OK.. just want to understand this.. being "cool"/"interesting" is about having a one-dimensional mentality concerned only with the next self-indulgent, predictable alcohol-induced stupor and lame, predictable alcohol-induced "conversation", whereas being "dorky" involves experiencing a wide range of all the amazing, unusual things that the universe has to offer. Am I understanding this right? I mean, I'm trying to be "cool" and all, but I guess I just don't get it. To recap then, if I spend my entire life thinking and talking only about shoes and beer, and remaining in an ignorant stupor about even the most basic workings of the world I live in and interact with every day, I'll be "cool" then? If I blindly listen to whatever manufacture "music" huge corporations are hyping today, I too can be "cool"? If I wear the brands and logos that huge corporations tell me to wear, I'll be "cool"?
Basically, as I understand it, if I decide to have a mind of my own, and spend my life experiencing and learning about as much as possible of the world I live in, I'll be "dorky". But if I decide to never think, to do what society tells me to do, to buy what corporations tell me to buy, and spend my life listening to the same lame meaningless repetitive conversations over and over again till I die, I'll be "cool".
It's fine and well to expect different levels of support. But what if you aren't particularly interested in the support? If you know you're quite capable of setting up your Win2K machine as a web server, stuff the support. You know the machine can do it, so why fork out a whole lot of extra $$$ for the "server edition"? The crux of the issue is that the "workstation edition" is *deliberately crippled*. They have deliberately added extra code to (for example) limit the maximum number of incoming TCP connections.
This is more than just a case of the server edition being "more optimized". It's a case of you being forced to buy the more expensive edition through deliberately crippling the workstation edition.
Shouldn't you be allowed to at least make the choice? If you're going to buy and you dont want support, then you should have some choice in what you buy. Your idea that you are definitely going to want support is completely bizarre to me. Support is not some intrinsic part of the product, and should never be. Support is something optional that you pay extra for that gives some people a comforting feeling that if the system messes up they have someone to phone that'll fix everything up. In reality "support" doesn't work that way though. Why should the "tech support" be worked into the price of the product? Why should I pay more for it just because somebody else wants to be able to phone someone when they don't know how to install a network printer or configure the web server or something?
Why not just charge a flat price for the OS (all those optional extras and configuration tools can be selected via amazing things called "checkboxes" when you install the system) and then charge extra differing amounts for differing levels of support? Exactly like RedHat in fact. One set of installation media, with an option on startup "server" or "workstation" install. No crippling needed, and if you want lots of support, pay for it. As for "optimizations in the software", well, once again these should be configurable via those amazing "checkboxes", "radio buttons" and "configuration tools". In NT you can dynamically select "optimize for background processes" for example. There is no absolute rule in the universe that each set of "optimizations" can only be fixed to one particular set of installation media. Thats ridiculous - the only time this happens is if the company designing deliberately goes out of their way to limit the options available to clients, which is exactly what happens with MS.
With the optimizations I would expect a desktop version to be shipped with most daemons off
You seem to be under the impression that daemons are turned off by the manufacturer on the installation CD itself when they burn the CD. Please. It is the easiest thing in the world to select which daemons should be installed and/or disabled by default when installing a system based on what the user wants. I can only assume that you've have never installed any RedHat system released in the last 2 years.
I think your recipe is slightly flawed. If it sends to "everyone in the address book", it is very likely to get noticed very very quickly. Thus people would have ample time to react, given the "few days" indicated in (2). I would design it to only e-mail a small number of people in the address book.
For similar reasons to above, I would eliminate 3, as it would raise alarm bells straight away. It would literally be international news before the "few days" had even passed. Rather keep the worm as quiet and subtle as possible, so that most victims aren't even aware when it comes time for they payload to be activated.
Very very very true. When I used to work 8+ hours a day DirectX stuff on Win98, it was very uncommon for me to have to press the ol' reset button less than 2 or 3 times a day. It did not influence my demeanour in a very positive manner. But when bitching about how crap it is to some other people I'd often get replies along the lines of "jeez you must be doing something wrong because my PC doesn't crash nearly so much". Upon thinking about it, I realised that these people used their PC's only a few hours a day, and also did not run very intensive applications (e.g. a bit of word processing here and there, maybe some web browsing + email, some game playing etc). I've thankfully now shifted my development over to (almost) primarily Win2K. And what a pleasure it is. Win9X is dogshit, no doubt about it. "Pulsating screaming hatred" pretty much hits the nail on the head.
I think that as available bandwidth increases, even most of those "most users" you speak of will learn to use it more. You'll probably see lots more streaming video etc, streaming video will get bigger, higher quality. It is that way now (lots of little files) mainly because it is still too slow to be anything more. I'm not saying its going to be *better* of course, all it probably will mean will be bigger, higher image/audio quality streaming *adverts* and streaming *crap*. Probably also lots more file sharing going on (mp3s and specifically whole movies probably in the not too distant future will become very common to copy). More game playing as well.
Hmm.. now that you mention it, even now only a relatively small percentage of people even copy much music online. You're probably right, the majority of people (+/- 60%) are probably always going to be relatively low-bandwidth users. More for the rest of us.
This problem you refer to is only if you're talking about lots of little files. DNS lookups normally happen only once though for a web site, connection establishment is (IIRC in HTTP) per file. But if you're transferring a *big* file (e.g. > 1MB) then that overhead quickly becomes insignifant, as it happens once at the beginning and then file transfer begins - *then* the bandwidth really starts to help, as the only latency you have left is your ping to the server you're downloading from. Thats not bad with fiber, LAN etc (a couple of milliseconds maybe), but modems are pretty crap, they introduce about 100 ms of latency outright.
All we're saying here is that Fiber-To-The-Curb isn't very useful if all you're going to be doing is a lot of interactive web-browsing. Well of course yes then, but nobody was touting FTTC as an ultimate solution for web-browsing to begin with. FTTC is powerful specifically because it opens up the realistic possibility of widespread downloading/streaming of *big* files (e.g. music, movies etc).
which causes the higher-index modes to propagate faster than lower modes
Wouldn't a 'higher mode' ray take longer to reach the other end - wouldn't the zig-zagging from internal refraction cause it to have to travel a longer *distance* than single mode, which just goes "straight"? Sorry if this is a stupid question, this stuff is probably over my head.
Oh for Gods sake, I wasnt that pissed, it was just a bit of hyperbole. It was late, I was tired and thirsty, I just wanted to get my drink and go off to bed, I wasn't in the mood to argue anyway, and places were closing up. For flip sakes, where the hell do you get the idea that I expect everyone to think the same way I do? That was the entire point of my flipping post, words having not quite the same meaning. Sheesh but you overreact. Get a grip. The tone of my post wasn't 'angry', it was just a simple, light, silly anecdote.
I find it pretty annoying actually. I live in South Africa, we didn't have Pepsi here for about a decade because they left to show their disapproval of apartheid. (Of course, they've since tried to make a comeback here, but have failed. The irony of this is that although they left to show support for the cause of the south african black man, the south african black man now drinks Coke).
Aanyway, I was in London last year, and I felt like a Coke, so I walked into a KFC. I only saw a Pepsi machine, so I wasn't sure if they had Coke, so I asked the girl behind the counter "Do you have Coke?". "Yes". "Are you sure have *Coke*?". "Yes". "I'll have a *coke* please". She proceeds to fill me a cup of Pepsi. I was pretty pissed.
I was flying back from Germany last year too, and I asked the hostess on Air France for a Coke. She gives me a Pepsi. AAARGH!!
This idea that Pepsi can be called Coke is quite unusual to me.
It is unlikely I will win the lottery. Is it possible? Of course.
It is unreasonable to reject the possibility that anything with a non-zero probability of happening will happen. Take a statistics course. Learn the difference between "unlikely" and "impossible".
Re:It goes against reason, check your bible !
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New Human Ancestor?
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If we really are descended from monkeys, how come we don't all enjoy swinging from trees, eating bananas and mindless copulation with the closest memeber of either sex ?
What are you talking about, I enjoy all of the above! You should try these things sometime.
Now piss off, or I'll throw faeces at you.
Not normally one to feed the trolls but what the heck:)
Anyway, Man is the most pathetic, sick, twisted, vile creature to ever walk this earth, our actions (from fun everyday rape, murder, torture, child molestation to not so everyday hiroshima, jewish holocaust etc) prove that beyond a doubt. We ourselves are the surest proof that there is no God: *not one* of the Gods, as they are described in any of our religions, could have produced anything so vile. I for one would not want to claim "credit" (responsibility) for having created Man if I had been Man's creator. I would deny everything:)
In a way I feel sorry for the studios. Their movies suck so much that they can't even get people to create genuine fan sites. Their movies are so crap that they have to pay people (and big bucks too) to pretend to be fans. How desparate can you get? Its a little like those small-time band members who pay schoolgirls to clamour around them and pretend to like them.
I have this mental image of a group of aging execs in expensive suits gathered around in a large boardroom of a big company, all with very worried and frustrated expressions wondering "why don't people watch our movies any more!?!?" (theater sales have dwindled in recent years), and desparately trying to come up with every possible idea they can to get people interested in their movies - but not one of them ever even thinks to suggest the most obvious one: make better movies.
Movies are dumbed down to the lowest common denominator
Dumbing down of movies and TV shows seems to mainly be an American phenomenon. I think it's probably easier to make text-book formula movies than to be creative. There is a still a lot of innovation and creativity though in European movies.
To be fair... the impression I get is that although the USA produces by far the MOST movies, the number of good US movies is probably about equivalent to the number of good European movies.
Comics went through a VERY lousy phase of being victims of overcommercialization the last few decades, but the Net seems to be assisting in revitalizing creativity in this art. IMHO, music is currently the art that is suffering the most from corporate strangulation.
In short though, the answer is yes. You aren't the only one!
Really. The information is useful, yes. Is it terrible if somebody knows my modem speed? Probably not. But for God's sake, if you are going to collect information about your clients, no matter how benign it might seem, you TELL THEM!!! (And provide an opt-out too - one that actually works, not one that ignores you and goes ahead and does it anyway, which is another annoying thing American companies seem to be doing more and more these days). Is this concept really so difficult for American companies to understand? A simple message box or checkbox optino somewhere "send Earthlink the following information on my setup". Really, if you're honest and up-front about what you're doing, most people do not mind.
More sinister than the modem info; why would they need to PGP encrypt information that they're sending about you if it was "harmless" information? Obviously they do NOT want people to know what they're sending, which should tell you right away that you do not want their software on your computer.
Don't you hate it when/. goes down just before you hit "submit"? It's not the first time it's happened to me either:(
OK, I myself was not aware of anyone who believed this. Accounts that I've read are of peadophiles trying to reform under psychological care etc. Of course, the fact that *some* believe it is OK by no means implies that *most* believe that it is OK. I wonder if anybody has tried to study this to determine, e.g. percentage-wise, how many think it is OK? This is an area that is inherently very difficult to study though, as the vast majority of people with pedophile tendencies *never* express them, not just because they realise it is wrong, but also because of the way such people are seen by society. I do remember reading of an *anonymous* survey amongst university students that showed the actual numbers of people with sexual feelings toward children to be quite high. I can't remember any numbers of references though:(. I think one should try be fair though, most of these people are not threats by any means to society, it is probably only a tiny handful of them that are so dangerous.
Hear hear. Same thing here in South Africa with the dismantling of apartheid. It's only been what, seven years? And people (local and international) question why there is still such an imbalance. Nobody seriously contests though that it was a dumb idea:) OK - there are quite a few die-hard right-wingers who do. But most people see them for the brainwashed morons that they are, so they don't swing too much weight around here.
In the States, it's taken nearly a hundred years to get from "women getting the vote" to "it looks like there might even be a woman US president in the foreseeable future". American's official racism policies were dismantled about 40 years ago or so, and racism is still fairly well ingrained in the US system, and I doubt we'll see even the possibility of a black American president for the next 50 years. But I believe it will happen, and it will be no great shocker to the people then when it does. These things just take time.
I believe the problem is that most people suck at long-term thinking. They expect results *now*. Like many South African blacks who complain that their people still aren't as super-rich as local whites (which isn't really true, whites aren't "super rich", on average SA whites are worse off than average USA whites) Due to the lack of education, many don't understand economics etc very well (not that I do) but they seem to think that simply placing (unskilled) blacks into the same positions that were occupied by (skilled) whites will somehow result in lots of wealth. I can understand that from their position it probably looked like white people were rich simply because they were lucky/priviledged and/or because of apartheid. These people are now starting to learn that it also takes skills as well as a lot of hard work. Existing wealth dries up *very* quickly without skills and hard work to maintain it. Nonetheless things are going relatively well here and the economy is (I believe) in relatively good shape (seems to be getting better).
Fiber ("fibre") optics, England. CD-ROM, Netherlands/Japan. A-bomb, America, but vast majority of physicists non-American. Any more?
It also seems to me that many things that were invented in the USA were invented by people from elsewhere in the world who were researching in the USA. The USA seems to provide a good climate for research. I don't think that Americans in general are any more (or less) inventive than people in other developed nations.
The east notwithstanding, the German economy is actually in pretty good shape at the moment.
"It doesn't mean that MS has backdoors in its code; rather the *rumor* that such things exist is the perfect reason for the German's to use software from their country."
Uh, I'm certainly no security expert, but even I can recognize the most basic principles of trust in a system. There does not even need to have been a rumour of backdoors - the more basic principle is that you're using a system that you simply DO NOT KNOW can be trusted, in an application where complete trust is imperative. The fact is, Germany simply has no way of knowing if MS systems can be trusted, and if you are the person responsible for implementing security in such a sensitive system, and you choose systems whose trustworthiness is inherently unknown, you should have your ass fired on the spot. The fact that the US goverment has spying backdoors in most major communications technologies exported from the states certainly should tell you that MS systems most likely *can't* be trusted. But even without this background knowledge, you know that the MS system is less than 100% trustable. When you absolutely need 100% trustable, then anything less cannot be accepted.
You do have a point, and I'm sure that part of the reasoning is to encourage the use and development of home-grown stuff. But those "security concerns" are more than just a useful excuse for this - they are probably very valid concerns too.
Our company used to be next door to a local Peanut company (not in the US BTW). This is a small company, with maybe 10 or 20 people, and not exactly cutting-edge or anything like that. I was quite surprised when I learned that their phone lines had actually been bugged (about a year ago, by competitors). Really, if even a small Peanut company in an *apparently* mild competitive climate has such problems, I find it difficult to imagine this stuff not happening at multi-billion dollar global corporations like Boeing. I would be fairly surprised actually if it hadn't happened.
Interesting article. By the sounds of it, instead of bribes, the US spies so they can blackmail - "we caught your company taking bribes from such-and-such European company - we'll be quiet about it, of course, if you provide such-and-such US company with some major contracts":)
What a joke. Seriously, where do Americans get this arrogant idea that they are the world's only technological innovators? Do they teach it in US schools or something? Many major technological advancements (such as fiber optics, CD ROM's) were done in UK/Europe/Japan.
The guy implies that the two times that they were caught are the only two times they ever spied. Quite laughable. Then goes on to explain how great America's economic policies are (which explains why the US has never had an economic depression, right?). Anyway, who appointed the USA as the police of world economic corruption? I can't remember anyone doing so. Isn't it kind of like the pot calling the kettle black anyway? I mean, nobody in their right minds would even imply that US business is free of bribery and corruption. How do such narrow-minded bigots get appointed in such high positions?
That is the line between being a mindless follower in a religion like Scientology
Everything you say would be fine and well if people actually thought about their religions and the things that were going on. Unfortunately, many major religions (especially Christianity) deliberately teach its followers not to think (i.e. to be "mindless followers"). They must simply 'have faith' and just 'accept' everything that they are taught. This is pursued doggedly as a fundamental part of the religion. The result is a large mass of people who are very easily controllable - they'll just follow their leaders. This is never good, it's either bad (if the leaders are corrupt), or it is neutral (if the leaders are "good" people). You might be thinking "if the leaders are good people then surely it is a good thing" - but I don't think so - because if the leaders are good people, then not thinking has no positive benefit, since being able to think for oneself does not prevent a follower from being a good person also.
So why should a major religion like Christianity teach its people to be mindless followers? What benefit is it to the religion? People who can think for themselves are quite capable of being good Christians and following Jesus. So why not teach people to think for themselves, and allow the attractiveness of the religion itself to lead them to make up their minds, rather than having their minds made up by subversion/brainwashing? I turned my car radio onto one of the more religous stations here in South Africa the other day, and some woman was going on about some effort to get small children as heavily brainwashed from as young as possible (not her words obviously) but her words were approximately 'I can't stress how important it is get them from a really young age' (we're talking about age 6 to 10, thereabouts) and she literally sounded worried about the fact that if kids aren't brainwashed into Christianity by about age 10, then there is very little hope of ever getting them onto the 'straight and narrow' path).
What I'm trying to say is that if a religion was a good, noble, "makes-sense" religion, then you could easily allow people to think for themselves and they would still follow your religion (and on the plus side, when the religious leaders become corrupt, you end up with a lot of people who are actually capable of detecting the corruption). Clearly Christianity fails to do this - the majority of Christians either (a) are really only "sunday Christians" only, or (b) are blind, unthinking mindless followers. I say rather teach people to question their religion doggedly? If a religion made any sense to begin with, then it would actually hold up to any amount of questioning. Christianity fails to hold up to even rudimentary questioning, thus its followers have to be continually reminded that they must not question and must not "test the Lord your God", or they'll end up frying for eternity (what is scarier than that?)
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Did you even read the post I was replying to? Holy shit, *wake up*.
OK .. just want to understand this .. being "cool"/"interesting" is about having a one-dimensional mentality concerned only with the next self-indulgent, predictable alcohol-induced stupor and lame, predictable alcohol-induced "conversation", whereas being "dorky" involves experiencing a wide range of all the amazing, unusual things that the universe has to offer. Am I understanding this right? I mean, I'm trying to be "cool" and all, but I guess I just don't get it. To recap then, if I spend my entire life thinking and talking only about shoes and beer, and remaining in an ignorant stupor about even the most basic workings of the world I live in and interact with every day, I'll be "cool" then? If I blindly listen to whatever manufacture "music" huge corporations are hyping today, I too can be "cool"? If I wear the brands and logos that huge corporations tell me to wear, I'll be "cool"?
Basically, as I understand it, if I decide to have a mind of my own, and spend my life experiencing and learning about as much as possible of the world I live in, I'll be "dorky". But if I decide to never think, to do what society tells me to do, to buy what corporations tell me to buy, and spend my life listening to the same lame meaningless repetitive conversations over and over again till I die, I'll be "cool".
Sounds great. Sign me up.
It's fine and well to expect different levels of support. But what if you aren't particularly interested in the support? If you know you're quite capable of setting up your Win2K machine as a web server, stuff the support. You know the machine can do it, so why fork out a whole lot of extra $$$ for the "server edition"? The crux of the issue is that the "workstation edition" is *deliberately crippled*. They have deliberately added extra code to (for example) limit the maximum number of incoming TCP connections.
This is more than just a case of the server edition being "more optimized". It's a case of you being forced to buy the more expensive edition through deliberately crippling the workstation edition.
Shouldn't you be allowed to at least make the choice? If you're going to buy and you dont want support, then you should have some choice in what you buy. Your idea that you are definitely going to want support is completely bizarre to me. Support is not some intrinsic part of the product, and should never be. Support is something optional that you pay extra for that gives some people a comforting feeling that if the system messes up they have someone to phone that'll fix everything up. In reality "support" doesn't work that way though. Why should the "tech support" be worked into the price of the product? Why should I pay more for it just because somebody else wants to be able to phone someone when they don't know how to install a network printer or configure the web server or something?
Why not just charge a flat price for the OS (all those optional extras and configuration tools can be selected via amazing things called "checkboxes" when you install the system) and then charge extra differing amounts for differing levels of support? Exactly like RedHat in fact. One set of installation media, with an option on startup "server" or "workstation" install. No crippling needed, and if you want lots of support, pay for it. As for "optimizations in the software", well, once again these should be configurable via those amazing "checkboxes", "radio buttons" and "configuration tools". In NT you can dynamically select "optimize for background processes" for example. There is no absolute rule in the universe that each set of "optimizations" can only be fixed to one particular set of installation media. Thats ridiculous - the only time this happens is if the company designing deliberately goes out of their way to limit the options available to clients, which is exactly what happens with MS.
With the optimizations I would expect a desktop version to be shipped with most daemons off
You seem to be under the impression that daemons are turned off by the manufacturer on the installation CD itself when they burn the CD. Please. It is the easiest thing in the world to select which daemons should be installed and/or disabled by default when installing a system based on what the user wants. I can only assume that you've have never installed any RedHat system released in the last 2 years.
I think your recipe is slightly flawed. If it sends to "everyone in the address book", it is very likely to get noticed very very quickly. Thus people would have ample time to react, given the "few days" indicated in (2). I would design it to only e-mail a small number of people in the address book.
For similar reasons to above, I would eliminate 3, as it would raise alarm bells straight away. It would literally be international news before the "few days" had even passed. Rather keep the worm as quiet and subtle as possible, so that most victims aren't even aware when it comes time for they payload to be activated.
Very very very true. When I used to work 8+ hours a day DirectX stuff on Win98, it was very uncommon for me to have to press the ol' reset button less than 2 or 3 times a day. It did not influence my demeanour in a very positive manner. But when bitching about how crap it is to some other people I'd often get replies along the lines of "jeez you must be doing something wrong because my PC doesn't crash nearly so much". Upon thinking about it, I realised that these people used their PC's only a few hours a day, and also did not run very intensive applications (e.g. a bit of word processing here and there, maybe some web browsing + email, some game playing etc). I've thankfully now shifted my development over to (almost) primarily Win2K. And what a pleasure it is. Win9X is dogshit, no doubt about it. "Pulsating screaming hatred" pretty much hits the nail on the head.
I remember noticing an invalid IP (above 300 IIRC) in "The Net" (Sandra Bullock). Haven't seen Antitrust.
I think that as available bandwidth increases, even most of those "most users" you speak of will learn to use it more. You'll probably see lots more streaming video etc, streaming video will get bigger, higher quality. It is that way now (lots of little files) mainly because it is still too slow to be anything more. I'm not saying its going to be *better* of course, all it probably will mean will be bigger, higher image/audio quality streaming *adverts* and streaming *crap*. Probably also lots more file sharing going on (mp3s and specifically whole movies probably in the not too distant future will become very common to copy). More game playing as well.
Hmm .. now that you mention it, even now only a relatively small percentage of people even copy much music online. You're probably right, the majority of people (+/- 60%) are probably always going to be relatively low-bandwidth users. More for the rest of us.
Uh, that was *my* point - the guy basically said that the ones that have to travel longer propagate *faster*. Read a little more carefully next time.
This problem you refer to is only if you're talking about lots of little files. DNS lookups normally happen only once though for a web site, connection establishment is (IIRC in HTTP) per file. But if you're transferring a *big* file (e.g. > 1MB) then that overhead quickly becomes insignifant, as it happens once at the beginning and then file transfer begins - *then* the bandwidth really starts to help, as the only latency you have left is your ping to the server you're downloading from. Thats not bad with fiber, LAN etc (a couple of milliseconds maybe), but modems are pretty crap, they introduce about 100 ms of latency outright.
All we're saying here is that Fiber-To-The-Curb isn't very useful if all you're going to be doing is a lot of interactive web-browsing. Well of course yes then, but nobody was touting FTTC as an ultimate solution for web-browsing to begin with. FTTC is powerful specifically because it opens up the realistic possibility of widespread downloading/streaming of *big* files (e.g. music, movies etc).
which causes the higher-index modes to propagate faster than lower modes
Wouldn't a 'higher mode' ray take longer to reach the other end - wouldn't the zig-zagging from internal refraction cause it to have to travel a longer *distance* than single mode, which just goes "straight"? Sorry if this is a stupid question, this stuff is probably over my head.
Oh for Gods sake, I wasnt that pissed, it was just a bit of hyperbole. It was late, I was tired and thirsty, I just wanted to get my drink and go off to bed, I wasn't in the mood to argue anyway, and places were closing up. For flip sakes, where the hell do you get the idea that I expect everyone to think the same way I do? That was the entire point of my flipping post, words having not quite the same meaning. Sheesh but you overreact. Get a grip. The tone of my post wasn't 'angry', it was just a simple, light, silly anecdote.
You haven't been to a LAN, have you?
I find it pretty annoying actually. I live in South Africa, we didn't have Pepsi here for about a decade because they left to show their disapproval of apartheid. (Of course, they've since tried to make a comeback here, but have failed. The irony of this is that although they left to show support for the cause of the south african black man, the south african black man now drinks Coke).
Aanyway, I was in London last year, and I felt like a Coke, so I walked into a KFC. I only saw a Pepsi machine, so I wasn't sure if they had Coke, so I asked the girl behind the counter "Do you have Coke?". "Yes". "Are you sure have *Coke*?". "Yes". "I'll have a *coke* please". She proceeds to fill me a cup of Pepsi. I was pretty pissed.
I was flying back from Germany last year too, and I asked the hostess on Air France for a Coke. She gives me a Pepsi. AAARGH!!
This idea that Pepsi can be called Coke is quite unusual to me.
It is unlikely I will win the lottery. Is it possible? Of course.
It is unreasonable to reject the possibility that anything with a non-zero probability of happening will happen. Take a statistics course. Learn the difference between "unlikely" and "impossible".
If we really are descended from monkeys, how come we don't all enjoy swinging from trees, eating bananas and mindless copulation with the closest memeber of either sex ?
What are you talking about, I enjoy all of the above! You should try these things sometime.
Now piss off, or I'll throw faeces at you.
Not normally one to feed the trolls but what the heck :)
Anyway, Man is the most pathetic, sick, twisted, vile creature to ever walk this earth, our actions (from fun everyday rape, murder, torture, child molestation to not so everyday hiroshima, jewish holocaust etc) prove that beyond a doubt. We ourselves are the surest proof that there is no God: *not one* of the Gods, as they are described in any of our religions, could have produced anything so vile. I for one would not want to claim "credit" (responsibility) for having created Man if I had been Man's creator. I would deny everything :)
In a way I feel sorry for the studios. Their movies suck so much that they can't even get people to create genuine fan sites. Their movies are so crap that they have to pay people (and big bucks too) to pretend to be fans. How desparate can you get? Its a little like those small-time band members who pay schoolgirls to clamour around them and pretend to like them.
I have this mental image of a group of aging execs in expensive suits gathered around in a large boardroom of a big company, all with very worried and frustrated expressions wondering "why don't people watch our movies any more!?!?" (theater sales have dwindled in recent years), and desparately trying to come up with every possible idea they can to get people interested in their movies - but not one of them ever even thinks to suggest the most obvious one: make better movies.
Movies are dumbed down to the lowest common denominator
Dumbing down of movies and TV shows seems to mainly be an American phenomenon. I think it's probably easier to make text-book formula movies than to be creative. There is a still a lot of innovation and creativity though in European movies.
To be fair ... the impression I get is that although the USA produces by far the MOST movies, the number of good US movies is probably about equivalent to the number of good European movies.
Comics went through a VERY lousy phase of being victims of overcommercialization the last few decades, but the Net seems to be assisting in revitalizing creativity in this art. IMHO, music is currently the art that is suffering the most from corporate strangulation.
In short though, the answer is yes. You aren't the only one!
Really. The information is useful, yes. Is it terrible if somebody knows my modem speed? Probably not. But for God's sake, if you are going to collect information about your clients, no matter how benign it might seem, you TELL THEM!!! (And provide an opt-out too - one that actually works, not one that ignores you and goes ahead and does it anyway, which is another annoying thing American companies seem to be doing more and more these days). Is this concept really so difficult for American companies to understand? A simple message box or checkbox optino somewhere "send Earthlink the following information on my setup". Really, if you're honest and up-front about what you're doing, most people do not mind.
More sinister than the modem info; why would they need to PGP encrypt information that they're sending about you if it was "harmless" information? Obviously they do NOT want people to know what they're sending, which should tell you right away that you do not want their software on your computer.
Don't you hate it when /. goes down just before you hit "submit"? It's not the first time it's happened to me either :(
OK, I myself was not aware of anyone who believed this. Accounts that I've read are of peadophiles trying to reform under psychological care etc. Of course, the fact that *some* believe it is OK by no means implies that *most* believe that it is OK. I wonder if anybody has tried to study this to determine, e.g. percentage-wise, how many think it is OK? This is an area that is inherently very difficult to study though, as the vast majority of people with pedophile tendencies *never* express them, not just because they realise it is wrong, but also because of the way such people are seen by society. I do remember reading of an *anonymous* survey amongst university students that showed the actual numbers of people with sexual feelings toward children to be quite high. I can't remember any numbers of references though :(. I think one should try be fair though, most of these people are not threats by any means to society, it is probably only a tiny handful of them that are so dangerous.
Hear hear. Same thing here in South Africa with the dismantling of apartheid. It's only been what, seven years? And people (local and international) question why there is still such an imbalance. Nobody seriously contests though that it was a dumb idea :) OK - there are quite a few die-hard right-wingers who do. But most people see them for the brainwashed morons that they are, so they don't swing too much weight around here.
In the States, it's taken nearly a hundred years to get from "women getting the vote" to "it looks like there might even be a woman US president in the foreseeable future". American's official racism policies were dismantled about 40 years ago or so, and racism is still fairly well ingrained in the US system, and I doubt we'll see even the possibility of a black American president for the next 50 years. But I believe it will happen, and it will be no great shocker to the people then when it does. These things just take time.
I believe the problem is that most people suck at long-term thinking. They expect results *now*. Like many South African blacks who complain that their people still aren't as super-rich as local whites (which isn't really true, whites aren't "super rich", on average SA whites are worse off than average USA whites) Due to the lack of education, many don't understand economics etc very well (not that I do) but they seem to think that simply placing (unskilled) blacks into the same positions that were occupied by (skilled) whites will somehow result in lots of wealth. I can understand that from their position it probably looked like white people were rich simply because they were lucky/priviledged and/or because of apartheid. These people are now starting to learn that it also takes skills as well as a lot of hard work. Existing wealth dries up *very* quickly without skills and hard work to maintain it. Nonetheless things are going relatively well here and the economy is (I believe) in relatively good shape (seems to be getting better).
Fiber ("fibre") optics, England. CD-ROM, Netherlands/Japan. A-bomb, America, but vast majority of physicists non-American. Any more?
It also seems to me that many things that were invented in the USA were invented by people from elsewhere in the world who were researching in the USA. The USA seems to provide a good climate for research. I don't think that Americans in general are any more (or less) inventive than people in other developed nations.
The east notwithstanding, the German economy is actually in pretty good shape at the moment.
"It doesn't mean that MS has backdoors in its code; rather the *rumor* that such things exist is the perfect reason for the German's to use software from their country."
Uh, I'm certainly no security expert, but even I can recognize the most basic principles of trust in a system. There does not even need to have been a rumour of backdoors - the more basic principle is that you're using a system that you simply DO NOT KNOW can be trusted, in an application where complete trust is imperative. The fact is, Germany simply has no way of knowing if MS systems can be trusted, and if you are the person responsible for implementing security in such a sensitive system, and you choose systems whose trustworthiness is inherently unknown, you should have your ass fired on the spot. The fact that the US goverment has spying backdoors in most major communications technologies exported from the states certainly should tell you that MS systems most likely *can't* be trusted. But even without this background knowledge, you know that the MS system is less than 100% trustable. When you absolutely need 100% trustable, then anything less cannot be accepted.
You do have a point, and I'm sure that part of the reasoning is to encourage the use and development of home-grown stuff. But those "security concerns" are more than just a useful excuse for this - they are probably very valid concerns too.
Our company used to be next door to a local Peanut company (not in the US BTW). This is a small company, with maybe 10 or 20 people, and not exactly cutting-edge or anything like that. I was quite surprised when I learned that their phone lines had actually been bugged (about a year ago, by competitors). Really, if even a small Peanut company in an *apparently* mild competitive climate has such problems, I find it difficult to imagine this stuff not happening at multi-billion dollar global corporations like Boeing. I would be fairly surprised actually if it hadn't happened.
Interesting article. By the sounds of it, instead of bribes, the US spies so they can blackmail - "we caught your company taking bribes from such-and-such European company - we'll be quiet about it, of course, if you provide such-and-such US company with some major contracts" :)
What a joke. Seriously, where do Americans get this arrogant idea that they are the world's only technological innovators? Do they teach it in US schools or something? Many major technological advancements (such as fiber optics, CD ROM's) were done in UK/Europe/Japan.
The guy implies that the two times that they were caught are the only two times they ever spied. Quite laughable. Then goes on to explain how great America's economic policies are (which explains why the US has never had an economic depression, right?). Anyway, who appointed the USA as the police of world economic corruption? I can't remember anyone doing so. Isn't it kind of like the pot calling the kettle black anyway? I mean, nobody in their right minds would even imply that US business is free of bribery and corruption. How do such narrow-minded bigots get appointed in such high positions?
That is the line between being a mindless follower in a religion like Scientology
Everything you say would be fine and well if people actually thought about their religions and the things that were going on. Unfortunately, many major religions (especially Christianity) deliberately teach its followers not to think (i.e. to be "mindless followers"). They must simply 'have faith' and just 'accept' everything that they are taught. This is pursued doggedly as a fundamental part of the religion. The result is a large mass of people who are very easily controllable - they'll just follow their leaders. This is never good, it's either bad (if the leaders are corrupt), or it is neutral (if the leaders are "good" people). You might be thinking "if the leaders are good people then surely it is a good thing" - but I don't think so - because if the leaders are good people, then not thinking has no positive benefit, since being able to think for oneself does not prevent a follower from being a good person also.
So why should a major religion like Christianity teach its people to be mindless followers? What benefit is it to the religion? People who can think for themselves are quite capable of being good Christians and following Jesus. So why not teach people to think for themselves, and allow the attractiveness of the religion itself to lead them to make up their minds, rather than having their minds made up by subversion/brainwashing? I turned my car radio onto one of the more religous stations here in South Africa the other day, and some woman was going on about some effort to get small children as heavily brainwashed from as young as possible (not her words obviously) but her words were approximately 'I can't stress how important it is get them from a really young age' (we're talking about age 6 to 10, thereabouts) and she literally sounded worried about the fact that if kids aren't brainwashed into Christianity by about age 10, then there is very little hope of ever getting them onto the 'straight and narrow' path).
What I'm trying to say is that if a religion was a good, noble, "makes-sense" religion, then you could easily allow people to think for themselves and they would still follow your religion (and on the plus side, when the religious leaders become corrupt, you end up with a lot of people who are actually capable of detecting the corruption). Clearly Christianity fails to do this - the majority of Christians either (a) are really only "sunday Christians" only, or (b) are blind, unthinking mindless followers. I say rather teach people to question their religion doggedly? If a religion made any sense to begin with, then it would actually hold up to any amount of questioning. Christianity fails to hold up to even rudimentary questioning, thus its followers have to be continually reminded that they must not question and must not "test the Lord your God", or they'll end up frying for eternity (what is scarier than that?)