My prediction is that while the UK is probably the worst English-speaking country in the world in terms of civil liberties and privacy right now, it will be one of the first to get a cluestick.
If that is going to happen, it won't until the fear of terrorism dies down, and that probably won't happen for another generation or so.
Last I heard, the UK government uses the spectre of terrorism as their excuse for every single fascist thing they do. From the cameras and assorted forms of spying, to all the rest of it.
The public needs to stop falling for terrorism as a bogeyman, and realise that it is nothing but a con game from government to boost its' own power. Unfortunately, at the moment all the government needs to do is point to the London tube bombing, and the sheep will obediently fall into line.
Given who the primary beneficiaries of terrorism have really been, it sort of makes you wonder who, in reality, was possibly responsible for the various bombings, doesn't it?;)
I've been reading a number of other posts in this thread about how ICANN is a failure because it operates primarily in the interests of American corporations.
The thing to understand, however, is that everyone is raped by American corporations. Absolutely everyone. It is inevitable, and totally unavoidable. They chip away, tirelessly, day and night, and eventually they get in and dominate things, and because they are so relentless, there is nothing that anyone can do to stop it.
So get rid of ICANN if you want; create a new oversight group, and put it under the jurisdiction of whichever government you want. It doesn't matter how you do it; within six months, the new organisation will again be routinely sodomised by American corporations.
The Internet rightfully should never have been allowed to become commercial in the first place; it should have remained under the jurisdiction of the universities, the scientists, and the intellectuals, where it belongs.
Corporations, and the insects who run them, are a scourge, that needs to be violently rendered extinct.
...Christians that insist on injecting quaint little refrigerator magnet-style philosophy and superstitious dogma into conversations about death, or pseudo-intellectual atheists that hamfistedly bring up their personal beliefs (or lack of beliefs) at every fucking opportunity.
Agreed. I'm noticing also that there seem to be very few atheists around who are that way for legitimate reasons. Most seem to be leaping on the bandwagon because it's the 21st century and all the cool kids are doing it. Just ask Richard Dawkins; he's really cool.;)
It happens, though. Every religion that has ever existed has had groupies, fakes, and scenesters; In that respect, atheism is no different.
The twitterverse has spontaneously shifted from being a (supposed) forum for Iranian democracy to a Michael Jackson tribute site.
Exactly my point. Very few people truly give a shit about Iran. It's purely the latest meme, and absolutely nothing more. It will burn itself out in a month or two, and people will go back to wondering what Paris Hilton is up to, or who Brad Pitt's latest nookie is.
Do not respond to this with yet more self-righteous fake moral outrage either, Americans. You only provide more evidence of your hypocrisy (where Iran is concerned) when you do so.
The guys over in Iran trying to communicate via Twitter. I'm sure those guys really loved it.
Fuck Iran. I care a lot more about Jacko's death than I do about Iran, personally.
One thing Americans don't get, is that the current shit that's going down in Iran, is the sort of thing that happens in the Middle East on a continual basis; it's purely business as usual for them.
Seriously, get used to it, mentally relegate it to background noise where it belongs, and then spend time thinking about things which actually impact your life, on a personal level. I can almost guarantee you that unless you're actually reading this from Iran yourself, then in your case, it doesn't.
This is a very sad day. If the suits have managed to successfully assimilate John Carmack, then it can very truly be said that nobody in the gaming industry is now safe.
It's odd. Blizzard sold out just before the release of The Burning Crusade; I think subconsciously I always held out some naive, juvenile hope that id would somehow manage to remain themselves, and stay autonomous.
It is also disturbing and upsetting to witness Carmack attempt to rationalise that he will be able to remain in control of the company's projects. Richard Garriott probably thought that when he initially got into bed with EA, as well; and we all know how that turned out. Garriott got voted out by the board of directors of his own company.
We've been given some great games by id, but nothing lasts forever. I'm not going to fall for the line that it will still be business as usual, either; I've seen too many developer/artist startups get swallowed by spreader companies (EA, Activision, etc) to know that that is not true, and can never be true.
You are wholly a product of a pop culture in which strong copyright is the norm.
And I assume you somehow aren't?;)
Also, before accusing me of being a pure pop culture robot by mentioning Pirates, realise that the raising of the Jolly Roger as depicted in that film, would itself have been inspired by real world events where the raising of said flag actually happened.
If you're looking for irony, consider it ironic that the film industry have produced films utilising an icon that would remain deeply appropriate for those of us who are opposed to the concept of intellectual property, whether they themselves had made use of it or not. Their material is as much a product of history, as we are supposedly a product of their material.
I'm currently sitting here listening to an mp3 of the Symphony of the Seas, from the old album Hooked on Classics, along with mental flashbacks of the scene where the Jolly Roger was raised during Pirates of the Carribean.
As this article refers to a victory for piracy, it is a good opportunity to issue a collective, impassioned scream of defiance against the very concept of intellectual property; to remind ourselves of who the enemy is, and why they must, and eventually will, be entirely and unrelentingly destroyed.
WIPO, RIAA, MPAA, and other related organisations, you are recognised as institutions which perpetuate the toxic mentality that making money is, in itself, more important than being alive to spend it. In our ongoing war with you, it is we, the greater public of this planet, who have the will of God on our side. We will have justice. We will have vengeance.
This is a good idea, and it's actually something I've had in my own head for years, but I've never been able to work out the finer points of how it might function.
It's exactly what we need; come up with a sufficiently non-polluting means of mass-producing these things, and then line the streets with them. Clean air for breathing, astronomy, and as a major part of lowering global temperatures and cleaning up the environment.
I am seeing more and more, an influx of WoW forum refugees to Slashdot, as I've mentioned earlier, and they're just as anti-intellectual, brazenly sociopathic, and juvenile now as they were within the WoW forums.
Please go back there, former WoW players. Slashdot used to be a place for intelligent, often enjoyable discussion of ideas; and you're ruining it.
I see you've been modded down as a troll. Personally, I disagree with you, and I'll explain my disagreement. Obviously, those who modded you are incapable of doing so.;)
I appreciate that, and view it as an indication of integrity.
I assume that you are familiar with Operation Ajax - if not, look it up.
Not the specifics, but I remember something about the deposition of the Shah. From memory, that was one of the original places where the term, "blowback," originally came from. The CIA seemed to think they were really smart by installing Khomeini in the Shah's place, but according to what I read, it ended up causing more harm than good.
What I did end up reading about more specifically, as far as the CIA's antics are concerned, was what went down in Nicaragua. Then, of course, there were some fun rumours going around online about how Jonestown was supposedly an MK-ULTRA program gone bad, and they ended up needing to liquidate the whole thing in a big hurry. Maybe that's an urban legend, but I've read wilder things before that ended up being true.
The long and the short of it is, I ended up learning that attempting to destabilise foreign governments who are perceived as hostile to American interests is possibly one of the CIA's core mandates, although the story also goes that even though they do have a specific charter, it isn't something which a lot of people are allowed to see, for fairly obvious reasons.
I've poured Iranian (and Iraqi) sand out of my boots, but that doesn't make me expert at anything other than pouring sand out of my boots.;)
I've noticed that soldiers seem to be one of the groups of people on Slashdot who I can consistently have a decent conversation with. I think that's because even though I'm a civilian, it's still possible for us to get killed, and I nearly have been a couple of times. As a result, I don't advocate other people arbitrarily losing their lives for pointless and/or stupid reasons.
I'm also aware that the first person shooter games I've grown up with have given a lot of dumb teenagers the idea that they know what war is like. I know that I have no clue what war is like; not even the remotest idea. However, some of the less sanitary images that ended up on Google from Iraq have almost caused me to throw up a couple of times, which in turn led me to believe that whatever war is really like, it isn't anything good. So I think that is the major difference between me and a lot of people; even though like them, I also haven't experienced it, I consider it something very negative, and I don't think it's something that should be rushed into for anything other than the most dire of reasons. I've also noticed that the people who are most keen for it are never those who actually have to go through it, which I think is wrong.
While I don't see the Supreme Leader as being above tampering with the election results, I can see how, and why, his chosen boy may have legitimately won the election.
From our perspective of course, theocracy never looks like a good thing. Some of the Islamic countries don't seem to mind it so much, though; maybe it's because they've grown up with it. I think that can be a hard thing for a lot of Americans and Australians to understand. We think that religious government is always bad, but the truth is that as long as the priests don't treat people badly, it doesn't have to be. Religion can give a lot of structure and meaning to people's lives if it's done positively.
And yes, I say "our," even though I'm an Australian. The people here who've accused me of anti-Americanism are utterly moronic. If I was really anti-American, I'd be advocating American involvement in Iran, because that happening would get a lot of Americans killed. The war mongers always think that you're against them if you don't advocate continual war. What I'm against is pointless loss of life.
No; all that's happened is that digital as a format has proven that, in most cases, photos genuinely aren't worth all that much.
As far as people are concerned, photography is basically an attempt to evade death, and not one that works well. I'm guessing most digital photos probably last about as long as they actually should.
Ubuntu typically has everything but the kitchen sink running in the background; it's even worse than XP for frivolous defaults.
Get Slackware, or something else minimalistic, where you're likely to have a marginal amount of memory left after the operating system and residents are loaded in.;)
If you prevent people from killing each other, the moment your back is turned they resume the proscribed activity with greater zeal than before. Nothing is ever settled until they get a chance to simply duke it out. If one side loses and gets wiped out, that's tough luck, but at least matters are settled, rather than hostility continuing forever.
Yep. That's why I said that America (or anyone else) won't be doing the Iranian public any favours if they interfere with the removal of the current dictatorship. The Iranians need to do it by themselves.
One problem is that Iranian leaders are trying to delegitimize the reform movement by pretending that they're puppets of foreign powers.
(Mod this down again, if you want; I'm going to keep making this argument until someone finally has the spine to actually respond to me)
The only problem with this is, that's fairly likely exactly what the reform movement genuinely is. Is anyone honestly going to try and tell me with a straight face that the reform movement would not have CIA agents within its' ranks?
Truthfully, if I'd been the leader of the Chinese government at the time of Tienanmen Square, the first thing I would have done would be to broadcast a message announcing that if all of the American intelligence people were to come forward out of the crowd and give themselves up, none of the actual university students would be harmed.
This is the single main reason why this entire issue (Iran, currently) is pissing me off to the degree that it is.
Americans want to get involved purely because they still view their role as being to solve the political and/or moral problems of everyone else on the planet. The only problem is that George W. Bush eloquently proved (even if none of your earlier leaders did) that you don't have the ability to solve your own problems. A tyrant and a murderer held office as the President for eight years, and virtually none of you did anything to challenge him.
Because of this, any desire you might have to be involved with the current turmoil in Iraq has exactly zero moral credibility. You let a tyrant hold office in your own country, but you still think that you have a moral imperative to help remove tyrants from other people's.
You are not rightfully the planet's police force, Americans. The only reason why any of you think that, is because you've been brainwashed to think it by your country's education system. I'm aware, however, that nobody who is capable of truly rational thought will respond to that statement, since nobody who is capable of rational thought actually believes in the exceptionalist global police idea.
The current regime in Iran might well genuinely need to be removed, but if you want to truly do the right thing where another country is concerned, for once, then back off and let the Iranian people figure out how to do that for themselves. Don't get involved, because apart from anything else, you are not on record as having intervened in a single foreign country, (except, maybe, during WW2) where it actually worked out well, for either you, or the other country involved. Vietnam was a mess, and Iraq largely has been both times. Do you really think Iran won't be?
Let the Iranian people sort it out. Don't sell them arms, don't try and escalate things either way, and pull your damn spooks out if they are there. (And of course, they would be at this point, even if they weren't earlier)
Any new government, in order for it to be legitimate, will have to be something that the Iranian people have devised for themselves, and if there is a tyranny that needs to be removed, Iranian blood needs to be shed to remove it. That is the only way that the Iranian people will see any future democratic system as being genuine or meaning something, and it is the only way that they will be able to retain dignity throughout and after the process, as well; because it will mean that they will have cleaned up their own mess, which is an essential part of being an adult.
All they're doing is selling the Iranian government some mobile telecommunications infrastructure. What the government decide to do with said infrastructure is entirely their responsibility.
Sophistry, I hear you say? Only about to the same degree as that moron who was arguing with me here, that the author of the World of Warcraft Glider bot should not be sued by Blizzard; because he wasn't doing anything against the rules himself. All he was doing was creating a macro generation program; what other people did with it was entirely their own responsibility.
when you pay them $15/hr and expect them to be good at what they do.
I suspect that you've just realised the main reason why outsourcing really exists.
Corporate bean counters aren't too intelligent. They think they're really clever if they focus on hiring people from Third World countries for chips per hour, they can sidestep all those nasty old restrictions at home. You know, the ones like a living wage, unionised labour, set working hours, and just having to treat your employees like human beings more or less in general.
What they don't realise though, is that people living in said Third World countries actually aren't stupid, despite American white supremacist myopia to the contrary. As IBM impersonates Ganesha and gradually generates an affluent middle class in Bangalore, eventually labour unions, and labour laws, are going to start springing up there as well. Indian society has been undergoing reform for a while now, and as the caste system is erroded to a progressively greater degree, Indians will start announcing that they no longer want to work in sweatshops either, and then what is a poor megacorp to do?;)
Maybe it's because I haven't had a job that has been outsourced, but I cannot feel racist towards India; if anything, it's entirely the opposite.
I'm Caucasian myself, I admit; but to the degree that a white individual is able to at least, I converted to Hinduism three years ago. I am helplessly in love with virtually everything about the country that I have been able to discover; its' religion, its' music, its' art, its' architecture, its' food...all of it. My reaction to the recent racist violence towards Indians here in Melbourne has been one of grief and concern.
I cannot resent the Indian people themselves for international corporations having outsourced to their country, as well; that is hardly their fault, despite the fact that, of course, they are going to economically benefit from it. Still, India is a country which in places is still desperately poor; infusions of money there could potentially save large numbers of lives.
We do need to find ways to turn corporate focus back towards the West as well, yes; but I feel that if corporations and subsequent money and opportunities go to Third World countries, it is only mean-spirited of us to resent their populations for it. They are gaining the opportunity now to have a standard of living which we have already had for a long time; I feel happy for them.
Slashdot editors, please stop allowing this kind of opinionated trollbait to reach the front page.
It isn't news. It's nothing but navel gazing and whining from Windows refugees about how they don't want to feel forced to use their near non-existent intelligence.
If Windows refugees want a system that facilitates willful ignorance and stupidity, they need to simply go back to Windows, and the existing Linux community also needs to stop evangelising Linux to these sorts of dumb users.
Try and understand something, Linux community; Linux taking over the world, would mean Linux ultimately being used by a lot of the kind of people that you actually really don't want. The vast majority of human beings are absolute morons, as rants like TFA clearly show.
This wasn't a troll; it was an opinion, and a valid one. Some people do use non-GPL licenses.
I'm still waiting for the day when Stallman's fanboys stop abusing Slashdot's moderation system, by using it as a means of attempting to silence people they disagree with.
I had the same problem as you, when my ex-girlfriend moved out; she'd managed to alienate literally everyone I'd previously ever known, including family members.
I joined a Meetup group about 18 months ago, and was eventually made Organizer. I host monthly groups, and out of a resident membership of around 100 people, I get regular attendance of close to a dozen people now. There are also Meetups for just about every possible kind of general interest you can think of, including some which are purely for random socialising.
They should rewrite the whole thing if they can be bothered, and use the BSD license; that way they get what they need, and it would help the rest of us out as well.
Remember, kids; GPL violation is only an issue with code that uses the GPL. If you don't use the GPL, you won't have its' drawbacks.
I'm getting sick of hearing about it. The single main reason is that any (and I mean any) Americans who are involving themselves in it are complete, total hypocrites.
You allowed a monster to hold political office in your country for eight years. He was the single worst political leader that you have ever had, and one of the worst that any country in the world has ever had.
He stole at least the first election, if not both of them. He committed the greatest crime against you that anyone in your government ever has. (9/11) He is responsible for baseless war crimes against Iraq. He built gulags, advocated torture, sought ways around international laws that prohibit torture, and worked tirelessly, night and day, to move your country as close to outright fascism as he possibly could.
Through it all, you never opposed him in any meaningful way. Not once.
No impeachment. No censure. No investigation of him directly; only actions aimed at entirely dispensable underlings like Scooter Libby.
You never challenged either of his election victories. You were never even willing to remotely comprehend the idea that he might have been responsible for 9/11, instead sticking your fingers in your ears and singing whenever anyone suggested it, or calling such people either insane conspiracy theorists, or traitors and un-American.
When he insisted that war with Iraq was necessary, despite using a totally bogus rationale, the vast majority of you unquestioningly swallowed it whole.
With the presidency of George Walker Bush, (and even more, with the continued outrage that the man has not been taken into custody for his crimes) America has permanently forfeited any right that it may previously have had, to pass comment on the moral character of any foreign government, or whether or not said government is serving the cause of liberty.
You cannot credibly oppose monsters in government abroad, when you are entirely willing to allow and accept them domestically.
Spare me also the usual, semi-crying, "Why do you hate America?" response. The only thing such response serves to do, is illustrate the complete, unsparing lack of even the most basic intelligence in the person making it.
Slashdot Mirror
My prediction is that while the UK is probably the worst English-speaking country in the world in terms of civil liberties and privacy right now, it will be one of the first to get a cluestick.
If that is going to happen, it won't until the fear of terrorism dies down, and that probably won't happen for another generation or so.
Last I heard, the UK government uses the spectre of terrorism as their excuse for every single fascist thing they do. From the cameras and assorted forms of spying, to all the rest of it.
The public needs to stop falling for terrorism as a bogeyman, and realise that it is nothing but a con game from government to boost its' own power. Unfortunately, at the moment all the government needs to do is point to the London tube bombing, and the sheep will obediently fall into line.
Given who the primary beneficiaries of terrorism have really been, it sort of makes you wonder who, in reality, was possibly responsible for the various bombings, doesn't it? ;)
I've been reading a number of other posts in this thread about how ICANN is a failure because it operates primarily in the interests of American corporations.
The thing to understand, however, is that everyone is raped by American corporations. Absolutely everyone. It is inevitable, and totally unavoidable. They chip away, tirelessly, day and night, and eventually they get in and dominate things, and because they are so relentless, there is nothing that anyone can do to stop it.
So get rid of ICANN if you want; create a new oversight group, and put it under the jurisdiction of whichever government you want. It doesn't matter how you do it; within six months, the new organisation will again be routinely sodomised by American corporations.
The Internet rightfully should never have been allowed to become commercial in the first place; it should have remained under the jurisdiction of the universities, the scientists, and the intellectuals, where it belongs.
Corporations, and the insects who run them, are a scourge, that needs to be violently rendered extinct.
...Christians that insist on injecting quaint little refrigerator magnet-style philosophy and superstitious dogma into conversations about death, or pseudo-intellectual atheists that hamfistedly bring up their personal beliefs (or lack of beliefs) at every fucking opportunity.
Agreed. I'm noticing also that there seem to be very few atheists around who are that way for legitimate reasons. Most seem to be leaping on the bandwagon because it's the 21st century and all the cool kids are doing it. Just ask Richard Dawkins; he's really cool. ;)
It happens, though. Every religion that has ever existed has had groupies, fakes, and scenesters; In that respect, atheism is no different.
The twitterverse has spontaneously shifted from being a (supposed) forum for Iranian democracy to a Michael Jackson tribute site.
Exactly my point. Very few people truly give a shit about Iran. It's purely the latest meme, and absolutely nothing more. It will burn itself out in a month or two, and people will go back to wondering what Paris Hilton is up to, or who Brad Pitt's latest nookie is.
Do not respond to this with yet more self-righteous fake moral outrage either, Americans. You only provide more evidence of your hypocrisy (where Iran is concerned) when you do so.
The guys over in Iran trying to communicate via Twitter. I'm sure those guys really loved it.
Fuck Iran. I care a lot more about Jacko's death than I do about Iran, personally.
One thing Americans don't get, is that the current shit that's going down in Iran, is the sort of thing that happens in the Middle East on a continual basis; it's purely business as usual for them.
Seriously, get used to it, mentally relegate it to background noise where it belongs, and then spend time thinking about things which actually impact your life, on a personal level. I can almost guarantee you that unless you're actually reading this from Iran yourself, then in your case, it doesn't.
This is a very sad day. If the suits have managed to successfully assimilate John Carmack, then it can very truly be said that nobody in the gaming industry is now safe.
It's odd. Blizzard sold out just before the release of The Burning Crusade; I think subconsciously I always held out some naive, juvenile hope that id would somehow manage to remain themselves, and stay autonomous.
It is also disturbing and upsetting to witness Carmack attempt to rationalise that he will be able to remain in control of the company's projects. Richard Garriott probably thought that when he initially got into bed with EA, as well; and we all know how that turned out. Garriott got voted out by the board of directors of his own company.
We've been given some great games by id, but nothing lasts forever. I'm not going to fall for the line that it will still be business as usual, either; I've seen too many developer/artist startups get swallowed by spreader companies (EA, Activision, etc) to know that that is not true, and can never be true.
Once the suits move in, the show is over.
You are wholly a product of a pop culture in which strong copyright is the norm.
And I assume you somehow aren't? ;)
Also, before accusing me of being a pure pop culture robot by mentioning Pirates, realise that the raising of the Jolly Roger as depicted in that film, would itself have been inspired by real world events where the raising of said flag actually happened.
If you're looking for irony, consider it ironic that the film industry have produced films utilising an icon that would remain deeply appropriate for those of us who are opposed to the concept of intellectual property, whether they themselves had made use of it or not. Their material is as much a product of history, as we are supposedly a product of their material.
I'm currently sitting here listening to an mp3 of the Symphony of the Seas, from the old album Hooked on Classics, along with mental flashbacks of the scene where the Jolly Roger was raised during Pirates of the Carribean.
As this article refers to a victory for piracy, it is a good opportunity to issue a collective, impassioned scream of defiance against the very concept of intellectual property; to remind ourselves of who the enemy is, and why they must, and eventually will, be entirely and unrelentingly destroyed.
WIPO, RIAA, MPAA, and other related organisations, you are recognised as institutions which perpetuate the toxic mentality that making money is, in itself, more important than being alive to spend it. In our ongoing war with you, it is we, the greater public of this planet, who have the will of God on our side. We will have justice. We will have vengeance.
You are going to be removed from human memory.
This is a good idea, and it's actually something I've had in my own head for years, but I've never been able to work out the finer points of how it might function.
It's exactly what we need; come up with a sufficiently non-polluting means of mass-producing these things, and then line the streets with them. Clean air for breathing, astronomy, and as a major part of lowering global temperatures and cleaning up the environment.
I am seeing more and more, an influx of WoW forum refugees to Slashdot, as I've mentioned earlier, and they're just as anti-intellectual, brazenly sociopathic, and juvenile now as they were within the WoW forums.
Please go back there, former WoW players. Slashdot used to be a place for intelligent, often enjoyable discussion of ideas; and you're ruining it.
I wish I had mod points. Very creative, very funny!!
I see you've been modded down as a troll. Personally, I disagree with you, and I'll explain my disagreement. Obviously, those who modded you are incapable of doing so. ;)
I appreciate that, and view it as an indication of integrity.
I assume that you are familiar with Operation Ajax - if not, look it up.
Not the specifics, but I remember something about the deposition of the Shah. From memory, that was one of the original places where the term, "blowback," originally came from. The CIA seemed to think they were really smart by installing Khomeini in the Shah's place, but according to what I read, it ended up causing more harm than good.
What I did end up reading about more specifically, as far as the CIA's antics are concerned, was what went down in Nicaragua. Then, of course, there were some fun rumours going around online about how Jonestown was supposedly an MK-ULTRA program gone bad, and they ended up needing to liquidate the whole thing in a big hurry. Maybe that's an urban legend, but I've read wilder things before that ended up being true.
The long and the short of it is, I ended up learning that attempting to destabilise foreign governments who are perceived as hostile to American interests is possibly one of the CIA's core mandates, although the story also goes that even though they do have a specific charter, it isn't something which a lot of people are allowed to see, for fairly obvious reasons.
I've poured Iranian (and Iraqi) sand out of my boots, but that doesn't make me expert at anything other than pouring sand out of my boots. ;)
I've noticed that soldiers seem to be one of the groups of people on Slashdot who I can consistently have a decent conversation with. I think that's because even though I'm a civilian, it's still possible for us to get killed, and I nearly have been a couple of times. As a result, I don't advocate other people arbitrarily losing their lives for pointless and/or stupid reasons.
I'm also aware that the first person shooter games I've grown up with have given a lot of dumb teenagers the idea that they know what war is like. I know that I have no clue what war is like; not even the remotest idea. However, some of the less sanitary images that ended up on Google from Iraq have almost caused me to throw up a couple of times, which in turn led me to believe that whatever war is really
like, it isn't anything good. So I think that is the major difference between me and a lot of people; even though like them, I also haven't experienced it, I consider it something very negative, and I don't think it's something that should be rushed into for anything other than the most dire of reasons. I've also noticed that the people who are most keen for it are never those who actually have to go through it, which I think is wrong.
While I don't see the Supreme Leader as being above tampering with the election results, I can see how, and why, his chosen boy may have legitimately won the election.
From our perspective of course, theocracy never looks like a good thing. Some of the Islamic countries don't seem to mind it so much, though; maybe it's because they've grown up with it. I think that can be a hard thing for a lot of Americans and Australians to understand. We think that religious government is always bad, but the truth is that as long as the priests don't treat people badly, it doesn't have to be. Religion can give a lot of structure and meaning to people's lives if it's done positively.
And yes, I say "our," even though I'm an Australian. The people here who've accused me of anti-Americanism are utterly moronic. If I was really anti-American, I'd be advocating American involvement in Iran, because that happening would get a lot of Americans killed. The war mongers always think that you're against them if you don't advocate continual war. What I'm against is pointless loss of life.
No; all that's happened is that digital as a format has proven that, in most cases, photos genuinely aren't worth all that much.
As far as people are concerned, photography is basically an attempt to evade death, and not one that works well. I'm guessing most digital photos probably last about as long as they actually should.
Life is transient.
Wow...and yet this gets moderated Interesting, and my GP gets moderated Flamebait?
Slashdot's moderators truly do work in mysterious ways. ;)
Ubuntu typically has everything but the kitchen sink running in the background; it's even worse than XP for frivolous defaults.
Get Slackware, or something else minimalistic, where you're likely to have a marginal amount of memory left after the operating system and residents are loaded in. ;)
If you prevent people from killing each other, the moment your back is turned they resume the proscribed activity with greater zeal than before. Nothing is ever settled until they get a chance to simply duke it out. If one side loses and gets wiped out, that's tough luck, but at least matters are settled, rather than hostility continuing forever.
Yep. That's why I said that America (or anyone else) won't be doing the Iranian public any favours if they interfere with the removal of the current dictatorship. The Iranians need to do it by themselves.
One problem is that Iranian leaders are trying to delegitimize the reform movement by pretending that they're puppets of foreign powers.
(Mod this down again, if you want; I'm going to keep making this argument until someone finally has the spine to actually respond to me)
The only problem with this is, that's fairly likely exactly what the reform movement genuinely is. Is anyone honestly going to try and tell me with a straight face that the reform movement would not have CIA agents within its' ranks?
Truthfully, if I'd been the leader of the Chinese government at the time of Tienanmen Square, the first thing I would have done would be to broadcast a message announcing that if all of the American intelligence people were to come forward out of the crowd and give themselves up, none of the actual university students would be harmed.
This is the single main reason why this entire issue (Iran, currently) is pissing me off to the degree that it is.
Americans want to get involved purely because they still view their role as being to solve the political and/or moral problems of everyone else on the planet. The only problem is that George W. Bush eloquently proved (even if none of your earlier leaders did) that you don't have the ability to solve your own problems. A tyrant and a murderer held office as the President for eight years, and virtually none of you did anything to challenge him.
Because of this, any desire you might have to be involved with the current turmoil in Iraq has exactly zero moral credibility. You let a tyrant hold office in your own country, but you still think that you have a moral imperative to help remove tyrants from other people's.
You are not rightfully the planet's police force, Americans. The only reason why any of you think that, is because you've been brainwashed to think it by your country's education system. I'm aware, however, that nobody who is capable of truly rational thought will respond to that statement, since nobody who is capable of rational thought actually believes in the exceptionalist global police idea.
The current regime in Iran might well genuinely need to be removed, but if you want to truly do the right thing where another country is concerned, for once, then back off and let the Iranian people figure out how to do that for themselves. Don't get involved, because apart from anything else, you are not on record as having intervened in a single foreign country, (except, maybe, during WW2) where it actually worked out well, for either you, or the other country involved. Vietnam was a mess, and Iraq largely has been both times. Do you really think Iran won't be?
Let the Iranian people sort it out. Don't sell them arms, don't try and escalate things either way, and pull your damn spooks out if they are there. (And of course, they would be at this point, even if they weren't earlier)
Any new government, in order for it to be legitimate, will have to be something that the Iranian people have devised for themselves, and if there is a tyranny that needs to be removed, Iranian blood needs to be shed to remove it. That is the only way that the Iranian people will see any future democratic system as being genuine or meaning something, and it is the only way that they will be able to retain dignity throughout and after the process, as well; because it will mean that they will have cleaned up their own mess, which is an essential part of being an adult.
Just stop interfering.
All they're doing is selling the Iranian government some mobile telecommunications infrastructure. What the government decide to do with said infrastructure is entirely their responsibility.
Sophistry, I hear you say? Only about to the same degree as that moron who was arguing with me here, that the author of the World of Warcraft Glider bot should not be sued by Blizzard; because he wasn't doing anything against the rules himself. All he was doing was creating a macro generation program; what other people did with it was entirely their own responsibility.
when you pay them $15/hr and expect them to be good at what they do.
I suspect that you've just realised the main reason why outsourcing really exists.
Corporate bean counters aren't too intelligent. They think they're really clever if they focus on hiring people from Third World countries for chips per hour, they can sidestep all those nasty old restrictions at home. You know, the ones like a living wage, unionised labour, set working hours, and just having to treat your employees like human beings more or less in general.
What they don't realise though, is that people living in said Third World countries actually aren't stupid, despite American white supremacist myopia to the contrary. As IBM impersonates Ganesha and gradually generates an affluent middle class in Bangalore, eventually labour unions, and labour laws, are going to start springing up there as well. Indian society has been undergoing reform for a while now, and as the caste system is erroded to a progressively greater degree, Indians will start announcing that they no longer want to work in sweatshops either, and then what is a poor megacorp to do? ;)
Maybe it's because I haven't had a job that has been outsourced, but I cannot feel racist towards India; if anything, it's entirely the opposite.
I'm Caucasian myself, I admit; but to the degree that a white individual is able to at least, I converted to Hinduism three years ago. I am helplessly in love with virtually everything about the country that I have been able to discover; its' religion, its' music, its' art, its' architecture, its' food...all of it. My reaction to the recent racist violence towards Indians here in Melbourne has been one of grief and concern.
I cannot resent the Indian people themselves for international corporations having outsourced to their country, as well; that is hardly their fault, despite the fact that, of course, they are going to economically benefit from it. Still, India is a country which in places is still desperately poor; infusions of money there could potentially save large numbers of lives.
We do need to find ways to turn corporate focus back towards the West as well, yes; but I feel that if corporations and subsequent money and opportunities go to Third World countries, it is only mean-spirited of us to resent their populations for it. They are gaining the opportunity now to have a standard of living which we have already had for a long time; I feel happy for them.
Slashdot editors, please stop allowing this kind of opinionated trollbait to reach the front page.
It isn't news. It's nothing but navel gazing and whining from Windows refugees about how they don't want to feel forced to use their near non-existent intelligence.
If Windows refugees want a system that facilitates willful ignorance and stupidity, they need to simply go back to Windows, and the existing Linux community also needs to stop evangelising Linux to these sorts of dumb users.
Try and understand something, Linux community; Linux taking over the world, would mean Linux ultimately being used by a lot of the kind of people that you actually really don't want. The vast majority of human beings are absolute morons, as rants like TFA clearly show.
This wasn't a troll; it was an opinion, and a valid one. Some people do use non-GPL licenses.
I'm still waiting for the day when Stallman's fanboys stop abusing Slashdot's moderation system, by using it as a means of attempting to silence people they disagree with.
http://www.meetup.com/
I had the same problem as you, when my ex-girlfriend moved out; she'd managed to alienate literally everyone I'd previously ever known, including family members.
I joined a Meetup group about 18 months ago, and was eventually made Organizer. I host monthly groups, and out of a resident membership of around 100 people, I get regular attendance of close to a dozen people now. There are also Meetups for just about every possible kind of general interest you can think of, including some which are purely for random socialising.
Refactor, relicense.
They should rewrite the whole thing if they can be bothered, and use the BSD license; that way they get what they need, and it would help the rest of us out as well.
Remember, kids; GPL violation is only an issue with code that uses the GPL. If you don't use the GPL, you won't have its' drawbacks.
OSS is tolerable, if you've got a card that it has drivers for.
ALSA, on the other hand is overcomplex, unstable crap...and unfortunately, denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
I'm getting sick of hearing about it. The single main reason is that any (and I mean any) Americans who are involving themselves in it are complete, total hypocrites.
You allowed a monster to hold political office in your country for eight years. He was the single worst political leader that you have ever had, and one of the worst that any country in the world has ever had.
He stole at least the first election, if not both of them. He committed the greatest crime against you that anyone in your government ever has. (9/11) He is responsible for baseless war crimes against Iraq. He built gulags, advocated torture, sought ways around international laws that prohibit torture, and worked tirelessly, night and day, to move your country as close to outright fascism as he possibly could.
Through it all, you never opposed him in any meaningful way. Not once.
No impeachment. No censure. No investigation of him directly; only actions aimed at entirely dispensable underlings like Scooter Libby.
You never challenged either of his election victories. You were never even willing to remotely comprehend the idea that he might have been responsible for 9/11, instead sticking your fingers in your ears and singing whenever anyone suggested it, or calling such people either insane conspiracy theorists, or traitors and un-American.
When he insisted that war with Iraq was necessary, despite using a totally bogus rationale, the vast majority of you unquestioningly swallowed it whole.
With the presidency of George Walker Bush, (and even more, with the continued outrage that the man has not been taken into custody for his crimes) America has permanently forfeited any right that it may previously have had, to pass comment on the moral character of any foreign government, or whether or not said government is serving the cause of liberty.
You cannot credibly oppose monsters in government abroad, when you are entirely willing to allow and accept them domestically.
Spare me also the usual, semi-crying, "Why do you hate America?" response. The only thing such response serves to do, is illustrate the complete, unsparing lack of even the most basic intelligence in the person making it.