It's about energy security. The US economy is heavily dependent on oil. It's about ensuring that in the coming decade, in which the production of light sweet crude oil will fall far behind world demand for it, the US will have another rich source to, hopefully, keep our economy from tanking completely.
It would be nice if people would quit buying Hummers for their half-hour-each-way commute. It would be nice if people would start telecommuting more. But that's not going to really start happening until either the government starts providing more incentives for these things, or oil prices reach crisis level, by which time it will really be too late for the US economy. Britian and France haven't significantly increased their crude oil consumption since the 70's oil crisis. Countries who actually use oil efficiently minimize the economic impact of the extreme oil price volatility that will start hitting us in the next few years as China continues to ramp up its industry. Those countries will be able to economically dominate the US while we're struggling to make our infrastructure less oil-dependent. If you think oil prices are bad now, wait 'till 2009.
What since 9/11/2001 has the United States of America done under President Bush's leadership to convince the Arab peoples that their culture is broken and that they need to do something about it in order to end this endless cycle of war and destruction so that they may prosper and live in peace? (Answer: NOTHING!)
By GOD, that's IT!!!! All we have to do is tell all the towelheads their CULTURE IS BROKEN and they'll say
"How silly we've been, perpetuating this endless cycle of war and destruction. You know, I think those Jews should just keep all that "holy land" they stole from us when they corralled us up, and moved us out to lovely, serene West Bank and Gaza. All these tyrranical dictators dominating our peoples for the past fifty years or so, supported by the West... Hey. Live and let live, I say. The Saudi Family isn't all that bad. We toppled the Shah all the way back in the seventies, that's like ancient history. And sure, the West put Saddam in power. But you gotta admit, they only killed a few tens of thousands of us getting rid of him!"
Or maybe not. The VAST majority of muslims already are peaceful regular folks. The violence is caused by an active and vocal minority, who gain new recruits so easily because the governments of the West really don't give a shit about the Arab peoples, they only care about how much it costs to extract oil from the region and whether Americans and Israelis are getting killed. Which may be how the situation degraded to where it is today. Killing or kidnapping Americans and Israelis are the only things that get the attention of the people in power these days
At least we can agree that the years since 9/11 have been horribly mismanaged. The history of the West's meddling in the region's affairs have made us an easy scapegoat for all the problems of the Arab peoples. The past five years have only reinforced that, making it ever so much easier to paint the West as the Great Satan when recruiting impressionable young Arab men to terrorist causes.
"Yahoo just helped us find like a dozen music pirates in about ten minutes. Thanks, Yahoo! Oh hey, it's kinda tricky to track down these international guys. Bad Yahoo! Bad Bad Yahoo!"
If all the search engines colluded with illegal content distributors by hiding their stashes, these morons (and law enforcement) would have to write their own search engines to find them.
I wasn't saying things have changed in the last 30 years. I was saying that people under thirty probably aren't aware of how much piracy DOES exist right now, today. And thirty years ago, too. By the way, how old are you?
For most young Americans, the word Pirate is associated with Captain Hook and other loveable semi-villains. For most older Americans who pay attention to the news and world affairs, the association is with the MANY real-life murderers and rapists who roam the oceans today. I don't think that name's going to "cease to be a bother" as long as the party is interested in gaining the respect and political support of anybody over age 30.
What people are starting to discover is that people who write GPL code are not evil and people who write commercial software are also not evil, we just have different approaches.
The goal, from both sides, is to meet customer needs, he said, adding, "This is just the more mature view of the way the world is evolving..."
Translation:
So... it's starting to look like all that money we dumped into the SCO FUD machine is no longer slowing down the flood of customers moving to GPL'd code. Um, please everyone, let's be mature about this. We're not evil, the GPL guys aren't evil. Let's not point fingers. Can't we all get along? We swear we're going to meet customer needs, as long as customers don't demand to see the source code. We can do the community stuff, but come on, you don't really expect us to show you the source. Right? Right? Guys?
Gmail for your domain is currently available as a limited beta. If your organization is interested in helping Google test this service, we'll consider your domain for this beta. You'll need to sign in with a Google Account (or get a new one), and answer a few quick questions about your organization and your email needs.
Sounds like there's a little more you need to do, besides just pointing your MX record at their servers. Like for instance, getting them to accept you as a beta user, answering a few quick questions, etc., having them set up their system to accept mail addressed to your domain...
O RLY? Google will accept messages addressed to user@x.random.domain? All you have to do is point your MX record their way, and they'll have a mailbox all set up and waiting for the message? Wow, those guys really are geniuses.
How can you be a huge fan of DRM? I guess she's never bought a "CD*" only to find it wouldn't play on her CD player.
* "Disc does not comply with CD specifications and may not play on some players due to DRM implementation"/actual text printed on Sony "music disc" I got as a gift. Was able to listen on the multi-format DVD player in my home entertainment system. Unfortunately I mostly listen to music at work, where I can't play this disc...
My wife used to have contact lens problems caused by dry eyes until she started taking fish oil supplements. Flaxseed oil is supposed to be good too. Try a health food store, or you can order online.
I'd like to see them put together a nice plot of home-theater system sales vs. box-office sales. It doesn't cost me eight bucks for a bag of popcorn and a coke. My popcorn isn't stale. There's nobody talking during the show. My feet don't stick to the floor. I can pause the movie whenever I want.
I have been to the theater a lot less since I got my 52" TV + surround sound. Yeah, it's the intarweb movie pirates dropping box office sales.... riiight.
They've removed the biggest security hole in an OS X system: The Mac User. The Mac User will set "fluffy" as their password, and attempt to install any interesting-looking screensaver that gets e-mailed to them.
Not that any other OS would do much better in the face of such adversity. But it's funny that they would use a test like this to "demonstrate the security" of a desktop OS.
We have almost 500 heavy IMAP users in a corporate environment, and there's lots of mailing attachments back & forth despite the availability of file servers.
Our IMAP backend used to be pretty big until we implemented mailbox quotas. We have no policy for setting a maximum mailbox size - every user starts off with 100MB, and if they need more they just ask for it, and get it, in 100MB increments. The quota serves one and only one purpose: to remind users that space on the server is limited and costs the company money (mainly in terms of backup expenses). It's just a periodic reminder to clean up the old crap they're not using anymore. If they hit the quota limit, their mail delivery is interrupted until they either delete some old junk or call support and ask for a quota increase. They would usually rather delete some old mail than call support. That alone reduced our IMAP storage requirements from ~110 GB to ~30GB.
We are finally at a point in history where the government, the toughest gang in town, *actually responds to the common person*.
Yeah, but the response is:
Dear Sir or Madam: Thank you for writing. Your opinions are of utmost concern to this Congressperson. Rest assured that your letter will be filed by one of my trained monkeys. Thank you for your support. Campaign contributions can be sent to PO Box 62466...
Why do you keep talking as if FISA is a group of people? It's a law. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. And if you look at 1802(a)(1)(B) you will see that it specifically says warrantless surveillance is only legal if "there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party"
Well, Mr. Legal Eagle, if you look at the section that talks specifically about warrantless surveillance, it specifically says that a warrant is required for US persons, foreign agent or not. See section 1802(a)(1)(B):
(a)
(1) Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year if the Attorney General certifies in writing under oath that--
(A) the electronic surveillance is solely directed at--
(i) the acquisition of the contents of communications transmitted by means of communications used exclusively between or among foreign powers, as defined in section 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title; or
(ii) the acquisition of technical intelligence, other than the spoken communications of individuals, from property or premises under the open and exclusive control of a foreign power, as defined in section 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title;
(B) there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party
The difference that you missed between what the Bush Administration has done and what past presidents have done is this: FISA only allows warrantless surveillance of NON-US-PERSONS.
Warrants are still legally required under FISA and the Patriot act for surveilling US Citizens. Which is why the FISA court was set up - so they could get a warrant in minutes if necessary, or even within 24 hours AFTER the surveillance had begun.
So what's their excuse? Judicial oversight just too much hassle, with that minutes-long waiting period?
Give me a break! If Universal had given Serenity the marketing it deserved, Joss wouldn't have to resort to cheesily timed "announcements" like this one, they would all be too busy counting their money.
Yup. A Presidential order in direct violation of the constitutional freedom from unreasonable search and seizure... the constitution which is the foundation upon which every law in the nation rests. Sounds pretty unlawful to me, Condi.
But after all, as Bush said, "Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper." It's not like he swore to uphold it before he took office or anything.
How can you send billions of dollars overseas? How can you do this to us, when we totally bailed you out a few years back? We sold out US consumers so that your money-printing business model could continue to flourish and feed back into our economy. Now you're sending billions overseas? WMD!! WMD on your ass! Threatenin' the homeland! Terrrizing the economy! Condi, go get my bike!
Except that most of the CO2 that's locked into landfills is in the form of biodegradable organic matter. Which biodegrades, releasing the CO2 back into the atmosphere.
Slashdot Mirror
It's about energy security. The US economy is heavily dependent on oil. It's about ensuring that in the coming decade, in which the production of light sweet crude oil will fall far behind world demand for it, the US will have another rich source to, hopefully, keep our economy from tanking completely.
It would be nice if people would quit buying Hummers for their half-hour-each-way commute. It would be nice if people would start telecommuting more. But that's not going to really start happening until either the government starts providing more incentives for these things, or oil prices reach crisis level, by which time it will really be too late for the US economy. Britian and France haven't significantly increased their crude oil consumption since the 70's oil crisis. Countries who actually use oil efficiently minimize the economic impact of the extreme oil price volatility that will start hitting us in the next few years as China continues to ramp up its industry. Those countries will be able to economically dominate the US while we're struggling to make our infrastructure less oil-dependent. If you think oil prices are bad now, wait 'till 2009.
"How silly we've been, perpetuating this endless cycle of war and destruction. You know, I think those Jews should just keep all that "holy land" they stole from us when they corralled us up, and moved us out to lovely, serene West Bank and Gaza. All these tyrranical dictators dominating our peoples for the past fifty years or so, supported by the West... Hey. Live and let live, I say. The Saudi Family isn't all that bad. We toppled the Shah all the way back in the seventies, that's like ancient history. And sure, the West put Saddam in power. But you gotta admit, they only killed a few tens of thousands of us getting rid of him!"
Or maybe not. The VAST majority of muslims already are peaceful regular folks. The violence is caused by an active and vocal minority, who gain new recruits so easily because the governments of the West really don't give a shit about the Arab peoples, they only care about how much it costs to extract oil from the region and whether Americans and Israelis are getting killed. Which may be how the situation degraded to where it is today. Killing or kidnapping Americans and Israelis are the only things that get the attention of the people in power these days
At least we can agree that the years since 9/11 have been horribly mismanaged. The history of the West's meddling in the region's affairs have made us an easy scapegoat for all the problems of the Arab peoples. The past five years have only reinforced that, making it ever so much easier to paint the West as the Great Satan when recruiting impressionable young Arab men to terrorist causes.
"Yahoo just helped us find like a dozen music pirates in about ten minutes. Thanks, Yahoo! Oh hey, it's kinda tricky to track down these international guys. Bad Yahoo! Bad Bad Yahoo!" If all the search engines colluded with illegal content distributors by hiding their stashes, these morons (and law enforcement) would have to write their own search engines to find them.
I wasn't saying things have changed in the last 30 years. I was saying that people under thirty probably aren't aware of how much piracy DOES exist right now, today. And thirty years ago, too. By the way, how old are you?
I don't think anything they could have done or said would make any difference in my opinion about them.
For most young Americans, the word Pirate is associated with Captain Hook and other loveable semi-villains. For most older Americans who pay attention to the news and world affairs, the association is with the MANY real-life murderers and rapists who roam the oceans today. I don't think that name's going to "cease to be a bother" as long as the party is interested in gaining the respect and political support of anybody over age 30.
O RLY? Google will accept messages addressed to user@x.random.domain? All you have to do is point your MX record their way, and they'll have a mailbox all set up and waiting for the message? Wow, those guys really are geniuses.
How can you be a huge fan of DRM? I guess she's never bought a "CD*" only to find it wouldn't play on her CD player. * "Disc does not comply with CD specifications and may not play on some players due to DRM implementation" /actual text printed on Sony "music disc" I got as a gift. Was able to listen on the multi-format DVD player in my home entertainment system. Unfortunately I mostly listen to music at work, where I can't play this disc...
My wife used to have contact lens problems caused by dry eyes until she started taking fish oil supplements. Flaxseed oil is supposed to be good too. Try a health food store, or you can order online.
OK, who's not thinking of boobies right now?
I'd like to see them put together a nice plot of home-theater system sales vs. box-office sales. It doesn't cost me eight bucks for a bag of popcorn and a coke. My popcorn isn't stale. There's nobody talking during the show. My feet don't stick to the floor. I can pause the movie whenever I want.
I have been to the theater a lot less since I got my 52" TV + surround sound.
Yeah, it's the intarweb movie pirates dropping box office sales.... riiight.
They've removed the biggest security hole in an OS X system: The Mac User. The Mac User will set "fluffy" as their password, and attempt to install any interesting-looking screensaver that gets e-mailed to them. Not that any other OS would do much better in the face of such adversity. But it's funny that they would use a test like this to "demonstrate the security" of a desktop OS.
We have almost 500 heavy IMAP users in a corporate environment, and there's lots of mailing attachments back & forth despite the availability of file servers. Our IMAP backend used to be pretty big until we implemented mailbox quotas. We have no policy for setting a maximum mailbox size - every user starts off with 100MB, and if they need more they just ask for it, and get it, in 100MB increments. The quota serves one and only one purpose: to remind users that space on the server is limited and costs the company money (mainly in terms of backup expenses). It's just a periodic reminder to clean up the old crap they're not using anymore. If they hit the quota limit, their mail delivery is interrupted until they either delete some old junk or call support and ask for a quota increase. They would usually rather delete some old mail than call support. That alone reduced our IMAP storage requirements from ~110 GB to ~30GB.
We are finally at a point in history where the government, the toughest gang in town, *actually responds to the common person*.
Yeah, but the response is:
Dear Sir or Madam:
Thank you for writing. Your opinions are of utmost concern to this Congressperson.
Rest assured that your letter will be filed by one of my trained monkeys.
Thank you for your support. Campaign contributions can be sent to PO Box 62466...
Why do you keep talking as if FISA is a group of people? It's a law. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. And if you look at 1802(a)(1)(B) you will see that it specifically says warrantless surveillance is only legal if "there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party"
Well, Mr. Legal Eagle, if you look at the section that talks specifically about warrantless surveillance, it specifically says that a warrant is required for US persons, foreign agent or not. See section 1802(a)(1)(B):
(a)
(1) Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year if the Attorney General certifies in writing under oath that--
(A) the electronic surveillance is solely directed at--
(i) the acquisition of the contents of communications transmitted by means of communications used exclusively between or among foreign powers, as defined in section 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title; or
(ii) the acquisition of technical intelligence, other than the spoken communications of individuals, from property or premises under the open and exclusive control of a foreign power, as defined in section 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title;
(B) there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party
The difference that you missed between what the Bush Administration has done and what past presidents have done is this: FISA only allows warrantless surveillance of NON-US-PERSONS. Warrants are still legally required under FISA and the Patriot act for surveilling US Citizens. Which is why the FISA court was set up - so they could get a warrant in minutes if necessary, or even within 24 hours AFTER the surveillance had begun. So what's their excuse? Judicial oversight just too much hassle, with that minutes-long waiting period?
Give me a break! If Universal had given Serenity the marketing it deserved, Joss wouldn't have to resort to cheesily timed "announcements" like this one, they would all be too busy counting their money.
Yup. A Presidential order in direct violation of the constitutional freedom from unreasonable search and seizure... the constitution which is the foundation upon which every law in the nation rests. Sounds pretty unlawful to me, Condi.
But after all, as Bush said, "Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper." It's not like he swore to uphold it before he took office or anything.
Hey, barcodes do almost the same thing, and look at all the evil that's been done with them. Didn't you read "Jennifer Government" by Max Barry?
How can you send billions of dollars overseas? How can you do this to us, when we totally bailed you out a few years back? We sold out US consumers so that your money-printing business model could continue to flourish and feed back into our economy. Now you're sending billions overseas? WMD!! WMD on your ass! Threatenin' the homeland! Terrrizing the economy! Condi, go get my bike!
For one with a low tolerance for cheesy dialog, perhaps even... deadly.
Except that most of the CO2 that's locked into landfills is in the form of biodegradable organic matter. Which biodegrades, releasing the CO2 back into the atmosphere.