Can't they just send 100 messages each with 200 receipients? And repeat this from their 100 accounts?
Almost all spam software considers any message with 200 recipients as spam unless you whitelist the sender.
The whole idea of their disallowing non-paying customers to use WebDav is to make it harder for spammers to setup multiple accounts to send 100 from each account. I would bet they will lower the amount of email allowed per day for nonpaying customers to something closer to 50 as well.
It is somewhat easier for them to filter out spammers if they are using the web interface, and they don't need to worry too much about paying customers sending spam since they must provide a credit card, and thus are traceable.
Not a cureall, but sounds like a very reasonable plan to me. You can say "Pfah" if you like, but would you rather they did nothing? As it stands, I get the LEAST amount of spam through my networks (talking thousands per day) from Hotmail and AOL, which use a more restrictive method for sending mail than most ISPs/mail providers.
That is a good way of putting it. Another application is how distributed computing is accomplished. You can take ONE super computer, which is the most efficient method, to calculate something. Or you can do like Seti@home and get people to give up a tiny percentage of their cpu cycles to do a small portion of the whole, then calculate each small piece with three different people (or more if results are different) and the only overhead is the distribution.
This is theoretically the least efficient method to obtain a result because it takes so many redundant cycles to calculate the results of a small sample, plus distribution overhead, but it is the most cost effective AND fastest way. Same concept: different method for different tasks.
This redundancy is at the user level and triple checked for accuracy, which is even farther down the line than componant or system level. For these type of tasks (cracking encryption, searching for ET, etc.) this ugly, brute force method actually becomes rather elegant. Obviously, it can be the least expensive method as well.
If Sun becomes a company worth less than a billion dollars (i.e. is expendable) and suffers a sudden executive shakedown, THEN you can worry.
Kinda late then, if you have invested millions in Sun hardware and software, don't you think?
Waiting until Sun goes through the same problems as SCO is like seeing someone with a gun and bullets who is broke, but saying "Don't worry about him robbing you until he puts the bullets in the chamber". Its a bit late then.
Personally, I will keep a wary eye toward Sun while giving them the benefit of the doubt. But that benefit doesn't include investing in their products. THAT would be too much risk, considering there ARE alternatives you need real world servers, sold by companies that really *DO* support Linux and mixed OS environments. Obviously, IBM comes to mind first. Sun has simply been sending too many mixed signals for too many years for me to consider them as a potential platform for my servers in the future.
Even Dell has a better reputation as a server hardware vendor for supporting Linux than Sun does. (They do come with kickstart disks and such) Too bad most of their hardware rather sucks.
Most PC's dont use SCSI. Like I originally stated, you can't expect the same from PCs and server hardware (including Sun's). I have a couple PCs that do use SCSI, but they are not hot swappable. The primary point being that there is a difference between real servers and x86, even if there are occasionally similarities.
My problem is that people always assume that's what Sun is going to do when they have ZERO history of pulling that sort of crap.
I think some people would argue that Sun's recent relicensing of Unix from SCO *COULD* be viewed as supporting this type of crap. I would grant that the jury is still out, but their actions during the SCO affair *DO* justify looking at them with a skeptical, but open, mind.
Mix that with Sun's "on again, off again" love/hate relationship with Linux, and its easy to question their motives. Not enough to draw a definitive opinion perhaps, but enough to ask questions. Their previous actions with OSS in general also raises more questions than answers.
They have done some very cool things, like Open Office, but before I start praising or cursing them, I need more information. I don't fully trust them, and I think many people feel the exact same way, sleeping with one ear to the ground, just in case.
I think part of it is also because Linux runs on off the shelf hardware which is by design, not as reliable as Sun hardware. A PC will never be as reliable as a Sparc server, because the average user doesn't want to pay three to four times more for the hardware. Even a really good PC.
Google runs thousands of off the shelf servers in a way that makes failure a non issue, by having so damn many PCs that you can't tell if a few hundred fail. Its a different type of redundancy that is more cost effective in that particular application.
OpenFirmware may help in some ways, but it will not automatically allow you to hotswap memory, hard drives and even CPUs the way Sun servers can. These features will probably NEVER be included on any x86 type box because if you need those features, then x86 is the wrong architecture for the job. Instead, multiple PPC or Sparc would be the right tool.
I read the article and found nothing that I really didn't already know. Different tools, different jobs. I will continue to use Linux for my servers, but if we ever got to a point where we needed better than 99% uptime and availability then I would be looking at Sun or more likely, Big Iron. Interesting, probably will start a flamewar, but still obvious information. Even the comments on GPL were right on.
All the time for stuff that interests nerds, thats the entire idea "news for nerds". Same for Doom 3, etc. Besides, its not really an ad, its a forum to discuss if people like it or not, and if its worth buying or not.
Yes, you are right, I was mistaken. In reality, the vast majority of Deadheads at the concerts are wearing suits and ties, and drinking champagne. I think most were even driving BMW's...
Obviously, you have never met any people who actually followed the Dead.
Just the idea of barefoot people who don't bathe trying to sell you cheese sandwiches in the parking lot, to raise money to get to the next show, is enough to gag me. Jesus, you can love music and STILL have proper hygiene. Deadheads were just plain nasty, at least the one's I knew.
If you ever saw Stevie Ray Vaugn live in concert, you would understand why. He was significantly better live than on tape. Some music has a more raw, edge to it live, with more energy. This is very common for Blues, but lots of music sounds better live, mistakes and all. Gives you a more real sound that many people, especially musicians like myself, like.
Then again, some musicians suck live. I try to avoid them on CD as well.
or do a 'cat/dev/random >>file.iso' and let it run for a while until its large enough (600mb-700mb), and use symbolic links to link all the other links to it, so all the "movies" link to the same file. My understanding is that most of the letters were generated because of files that were too small anyway, so probably not needed.
Another person replied about isp's canceling your account, so I would recommend getting multiple Yahoo accounts with web sites for free. I have my own T1s, so its not likely that they would shut me down without asking first, since I have an account rep.
This is EXACTLY what I was thinking. We already know they do not check for file size. Obviously a 140k file is NOT a movie, unless someone has invented some miracle compression technique.
I was thinking about setting up a page that has links to small text files with random content, named the same as all the popular movies. Might even add text on the main page using the terms "These files are not warez or pirated movies" just to let them find those key words.
This *might* be an effective method to create so much noise that their lame efforts will have to be changed, assuming enough people do it. It would seem to me that if you are going to send legal letters with threats, you should at least have a real person review the alleged infringment first. Otherwise, it IS spam, and no different than a spider that trolls for email addresses.
This is kind of like a reverse DDOS attack on their lame spider that is searching for infringment. Oh yea, and who ever wrote the code for this spider, and whoever agreed that this was a good idea and should be implimented, should be fired.
In the case of Iraq, I'm not convinced at all. We rushed into Iraq
I appreciate the intellegent reply. I can agree that we made plenty of mistakes in Iraq, but I am of the belief that we should have taken out Saddam back in the first Gulf War. I am also not convinced that getting more help was really possible, since all the powers that opposed us had financial reasons to do so (idealogical, maybe, but mainly financial). And we got Libya to start down the right path, to boot. Most people against the war still agree Libya would not have changed if we had not gone into Iraq.
We can disagree on HOW we entered Iraq (isn't that cool, in a free world?) but my view is that were over a decade LATE, and we needed to surround Iran to put pressure on them as well (again, to get their people to do the job instead of us).
I don't mean to oversimplify the situation, but it is becoming very clear to me that the fear and brute force are the only factors that will create some change in the middle east, and after 9-11, the stakes are just too high to do nothing. 9-11 emboldened terrorists, and frankly, I would rather see them flooding into Iraq, where we have the military might to deal with them, and it is easy for them to enter, than for them to spend time scheming how to enter the US.
I just got back from a week in Europe, visiting both western and eastern countries. I found plenty of people who disagreed with the US, and plenty who agreed with it, but I didn't see any "hate" for us in the limited places I went. There is a part of me that thinks many people may SAY they are against us going into Iraq, but secretly are glad it is US that is doing the dirty work, and not them. The British and Irish people I met were strongly FOR our presence in Iraq, in spite of polls. Then again, most people I came in contact with were over 30 years old.
So, they are going to delay releasing HL2, and this is news? I have been waiting for TFC2 since it was announced in 1998, and gave up hope in 2001. If they don't get this puppy out by Xmas of this year, they are going to really have some trouble creating a buzz, you know...
I believe the strategy is valid, the problem has been our absolute failure to impliment it for over half a century. I will freely admit my country has majorly fucked up in the past in dealing with the freedoms of others, but sitting and doing nothing is NOT more effective in achieving the goal.
Yeah, remove the dictators! Like Musharraf in Pakistan (military coup), and Fahd in Saudi (oppressive oil barons), and Karimov is Uzbekistan (boils prisoners to death), and a dozen other US allies in the war on freedom^H^H^Hterror.
Yes. Do. Start with the most brutal, Saddam. Then once you have a presence in the area, it becomes a little easier to use political pressure (and the potential threat of military violence) to create change, a little at a time. Hopefully, at least a few more will capitulate like Libya before we have to fire a single shot, and the people of a few more (perhaps Iran) will rise up on their own accord. Even now, Saudi Arabia is implimenting "democratic reforms", which are pitiful, but at least a move in the right direction. Thats all Freedom needs, momentum.
Better yet, get some of the more minor dictators to HELP us get rid of the worst abusers, not knowing that their time is coming soon enough if they don't reform. My guess is that one or two will see the writing on the wall, and opt to become their own liberator, if for no other reason than to take the credit. Fine, so be it. I would love to see Musharraf viewed by history as the revolutionary that eventually restored democracy and peace to Pakistan.
Freedom IS infectious, but it is the cure, not the disease.
So yes, your statement is correct. You just THOUGHT it was sarcasm when in reality it is a valid game plan.
Um, that was my point. But it still isn't bullet proof, you still have to have some trust with your user. You can do all that with a computer, and if I *reallY* want to get access (and its a Windows box in particular) I can still do all kinds of nasty stuff. Not easy, but doesn't take very long. This is why you still have to have employees that are worth trusting.
The suggestions are valid, as long as you don't have employees who are truly out to screw you. Even with Linux, no system is 100% secure.
Then why does business seem as shitty as it did in January of 2002?
Not sure, our business is up. Unit volume is up, dollar volume is up, and gross margins up a few points to boot. Personal income is almost double, from '02 numbers. Most of my friends are in the same position. A few are even from 02. Fewer are worse off. Perhaps your problems are not related to the President.
And why are we supposed to be enamoured of the conservative fiscal policy of the President if it makes no difference?
I am not enamoured by any Presidents policies. I don't think that the ONE person in office is the most important factor in my personal success. I have always believed the person who has the most control over my personal success is ME. Granted, its not very convenient for laying blame, but since I take personal responsibility, I find I don't need to blame anyone anyway.
I prefer a fiscal conservative, but unfortunately, there isn't one running for President this year. W is the closest thing to a fiscal conservative, so he gets my vote. The last fiscal conservative we had as President was Reagan. It will be a while until we see someone like him again.
Actually, we don't use any USB devices on our network, all resources are TCP/IP over ethernet, so if I was concerned, I could just disable USB in the BIOS, and set a password to enter BIOS setup.
Of course, they can still pop in a Knoppix CD, mount the hard drive as RW, then copy files from another CD to the hard drive. Or just mount the hard drive as RO and then copy the companies files to any website via sftp, or burn them to disk.
For that matter, you CAN boot into DOS and read/write to a NTFS partition with easy to find utilities that fit on a floppy or a bootable CD. I have one of these for testing. Even in DOS, there are lots of things you can do to steal info.
So I could remove all floppies, all CDROMs, disable USB and set a password for BIOS (and put a physical lock on the case) to protect the system. Of course, this would not stop them from finding a way to repartition the drive and install a copy of Debian via ftp for dual booting, unless I had the firewall locked down so tight that the Net was useless. Then again, that wouldn't stop them from get 0wned by a trojan from visiting a rogue site.
The point is that no matter what you do, you have to have SOME trust in the users, because I can ALWAYS get around any security you put in place if I try hard enough. Usually, I would not have to try that hard.
That is the risk we take. The primary goal is to get a system where all the people can vote and decide. If they choose a Theocracy, then we will have to live with it.
Odds are that as long as everyone is given an equal chance to vote, they will not. Likely they will eventually develop a parlamentary system that recognizes their religious beliefs, like Turkey. Whatever it becomes, at least it will be the will of the people instead of the will of a small minority of people who are in charge simply because they have the weapons.
Anything that is democratic is better than the former system. Very seldom do you see wars between two governments when the peoples of both countries have equal representation. Its always two dictatorships, or one dictatorship against one democracy.
" I have been bitching since Desert Storm I that we left the Iraqi people out to dry"
I agree. Politically it was a good move. Leave an unbalanced country so OPEC needs are military. W screwed that up.
I would say that Osama screwed that up. The pre 9-11 situation was tolerable, but not great. Once the towers came down, the price was too high to NOT shake the place up. Right now, we have a presence on two sides of Iran, and next door to Saudi Arabia, the two real sources of Terrorism. Its ugly, its painful, but I still feel its better than the alternative.
We have lost 1000 people, which I hate, but as a Vet, I know its the price you pay. With all the bitching about effectiveness, the fact is we have killed more than 10x the number of enemy soldiers/combatants. Probably closer to a 50 to 1 ratio. A 2-1 ratio would normally be considered effective, yet we have succeeded in reducing our losses to 2% or less compared to "the enemy". This is success by any standard.
It may not be popular here on Slashdot, but I fully support the idea of thinning the herd of radical elements. 100%. Like it or not, I would rather blow up potential problems that see them on our soil. Educating women is as effective as killing men in Afganistan, since it defeats their political philosophy. I have read the Koran, and it doesn't look great for women, but it doesn't excuse the domination of men by keeping women uneducated and subservient. That alone was reason enough to drop some bombs, in my opinion.
I don't want anyone to die, but if someone must die, I choose them. I say we take the battle to them, and assist them in their desire to die in battle and ascend into heaven and hook up with 72 virgins. If that is what it takes, so be it. I just am not afraid to admit it, and don't feel the need to post as AC when I do.
As to lying, I am not convinced he lied to anyone. I think he is embarassed that either 1) there were no WMDs, which is odd since even the French thought there were, or 2) The WMDs were moved to another location. My money is on them being moved. Being wrong isn't evil, its just wrong. It happens, and no country thought the WMDs didn't exist, so we were ALL wrong.
Rush was right about at least one thing, the definition of "Peace", which is that period that follows after one side beats the living snot out of the other. There really never HAS been a negotiaged peace, it has always taken a war. We tried it on our soil, that was much worse than going into Afganistan and Iraq. Again, this should be an easy choice to make.
Did you watch any of the origional series? The whole thing was a giant metaphore for the cold war that very clearly had the USA (Federation) as the good guys.
It takes good guys and bad guys to make a story. The Xindi are the current bad guys. The Klingons go from good guys to bad guys all the time, showing it is not a black and white issue. Showing the conflict among friends (early Vulcans) is good as well. There is a difference in bad and evil. Even the Romulans are not always "bad". Just like in real life.
We hated the Soviets, but we love the Russian people (substitute for any country). We often support a country in public, but privately work against them (or vise versa). There are usually good reasons for this, even if we don't like them. Life is always simpler "in theory" than it is in practice.
Enterprise and other ST shows are a classic example of art imitating life. So yes, you have good guys, bad guys, and sometimes truly evil guys.
Slashdot Mirror
Can't they just send 100 messages each with 200 receipients? And repeat this from their 100 accounts?
Almost all spam software considers any message with 200 recipients as spam unless you whitelist the sender.
The whole idea of their disallowing non-paying customers to use WebDav is to make it harder for spammers to setup multiple accounts to send 100 from each account. I would bet they will lower the amount of email allowed per day for nonpaying customers to something closer to 50 as well.
It is somewhat easier for them to filter out spammers if they are using the web interface, and they don't need to worry too much about paying customers sending spam since they must provide a credit card, and thus are traceable.
Not a cureall, but sounds like a very reasonable plan to me. You can say "Pfah" if you like, but would you rather they did nothing? As it stands, I get the LEAST amount of spam through my networks (talking thousands per day) from Hotmail and AOL, which use a more restrictive method for sending mail than most ISPs/mail providers.
That is a good way of putting it. Another application is how distributed computing is accomplished. You can take ONE super computer, which is the most efficient method, to calculate something. Or you can do like Seti@home and get people to give up a tiny percentage of their cpu cycles to do a small portion of the whole, then calculate each small piece with three different people (or more if results are different) and the only overhead is the distribution.
This is theoretically the least efficient method to obtain a result because it takes so many redundant cycles to calculate the results of a small sample, plus distribution overhead, but it is the most cost effective AND fastest way. Same concept: different method for different tasks.
This redundancy is at the user level and triple checked for accuracy, which is even farther down the line than componant or system level. For these type of tasks (cracking encryption, searching for ET, etc.) this ugly, brute force method actually becomes rather elegant. Obviously, it can be the least expensive method as well.
If Sun becomes a company worth less than a billion dollars (i.e. is expendable) and suffers a sudden executive shakedown, THEN you can worry.
Kinda late then, if you have invested millions in Sun hardware and software, don't you think?
Waiting until Sun goes through the same problems as SCO is like seeing someone with a gun and bullets who is broke, but saying "Don't worry about him robbing you until he puts the bullets in the chamber". Its a bit late then.
Personally, I will keep a wary eye toward Sun while giving them the benefit of the doubt. But that benefit doesn't include investing in their products. THAT would be too much risk, considering there ARE alternatives you need real world servers, sold by companies that really *DO* support Linux and mixed OS environments. Obviously, IBM comes to mind first. Sun has simply been sending too many mixed signals for too many years for me to consider them as a potential platform for my servers in the future.
Even Dell has a better reputation as a server hardware vendor for supporting Linux than Sun does. (They do come with kickstart disks and such) Too bad most of their hardware rather sucks.
Most PC's dont use SCSI. Like I originally stated, you can't expect the same from PCs and server hardware (including Sun's). I have a couple PCs that do use SCSI, but they are not hot swappable. The primary point being that there is a difference between real servers and x86, even if there are occasionally similarities.
My problem is that people always assume that's what Sun is going to do when they have ZERO history of pulling that sort of crap.
I think some people would argue that Sun's recent relicensing of Unix from SCO *COULD* be viewed as supporting this type of crap. I would grant that the jury is still out, but their actions during the SCO affair *DO* justify looking at them with a skeptical, but open, mind.
Mix that with Sun's "on again, off again" love/hate relationship with Linux, and its easy to question their motives. Not enough to draw a definitive opinion perhaps, but enough to ask questions. Their previous actions with OSS in general also raises more questions than answers.
They have done some very cool things, like Open Office, but before I start praising or cursing them, I need more information. I don't fully trust them, and I think many people feel the exact same way, sleeping with one ear to the ground, just in case.
I think part of it is also because Linux runs on off the shelf hardware which is by design, not as reliable as Sun hardware. A PC will never be as reliable as a Sparc server, because the average user doesn't want to pay three to four times more for the hardware. Even a really good PC.
Google runs thousands of off the shelf servers in a way that makes failure a non issue, by having so damn many PCs that you can't tell if a few hundred fail. Its a different type of redundancy that is more cost effective in that particular application.
OpenFirmware may help in some ways, but it will not automatically allow you to hotswap memory, hard drives and even CPUs the way Sun servers can. These features will probably NEVER be included on any x86 type box because if you need those features, then x86 is the wrong architecture for the job. Instead, multiple PPC or Sparc would be the right tool.
I read the article and found nothing that I really didn't already know. Different tools, different jobs. I will continue to use Linux for my servers, but if we ever got to a point where we needed better than 99% uptime and availability then I would be looking at Sun or more likely, Big Iron. Interesting, probably will start a flamewar, but still obvious information. Even the comments on GPL were right on.
since when has slashdot done free advertising?
All the time for stuff that interests nerds, thats the entire idea "news for nerds". Same for Doom 3, etc. Besides, its not really an ad, its a forum to discuss if people like it or not, and if its worth buying or not.
I'm sure, the Dead have fans that span all economic catagories. I was refering to the ones who used to follow them all over the US tho.
Yes, you are right, I was mistaken. In reality, the vast majority of Deadheads at the concerts are wearing suits and ties, and drinking champagne. I think most were even driving BMW's...
Obviously, you have never met any people who actually followed the Dead.
Just the idea of barefoot people who don't bathe trying to sell you cheese sandwiches in the parking lot, to raise money to get to the next show, is enough to gag me. Jesus, you can love music and STILL have proper hygiene. Deadheads were just plain nasty, at least the one's I knew.
If you ever saw Stevie Ray Vaugn live in concert, you would understand why. He was significantly better live than on tape. Some music has a more raw, edge to it live, with more energy. This is very common for Blues, but lots of music sounds better live, mistakes and all. Gives you a more real sound that many people, especially musicians like myself, like.
Then again, some musicians suck live. I try to avoid them on CD as well.
or do a 'cat /dev/random >>file.iso' and let it run for a while until its large enough (600mb-700mb), and use symbolic links to link all the other links to it, so all the "movies" link to the same file. My understanding is that most of the letters were generated because of files that were too small anyway, so probably not needed.
Another person replied about isp's canceling your account, so I would recommend getting multiple Yahoo accounts with web sites for free. I have my own T1s, so its not likely that they would shut me down without asking first, since I have an account rep.
This is EXACTLY what I was thinking. We already know they do not check for file size. Obviously a 140k file is NOT a movie, unless someone has invented some miracle compression technique.
I was thinking about setting up a page that has links to small text files with random content, named the same as all the popular movies. Might even add text on the main page using the terms "These files are not warez or pirated movies" just to let them find those key words.
This *might* be an effective method to create so much noise that their lame efforts will have to be changed, assuming enough people do it. It would seem to me that if you are going to send legal letters with threats, you should at least have a real person review the alleged infringment first. Otherwise, it IS spam, and no different than a spider that trolls for email addresses.
This is kind of like a reverse DDOS attack on their lame spider that is searching for infringment. Oh yea, and who ever wrote the code for this spider, and whoever agreed that this was a good idea and should be implimented, should be fired.
In the case of Iraq, I'm not convinced at all. We rushed into Iraq
I appreciate the intellegent reply. I can agree that we made plenty of mistakes in Iraq, but I am of the belief that we should have taken out Saddam back in the first Gulf War. I am also not convinced that getting more help was really possible, since all the powers that opposed us had financial reasons to do so (idealogical, maybe, but mainly financial). And we got Libya to start down the right path, to boot. Most people against the war still agree Libya would not have changed if we had not gone into Iraq.
We can disagree on HOW we entered Iraq (isn't that cool, in a free world?) but my view is that were over a decade LATE, and we needed to surround Iran to put pressure on them as well (again, to get their people to do the job instead of us).
I don't mean to oversimplify the situation, but it is becoming very clear to me that the fear and brute force are the only factors that will create some change in the middle east, and after 9-11, the stakes are just too high to do nothing. 9-11 emboldened terrorists, and frankly, I would rather see them flooding into Iraq, where we have the military might to deal with them, and it is easy for them to enter, than for them to spend time scheming how to enter the US.
I just got back from a week in Europe, visiting both western and eastern countries. I found plenty of people who disagreed with the US, and plenty who agreed with it, but I didn't see any "hate" for us in the limited places I went. There is a part of me that thinks many people may SAY they are against us going into Iraq, but secretly are glad it is US that is doing the dirty work, and not them. The British and Irish people I met were strongly FOR our presence in Iraq, in spite of polls. Then again, most people I came in contact with were over 30 years old.
So, they are going to delay releasing HL2, and this is news? I have been waiting for TFC2 since it was announced in 1998, and gave up hope in 2001. If they don't get this puppy out by Xmas of this year, they are going to really have some trouble creating a buzz, you know...
I believe the strategy is valid, the problem has been our absolute failure to impliment it for over half a century. I will freely admit my country has majorly fucked up in the past in dealing with the freedoms of others, but sitting and doing nothing is NOT more effective in achieving the goal.
I'll stick with off-the-shelf OSes, thanks.
;)
Me too, thats why I like SuSE.
Don't you mean 2001?
My guess is that it is a Y2K bug.
Yeah, remove the dictators! Like Musharraf in Pakistan (military coup), and Fahd in Saudi (oppressive oil barons), and Karimov is Uzbekistan (boils prisoners to death), and a dozen other US allies in the war on freedom^H^H^Hterror.
Yes. Do. Start with the most brutal, Saddam. Then once you have a presence in the area, it becomes a little easier to use political pressure (and the potential threat of military violence) to create change, a little at a time. Hopefully, at least a few more will capitulate like Libya before we have to fire a single shot, and the people of a few more (perhaps Iran) will rise up on their own accord. Even now, Saudi Arabia is implimenting "democratic reforms", which are pitiful, but at least a move in the right direction. Thats all Freedom needs, momentum.
Better yet, get some of the more minor dictators to HELP us get rid of the worst abusers, not knowing that their time is coming soon enough if they don't reform. My guess is that one or two will see the writing on the wall, and opt to become their own liberator, if for no other reason than to take the credit. Fine, so be it. I would love to see Musharraf viewed by history as the revolutionary that eventually restored democracy and peace to Pakistan.
Freedom IS infectious, but it is the cure, not the disease.
So yes, your statement is correct. You just THOUGHT it was sarcasm when in reality it is a valid game plan.
Um, that was my point. But it still isn't bullet proof, you still have to have some trust with your user. You can do all that with a computer, and if I *reallY* want to get access (and its a Windows box in particular) I can still do all kinds of nasty stuff. Not easy, but doesn't take very long. This is why you still have to have employees that are worth trusting.
The suggestions are valid, as long as you don't have employees who are truly out to screw you. Even with Linux, no system is 100% secure.
Then why does business seem as shitty as it did in January of 2002?
Not sure, our business is up. Unit volume is up, dollar volume is up, and gross margins up a few points to boot. Personal income is almost double, from '02 numbers. Most of my friends are in the same position. A few are even from 02. Fewer are worse off. Perhaps your problems are not related to the President.
And why are we supposed to be enamoured of the conservative fiscal policy of the President if it makes no difference?
I am not enamoured by any Presidents policies. I don't think that the ONE person in office is the most important factor in my personal success. I have always believed the person who has the most control over my personal success is ME. Granted, its not very convenient for laying blame, but since I take personal responsibility, I find I don't need to blame anyone anyway.
I prefer a fiscal conservative, but unfortunately, there isn't one running for President this year. W is the closest thing to a fiscal conservative, so he gets my vote. The last fiscal conservative we had as President was Reagan. It will be a while until we see someone like him again.
Actually, we don't use any USB devices on our network, all resources are TCP/IP over ethernet, so if I was concerned, I could just disable USB in the BIOS, and set a password to enter BIOS setup.
Of course, they can still pop in a Knoppix CD, mount the hard drive as RW, then copy files from another CD to the hard drive. Or just mount the hard drive as RO and then copy the companies files to any website via sftp, or burn them to disk.
For that matter, you CAN boot into DOS and read/write to a NTFS partition with easy to find utilities that fit on a floppy or a bootable CD. I have one of these for testing. Even in DOS, there are lots of things you can do to steal info.
So I could remove all floppies, all CDROMs, disable USB and set a password for BIOS (and put a physical lock on the case) to protect the system. Of course, this would not stop them from finding a way to repartition the drive and install a copy of Debian via ftp for dual booting, unless I had the firewall locked down so tight that the Net was useless. Then again, that wouldn't stop them from get 0wned by a trojan from visiting a rogue site.
The point is that no matter what you do, you have to have SOME trust in the users, because I can ALWAYS get around any security you put in place if I try hard enough. Usually, I would not have to try that hard.
That is the risk we take. The primary goal is to get a system where all the people can vote and decide. If they choose a Theocracy, then we will have to live with it.
Odds are that as long as everyone is given an equal chance to vote, they will not. Likely they will eventually develop a parlamentary system that recognizes their religious beliefs, like Turkey. Whatever it becomes, at least it will be the will of the people instead of the will of a small minority of people who are in charge simply because they have the weapons.
Anything that is democratic is better than the former system. Very seldom do you see wars between two governments when the peoples of both countries have equal representation. Its always two dictatorships, or one dictatorship against one democracy.
" I have been bitching since Desert Storm I that we left the Iraqi people out to dry"
I agree. Politically it was a good move. Leave an unbalanced country so OPEC needs are military. W screwed that up.
I would say that Osama screwed that up. The pre 9-11 situation was tolerable, but not great. Once the towers came down, the price was too high to NOT shake the place up. Right now, we have a presence on two sides of Iran, and next door to Saudi Arabia, the two real sources of Terrorism. Its ugly, its painful, but I still feel its better than the alternative.
We have lost 1000 people, which I hate, but as a Vet, I know its the price you pay. With all the bitching about effectiveness, the fact is we have killed more than 10x the number of enemy soldiers/combatants. Probably closer to a 50 to 1 ratio. A 2-1 ratio would normally be considered effective, yet we have succeeded in reducing our losses to 2% or less compared to "the enemy". This is success by any standard.
It may not be popular here on Slashdot, but I fully support the idea of thinning the herd of radical elements. 100%. Like it or not, I would rather blow up potential problems that see them on our soil. Educating women is as effective as killing men in Afganistan, since it defeats their political philosophy. I have read the Koran, and it doesn't look great for women, but it doesn't excuse the domination of men by keeping women uneducated and subservient. That alone was reason enough to drop some bombs, in my opinion.
I don't want anyone to die, but if someone must die, I choose them. I say we take the battle to them, and assist them in their desire to die in battle and ascend into heaven and hook up with 72 virgins. If that is what it takes, so be it. I just am not afraid to admit it, and don't feel the need to post as AC when I do.
As to lying, I am not convinced he lied to anyone. I think he is embarassed that either 1) there were no WMDs, which is odd since even the French thought there were, or 2) The WMDs were moved to another location. My money is on them being moved. Being wrong isn't evil, its just wrong. It happens, and no country thought the WMDs didn't exist, so we were ALL wrong.
Rush was right about at least one thing, the definition of "Peace", which is that period that follows after one side beats the living snot out of the other. There really never HAS been a negotiaged peace, it has always taken a war. We tried it on our soil, that was much worse than going into Afganistan and Iraq. Again, this should be an easy choice to make.
Did you watch any of the origional series? The whole thing was a giant metaphore for the cold war that very clearly had the USA (Federation) as the good guys.
It takes good guys and bad guys to make a story. The Xindi are the current bad guys. The Klingons go from good guys to bad guys all the time, showing it is not a black and white issue. Showing the conflict among friends (early Vulcans) is good as well. There is a difference in bad and evil. Even the Romulans are not always "bad". Just like in real life.
We hated the Soviets, but we love the Russian people (substitute for any country). We often support a country in public, but privately work against them (or vise versa). There are usually good reasons for this, even if we don't like them. Life is always simpler "in theory" than it is in practice.
Enterprise and other ST shows are a classic example of art imitating life. So yes, you have good guys, bad guys, and sometimes truly evil guys.