Er, so you're saying that 9-11 is not linked in any way with the Iraq war and that Saddam did not sponsor terrorism?
No, Hussein did not himself sponsor the attacks on 9-11, and if people believe that then they're probably wrong.
But they're wrong only in the details. There's no question that the Baathists in Iraq were willing to do accomodate terrorist groups or sponsor suicide attacks. It's also clear that the decision to finally act on years of cease-fire violations and remove Hussein from power came from a renewed desire to get rid of violent tyrannical governments that sponsor terrorist groups.
Haha, the UN embezzled money and the European press was bought and paid for by Saddam? I can't believe your Fox News conspiracy theories got modded up!
Those dastardly Fox News conspirators! And apparently they now control the Associated Press too!
The UN collected a commision on every barrel of Iraqi oil handled under the UN administered Oil-for-food program. That comes to something like $12 billion dollars total. But strangely enough, the money that was supposed to go toward humanitarian aid in Iraq never seems accompished much aid. In fact, no one seems quite sure what it was used for. How odd. The UN has denied reporters access to the records that show how that money was spent. Embezzelment? Well, a $12 billon slush fund, secret accounting records, huge piles of cash found in Iraq, and a documented history of fraud in other UN aid programs suggests that the UN probably didn't lose it under the couch cushions.
I don't think the European press was "bought and paid for" (nor is that what the original poster claimed) but I don't think most of the journalists in Baghdad have anything to be proud of. They reported only what Hussein's government let them report, and they didn't try very hard to do otherwise. CNN, for one, has admitted that they chose their stories to keep the Iraqi government happy in return for being allowed to report from the country. And Al Jazeera is a trustworthy news outlet in the same sense that professional TV wrestlers are distinguished sportsmen.
Except, of course, when it comes to reporting unpleasant truths about themselves. That's when they develop a sudden desire for cautious discourse and great concern for the possible mental state of certain reporters accused of falsifying their stories. Being a government media monopoly is such fun.
That's silly. The legal justification of these fines isn't to deter people, it's to compensate the RIAA for the monetary damage they've supposedly suffered through these illegal activities. The intrinsic value the RIAA attaches to those 50 tracks should be exactly the same regardless if the person breaking the law a 12 year old girl in public housing or Milton M. Gotrocks, Esq. downloading songs from his penthouse apartment.
If the value they choose to fine people is some random number based then I'd say that would substantially weaken their case.
Duplication of physical goods requires raw materials (paper & toner, or blank disks/tapes) and has an inherent cost in both time and money.... In the digital world it is just bits. I can make 10,000 copies of a music file for a net 0 cost -- my cable modem is a flat rate and my PC can serve files in the background without interfering with what I am doing.
No doubt that the time and materials cost to make a physical copy are greater, but the time and materials required for a digital copy are certainly not zero.
You may be paying a flat rate for your cable modem, but that's just the particular financial agreement in place at the moment, not a law of nature. You're really still paying for the bandwidth, the network maintenance, and so forth, it's just not immediately apparent. You've also got your own time to consider, as well as the cost of the machine, storage, and even electricity.
Your total cost to support a file-sharing setup may be negligable under your present circumstances, but scale things up a little and I think that would quickly change.
Data transfer is cheap, but it ain't free. Slashdot has been instrumental in helping many web sites discover this fact.
We came pretty darn close to losing Apollo 13 in space, though.
Not that that comparing these stats really means anything. People die on tugboats and on cruise ships, but comparing those two numbers won't tell you which is "better". Space is dangerous. We can make it safer, but some people are going to die. It's about time we get past that.
1) It is not as though "hard" science-fiction has always had mass appeal. It has always had a specialized genre feeling. What passes for science fiction movies today are generally no more than shoot-em-up's in space. More like futuristic action. This is what appeals to the movie-going audience. "Hard" science fiction is too "hard" (must think...hurts brain) and is probably not profitable.
Don't diss the audience, man. Before a movie can be good SF it first has to be a good movie. The problem with translating hard SF into a movie is that it tends to be very expository. They establish the rules and then play by them, but unless you want to leave people behind you have to explain a lot of stuff for it to make sense. A typical hard SF novel, Niven's Ringworld for example, spends a lot of time explaining how this works and that works, and why this happens but that doesn't happen. You can skip it and ask people to take it all on faith, but that seems like cheating.
It's hard to do that in a movie. The easiest solution, long talky sections stuck in between the action, not only ruin the pace but are usually hard to follow. It can be done, but it isn't easy. Since most movies can barely manage a coherent plot when they're set in the real world, I suspect that most of today's moviemakers are ill-equipped for that challenge.
3) The idea of a "bright, happy, future" seems to be relegated to naivety and a cynical "dystopia" seems to have set in (thus apocalyptic movies, etc), and this view seems to be pushed by many media outlets (i.e. bad news sells). We apparantly will pollute ourselves to death in 50 years, the world will be completely controlled by corporations, etc.
Yes, that is a popular perception, but it's probably wrong. We don't live in The Jetsons, but it isn't 1984, either. (No, it really, really isn't.) A book set in Horrible Corporatized Polluted Future #7,845 is as much a lazy hack as the most naive utopian fantasy. Knowing that, what self-respecting writer would continue to churn them out?
Older SF really wasn't all cheerfulness and smiles, either. Yeah, we might have moon colonies and space stations to look forward to, but we also had alien invasions, nuclear wars, natural disasters, monsters created by careless science, cultural decay, planetwide plagues, genocide, etc. Yet somehow or another the authors all managed to talk about these issues while still writing good stories that people enjoyed reading. Go figure.
It may make social commentary, or pose interesting problems, but very rarely in sci-fi is there an archetypal hero, and that this is something that people really crave in today's society... a person (even if they're fictional) that a reader can admire, and be inspired by.
Well said, and I think that's a very good point. But I think it's imporant to note that the appeal of heroic figures is hardly something new or unique to today's society. The problem isn't that society changed, it's that many modern writers decided that there was no room in "serious" writing for childish concepts as good and evil. In doing so they lost their core readership, real people who immediately knew that something very important was missing from these stories.
I began to lose interest in modern SF when the good guys and the bad guys were all replaced by characters who were narcassistic, amoral jerks. And the rest of the world just seemed to be a tedious backdrop constructed purely to justify their nacissitic, amoral jerkiness. Why would I want to read about that?
I don't mean to say that it all must be black-and-white. SF has always had it's share of antiheroes, after all, or characters who were ultimately misguided. But the characters have to appeal to me on some level or I'm not interested.
Patents were invented to protect the small inventor that can't afford to produce his invention. The idea is that, once patented, he can secure funding to produce his invention. To require an implementation before granting the patent would be to turn this upside down.
Not really. Patents were created to provide any inventor with a means of protecting his idea for a limited period of time in exchange for sharing all his secrets with the world. The Constitution doesn't really care whether you're a "small inventor", whatever that means.
FYI, this is not a radical new idea. From 1790 until 1880, every single patent had to be accompanied by a working model, and it certainly didn't seem to hamper technological progress. Models would present practical problems with some physical inventions using modern technologies, but I see no reason why those seeking software patents shouldn't be required to create and demonstrate a specific, working implementation.
Right now, in jobs like this, it's learning who you can blow off and who you can't, who you can string along and who you can't - lots of people will just not say anything, and some people will bitch all the time. Those are the ones that get their stuff taken care of. It's the only way to do it. In this case, the timid get blown off. It's a horrible thing to do, some of the nicest people being ignored because they are not being difficult.
I agree with everything you said except that paragraph. When you think of what you're doing as "blowing people off" then you're already justifying bad behavior and setting yourself up for serious problems.
If a vital piece of content from the CFO has to go up on the web site today then it doesn't matter if the the CFO is a shrinking violet afraid to bother the busy webmaster. You can blow him off and defrag your whiny supervisor's hard drive instead, but the consequences aren't going to be pleasant for anyone. Sometimes you've got to take a little heat today in order to avoid being burned at the stake tomorrow.
Some projects really are inherently more important than others. It's up to a responsible employee to understand as best they can what's going on, and it's up to their supervisors to keep them informed. Sadly, most organizations have absolutely horrible internal communication.
In a well managed organization priorities are understood and documented, so it's not you saying no - it's The Rules that say no. And if you can build enough flexibility into the rules to accomdate special situations then all the better. But remember that every poorly chosen exception will weaken your ability to stand firm in the future.
In fact, there are only 51 (yes, Fifty One) People in the world who link to www.msn.com. www.MSNBC fares even worse with 7 (SEVEN) links to it. Compare this to www.cnn.com with 74,000 links.
Are you seriously claiming that that only seven people in the world currently have links to MSNBC? Doesn't that seem just a tiny bit unlikely? When you get impossible results like that it's usually a clue that you need to rethink your methodology.
For example, a Google search for the "msnbc.com" domain, excluding results within the MSNBC domain itself, returned 145,000 results. That seems like a more reasonable result, I think.
The real irony is how calm everyone is, how they are seem to have a "oh well, can't help it, no reason to freak out" attitude even while the news reporters are almost trying to get them to.
MSNBC, CNN, and Fox weren't that bad from what I saw. Once it was clear that the situation was just a big power failure and not an attack of some sort everything was pretty calm.
By contrast, BBC and CBC radio were reporting that the cities were in "chaos", even as TV showed people having block parties, strangers arranging carpooling to get each other home, and people calmly waiting to use pay phones. Yet another instance of just plain bad reporting.
There are no innovations. ALL knowledge is based on prior knowlegde
All humans are genetically related to all other humans, but that doesn't mean that you're my mother. The real world isn't a game of Civilization where new discoveries magically appear in your technology tree at predefined moments.
Possessing certain knowledge does nothing for you if you don't know how to apply that knowledge to do something useful. Knowledge just sits there - it takes people to innovate, and in order for people to do so they have to have the skills and the incentive to invest their time, money, and energy.
Now the question we need to ask ourselves, and especially the government is do we really want the advancement of our society to be hindered by monetary interests of the greedy?
The question you may want to ask yourself is why people and businesses would spend huge amounts of money to research, develop, and test new ideas and inventions to advance society when a lazier company or individual could simply steal the fruits of their labor and present them as their own without any consequences. Monetary interests are the reason for progress, not a hinderance.
It woulden't be so bad if Windows 2000 had a servacable firewall - there's one hidden in the managment console thingy.
It's really pathetetic that in the year 2000 - ALL of the free unixes had decent, available firewalls, and most of them fit under 60 Megs.
And I'd wager that the average desktop user would have a far more difficult time sucessfully installing and configuring a Linux-based firewall than they would have activating the "hidden" Windows 2000 thingy. Or they could just download ZoneAlarm or any of the other free, decent Windows firewalls.
Yes, but Saddam is also known to have played host to leaders of various terrorist groups and their training camps, including those with ties to Bin Laden. Neither seemed to care much about the other's religious convictions or lack thereof.
Bin Laden's schitck was to play to his fanatical followers, and he'd say whatever was necessary to do so. Saddam's was more pragmatic but just as calculated. What Bin Laden and Hussein said about one another in public statements means little, really.
That's mostly due to the anglo-saxon neurosis that makes them believe that everything coming from the State is bad. This has the unfortunate effect of painting State workers (civil servants) in a bad light, assuming by default that they are incompetent.
It's not "neurotic" at all. The reason that most civil servants are viewed as incompetent is because a large number of them in first-line positions are, in fact, incompetent.
This isn't because incompetent people are attracted to those jobs or because managers deliberate hire incompetent people, it's because it's easier for incompetent or unproductive people to stay in those jobs if they are hired. Or for people to hang on to a job that shouldn't even exist anymore. Entropy in action.
Over time the ratio inevitably tilts, and the insular environment of a government beuracracy makes it extremely difficult to fix the problem by hiring and firing or even retraining. The lack of any negative consequences removes any real incentive to improve performance or services. Good workers realize that they're outnumbered, get frustrated, and leave. Wash, rinse, repeat.
I say "seemingly" because the private sector makes as much if not more mistakes than the public sector, but by it's own virtue of privateness, is much better apt at hiding those mistakes than the public sector which, by definition, does things publicly and thus is under the constant spotlight.
I doubt it. Serious mistakes and misdeeds of private corporations are likely to cost someone money and/or hurt a company's competitiveness in the marketplacce. Anything that costs money is quite likely to come to the attention of management and (if the company is publically traded) the stockholders. If you don't think that kind of accountability actually matters then you haven't been reading the papers lately.
What makes this particular story seem so exceptional is that it is a years-long case brought to the attention of the public. Most public-sector screwups don't make the news, and, when they do, the entrenched systemic problems aren't even noticed by the reporters, much less by federal judges.
Then those folks will buy their goods somewhere else, and if enough people buy somewhere else then the company will suffer in the marketplace and be forced to change their policies or go out of business. Problem solved.
Sure, I know some people (from elsewhere) that got jobs reasonably quick, but that's because they KNEW SOMEONE on the inside, or had some high connections. I'm not being bitter, they've admitted it to me.
Oh my God! They KNEW SOMEONE! That's not exactly the earthshaking admission you seem to think it is, friend.
Say I have three equally qualified applicants for the same job, virtually identical as far as their resumes go.
From personal experience I know Applicant 1 to be a highly motivated, adaptable employee who works well with both non-technical and technical users. His coding skills are current and his work is widely admired.
Let's say that I also know Applicant 2. Unfortuantely I know him as an unreliable and frequently absent employee. Many of the things on his resume are exaggerated or simply untrue.
Applicant 3? Never met the guy. He's qualified, but lacks any distinguishing qualities that make him preferable to Applicant 1, who's a sure thing.
Sure, if you can find the particular book that you want in the "real fucking bookstore[s]" you happen to have access to. Amazon's stock is a wee bit larger than most.
After flipping through the bookstore's copy of the book do you buy it there or do you order it online? Be honest.
I'm pretty sure the USA Constitution remains in effect for American companies even if they post a sign. Flying isn't a right, but for Americans, all the rights and freedoms in your Constiution ARE rights and cannot be ignored by American companies.
Nothing in the Constitution prohibits private companies or individuals from controlling what happens on their property. No shirt, no shoes, no service.
Besides, where in the Contitution does it say that I can't videotape someone on my own property? Or that I have to erase the videotape after a certain amount of time?
And why would a SUICIDE terrorist care if his picture is taken? It is not like he is planning on flying again. Much of the "security" measures the USA is implementing are like this - completely ineffectual, but make a nervous public feel better.
And many of the arguments about ineffectual security measures are just knee-jerk posturing by people who automatically regard any and all law enforcement or security measures as evil fascist ploys.
Knock off the straw-man arguments and think about it. Yes, it's unlikely that videotaping would discourage suicidal terrorists from killing a planeload of people. However, a videotaped record of what happened aboard a downed plane would be an invaluable aid to investigators trying to figure out what happened.
Exactly. Paranoid, spittle-spewing arguments aside, why does anyone expect privacy when driving in full view on a public street?
There's nothing that stops anyone - government agent, private detective or private citizen - from watching anything that happens in public. That's why it's public and not private.
My only worry about this is what happens if the data collected by the government falls into the wrong hands? If someone had enough information about you to know what places you went to on a regular basis, they'd have enough information to know when you're not at home (and therefore the best time to break in and steal things from your house).
Anyone who wants to know where you go on a regular basis can already discover that information, either by social engineering or simple observation.
Still, even if I'm just one guy working on my own favorite pet project which I distribute as open source, I'm going to put as much effort into making it clean, simple, aesthetically pleasing, well-designed, etc. as possible.
While many coders may automatically apply those lofty goals to their code, few seem to appreciate the need to apply the same rigor to the UI or the documentation. The underlying code may be pure poetry, but the other stuff just isn't on the radar. And even if it is, just because you can code doesn't mean you can make a decent UI, no more than the reverse.
And that's simply because of human nature. It's like cleaning house. If I *know* people are coming over and likely to see my house, I want it clean and orderly. If I *know* the reverse is true, I have less incentive to make my house immaculate.
Yeah, but profesisonals often have narrowly skewed priorities where their peers are concerned. If I'm an plumber, for example, and a bunch of my plumber friends are coming over then I'm probably going to make sure that my pipes don't leak, cause that would be embarassing. But neither I nor my friends would have any professional interest in the sink full of dirty dishes or the mildew on the shower curtain. A lot of coders seem to place UI design just a tiny step above mildew on their scale of importance.
Slashdot Mirror
Er, so you're saying that 9-11 is not linked in any way with the Iraq war and that Saddam did not sponsor terrorism?
No, Hussein did not himself sponsor the attacks on 9-11, and if people believe that then they're probably wrong.
But they're wrong only in the details. There's no question that the Baathists in Iraq were willing to do accomodate terrorist groups or sponsor suicide attacks. It's also clear that the decision to finally act on years of cease-fire violations and remove Hussein from power came from a renewed desire to get rid of violent tyrannical governments that sponsor terrorist groups.
Those dastardly Fox News conspirators! And apparently they now control the Associated Press too!
Lawmakers see abuses in Iraqi oil-for-food programs
The UN collected a commision on every barrel of Iraqi oil handled under the UN administered Oil-for-food program. That comes to something like $12 billion dollars total. But strangely enough, the money that was supposed to go toward humanitarian aid in Iraq never seems accompished much aid. In fact, no one seems quite sure what it was used for. How odd. The UN has denied reporters access to the records that show how that money was spent. Embezzelment? Well, a $12 billon slush fund, secret accounting records, huge piles of cash found in Iraq, and a documented history of fraud in other UN aid programs suggests that the UN probably didn't lose it under the couch cushions.
I don't think the European press was "bought and paid for" (nor is that what the original poster claimed) but I don't think most of the journalists in Baghdad have anything to be proud of. They reported only what Hussein's government let them report, and they didn't try very hard to do otherwise. CNN, for one, has admitted that they chose their stories to keep the Iraqi government happy in return for being allowed to report from the country. And Al Jazeera is a trustworthy news outlet in the same sense that professional TV wrestlers are distinguished sportsmen.
Except, of course, when it comes to reporting unpleasant truths about themselves. That's when they develop a sudden desire for cautious discourse and great concern for the possible mental state of certain reporters accused of falsifying their stories. Being a government media monopoly is such fun.
That's silly. The legal justification of these fines isn't to deter people, it's to compensate the RIAA for the monetary damage they've supposedly suffered through these illegal activities. The intrinsic value the RIAA attaches to those 50 tracks should be exactly the same regardless if the person breaking the law a 12 year old girl in public housing or Milton M. Gotrocks, Esq. downloading songs from his penthouse apartment.
If the value they choose to fine people is some random number based then I'd say that would substantially weaken their case.
Not quite true.
...
Duplication of physical goods requires raw materials (paper & toner, or blank disks/tapes) and has an inherent cost in both time and money.
In the digital world it is just bits. I can make 10,000 copies of a music file for a net 0 cost -- my cable modem is a flat rate and my PC can serve files in the background without interfering with what I am doing.
No doubt that the time and materials cost to make a physical copy are greater, but the time and materials required for a digital copy are certainly not zero.
You may be paying a flat rate for your cable modem, but that's just the particular financial agreement in place at the moment, not a law of nature. You're really still paying for the bandwidth, the network maintenance, and so forth, it's just not immediately apparent. You've also got your own time to consider, as well as the cost of the machine, storage, and even electricity.
Your total cost to support a file-sharing setup may be negligable under your present circumstances, but scale things up a little and I think that would quickly change.
Data transfer is cheap, but it ain't free. Slashdot has been instrumental in helping many web sites discover this fact.
We came pretty darn close to losing Apollo 13 in space, though.
Not that that comparing these stats really means anything. People die on tugboats and on cruise ships, but comparing those two numbers won't tell you which is "better". Space is dangerous. We can make it safer, but some people are going to die. It's about time we get past that.
1) It is not as though "hard" science-fiction has always had mass appeal. It has always had a specialized genre feeling. What passes for science fiction movies today are generally no more than shoot-em-up's in space. More like futuristic action. This is what appeals to the movie-going audience. "Hard" science fiction is too "hard" (must think...hurts brain) and is probably not profitable.
Don't diss the audience, man. Before a movie can be good SF it first has to be a good movie.
The problem with translating hard SF into a movie is that it tends to be very expository. They establish the rules and then play by them, but unless you want to leave people behind you have to explain a lot of stuff for it to make sense. A typical hard SF novel, Niven's Ringworld for example, spends a lot of time explaining how this works and that works, and why this happens but that doesn't happen. You can skip it and ask people to take it all on faith, but that seems like cheating.
It's hard to do that in a movie. The easiest solution, long talky sections stuck in between the action, not only ruin the pace but are usually hard to follow. It can be done, but it isn't easy. Since most movies can barely manage a coherent plot when they're set in the real world, I suspect that most of today's moviemakers are ill-equipped for that challenge.
3) The idea of a "bright, happy, future" seems to be relegated to naivety and a cynical "dystopia" seems to have set in (thus apocalyptic movies, etc), and this view seems to be pushed by many media outlets (i.e. bad news sells). We apparantly will pollute ourselves to death in 50 years, the world will be completely controlled by corporations, etc.
Yes, that is a popular perception, but it's probably wrong. We don't live in The Jetsons, but it isn't 1984, either. (No, it really, really isn't.) A book set in Horrible Corporatized Polluted Future #7,845 is as much a lazy hack as the most naive utopian fantasy. Knowing that, what self-respecting writer would continue to churn them out?
Older SF really wasn't all cheerfulness and smiles, either. Yeah, we might have moon colonies and space stations to look forward to, but we also had alien invasions, nuclear wars, natural disasters, monsters created by careless science, cultural decay, planetwide plagues, genocide, etc. Yet somehow or another the authors all managed to talk about these issues while still writing good stories that people enjoyed reading. Go figure.
It may make social commentary, or pose interesting problems, but very rarely in sci-fi is there an archetypal hero, and that this is something that people really crave in today's society... a person (even if they're fictional) that a reader can admire, and be inspired by.
Well said, and I think that's a very good point. But I think it's imporant to note that the appeal of heroic figures is hardly something new or unique to today's society. The problem isn't that society changed, it's that many modern writers decided that there was no room in "serious" writing for childish concepts as good and evil. In doing so they lost their core readership, real people who immediately knew that something very important was missing from these stories.
I began to lose interest in modern SF when the good guys and the bad guys were all replaced by characters who were narcassistic, amoral jerks. And the rest of the world just seemed to be a tedious backdrop constructed purely to justify their nacissitic, amoral jerkiness. Why would I want to read about that?
I don't mean to say that it all must be black-and-white. SF has always had it's share of antiheroes, after all, or characters who were ultimately misguided. But the characters have to appeal to me on some level or I'm not interested.
Patents were invented to protect the small inventor that can't afford to produce his invention. The idea is that, once patented, he can secure funding to produce his invention. To require an implementation before granting the patent would be to turn this upside down.
Not really. Patents were created to provide any inventor with a means of protecting his idea for a limited period of time in exchange for sharing all his secrets with the world. The Constitution doesn't really care whether you're a "small inventor", whatever that means.
FYI, this is not a radical new idea. From 1790 until 1880, every single patent had to be accompanied by a working model, and it certainly didn't seem to hamper technological progress. Models would present practical problems with some physical inventions using modern technologies, but I see no reason why those seeking software patents shouldn't be required to create and demonstrate a specific, working implementation.
Right now, in jobs like this, it's learning who you can blow off and who you can't, who you can string along and who you can't - lots of people will just not say anything, and some people will bitch all the time. Those are the ones that get their stuff taken care of. It's the only way to do it. In this case, the timid get blown off. It's a horrible thing to do, some of the nicest people being ignored because they are not being difficult.
I agree with everything you said except that paragraph. When you think of what you're doing as "blowing people off" then you're already justifying bad behavior and setting yourself up for serious problems.
If a vital piece of content from the CFO has to go up on the web site today then it doesn't matter if the the CFO is a shrinking violet afraid to bother the busy webmaster. You can blow him off and defrag your whiny supervisor's hard drive instead, but the consequences aren't going to be pleasant for anyone. Sometimes you've got to take a little heat today in order to avoid being burned at the stake tomorrow.
Some projects really are inherently more important than others. It's up to a responsible employee to understand as best they can what's going on, and it's up to their supervisors to keep them informed. Sadly, most organizations have absolutely horrible internal communication.
In a well managed organization priorities are understood and documented, so it's not you saying no - it's The Rules that say no. And if you can build enough flexibility into the rules to accomdate special situations then all the better. But remember that every poorly chosen exception will weaken your ability to stand firm in the future.
In fact, there are only 51 (yes, Fifty One) People in the world who link to www.msn.com. www.MSNBC fares even worse with 7 (SEVEN) links to it. Compare this to www.cnn.com with 74,000 links.
Are you seriously claiming that that only seven people in the world currently have links to MSNBC? Doesn't that seem just a tiny bit unlikely? When you get impossible results like that it's usually a clue that you need to rethink your methodology.
For example, a Google search for the "msnbc.com" domain, excluding results within the MSNBC domain itself, returned 145,000 results. That seems like a more reasonable result, I think.
The real irony is how calm everyone is, how they are seem to have a "oh well, can't help it, no reason to freak out" attitude even while the news reporters are almost trying to get them to.
MSNBC, CNN, and Fox weren't that bad from what I saw. Once it was clear that the situation was just a big power failure and not an attack of some sort everything was pretty calm.
By contrast, BBC and CBC radio were reporting that the cities were in "chaos", even as TV showed people having block parties, strangers arranging carpooling to get each other home, and people calmly waiting to use pay phones. Yet another instance of just plain bad reporting.
There are no innovations. ALL knowledge is based on prior knowlegde
All humans are genetically related to all other humans, but that doesn't mean that you're my mother. The real world isn't a game of Civilization where new discoveries magically appear in your technology tree at predefined moments.
Possessing certain knowledge does nothing for you if you don't know how to apply that knowledge to do something useful. Knowledge just sits there - it takes people to innovate, and in order for people to do so they have to have the skills and the incentive to invest their time, money, and energy.
Now the question we need to ask ourselves, and especially the government is do we really want the advancement of our society to be hindered by monetary interests of the greedy?
The question you may want to ask yourself is why people and businesses would spend huge amounts of money to research, develop, and test new ideas and inventions to advance society when a lazier company or individual could simply steal the fruits of their labor and present them as their own without any consequences. Monetary interests are the reason for progress, not a hinderance.
It woulden't be so bad if Windows 2000 had a servacable firewall - there's one hidden in the managment console thingy.
It's really pathetetic that in the year 2000 - ALL of the free unixes had decent, available firewalls, and most of them fit under 60 Megs.
And I'd wager that the average desktop user would have a far more difficult time sucessfully installing and configuring a Linux-based firewall than they would have activating the "hidden" Windows 2000 thingy. Or they could just download ZoneAlarm or any of the other free, decent Windows firewalls.
Yes, but Saddam is also known to have played host to leaders of various terrorist groups and their training camps, including those with ties to Bin Laden. Neither seemed to care much about the other's religious convictions or lack thereof.
Bin Laden's schitck was to play to his fanatical followers, and he'd say whatever was necessary to do so. Saddam's was more pragmatic but just as calculated. What Bin Laden and Hussein said about one another in public statements means little, really.
That's mostly due to the anglo-saxon neurosis that makes them believe that everything coming from the State is bad. This has the unfortunate effect of painting State workers (civil servants) in a bad light, assuming by default that they are incompetent.
It's not "neurotic" at all. The reason that most civil servants are viewed as incompetent is because a large number of them in first-line positions are, in fact, incompetent.
This isn't because incompetent people are attracted to those jobs or because managers deliberate hire incompetent people, it's because it's easier for incompetent or unproductive people to stay in those jobs if they are hired. Or for people to hang on to a job that shouldn't even exist anymore. Entropy in action.
Over time the ratio inevitably tilts, and the insular environment of a government beuracracy makes it extremely difficult to fix the problem by hiring and firing or even retraining. The lack of any negative consequences removes any real incentive to improve performance or services. Good workers realize that they're outnumbered, get frustrated, and leave. Wash, rinse, repeat.
I say "seemingly" because the private sector makes as much if not more mistakes than the public sector, but by it's own virtue of privateness, is much better apt at hiding those mistakes than the public sector which, by definition, does things publicly and thus is under the constant spotlight.
I doubt it. Serious mistakes and misdeeds of private corporations are likely to cost someone money and/or hurt a company's competitiveness in the marketplacce. Anything that costs money is quite likely to come to the attention of management and (if the company is publically traded) the stockholders. If you don't think that kind of accountability actually matters then you haven't been reading the papers lately.
What makes this particular story seem so exceptional is that it is a years-long case brought to the attention of the public. Most public-sector screwups don't make the news, and, when they do, the entrenched systemic problems aren't even noticed by the reporters, much less by federal judges.
Then those folks will buy their goods somewhere else, and if enough people buy somewhere else then the company will suffer in the marketplace and be forced to change their policies or go out of business. Problem solved.
Amazon's Gold Box offers and discounts for tie-in items are also examples of targeted pricing.
Sure, I know some people (from elsewhere) that got jobs reasonably quick, but that's because they KNEW SOMEONE on the inside, or had some high connections. I'm not being bitter, they've admitted it to me.
Oh my God! They KNEW SOMEONE! That's not exactly the earthshaking admission you seem to think it is, friend.
Say I have three equally qualified applicants for the same job, virtually identical as far as their resumes go.
From personal experience I know Applicant 1 to be a highly motivated, adaptable employee who works well with both non-technical and technical users. His coding skills are current and his work is widely admired.
Let's say that I also know Applicant 2. Unfortuantely I know him as an unreliable and frequently absent employee. Many of the things on his resume are exaggerated or simply untrue.
Applicant 3? Never met the guy. He's qualified, but lacks any distinguishing qualities that make him preferable to Applicant 1, who's a sure thing.
Who would you hire?
The article is from Slate, not MSN. Slate is owned my Microsoft, but the people who write for Slate have nothing to do with Microsoft's search engine.
Sure, if you can find the particular book that you want in the "real fucking bookstore[s]" you happen to have access to. Amazon's stock is a wee bit larger than most.
After flipping through the bookstore's copy of the book do you buy it there or do you order it online? Be honest.
I'm pretty sure the USA Constitution remains in effect for American companies even if they post a sign. Flying isn't a right, but for Americans, all the rights and freedoms in your Constiution ARE rights and cannot be ignored by American companies.
Nothing in the Constitution prohibits private companies or individuals from controlling what happens on their property. No shirt, no shoes, no service.
Besides, where in the Contitution does it say that I can't videotape someone on my own property? Or that I have to erase the videotape after a certain amount of time?
And why would a SUICIDE terrorist care if his picture is taken? It is not like he is planning on flying again. Much of the "security" measures the USA is implementing are like this - completely ineffectual, but make a nervous public feel better.
And many of the arguments about ineffectual security measures are just knee-jerk posturing by people who automatically regard any and all law enforcement or security measures as evil fascist ploys.
Knock off the straw-man arguments and think about it. Yes, it's unlikely that videotaping would discourage suicidal terrorists from killing a planeload of people. However, a videotaped record of what happened aboard a downed plane would be an invaluable aid to investigators trying to figure out what happened.
Yup. Wow, imagine the lunch tabs alone. Those folks at Ars are a dedicated bunch.
Exactly. Paranoid, spittle-spewing arguments aside, why does anyone expect privacy when driving in full view on a public street?
There's nothing that stops anyone - government agent, private detective or private citizen - from watching anything that happens in public. That's why it's public and not private.
My only worry about this is what happens if the data collected by the government falls into the wrong hands? If someone had enough information about you to know what places you went to on a regular basis, they'd have enough information to know when you're not at home (and therefore the best time to break in and steal things from your house).
Anyone who wants to know where you go on a regular basis can already discover that information, either by social engineering or simple observation.
Still, even if I'm just one guy working on my own favorite pet project which I distribute as open source, I'm going to put as much effort into making it clean, simple, aesthetically pleasing, well-designed, etc. as possible.
While many coders may automatically apply those lofty goals to their code, few seem to appreciate the need to apply the same rigor to the UI or the documentation. The underlying code may be pure poetry, but the other stuff just isn't on the radar. And even if it is, just because you can code doesn't mean you can make a decent UI, no more than the reverse.
And that's simply because of human nature. It's like cleaning house. If I *know* people are coming over and likely to see my house, I want it clean and orderly. If I *know* the reverse is true, I have less incentive to make my house immaculate.
Yeah, but profesisonals often have narrowly skewed priorities where their peers are concerned. If I'm an plumber, for example, and a bunch of my plumber friends are coming over then I'm probably going to make sure that my pipes don't leak, cause that would be embarassing. But neither I nor my friends would have any professional interest in the sink full of dirty dishes or the mildew on the shower curtain. A lot of coders seem to place UI design just a tiny step above mildew on their scale of importance.