If you're so scared of another group of airplanes being crashed into Tourist Attractions, stop building tourist attractions, or move somewhere that doesn't have any.
... why does it sound to me as if you're more interested in your own freedom that those of everyone else? What about the freedom to live from fear, the freedom to be able to make your choices without having options imposed upon you by faceless terrorists?
Do these count in your book? It doesn't sound like it!
Freedom is nothing without security, because without security you cannot truly be free. Therefore freedom is dependant upon security, and for you to argue otherwise is nonsense. Our Founders understood this; just look at the Second Amendment for a fine example of how they saw the need for security as being paramount!
We've heard this all before after Columbine and other such incidents here in the US; indeed there was plenty of coverage right here on/. about things like WAVE and so on. It's definitely not new, and just because some famous filmwriter and director starts talking about it doesn't make it any more real or dangerous.
Because after all if recent events have shown us anything it's that there are people out there who are willing to risk everything in order to acheive their goals. The frightening difference between these people and normal, less dangerous terrorists like say those in Ireland is that they don't care if they die as long as they get the job done, which means they will take any risk at all!
Clearly this death wish is not normal. No sane, healthy person could be willing to give up their own life for any nonsense cause like religion. And if these people aren't normal, then we need some way to be able to find these people before they strike! That's just obvious! Do we want another 9/11? No!
Profiling is a quite advanced science, as evidenced by some of the successes agencies like the FBI have had with serial killers. There is no reason, other then the squeamishness of liberals for it not to be used, and used successfully in the defense of our nation against the religious loonies that are desparate to bring it down. And so we must be prepared to accept some limits to our freedom in order to defend ourself; this is not only practical, but it is sensible, and those that argue against it are hindering national defense.
Re:I honestly can't figure out
on
What is .NET?
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· Score: 3, Informative
Well if you'd read the article then you'd realise that Intel's new Itanium architecture is actually completely unsuited for the kind of JIT techniques used by.NET due to the fact that the CPU doesn't reorder code - it needs the compiler to organise things beforehand.
So I very much doubt that Intel are pushing.NET to wean themselves off of x86...
Re:.NET good, not evil
on
What is .NET?
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· Score: 2, Informative
Well yes, apart from the fact that they're in the middle of developing a FreeBSD version right now since they need reference implementations on two platforms to submit it as a standard.
For a start they were the ones trying to introduce a non-compliant DOM and lock everyone into their browser well before IE was even vaugely worth using. And secondly, they lost out mainly because IE made huge performace and usability improvement with every version, whereas Netscape stagnated and died.
Sorry, but IE is still the best browser out there. If you read/. regularly, you'll even notice there are quite a few posts saying that people wish they could get it for Linux...
I'm sorry, but you'll have to explain to me how bundling IE to Windows is not illegal tying.
Because the HTML viewer component is a core part of Windows, used for various different things (such as Explorer for instance), not just IE. Active Desktop uses it for instance. And since IE is just a wrapper around that and the networking code, then how is that wrong? Most of IE is part of the core Windows code. You can get rid of the wrapper, but the rest of the components are used for different things around Windows and need to be there...
What mindless, pathetic drivel. This is a new low, even for Jon Katz.
Microsoft are guilty of several dubious business practices (the OEM lockin for instance) but their core business has succeeded by a shrewd knowledge of what their customers want, a cunning marketing campaign and quality products. Yes, that's right, quality products.
The reason the Court of Appeals will reverse Judge Jackson's rulings is simple - they did not act illegally in tying IE to their operating system. Quite simply, having IE as part of the OS makes it a better product for users! What a concept!
Quite simply, we live in a capitalist system and corporations making money is good for everyone at the end of the day, as it benefits us in services from tax revenues and general growth of the economy. Without companies like Microsoft, AOL, Time-Warner and Cisco, do you really think we would be able to maintain the world dominating position we are presently in?
No.
And if Microsoft come to dominate a set of new markets (a hell of a lot less likely than it made out here), then it'll be because they've again produced what the customer wants.
Microsoft is not "above the law". How foolish. They're nothing more than one of our great success stories, a hugely visible embodiment of the American Dream.
Except that quite rightly, the Helms-Burton act caused international outrage when it was implemented, and as far as I know has never been used. In fact, it backfired in that it caused Canada to increase ties with Cuba with regards to trade and diplomacy.
Such laws are merely another sign of the folly of big government.
... because it would be an outrageous blow for both freedom and the ability of a nation to determine its own laws if this man suceeds in his suit against Dow.
If he wins, it basically means that citizens of one country can be held accountable to laws from any country in the world!
It's a precedent that should not be set, because it's a dangerous first step towards a loss of sovereignity.
And since the US has laws ensuring more freedom than any other nation, this means that we, as US citizens, are losing our freedoms through this judicial back door! The Constitution is already at the mercy of our Supreme Court, but this opens up the door for any other nation's courts to strip our people's freedoms away.
While it's a noble and practical goal to eventually allow every language to be rendered as part of a website to allow for maximum access, I don't think that this limitation will really be much of a problem in the long run for two reasons.
Firstly, many cultures are still too poverty-stricken to have electricity and running water, let alone net access. For these people, the thorny issue of whether Unicode has the capacity to represent their native language is totally irrelevent. And in many of these places, political and economic instability caused by civil wars, corporate greed and a lack of resources will mean this situation will continue for some time.
Secondly, the rate at which languages are dying is still accelerating. Every year, we lose several languages as native speakers die of old age without their descendents having ever learned their original language. Cultural assimilation has proceeded at a brisk pace, with western countries only too willing to help with the "modernisation" of other cultures, which invariably results in a loss of their original heritage and linguistic uniqueness. And already globalisation is turning English into the de facto second language of the world.
By the time the 65K limit would become a problem, I estimate it won't be a problem any more - there will be far fewer languages around, and only a subset of those will require online access. If all else fails, many of the majority remaining will speak English anyway.
Well, apart from Yahoo mail (never even heard of it)...
So you've never, ever seen someone with an @yahoo.com email address? Try searching this page, there are at least 3 under this story already.
I've never seen the attraction of portals which exist only to filter your view of the net - I don't want it filtered, I want it all.
Err, yahoo is good for finding generic sites about a subject, whereas I'd use google for anything more specific. Trying to do broad searches under google means you get far too many results to deal with, most of which are only tangentially related.
Geography may be an issue here, I'm in the UK and YahooUK is just junk; perhaps the US site is better.
Errm, I've just been to the UK Yahoo page, and it's pretty much identical to the.com version. There's a link to Yahoo Mail in the top-right hand corner.
Electric money is quite simply, the work of Satan:) For anyone even vaguely concerned about privacy and Government intrusion (which should be you if you're reading/.), then opposing its introduction is somethng you should be doing. This is one of those times when we don't need any more technology, because what we have easily suffices.
Sure, you can argue, we already use electronic money on the internet. Well yes we do, but we don't need new forms appearing, because every time they do it becomes more likely that a country's government will decide that the time is right for a general electronic currency, and introduce it.
And then every purchase you make is logged and tracked. And at will, the Government can block your money. Don't think they won't either. If you're even suspected of any wrong-doing then you'll swiftly find yourself unable to buy anything unless you check into the police station every day. And in the modern liberal trend of protecting people from their own "mistakes", the list of verboten behaviours is growing by the day.
Quite simply, electronic money is just a sneaky way for the Government to get your life on file. Don't be fooled by the technology.
Jesus, Jon, what has McDonald's ever done to you?:)
Honestly, fast food chains have come under an inordinate amount of PR flak from the tree-hugging eco-warrior contingent because they combine two of their greatest bogiemen - globalisation and meat. By attacking fast food chains they don't have to do such much running around, which means they can get their social security money from the Government.
But while McDonald's may not live up to the greenies' standards, who does? Many of them fail this test I'd imagine. But for such a large company, McDonald's does realise that popular opinion is all important, and it makes a lot of effort to maintain a reputation as a "good guy".
Which means clearing up litter around their shops, donating money to various goodwill groups and acting according to what their customers want - if there's even a hint of a food scare they'll react before the Government even starts to get its act together.
Basically, McDonald's has become the fall guy for the corporate world. The attacks on it would be far better placed on other companies which don't share McDonald's ethical policies, but instead act as they damn well please.
Looking back to the past from the present, we tend to forget the psychology of the day, instead seeing events through a filter of modern opinion and judgement.
Or in your case, through the filter of modern American "history," which many people have noted is more an exercise in revisionism than genuine research.
The Japanese (at least their military) were fanatical.
It's funny how when this trait is present in our armies, we call it "courage" or "tenacity" isn't it?
Thats why in the end of the war they had suicide pilots (named after the supernatural forces they believed defended them). They were training civilians, women, to fight the Americans when they came. Running out of metal...
See the contradiction? If they were training all of these suicide pilots, what were they going to suicide in?
... they resorted to building balloons out of cloth and wood with incendiary payloads, and tried to float them over to North America to start massive forest fires.
Ah, they were suicide balloonists, trained to float through the skys like a deadly horde of jellyfish, waiting for the chance to swoop down on helpless American fighters and explode.
The Emperor knew things were lost, but go read what he said he was dealing with in the end: A pack of generals who were still adamant that they would WIN the war, not just successfully defend Japan.
And they would still have held this belief without any means of offence or defence? Would it have even mattered at this point? Containment would have been slower, but more humane.
But by dropping the atomic bomb, a weapon of unforseen destructive power, their mindset was broken.
Along with a fair old chunk of the civilian population.
So whenever you weep for those slain by the bomb (and you should), dont forget that it likely saved a lot more human life on both sides of the conflict, by bringing a swifter end to the war. (I admit though that I dont know why the second bomb was dropped.)
Yes, it is odd how that has never really been explained now isn't it? Maybe the data from the first one wasn't sufficient... after all, a single datum isn't good statistics.
As regards the potential use to the military, increased fuel economy in motor vehicles is also beneficial to the military... but because it benefits everybody else also, work in this area continues apace. Nuclear power, much as I dislike it, is clean and efficient and yes it produces a byproduct that can be used in weapons of mass destruction.
That's true, but history has shown that every weapon needs to be demonstrated at least once by its creators. There was no need to drop nukes on Japan and yet we did it - the ultimate field test, every general's dream.
We can't really complain about the potential military uses of new technologies when assault weapons are on sale to Joe Soap in the worlds more powerful country.
The nature of Government is to accumulate power at the expense of the freedom of its citizens. As such, the time must come when you either accept your servitude to the State, or reclaim your freedom through force of arms. A country in which there is no right to bear arms is one in which the Government has already taken a huge step towards control.
Just look at Switzerland - the oldest democracy, and they are required to be armed.
... that currently, it's really hard to produce - as the article says there are less than 10 nanograms currently produced each year, and the projected yield from Fermilab's new equipment would be no more than 140ng or so. And this requires huge particle accelerators costing billions of dollars.
And even when you've got these going, the cost to run them is prohibitive. And then there's the problem of keeping them stored for long periods at a time and transporting them. Despite a 100% matter to energy conversion rate antimatter has got to be one of the most inefficient fuel sources out there when you look at the entire picture! We'd be conserving resources by making coal-powered spaceships...
So Bush is probably going to love this:)
And an increased capacity to produce antimatter, while way out of our reach at the moment, brings new problems with it. After all, matter-antimatter reactions are far more efficient than even fusion reactions at converting matter to energy, and the military uses for this are obvious, especially to anyone who has read the Night's Dawn trilogy. It wouldn't suprise me if this sort of thing is being investigated somewhere as a speculative new military tool.
Hopefully, I'm just being paranoid. But given the military's obsession with technological superiority, I doubt it...
Why does slashdot insist on such low standards of journalistic integrity ? I mean, a faked memo, is it really 'news for nerds' or is it just pro-censorship Michael's attempt to beat the 'trolls' at their own game by crapflooding slashdot with inane rubbish ?
This would never happen on cool sites like kuro5hin
Its about time the balance of power shifted away from the consumer of media, and back toward the producer. Better piracy-prevention technology will enable content producers to invest in new movies music and other content without fear of it becoming instantly copied by legions of criminal slashdot readers who only obey the law if there is a danger that it might be enforced.
Secondly, this technology could also be used in our schools and libraries to ensure that objectionable content, such as sexually explicit images, or anti-religious propaganda can be blocked from our childrens tv screens. It is difficult to imagine any law-abiding sane adult arguing against this technology.
Unfortunately the politically correct liberal mafia running our country won't allow this to be said, but the internet corrupts people. Every site, even supposedly respectable mainstream sites such as Yahoo, are peddling filth.
Innocent websearches will turn up mountains of hardcore pornography, often involving underage children. Sites seem only exist to peddle pornography. The only sites that make any money are those relying on filth.
I think it's time people were told. Parents should know that their children are not 'doing their homework' when they are locked up in their rooms late at night. Almost invariably, they are gazing at pornographic material.
This is corrupting our young, by making them sexualized at a younger age. It encourages promiscuity and teenage sex. It is nothing but a corrupter of public morals.
While I do not have any objection to the internet being used, I think that fact that every site on the net, even the most famous one, is filled with pornography should mean that we should regulate more carefully the way the net is used. We need more control to stop the corruption of our children. Filtered internet access seems like the only option. After all, if they are not safe on Yahoo, where are they safe?
This to me shows the overwhelming hypocricy of the liberal movement. I have no doubt that those attacking this site were liberals, doubtless believing themselves to be on some righteous crusade. Typically, however, the liberals show themselves to favor censorship when it suits them, - that is to censor opposing views.
They claim to be tolerant, but in fact they are only tolerant of opinions that match with their own - those that agree, for instance, that sodomy is aceeptable behavior, or that we should countenance massive criminal activity because the poor dears were mistreated as children.
As ever, we find the true face of the liberal revealed - cowardly and snakelike, favoring censorship, but doing so by malevolent underhand means - attempting to flood people promulgating their legitimate views with much garbage. I really think it's time that these people were exposed for the cowards they are. We have tolerated liberalism in all its manifest guises - its tolerance of petty and not so petty criminals, its insistence on screwing up our country - for many years now. Never have we attempted any such underhand tactics against them.
It appears clear that these liberals will stop at nothing in the pursuit of their own agenda - posting obscene messages, and so on, and even "targeting Free Republic's founder, Jim Robinson" in pursuance of "his stated goal of chasing Free Republic off the Internet". I have seen enough. I have tolerated their supposedly well-meaning activities, but I will not accept these kind of attacks.
Genetically programmed FPGA (fully programmable gate arrays) are not new. This guy has been researching this for several years. What the article does not mention however, is that occasionally, when his program goes wrong, it actually destroys the chips, rendering them useless.
Now, imagine in the future you have one of these GPFPGA chips in your PC. What is to stop a malicious hacker (or is it cracker?) from planting a logic bomb in the very hardware of your PC ?
This technology seems like a retrograde step if we are concerned with the reliability of our hardware. I urge slashdot readers to boycott any PCs which use this dangerous new technology.
As i've said many times in the past, one of the jobs of the CEO is to increase shareholder value.
And starting rumours about new mergers is another great way of getting the stock up a few points isn't it? And it's pretty easy too, what with places like/. willing to post unsubstantiated stuff...
If anyone thinks that most of the people who moved onto LinuxPPC won't move back to Mac OS X then they're fooling themselves about the nature of Mac users. These are people that in the face of hardware superiority from Intel and software superiority from Microsoft have stuck by their Macs no matter what. Even when their Mac couldn't do what they wanted, they still tried to keep as close to their Macs as possible rather than doing the sensible thing and getting a Wintel box.
Of course they'll rush back to Mac OS X.
For most Mac users, the last thing they want to use is the "tech-savvy" requirements of a Linux desktop with its requirements to "grok" a bewildering array of obscure utilities, command line tools and text-based configuration files. They'd be much happier dealing with a smiling computer face and a single button on their mice, and being able to actually get some work done!
I think LinuxPPC is in serious risk of dying here. Who'd want to run Linux when there is a far superior competitor in terms of usability and power?
I think that anyone devoting more than five minutes of their time to analyse the profitability of online content providing can see that it's just never going to work. People just don't want the current system to change; they like getting stuff for free, and the creators be damned.
It's again an example of short-term thinking, in which people are happy to gain in the short-term, without a care in the world that this attitude is quite likely to cut down on the number of providers in the long-term. People need money to be able to work, and this has always been true throughout history. Whereas then they had patronage, nowadays they have the RIAA or the MPAA, and these organisations will remain until someone figures out a way that will allow artists to get paid at all, let alone fairly.
Whether or not artists get treated fairly by the MPAA/RIAA is a moot point; at least they get paid something. If they moved onto the net today, they'd never get a penny.
After all, whilst the advantages of distributed computing are clear in that they can provide a way of harnessing a lot of computing power for a cheap cost, there are also downsides to this kind of project.
If people are so taken up with this sort of thing, imagine how easily it could be abused. People don't tend to be able to recognise and deal with email viruses, let alone a rogue distributed project that claims to do one thing whilst in actuality do something else. It sounds to me like a perfect opportunity for intelligence agencies to get their software on people's computers without anyone knowing!
How can you tell whether that client you run 24-7 on your home computer is actually helping calculate the next prime number or whether it is scanning all of your net connections and sending the information to a giant government database to be perused at their leisure? Police states like Britain already want to keep records of everything you do, this seems like a damn good way of doing it on the sly.
Personally, I'd be very wary of any piece of software that sits on your PC and has a constant connection to the internet. Unfortunately, most people are too trusting when it comes to their security online...
Slashdot Mirror
If you're so scared of another group of airplanes being crashed into Tourist Attractions, stop building tourist attractions, or move somewhere that doesn't have any.
... why does it sound to me as if you're more interested in your own freedom that those of everyone else? What about the freedom to live from fear, the freedom to be able to make your choices without having options imposed upon you by faceless terrorists?
Do these count in your book? It doesn't sound like it!
Freedom is nothing without security, because without security you cannot truly be free. Therefore freedom is dependant upon security, and for you to argue otherwise is nonsense. Our Founders understood this; just look at the Second Amendment for a fine example of how they saw the need for security as being paramount!
Because after all if recent events have shown us anything it's that there are people out there who are willing to risk everything in order to acheive their goals. The frightening difference between these people and normal, less dangerous terrorists like say those in Ireland is that they don't care if they die as long as they get the job done, which means they will take any risk at all! Clearly this death wish is not normal. No sane, healthy person could be willing to give up their own life for any nonsense cause like religion. And if these people aren't normal, then we need some way to be able to find these people before they strike! That's just obvious! Do we want another 9/11? No! Profiling is a quite advanced science, as evidenced by some of the successes agencies like the FBI have had with serial killers. There is no reason, other then the squeamishness of liberals for it not to be used, and used successfully in the defense of our nation against the religious loonies that are desparate to bring it down. And so we must be prepared to accept some limits to our freedom in order to defend ourself; this is not only practical, but it is sensible, and those that argue against it are hindering national defense.
Well if you'd read the article then you'd realise that Intel's new Itanium architecture is actually completely unsuited for the kind of JIT techniques used by .NET due to the fact that the CPU doesn't reorder code - it needs the compiler to organise things beforehand.
So I very much doubt that Intel are pushing .NET to wean themselves off of x86...
Well yes, apart from the fact that they're in the middle of developing a FreeBSD version right now since they need reference implementations on two platforms to submit it as a standard.
But don't let the facts stop you eh?
For a start they were the ones trying to introduce a non-compliant DOM and lock everyone into their browser well before IE was even vaugely worth using. And secondly, they lost out mainly because IE made huge performace and usability improvement with every version, whereas Netscape stagnated and died.
Sorry, but IE is still the best browser out there. If you read /. regularly, you'll even notice there are quite a few posts saying that people wish they could get it for Linux...
I'm sorry, but you'll have to explain to me how bundling IE to Windows is not illegal tying.
Because the HTML viewer component is a core part of Windows, used for various different things (such as Explorer for instance), not just IE. Active Desktop uses it for instance. And since IE is just a wrapper around that and the networking code, then how is that wrong? Most of IE is part of the core Windows code. You can get rid of the wrapper, but the rest of the components are used for different things around Windows and need to be there...
What mindless, pathetic drivel. This is a new low, even for Jon Katz.
Microsoft are guilty of several dubious business practices (the OEM lockin for instance) but their core business has succeeded by a shrewd knowledge of what their customers want, a cunning marketing campaign and quality products. Yes, that's right, quality products.
The reason the Court of Appeals will reverse Judge Jackson's rulings is simple - they did not act illegally in tying IE to their operating system. Quite simply, having IE as part of the OS makes it a better product for users! What a concept!
Quite simply, we live in a capitalist system and corporations making money is good for everyone at the end of the day, as it benefits us in services from tax revenues and general growth of the economy. Without companies like Microsoft, AOL, Time-Warner and Cisco, do you really think we would be able to maintain the world dominating position we are presently in?
No.
And if Microsoft come to dominate a set of new markets (a hell of a lot less likely than it made out here), then it'll be because they've again produced what the customer wants.
Microsoft is not "above the law". How foolish. They're nothing more than one of our great success stories, a hugely visible embodiment of the American Dream.
Except that quite rightly, the Helms-Burton act caused international outrage when it was implemented, and as far as I know has never been used. In fact, it backfired in that it caused Canada to increase ties with Cuba with regards to trade and diplomacy.
Such laws are merely another sign of the folly of big government.
... because it would be an outrageous blow for both freedom and the ability of a nation to determine its own laws if this man suceeds in his suit against Dow.
If he wins, it basically means that citizens of one country can be held accountable to laws from any country in the world!
It's a precedent that should not be set, because it's a dangerous first step towards a loss of sovereignity.
And since the US has laws ensuring more freedom than any other nation, this means that we, as US citizens, are losing our freedoms through this judicial back door! The Constitution is already at the mercy of our Supreme Court, but this opens up the door for any other nation's courts to strip our people's freedoms away.
This could be a disaster if it goes through.
While it's a noble and practical goal to eventually allow every language to be rendered as part of a website to allow for maximum access, I don't think that this limitation will really be much of a problem in the long run for two reasons.
Firstly, many cultures are still too poverty-stricken to have electricity and running water, let alone net access. For these people, the thorny issue of whether Unicode has the capacity to represent their native language is totally irrelevent. And in many of these places, political and economic instability caused by civil wars, corporate greed and a lack of resources will mean this situation will continue for some time.
Secondly, the rate at which languages are dying is still accelerating. Every year, we lose several languages as native speakers die of old age without their descendents having ever learned their original language. Cultural assimilation has proceeded at a brisk pace, with western countries only too willing to help with the "modernisation" of other cultures, which invariably results in a loss of their original heritage and linguistic uniqueness. And already globalisation is turning English into the de facto second language of the world.
By the time the 65K limit would become a problem, I estimate it won't be a problem any more - there will be far fewer languages around, and only a subset of those will require online access. If all else fails, many of the majority remaining will speak English anyway.
Well, apart from Yahoo mail (never even heard of it)...
So you've never, ever seen someone with an @yahoo.com email address? Try searching this page, there are at least 3 under this story already.
I've never seen the attraction of portals which exist only to filter your view of the net - I don't want it filtered, I want it all.
Err, yahoo is good for finding generic sites about a subject, whereas I'd use google for anything more specific. Trying to do broad searches under google means you get far too many results to deal with, most of which are only tangentially related.
Geography may be an issue here, I'm in the UK and YahooUK is just junk; perhaps the US site is better.
Errm, I've just been to the UK Yahoo page, and it's pretty much identical to the .com version. There's a link to Yahoo Mail in the top-right hand corner.
Electric money is quite simply, the work of Satan :) For anyone even vaguely concerned about privacy and Government intrusion (which should be you if you're reading /.), then opposing its introduction is somethng you should be doing. This is one of those times when we don't need any more technology, because what we have easily suffices.
Sure, you can argue, we already use electronic money on the internet. Well yes we do, but we don't need new forms appearing, because every time they do it becomes more likely that a country's government will decide that the time is right for a general electronic currency, and introduce it.
And then every purchase you make is logged and tracked. And at will, the Government can block your money. Don't think they won't either. If you're even suspected of any wrong-doing then you'll swiftly find yourself unable to buy anything unless you check into the police station every day. And in the modern liberal trend of protecting people from their own "mistakes", the list of verboten behaviours is growing by the day.
Quite simply, electronic money is just a sneaky way for the Government to get your life on file. Don't be fooled by the technology.
Jesus, Jon, what has McDonald's ever done to you? :)
Honestly, fast food chains have come under an inordinate amount of PR flak from the tree-hugging eco-warrior contingent because they combine two of their greatest bogiemen - globalisation and meat. By attacking fast food chains they don't have to do such much running around, which means they can get their social security money from the Government.
But while McDonald's may not live up to the greenies' standards, who does? Many of them fail this test I'd imagine. But for such a large company, McDonald's does realise that popular opinion is all important, and it makes a lot of effort to maintain a reputation as a "good guy".
Which means clearing up litter around their shops, donating money to various goodwill groups and acting according to what their customers want - if there's even a hint of a food scare they'll react before the Government even starts to get its act together.
Basically, McDonald's has become the fall guy for the corporate world. The attacks on it would be far better placed on other companies which don't share McDonald's ethical policies, but instead act as they damn well please.
Looking back to the past from the present, we tend to forget the psychology of the day, instead seeing events through a filter of modern opinion and judgement.
Or in your case, through the filter of modern American "history," which many people have noted is more an exercise in revisionism than genuine research.
The Japanese (at least their military) were fanatical.
It's funny how when this trait is present in our armies, we call it "courage" or "tenacity" isn't it?
Thats why in the end of the war they had suicide pilots (named after the supernatural forces they believed defended them). They were training civilians, women, to fight the Americans when they came. Running out of metal...
See the contradiction? If they were training all of these suicide pilots, what were they going to suicide in?
Ah, they were suicide balloonists, trained to float through the skys like a deadly horde of jellyfish, waiting for the chance to swoop down on helpless American fighters and explode.
The Emperor knew things were lost, but go read what he said he was dealing with in the end: A pack of generals who were still adamant that they would WIN the war, not just successfully defend Japan.
And they would still have held this belief without any means of offence or defence? Would it have even mattered at this point? Containment would have been slower, but more humane.
But by dropping the atomic bomb, a weapon of unforseen destructive power, their mindset was broken.
Along with a fair old chunk of the civilian population.
So whenever you weep for those slain by the bomb (and you should), dont forget that it likely saved a lot more human life on both sides of the conflict, by bringing a swifter end to the war. (I admit though that I dont know why the second bomb was dropped.)
Yes, it is odd how that has never really been explained now isn't it? Maybe the data from the first one wasn't sufficient... after all, a single datum isn't good statistics.
As regards the potential use to the military, increased fuel economy in motor vehicles is also beneficial to the military... but because it benefits everybody else also, work in this area continues apace. Nuclear power, much as I dislike it, is clean and efficient and yes it produces a byproduct that can be used in weapons of mass destruction.
That's true, but history has shown that every weapon needs to be demonstrated at least once by its creators. There was no need to drop nukes on Japan and yet we did it - the ultimate field test, every general's dream.
We can't really complain about the potential military uses of new technologies when assault weapons are on sale to Joe Soap in the worlds more powerful country.
The nature of Government is to accumulate power at the expense of the freedom of its citizens. As such, the time must come when you either accept your servitude to the State, or reclaim your freedom through force of arms. A country in which there is no right to bear arms is one in which the Government has already taken a huge step towards control.
Just look at Switzerland - the oldest democracy, and they are required to be armed.
... that currently, it's really hard to produce - as the article says there are less than 10 nanograms currently produced each year, and the projected yield from Fermilab's new equipment would be no more than 140ng or so. And this requires huge particle accelerators costing billions of dollars.
And even when you've got these going, the cost to run them is prohibitive. And then there's the problem of keeping them stored for long periods at a time and transporting them. Despite a 100% matter to energy conversion rate antimatter has got to be one of the most inefficient fuel sources out there when you look at the entire picture! We'd be conserving resources by making coal-powered spaceships...
So Bush is probably going to love this :)
And an increased capacity to produce antimatter, while way out of our reach at the moment, brings new problems with it. After all, matter-antimatter reactions are far more efficient than even fusion reactions at converting matter to energy, and the military uses for this are obvious, especially to anyone who has read the Night's Dawn trilogy. It wouldn't suprise me if this sort of thing is being investigated somewhere as a speculative new military tool.
Hopefully, I'm just being paranoid. But given the military's obsession with technological superiority, I doubt it...
This would never happen on cool sites like kuro5hin
Secondly, this technology could also be used in our schools and libraries to ensure that objectionable content, such as sexually explicit images, or anti-religious propaganda can be blocked from our childrens tv screens. It is difficult to imagine any law-abiding sane adult arguing against this technology.
Lets hope it becomes commonplace, soon.
Unfortunately the politically correct liberal mafia running our country won't allow this to be said, but the internet corrupts people. Every site, even supposedly respectable mainstream sites such as Yahoo, are peddling filth.
Innocent websearches will turn up mountains of hardcore pornography, often involving underage children. Sites seem only exist to peddle pornography. The only sites that make any money are those relying on filth.
I think it's time people were told. Parents should know that their children are not 'doing their homework' when they are locked up in their rooms late at night. Almost invariably, they are gazing at pornographic material.
This is corrupting our young, by making them sexualized at a younger age. It encourages promiscuity and teenage sex. It is nothing but a corrupter of public morals.
While I do not have any objection to the internet being used, I think that fact that every site on the net, even the most famous one, is filled with pornography should mean that we should regulate more carefully the way the net is used. We need more control to stop the corruption of our children. Filtered internet access seems like the only option. After all, if they are not safe on Yahoo, where are they safe?
This to me shows the overwhelming hypocricy of the liberal movement. I have no doubt that those attacking this site were liberals, doubtless believing themselves to be on some righteous crusade. Typically, however, the liberals show themselves to favor censorship when it suits them, - that is to censor opposing views.
They claim to be tolerant, but in fact they are only tolerant of opinions that match with their own - those that agree, for instance, that sodomy is aceeptable behavior, or that we should countenance massive criminal activity because the poor dears were mistreated as children.
As ever, we find the true face of the liberal revealed - cowardly and snakelike, favoring censorship, but doing so by malevolent underhand means - attempting to flood people promulgating their legitimate views with much garbage. I really think it's time that these people were exposed for the cowards they are. We have tolerated liberalism in all its manifest guises - its tolerance of petty and not so petty criminals, its insistence on screwing up our country - for many years now. Never have we attempted any such underhand tactics against them.
It appears clear that these liberals will stop at nothing in the pursuit of their own agenda - posting obscene messages, and so on, and even "targeting Free Republic's founder, Jim Robinson" in pursuance of "his stated goal of chasing Free Republic off the Internet". I have seen enough. I have tolerated their supposedly well-meaning activities, but I will not accept these kind of attacks.
Now, imagine in the future you have one of these GPFPGA chips in your PC. What is to stop a malicious hacker (or is it cracker?) from planting a logic bomb in the very hardware of your PC ?
This technology seems like a retrograde step if we are concerned with the reliability of our hardware. I urge slashdot readers to boycott any PCs which use this dangerous new technology.
As i've said many times in the past, one of the jobs of the CEO is to increase shareholder value.
And starting rumours about new mergers is another great way of getting the stock up a few points isn't it? And it's pretty easy too, what with places like /. willing to post unsubstantiated stuff...
If anyone thinks that most of the people who moved onto LinuxPPC won't move back to Mac OS X then they're fooling themselves about the nature of Mac users. These are people that in the face of hardware superiority from Intel and software superiority from Microsoft have stuck by their Macs no matter what. Even when their Mac couldn't do what they wanted, they still tried to keep as close to their Macs as possible rather than doing the sensible thing and getting a Wintel box.
Of course they'll rush back to Mac OS X.
For most Mac users, the last thing they want to use is the "tech-savvy" requirements of a Linux desktop with its requirements to "grok" a bewildering array of obscure utilities, command line tools and text-based configuration files. They'd be much happier dealing with a smiling computer face and a single button on their mice, and being able to actually get some work done!
I think LinuxPPC is in serious risk of dying here. Who'd want to run Linux when there is a far superior competitor in terms of usability and power?
I think that anyone devoting more than five minutes of their time to analyse the profitability of online content providing can see that it's just never going to work. People just don't want the current system to change; they like getting stuff for free, and the creators be damned.
It's again an example of short-term thinking, in which people are happy to gain in the short-term, without a care in the world that this attitude is quite likely to cut down on the number of providers in the long-term. People need money to be able to work, and this has always been true throughout history. Whereas then they had patronage, nowadays they have the RIAA or the MPAA, and these organisations will remain until someone figures out a way that will allow artists to get paid at all, let alone fairly.
Whether or not artists get treated fairly by the MPAA/RIAA is a moot point; at least they get paid something. If they moved onto the net today, they'd never get a penny.
After all, whilst the advantages of distributed computing are clear in that they can provide a way of harnessing a lot of computing power for a cheap cost, there are also downsides to this kind of project.
If people are so taken up with this sort of thing, imagine how easily it could be abused. People don't tend to be able to recognise and deal with email viruses, let alone a rogue distributed project that claims to do one thing whilst in actuality do something else. It sounds to me like a perfect opportunity for intelligence agencies to get their software on people's computers without anyone knowing!
How can you tell whether that client you run 24-7 on your home computer is actually helping calculate the next prime number or whether it is scanning all of your net connections and sending the information to a giant government database to be perused at their leisure? Police states like Britain already want to keep records of everything you do, this seems like a damn good way of doing it on the sly.
Personally, I'd be very wary of any piece of software that sits on your PC and has a constant connection to the internet. Unfortunately, most people are too trusting when it comes to their security online...