Not so, it's the first time they've been in the USA...
quote:
Her mother and two brothers, ages 3 and 7, stayed home while she and her father came to the United States. It was the first trip to the country for both.
And pakistan may be a third world country, but she certainly isn't representative of the people living there.
quote:
her father, Amjad Karim, who serves with a U.N. peacekeeping force in Africa
Impressive girl though, too young yet to realise how crap Microsoft (as a company) really is.
Arfa's accomplishment is "very impressive," said Michael Earls, 33, a software consultant and Microsoft Certified Solution Developer in Atlanta. "The type of thinking that goes into correctly answering those questions is pretty mature.... Microsoft certifications are not a joke -- they're highly respected in the industry."
Only one thing to say... LOL
Impressive girl nonetheless, but what a big "HAHA" this quote was...
You can't realistically expect Joe SixPack, who doesn't know the difference between the CD tray and a coffee cup holder, to keep his computer up to date with the latest service pack or patch.
A better alternative for the ISPs, IMHO, would be to start behaving like the network administration team in a big company.
Well, Joe SixPack isn't trained to fix his car either, does that mean the state should act like a big car repair shop as well? I don't think so...
If you want to make use of a commodity, the burden is on you to be properly equipped for use of that commodity. If your gas tank is leaking, you can be sure you won't be allowed to drive where you endanger others with that leaking.
My point: if joe six pack is not able to get his computer in good working order, he can pay someone to do it, just like he does to get his car fixed...
Note: I admit that roads are a far less hostile environment to cars than the internet is for PCs, but the point remains...
Let me share my "adventure" about calendaring with you...
I'm IT manager for a a relatively small company, with 20ish salespeople on the road, trying to sell our (one shot) product. My company uses exclusively linux (SuSE 9) servers except for our accounting software, about 20 (yep, 20) of them. mail, printing, file sharing, firewalls, VPN,...
Well, we decided to outsource the appointment taking for our salespeople to another company and provide our salespeople with PDAs to sync with their calendars instantly because the less time they spend on the phone trying to get an appointment with customers, the more they sell, logical...
So I went shopping for some linux distro that actually provided outlook connectivity (these damn PDAs don't have anything but outlook on them it seems). After being fooled by (SUSE) Novel OpenExchange and their advertised "Seamless integration" with Outlooks (from Outlook 98+, their website advertises), I had to come to the conclusion that there was seemingly no linux distro that provided that kind of functionality.
My solution is now either to get one of these windows boxen with exchange on it or outsource the calendaring connectivity as well...
This need of mine is a real need, and not just fancy wishes based on nothing but comfort as you seem to imply, after all our other 30ish employees are very happy with sunbird but in this case, it's not an option...
Oh, and by the way, the "outlook connector" of Open-XChange works on about 50% of the windows XP machines, not all of them...
These two aspects (accounting and calendaring) are the points that prevent me from providing linux on the desktop throughout the company, everyone already uses firefox, thunderbird, sunbird, OO.org(except for the odd excel thing openexchange can't handle). Linux is cool, but it's not yet fully ready for all my needs...
That's the whole problem of the hanging method, doing it right... Want to risk a slow and painful death if you blunder? I don't... Which is why most people search for painless, riskless, fast suicide method. Hence the gunshot (but that's pretty messy and getting hold of a gun is hard around here) or my previous "recommendation" of using HCN.
HCN meets all the criteria except for one:
- it's painless
- it's quick
- no worries about damage if you fail (there's a 15 minutes headache and nothing else)
- it's not messy for whoever discovers you.
- it doesn't take much courage (inhaling something is easy, opening your veins is hard, stabbing yourself in the heart is hard [fucking ribs], pressing that trigger is hard I presume...)
The hard thing about hydrogen cyanide is getting it...
The bad things:
- Slicing wrists: damage to tendons
- Slicing the veins in armpit: takes ages to drain the blood and it's really freaky to see that blood gushing out of you...
- medicines: risks of overdose or not high enough dose, plus the potential to really damage something if you survive...
- plastic bag: uncomfortable, takes AGES, plus you look like an idiot...
- hanging: asphixy is not a way I'd like to die of...
- bullets: if you can get hold of a gun (not necessarily easy outside the US), let's get real here, the chances of not dying after blowing your brains are small, besides if you're left in a vegetative state, what do you care, your real self,the thinking one, will be gone (which is what we're after)... Then again, plugging that trigger can be extremely difficult...
The best option I found so far is hydrogen cyanide.
The good thing about it is a gas and thus you only have to breathe it, that it is lethal at low doses, that you pass out nearly instantly (in some seconds) and if you somehow manage to fail, there are no consequences as it doesn't damage your brain, lungs, liver or anything else. Should be pretty pleasant, if you can get hold of it, but that's seemingly not easy. Otherwise it can be synthesized with ammonia and methane, but I've yet to figure out exactly how (building a flat bed reactor with Platinum-Rhodium catalyst sure doesn't look easy)
Finding a sure, painless method is not easy, and reading suicide HOWTOs on the net is more a deterent than anything else. The methods these sites claim to be good are often cryptic, and there seems to be an emphasis on the ones that are not a Good Idea(TM).
The other bad idea about suicide is that if you somehow fail (which is more common than being "successful"), others will look at you as if you have the black plague, AIDS and an extra leg...
Just consider life an interesting experiment, since you don't care anyway...
From my experience, they don't. They even wonder why we Americans think that the French hate us. They were really confused by the freedom-fries debacle.
While being belgian and not french, we share the same culture and I might shed some light on this issue...
While it is true that the french do NOT hate americans, I think it is safe to say that the population at large despises the majority of americans and thinks very little of their culture and education. I don't think people were confused at all with the "freedom fries" concept. The general reaction I was given to see was like: "So you're not happy with us not supporting your 'Iraqi oil grabbing campaign', then go f*ck yourself"
The reason to this situation (and reaction) is that the current american stereotype is that of a fat lazy uneducated (some would say stupid) person to most of the european population.
This stereotype is the cause of the contempt "you" often mistake for arrogance...
Disclaimer: I know quite a few slim hard-working well-educated clever american people, I am just depicting a stereotype that my personal experience leads me to believe not to be too far from "the truth".
There have been a bunch of rumours about a car accident involving
some free software folks today. Since there seems to be no central place
for all information I am trying to gather all information here.
If you have any other information please drop me an email
at wichert at wiggy dot net
All mentioned times are in CEST (UTC +0200).
*
There has been a car accident returning from a trip to bring Richard
Stallman (RMS) from
SANE 2004 to Paris.
(confirmed by several sources)
* they collided with a truck which merged onto their lane while
driving in fog (unconfirmed)
* Exact time of the accident is unknown. It was on the
morning of September 30th before 09:00.
* Richard Stallman was dropped off in Paris and no longer in the car
(confirmed by Rop and Richard).
* At the time of the accident Hans Bakker (mclightje),
Edwin Hermans (madeddie), and
Sebastian S. (webmind) were in the car. (confirmed).
* The car belongs to Rop Gonggrijp, who lent it to the travelers.
RMS was staying with Rop during SANE. (confirmed by Rop)
* Hans Bakker (photo,
homepage)
did not survive the crash. (confirmed by girlfriend)
* Edwin Hermans has a broken hip and has been transfered to a different
hospital for surgery. Sebastian is (or was by now) in surgery for
broken bones but is not in critical condition.
*
This appears to be the traffic report for the accident, as taken
infotraffic.
30-09-2004 13:50 ACCIDENT MORTEL à ASSEVILLERS (80) sur A1 (sens SUD-NORD) ENTRE PERONNE ET ROYE Debut : 30-09-2004 06:48 VICTIMES : 1 TUE(S) VEHICULES EN CAUSE : 2 POIDS LOURD(S), 3 VEHICULE(S) LEGER(S) OBSERVATIONS:SENS PARIS LILLE, SORTIE CONSEILLÉE A29 SAINT QUENTIN .BOUCHON DE 4 KM. Evenement termine depuis 30-09-2004 13:50
Translation:
30-09-2004 13:50 DEADLY CRASH at ASSEVILLERS(80) on A1 highway (SOUTH-NORTH) BETWEEN PERONNE AND ROYE Start: 30-09-2004 06:48 VICTIMS: 1 KILLED VEHICLES INVOLVED: 2 TRUCKS, 3 CARS OBSERVATIONS: DIRECTION PARIS LILLE, EXIT RECOMMENDED A29 SAINT QUENTIN. TRAFFIC JAM 4 Km (2.5 miles) Event stopped since 30-09-2004 13:50
For example, last week I had to spend half an hour explaining to him the concept of a firewall. I told him that our network is behind a firewall, and that if he tried to connect to my machine from outside our network, he wouldn't be able to. He told me that no, our network must be behind a NAT device, because if it was behind a firewall, he'd be able to connect.
Which is, actually, quite correct.
Firewalls exist within networks that have world reachable addresses. You can, for instance, have a mail server behind a firewall. In that case, the firewall could for instance block anything but outgoing and incoming email ports as well as SSH (ports 22, 25 and 143, for instance) from the outside world. Which means that you can still reach the mail server. The identical same could apply to your workstation.
A NAT device is something that (in most cases) allows a number of machine with a non world reachable IP address (192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x for instance) to reach the outside world but NOT the other way around unless you put on that NAT device routing information that says "if packet comes on port Y, forward it to machine Z".
This is the role of the NAT device.
What happens most of the time is that NAT and firewall both reside on the same machine, but this does not mean he is wrong. What prevents him from reaching you from the outside world is mainly the NAT device. (unless you block ports at the firewall also, in which case it's BOTH).
Personally, I'd rather live in the US and not get the warranty.
Really? Why is that? Seriously, I'm curious why would anyone chose to live in the US.
I can understand people staying there because their family/friends/jobs are there, but other than that...
Actually, with the average pay for first year associates at DC law firms at over 100K, the pay for patent examiners doesn't seem so hot. IMHO, the government should increase the pay to intice good lawyers to work for the government instead.
Lawyers???? We don't need no darn lawyers at the patent office, we need qualified people in different fields to examine the patents and decide whether to grant them or not based on their merit.
The only thing you'll get if you put lawyers there is junk that's correctly phrased and formatted, just like we have now...
Actually, if you search on msn for web browser, you'll see Mozilla at position 37, all before that is either microsoft stuff or netscape. Hell, even a NCSA mosaic link comes up before a mozilla (or opera) one does.
Well, AOL back then was free to change their protocol, did you see microsoft cry foul when AOL did? The situation was the same back then. AOL's protocol, AOL's choice.
As you rightly pointed, microsoft changed their client as a consequence of AOL's protocol change. That's what current clients have to do too.
Besides, I'm not happy with MS's way of doing things so I don't use their products when I have the choice. There are lots of IM networks out there, pick a non MS one and stop complaining. After all, if you're not able to stand for what you think is right for something as trivial and non vital as an IM program, how dare you start criticizing...
You'd have to read and understand all the code, and then compile from that code. Something I am willing to bet very, very, few people do for every piece of software they run.
Then again, very few people need the kind of security we're talking about
Regarding firewalls, I hope you're aware that you can filter outgoing traffic as easily as incoming.
I am aware that it is indeed possible, but what good is it to be wholly protected when you can't access or be accessed by anything?
the only solution to that is cryptographic signing for authentication, and even then, you are still trusting the party to not do anything malicious, the signing just proves that the person is who you think it is.
This means that if you trust microsoft to update your software (i.e. patches), you're trusting them with your system. That's the problem.
That's the reason I won't trust anything that requires security and secrecy to a microsoft product...
Firewalls are all great, but unless you want to shut your computer from the outside world, they won't work.
Outgoing connexions are as much of a problem than incoming. If the software calls home to transmit information, there's not much you can do. It doesn't even have to be automatic, a properly crafter answer to a software update request could trigger the transmission of information, for instance.
And even if the code the chinese govt sees doesn't have any hole, quid of the patches they WILL have to apply to their systems?
Bottom line: The only solution to having a computer that can't spy on you is having full access to the code that's running on it, both at install time and after...
Well, to put the obvious directly out of the door, I'm a coder on the mud I'm going to talk about.
That said, Hesperia has been started because we (the admins) were getting tired of always the same rehashing of standard stuff, the same abusive/moronic/powerhungry so-called immortals, the lack of challenge,....
We started a brand new mud in 1996, took 2 years to get it past the beta stage and it's been online for 5 years now.
Unlike your average MUD, we spent a considerable amount of time paying attention to world details, every "area" is unique, all mobiles and objects have unique description worth reading and you'll find reference to plots of an area in other areas. There are plots that you will follow throughout hundreds of hours.
Not only do we have a good background storyline, we also have quite a number of unique features, ranging from original spells & skills to coaching lines, sailing, gambling, automatic quests, mutations at high level (it's really fun to sprout an extra head or a tail, or become afflicted with "uncontrollable flatulence"). We have made the game a challenge, so it's not necessarily for your average mindless hack&slasher.
But most importantly, you won't find moronic imms, we REALLY listen to what players feel and want, we spend countless hours working on the user input and I think it shows, we get very positive user feedback from them. The price to making it nice for people to feel at home and have a challenge is that most I-want-it-all-easy types of players stay away from Hesperia, but as a result, people you find there are friendly and knowledgeable, most are willing to give a hand because they have been through the hard parts too.
I know I'm not objective, but I think ours is a good mud. At least it's one I still enjoy playing (as do others) and paying for...
but I'm not sure if making it a national ID card is the best idea.
As a belgian citizen, I can tell you that we already have a mandatory national ID card, so it's not much of a point.
My national ID card has this on it:
a picture
Name
Given Names
Sex
Date of Birth
Place of Birth
Signing authority
My signature
Address
ID Card Number (2 of them)
Spouse
Children names
It bears several things on it that make its counterfeiting difficult (like a nice color changing hologram-like shape of the country)
The government can easily use this against the people and the privacy concerns are enormous.
All these concerns are very legit in the USA, but from the people I have talked to, this is the "only" country where people are so afraid of being bigbrothered. I have a national ID card and I use it very seldom, and I really don't have the feeling that it is being used as a way to track my habbits down.
On the other hand, my bank uses that ID number in their files, so does my social security company (social security is built in into the belgian system, but you have to have a "company" paying your stuff), and if I could, I'd actually encourage all these government bodies who require identification at one point or another to create that database, and give access to information about me on a need basis.
The problem does not come from the traceability, these problem are a minor concern compared to the advantages.
The real problem comes from trusting your government. The belgian political landscape (if I may speak of it thus) consists in dozens of parties, with 5 or 6 big players. This ensures that the same person don't stay in power very long if they don't do a good job, and there ARE alternatives to what is in place at the moment, and it's always a coalition of several parties that is running the country. This is one of the reasons I trust my government (to a large extent).
First and foremost, I am sorry you're taking it so bad you put me in your foes list. I personally don't use that except for morons who don't elaborate their [lack of] thought and are just plain rude.
Some of your arguments make sense, and I'll keep then in mind, but I'll respond to a couple of your arguments nonetheless, instead of just modding you overrated or some such and be gone with it.
Name me any country that has freed itself from a barbaric dictator that regularly killed any citizen that might have hinted at being against that dictator. It would never happen!
- France
- Russia
- Spain
- Italy
- Hungary
- Zaire (now Congo)
-...
The inspectors reported on numerous occasions that this was not the case. Did they say that they thought more inspections would be a good thing? Hell yes, and I'm somewhat certain that anyone in the position to keep their job by being the sole authority on whether or not it should continue would say the same thing.
You are saying here that the inspectors are partial and keep pushing for more inspections because they want to keep their jobs. By this argument, I could say that they report that Iraq is not cooperating for the sole reason of keeping their job too. I personally do expect profesionalism on their part.
Still about the inspections. Iraq has infringed their initial agreement to fully help the inspector check that they had removed all weapons and the like. I'd be happy to see what the US would do under such circumstances by the way, but that's beside the point for the time being. My opinion is that they should not have been banned from having weapons in the first place, but having been so, they should have complied. Does that justify an attack, hell no.
I can see no good reason the US attacked Iraq. I'll name what I think are the reasons:
- 9/11 traumatized the US in a way nothing has before. The US had been [to the US citizen] an unbreakable fortress. This trauma led to a sense of revenge. After failing to kill Ossama Bin Laden, the US govt had to move their revenge rage elsewhere.
May I here remind you that we're talking about the same Bin Laden that the US provided money and weapons to?
- Showing the world US is the strongest, easy one.
- Bush is a texan;-)
- Putting a US favorable govt in Iraq gives the US a foothold in middle east it doesn't have at the moment, after the diplomatical mood between UK and Egypt went a bit worse.
Other than that, I don't see no reason.
We buy soo much more than poeple are buying from us, and it is necessary to balance that to keep our economy striving. It allows US companies to stay competetive even when they have to pay higher US salaries. Is it fair? I don't know...probably not, but fair isn't the point. The point is that you are getting more of our money than we are of yours and the tarrifs create at least somewhat of a better balance.
Tariffs are not there to compensate for lower salaries, not all the time anyway. I am talking here about something I know, steel and food tariffs from Europe. You can't reasonably argue that the european citizen are paid lower than their american counterparts. The tariffs are there to balance the inefficiency of the US in some sectors. Capitalism isn't supposed to work like that. In theory, whoever provides the best at the lower cost wins (comparing apples and apples here, not talking about slave labors like in some asian countries).
So it's not fair, but like you said, fair isn't the point. And the world isn't fair. But it's still a measure on how the US acts towards the rest of the world.
In the case of China or Korea, the circumsyances surrounding our relatins with those countries demand a different tact. I think you will see that once this war is over.
You postpone your arguments because you have none. Iraq is the ta
1) The US gives more foreign aid in money, food, and medical supplies than any other country. This was true in 2001 and 2002, and previous to that it was second to japan since the early 90's. Perhaps you call this an extension of foreign policy, but I call it our money to help others. 11.4 billion worth in 2003. Those are just the ODA numbers. For the real story look here [usaid.gov]
being the largest country (except for china) helps too, I'd be curioous to see the same figures per capita
2) Whenever any country needs assistance militarily they come to the US. We have fought wars and spilled the blood of our citizens in 2 world wars, the korean war, the vietnam war, the gulf war, and several more minor conflicts. Perhaps you call this an extension of foreign policy, but I call it our blood to help others.
I remember pretty well the 2 world war, there is actually a pretty large american military 20 minutes from where I live (in belgium). I don't think the US entered that war out of good will though, a germany the size of europe sure wouldn't have pleased the US in the long run.
The other wars you mention were unneeded, especially the vietnam and gulf war. There's no denying that the US helped quite a lot when military strength was needed. A good thing that this role has been taken by the UN now. Everything but peace insurance is not a good idea imho.
3) Whenever a country has needed assistance to rebuild after such a war we help them do that. We pay for the war, and we pay for the rebuilding. Perhaps you call this an extension of foreign policy, but I call it our money to help others.
That's the problem here, it's not your money, it's the internation fund's money. So more money to your industries, more money to your taxpayers.
We do want freedom for the people in Iraq.
Leave them alone, all the other countries have gone through that, when they're tired enough of sadam, they'll take arms and fight. If they don't win, it probably means that they aren't pissed enough or a large enough part of the population. Helping people without their consent is a very good way of making an enmity between you, like colonialism showed.
But...if you want to kill us off, that's fine. Just don't come knocking if you need anything.
You got me wrong, I don't have anything against the US population, I actually admire some of them. What I hate is that the US turns out to be an international bully. Everyone not playing their way is threatened one way or another, look at all the tarrifs and stupid restrictions on trade.
Do you also think the US acts out of good will here?
Do you really think they're fighting sadam for the greater good? I'd say they'd better target some other more dangerous countries, or some of their economical partners who *really* have no respect for human rights such as china and korea...
The reason I want Iraq to give a kick in the figurative nuts of the USA is to have them stop meddling in other people's business on false pretenses.
But now that the USA is threatened, rather than some cute ethnic minority, oh no we musn't defend ourselves.
Threatened??
By who? Iraq didn't mention attacking the US? Funding Al Quaïda? Look at your "allies" in Kuweit and UAE.
Defend??
You're attacking pal...
Blame it all on yourselves if things like 9/11 happened, after all, who gave weapons and money to Al Quaïda? Who gave money and weapons to Iraq?
Peace will be achieved when the US will stop playing the bully-boy on the international playground.
We did EXACTLY THE SAME THING in the late 90's with Kosovo, and no-one was whining then!
Kosovo was entirely different. First, the internal community intervened AFTER the LOCAL conflict took place, to settle things down, after ONU decided it. It was an international effort.
In the case of Iraq, the US and UK unilateraly decided to attack a defenseless country.
Yes you hear me, defenseless. How fair is a war against someone you have spent the 10 years inventorying their military resources?
Hmm, what's the reason again? Weapons of mass destructions? Where are they? if Iraq has them, why didn't they shoot them at the US soldiers?
May I also kindly remind you that the only country to ever have used the atomic bomb is the US (aside from tests, that is).
I sincerely hope that Iraq beats the sh!t out of the US (sorry for being rude, here, no words can express my disgust at the US today).
Instead of making war when/where it's not needed, get your government to give 5 times more money to educate the children you do this for (rather than the DoD), so they can make educated decisions rather than relying on war mongering power hungry stupid politicians like this is the case now...
Slashdot Mirror
lol! "RTFA". Haha, you must be new around here. ;-)
quote: And pakistan may be a third world country, but she certainly isn't representative of the people living there.
quote: Impressive girl though, too young yet to realise how crap Microsoft (as a company) really is.
Impressive girl nonetheless, but what a big "HAHA" this quote was...
Side note: 5 years is a bit short to judge a technology as "major"
Well, Joe SixPack isn't trained to fix his car either, does that mean the state should act like a big car repair shop as well? I don't think so...
If you want to make use of a commodity, the burden is on you to be properly equipped for use of that commodity. If your gas tank is leaking, you can be sure you won't be allowed to drive where you endanger others with that leaking.
My point: if joe six pack is not able to get his computer in good working order, he can pay someone to do it, just like he does to get his car fixed...
Note: I admit that roads are a far less hostile environment to cars than the internet is for PCs, but the point remains...
I'm IT manager for a a relatively small company, with 20ish salespeople on the road, trying to sell our (one shot) product. My company uses exclusively linux (SuSE 9) servers except for our accounting software, about 20 (yep, 20) of them. mail, printing, file sharing, firewalls, VPN, ...
Well, we decided to outsource the appointment taking for our salespeople to another company and provide our salespeople with PDAs to sync with their calendars instantly because the less time they spend on the phone trying to get an appointment with customers, the more they sell, logical...
So I went shopping for some linux distro that actually provided outlook connectivity (these damn PDAs don't have anything but outlook on them it seems).
After being fooled by (SUSE) Novel OpenExchange and their advertised "Seamless integration" with Outlooks (from Outlook 98+, their website advertises), I had to come to the conclusion that there was seemingly no linux distro that provided that kind of functionality.
My solution is now either to get one of these windows boxen with exchange on it or outsource the calendaring connectivity as well...
This need of mine is a real need, and not just fancy wishes based on nothing but comfort as you seem to imply, after all our other 30ish employees are very happy with sunbird but in this case, it's not an option...
Oh, and by the way, the "outlook connector" of Open-XChange works on about 50% of the windows XP machines, not all of them...
These two aspects (accounting and calendaring) are the points that prevent me from providing linux on the desktop throughout the company, everyone already uses firefox, thunderbird, sunbird, OO.org(except for the odd excel thing openexchange can't handle). Linux is cool, but it's not yet fully ready for all my needs...
HCN meets all the criteria except for one:
- it's painless
- it's quick
- no worries about damage if you fail (there's a 15 minutes headache and nothing else)
- it's not messy for whoever discovers you.
- it doesn't take much courage (inhaling something is easy, opening your veins is hard, stabbing yourself in the heart is hard [fucking ribs], pressing that trigger is hard I presume...)
The hard thing about hydrogen cyanide is getting it...
- Slicing wrists: damage to tendons
- Slicing the veins in armpit: takes ages to drain the blood and it's really freaky to see that blood gushing out of you...
- medicines: risks of overdose or not high enough dose, plus the potential to really damage something if you survive...
- plastic bag: uncomfortable, takes AGES, plus you look like an idiot...
- hanging: asphixy is not a way I'd like to die of...
- bullets: if you can get hold of a gun (not necessarily easy outside the US), let's get real here, the chances of not dying after blowing your brains are small, besides if you're left in a vegetative state, what do you care, your real self,the thinking one, will be gone (which is what we're after)... Then again, plugging that trigger can be extremely difficult...
The best option I found so far is hydrogen cyanide.
The good thing about it is a gas and thus you only have to breathe it, that it is lethal at low doses, that you pass out nearly instantly (in some seconds) and if you somehow manage to fail, there are no consequences as it doesn't damage your brain, lungs, liver or anything else. Should be pretty pleasant, if you can get hold of it, but that's seemingly not easy. Otherwise it can be synthesized with ammonia and methane, but I've yet to figure out exactly how (building a flat bed reactor with Platinum-Rhodium catalyst sure doesn't look easy)
Finding a sure, painless method is not easy, and reading suicide HOWTOs on the net is more a deterent than anything else. The methods these sites claim to be good are often cryptic, and there seems to be an emphasis on the ones that are not a Good Idea(TM).
The other bad idea about suicide is that if you somehow fail (which is more common than being "successful"), others will look at you as if you have the black plague, AIDS and an extra leg...
Just consider life an interesting experiment, since you don't care anyway...
While it is true that the french do NOT hate americans, I think it is safe to say that the population at large despises the majority of americans and thinks very little of their culture and education. I don't think people were confused at all with the "freedom fries" concept. The general reaction I was given to see was like: "So you're not happy with us not supporting your 'Iraqi oil grabbing campaign', then go f*ck yourself"
The reason to this situation (and reaction) is that the current american stereotype is that of a fat lazy uneducated (some would say stupid) person to most of the european population.
This stereotype is the cause of the contempt "you" often mistake for arrogance...
Disclaimer: I know quite a few slim hard-working well-educated clever american people, I am just depicting a stereotype that my personal experience leads me to believe not to be too far from "the truth".
There have been a bunch of rumours about a car accident involving
some free software folks today. Since there seems to be no central place
for all information I am trying to gather all information here.
If you have any other information please drop me an email
at wichert at wiggy dot net
All mentioned times are in CEST (UTC +0200).
* There has been a car accident returning from a trip to bring Richard
Stallman (RMS) from
SANE 2004 to Paris.
(confirmed by several sources)
* they collided with a truck which merged onto their lane while
driving in fog (unconfirmed)
* Exact time of the accident is unknown. It was on the
morning of September 30th before 09:00.
* Richard Stallman was dropped off in Paris and no longer in the car
(confirmed by Rop and Richard).
* At the time of the accident Hans Bakker (mclightje),
Edwin Hermans (madeddie), and
Sebastian S. (webmind) were in the car. (confirmed).
* The car belongs to Rop Gonggrijp, who lent it to the travelers.
RMS was staying with Rop during SANE. (confirmed by Rop)
* Hans Bakker (photo,
homepage)
did not survive the crash. (confirmed by girlfriend)
* Edwin Hermans has a broken hip and has been transfered to a different
Translation:hospital for surgery. Sebastian is (or was by now) in surgery for
broken bones but is not in critical condition.
* This appears to be the traffic report for the accident, as taken
infotraffic.
Firewalls exist within networks that have world reachable addresses. You can, for instance, have a mail server behind a firewall. In that case, the firewall could for instance block anything but outgoing and incoming email ports as well as SSH (ports 22, 25 and 143, for instance) from the outside world. Which means that you can still reach the mail server. The identical same could apply to your workstation.
A NAT device is something that (in most cases) allows a number of machine with a non world reachable IP address (192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x for instance) to reach the outside world but NOT the other way around unless you put on that NAT device routing information that says "if packet comes on port Y, forward it to machine Z".
This is the role of the NAT device.
What happens most of the time is that NAT and firewall both reside on the same machine, but this does not mean he is wrong. What prevents him from reaching you from the outside world is mainly the NAT device. (unless you block ports at the firewall also, in which case it's BOTH).
Check any network book...
The only thing you'll get if you put lawyers there is junk that's correctly phrased and formatted, just like we have now...
Just my 0.02
All search engines bias results it seems...
Just a minor correction, there are 3 official languages in Belgium (Pop 10,000,000): French, Dutch and German
As you rightly pointed, microsoft changed their client as a consequence of AOL's protocol change. That's what current clients have to do too.
Besides, I'm not happy with MS's way of doing things so I don't use their products when I have the choice. There are lots of IM networks out there, pick a non MS one and stop complaining. After all, if you're not able to stand for what you think is right for something as trivial and non vital as an IM program, how dare you start criticizing...
Their Service, Their Hardware, Their Resources, Their Choice... ...
That's the reason I won't trust anything that requires security and secrecy to a microsoft product...
Outgoing connexions are as much of a problem than incoming. If the software calls home to transmit information, there's not much you can do.
It doesn't even have to be automatic, a properly crafter answer to a software update request could trigger the transmission of information, for instance.
And even if the code the chinese govt sees doesn't have any hole, quid of the patches they WILL have to apply to their systems?
Bottom line: The only solution to having a computer that can't spy on you is having full access to the code that's running on it, both at install time and after...
That said, Hesperia has been started because we (the admins) were getting tired of always the same rehashing of standard stuff, the same abusive/moronic/powerhungry so-called immortals, the lack of challenge, ....
We started a brand new mud in 1996, took 2 years to get it past the beta stage and it's been online for 5 years now.
Unlike your average MUD, we spent a considerable amount of time paying attention to world details, every "area" is unique, all mobiles and objects have unique description worth reading and you'll find reference to plots of an area in other areas. There are plots that you will follow throughout hundreds of hours.
Not only do we have a good background storyline, we also have quite a number of unique features, ranging from original spells & skills to coaching lines, sailing, gambling, automatic quests, mutations at high level (it's really fun to sprout an extra head or a tail, or become afflicted with "uncontrollable flatulence"). We have made the game a challenge, so it's not necessarily for your average mindless hack&slasher.
But most importantly, you won't find moronic imms, we REALLY listen to what players feel and want, we spend countless hours working on the user input and I think it shows, we get very positive user feedback from them. The price to making it nice for people to feel at home and have a challenge is that most I-want-it-all-easy types of players stay away from Hesperia, but as a result, people you find there are friendly and knowledgeable, most are willing to give a hand because they have been through the hard parts too.
I know I'm not objective, but I think ours is a good mud. At least it's one I still enjoy playing (as do others) and paying for...
Your comment
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Answering to comments is good, pointing that a person is wrong, fine. But come on, be more creative than that...
My national ID card has this on it:
a picture
Name
Given Names
Sex
Date of Birth
Place of Birth
Signing authority
My signature
Address
ID Card Number (2 of them)
Spouse
Children names
It bears several things on it that make its counterfeiting difficult (like a nice color changing hologram-like shape of the country)
All these concerns are very legit in the USA, but from the people I have talked to, this is the "only" country where people are so afraid of being bigbrothered. I have a national ID card and I use it very seldom, and I really don't have the feeling that it is being used as a way to track my habbits down. On the other hand, my bank uses that ID number in their files, so does my social security company (social security is built in into the belgian system, but you have to have a "company" paying your stuff), and if I could, I'd actually encourage all these government bodies who require identification at one point or another to create that database, and give access to information about me on a need basis.The problem does not come from the traceability, these problem are a minor concern compared to the advantages.
The real problem comes from trusting your government. The belgian political landscape (if I may speak of it thus) consists in dozens of parties, with 5 or 6 big players. This ensures that the same person don't stay in power very long if they don't do a good job, and there ARE alternatives to what is in place at the moment, and it's always a coalition of several parties that is running the country. This is one of the reasons I trust my government (to a large extent).
Trust is the real problem...
Some of your arguments make sense, and I'll keep then in mind, but I'll respond to a couple of your arguments nonetheless, instead of just modding you overrated or some such and be gone with it.
- France ...
- Russia
- Spain
- Italy
- Hungary
- Zaire (now Congo)
-
You are saying here that the inspectors are partial and keep pushing for more inspections because they want to keep their jobs. By this argument, I could say that they report that Iraq is not cooperating for the sole reason of keeping their job too. I personally do expect profesionalism on their part. ;-)
Still about the inspections. Iraq has infringed their initial agreement to fully help the inspector check that they had removed all weapons and the like. I'd be happy to see what the US would do under such circumstances by the way, but that's beside the point for the time being. My opinion is that they should not have been banned from having weapons in the first place, but having been so, they should have complied. Does that justify an attack, hell no.
I can see no good reason the US attacked Iraq. I'll name what I think are the reasons:
- 9/11 traumatized the US in a way nothing has before. The US had been [to the US citizen] an unbreakable fortress. This trauma led to a sense of revenge. After failing to kill Ossama Bin Laden, the US govt had to move their revenge rage elsewhere.
May I here remind you that we're talking about the same Bin Laden that the US provided money and weapons to?
- Showing the world US is the strongest, easy one.
- Bush is a texan
- Putting a US favorable govt in Iraq gives the US a foothold in middle east it doesn't have at the moment, after the diplomatical mood between UK and Egypt went a bit worse.
Other than that, I don't see no reason.
Tariffs are not there to compensate for lower salaries, not all the time anyway. I am talking here about something I know, steel and food tariffs from Europe. You can't reasonably argue that the european citizen are paid lower than their american counterparts. The tariffs are there to balance the inefficiency of the US in some sectors. Capitalism isn't supposed to work like that. In theory, whoever provides the best at the lower cost wins (comparing apples and apples here, not talking about slave labors like in some asian countries). So it's not fair, but like you said, fair isn't the point. And the world isn't fair. But it's still a measure on how the US acts towards the rest of the world.
You postpone your arguments because you have none. Iraq is the ta
being the largest country (except for china) helps too, I'd be curioous to see the same figures per capita
I remember pretty well the 2 world war, there is actually a pretty large american military 20 minutes from where I live (in belgium). I don't think the US entered that war out of good will though, a germany the size of europe sure wouldn't have pleased the US in the long run. The other wars you mention were unneeded, especially the vietnam and gulf war. There's no denying that the US helped quite a lot when military strength was needed. A good thing that this role has been taken by the UN now. Everything but peace insurance is not a good idea imho. That's the problem here, it's not your money, it's the internation fund's money. So more money to your industries, more money to your taxpayers. Leave them alone, all the other countries have gone through that, when they're tired enough of sadam, they'll take arms and fight. If they don't win, it probably means that they aren't pissed enough or a large enough part of the population. Helping people without their consent is a very good way of making an enmity between you, like colonialism showed. You got me wrong, I don't have anything against the US population, I actually admire some of them. What I hate is that the US turns out to be an international bully. Everyone not playing their way is threatened one way or another, look at all the tarrifs and stupid restrictions on trade.Do you also think the US acts out of good will here?
Do you really think they're fighting sadam for the greater good? I'd say they'd better target some other more dangerous countries, or some of their economical partners who *really* have no respect for human rights such as china and korea...
The reason I want Iraq to give a kick in the figurative nuts of the USA is to have them stop meddling in other people's business on false pretenses.
By who? Iraq didn't mention attacking the US? Funding Al Quaïda? Look at your "allies" in Kuweit and UAE.
Defend??
You're attacking pal...
Blame it all on yourselves if things like 9/11 happened, after all, who gave weapons and money to Al Quaïda? Who gave money and weapons to Iraq?
Peace will be achieved when the US will stop playing the bully-boy on the international playground.
Kosovo was entirely different. First, the internal community intervened AFTER the LOCAL conflict took place, to settle things down, after ONU decided it. It was an international effort.In the case of Iraq, the US and UK unilateraly decided to attack a defenseless country.
Yes you hear me, defenseless. How fair is a war against someone you have spent the 10 years inventorying their military resources?
Hmm, what's the reason again? Weapons of mass destructions? Where are they? if Iraq has them, why didn't they shoot them at the US soldiers?
May I also kindly remind you that the only country to ever have used the atomic bomb is the US (aside from tests, that is).
I sincerely hope that Iraq beats the sh!t out of the US (sorry for being rude, here, no words can express my disgust at the US today).
Instead of making war when/where it's not needed, get your government to give 5 times more money to educate the children you do this for (rather than the DoD), so they can make educated decisions rather than relying on war mongering power hungry stupid politicians like this is the case now...