ago, fuckwit.