I am sure that with a potato cannon army the Germans could be just as effective against Poland today. And if not they could scrape together the survivors and still take France. Reducing these countries to potato pancakes and french fries! The horror, the culinary horror!
Another Article from the Entertainment Biz
on
Shutting down Kazaa
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The Los Angeles Business Journal has a front page article about the menace of file sharing, and what the Entertainment Business (note: always capitalized in Los Angeles, a pure company town) is doing about it.
Quote:
The recording industry already has blamed illicit music file swapping for keeping as much as $5 billion from its coffers since 1999.
But it gets much worse. With the number of households installing high-speed Internet access - the key component in moving large data files - projected to nearly triple within four years, the music business faces the prospect of mammoth losses and little assurance that its counterattacks to piracy will have much effect.
This is why I can create a documentary on Disney, even using Disney's logos,...
From what I've heard about the sharks in Disney's legal department, I would not count on this. Even if they could not legally stop you, they would certainly try their best to make your life miserable in the meantime.
Instead of a simple numeric readout of calories, why not allow the victi^H^H^H^Hexercise enthusiast to select the high-calorie food item of their choice, then as they work out, have a proportional piece of the food item consumed. You select a pizza/chocolate cake/french fries/nachos and as you burn up, say, 100 calories, you see 100 calories worth of the item vanish.
What about alternatives to Palladium for providing hardware-based security? For example, trusted code of various crypto algorithms along with perhaps certain trustworthy public keys (CA signing keys, etc.) might be nice. One could run something like Tripwire using unhackable hardware based crypto. If the code and APIs were open, then open source developers could make wide use of this.
Despite much criticism of Palladium, I do think there is a need for a trusted security function built into hardware (so it will resist Trojan horse programs and kernel compromises).
In the bad old days, before the Internet became the be-all of online service, there was a role for proprietary networks. I had a subscription to CompuServe back then. They billed you monthly for a flat rate plus time used just for being online, not too dissimilar to an ISP. You also had the ability to purchase products from on-line vendors with a CompuServe presence. Payment would be a line item on you monthly statement. Basically you service provider also acted as agent for the merchant in collecting charges. (BTW, in 1993 it blew me away that I could order a Honey Baked Ham (TM) online!)
Its hard to see how to do this with an open Internet. Perhaps if the ISP also hosted ecommerce sites, they could have an arrangement similar to this - where the ISP would perform billing and collections as part of the hosting arrangement.
Hate to say it, but sometimes these older closed online services could do things better than the Internet.
You can try to retrain and use your grey matter all you want, but you are still at a great disadvantage when retraining for a second skill. This is a fact. You will always be tagged as a former IDMS/Natural technie no matter how hard you try to "acquire new skills" (or Informix/Powerbuilder or Java/Oracle or...)
Your worth in the marketplace is what the marketplace values your current skill set and your history. Someone skilled in one area is always less desirable in a different one, regardless of their desire and ability to learn.
You will meet lots of smart people in that unemployment line. They used to think they were just as smart as you did. Maybe some of them thought only loser could find themselves out of an occupation. It is a terrible thing when your sense of self-value battles the marketplace and loses.
There were IDMS/Natural programmers in the 1980's who had a similar attitude. They knew the hot technology of the day, commanded top salaries, and believed it was all due to their inherent skills in negotiating these top salaries.
Not true after a few years. Technical changes after a few years lead them to either change careers (get out of tech), start all over at the bottom of a new field, or cling like mad to the jobs they had.
If all you have is the "grey matter between your ears", you are just another mass of unemployed protoplasm once your skills are obsolete. What is so valuable now will soon be worthless. The fact you are so good at it now makes you LESS trainable in the next new technology.
Markets have an interesting way of periodically devaluing technical skills. It helps depress wages. It also knocks the wind out of those who believe they are too good to have to depend on anyone else. Having to stand in an unemployment line with the rest of humanity is a good lesson in humility.
It is noticeable that all your presidents who have travelled abroad believe in a policy of engagement.
Interesting that a slander against Bill Clinton during his initial campaign revolved around him having the audacity to visit Eastern European countries as a student, while the Vietnam war was in full force. Seeing Prague as a 20-year old student was viewed as a sort of treason.
Unfortunately, for the sake of this argument, the first thing done in a security check is investigate citizenship. Not a US citizen, you don't pass.
National origins are heavily scrutinized too. Having a spouse that is a non-citizen will cause you trouble, as well as any sort of other direct family ties.
BTW, I'm told that for a top secret clearance, one of the things you are expected to answer under polygraph is whether you or anyone you know are members of Greenpeace. AFAIK, no questions are asked about militia groups.
And no, I'm not advocating any of this - just showing where it comes from (and where it might lead).
The most significant benefit that the demonstration of nuclear power likely bought the United States was a trump card for use in post-war negotiations with the USSR.
Saw a convincing explanation that the point of the bomb was not to convince the Japanese to surrender, but to stop Stalin from occupying northern Japan (and who knows what else - Alaska?). Two bombs were needed to show the US possibly had an arsenal - if one bomb were dropped Stalin could believe that was all we had. After the fall of Germany, Soviet troops were turned eastwards. Truman may have had a well founded fear of where they would go next. Can't find ref - believe History Channel presented this theory.
That said, it was very terrible to kill so many Japanese civilians in so horrible a fashion to make this point
Look, you want protection - get a dog. A German Shepard is a very protective breed and is big enough to intimidate any attacker. You can rely on this breed to protect you, if you raise it properly. They will literally defend you to death.
Advantages of a dog over a gun:
Dog will protect your home even if you are not there
Criminal can't steal dog from you and use it against you, as they can with a gun
Dogs cannot be used to commit suicide
A dog cannot be (easily) used to attack a loved one in a fit of irrational rage
In the dark, a dog can tell an intruder from a member of the household more easily than you can - hence fewer accidental shootings
In the act of defending against an intruder, you don't have to reload a dog
Dogs can be fun to have around even if you don't need protection - no gun ever will greet you when you come home and lick your face
I love my job. I love all the people I work with. Especially my Boss, who is the kindest, hardest working, most intelligent Boss there is.
Of course, my praise does not extend to the secret, semi-secret, sort-of-secret, and almost-secret stuff we do here at work. Oh no, I couldn't praise that at all, it would violate my NDA
The likely use of this system would not be to track foreign terrorists, but to track domestic resistance to a war gone bad.
The government officials proposing this all have very clear memories of the Vietnam war and of the extent of domestic opposition to it. This opposition made it very difficult to prosecute that war - a fact not lost on Bush, Ashcroft, etc. They do not want to repeat the "mistakes" of the past.
Tracking the activities of dissenters allows more effective neutralization of their activities. Monitoring personal communications makes blackmail easier. It makes disrupting organized opposition activities easier, whether these are demonstrations or just running a peace candidate for office.
You all are aware that there is still mandatory registration for a military draft? During Vietnam, many folks managed to slip through the cracks and evade serving in that unpopular war. Not a chance this time around. You try to slip across the border to Canada, you will never get out of the country.
Actually, LAUSD has maybe one administrative staff per instructor - that's a staff person, not an admin. This ratio is probably not out of line with any other service business - look at a private medical practice, you prbably have as many clerical and support workers as you do medical professionals.
The LA school district's non-instructional staff includes facility maintenance, police, computer systems folks, etc. They don't teach students but they do support the instructional process.
TIA is useless for tracking terrorists. You are trying to find a few thousand dedicated individuals among massess of millions, based on shopping, Web surfing, etc.?
Consider what this MIGHT be useful for. Say there is another large scale war. Say the government needs to start drafting young adults to fight this war. Assume the war is very unpopular, and many of these young adults would prefer not to be drafted, in fact not to register for the draft after all. Wouldn't a database such as TIA be eminently useful for this purpose?
It was relatively easy to avoid registering for the draft in the Vietnam War era. It will be impossible in the next war.
Keep in mind avoiding conscription is a criminal act, and keep in mind those attempting to do so will easily be labeled terrorists.
Slashdot Mirror
Filtering out "-1 Troll" posts violates the DMCA?
I am sure that with a potato cannon army the Germans could be just as effective against Poland today. And if not they could scrape together the survivors and still take France.
Reducing these countries to potato pancakes and french fries! The horror, the culinary horror!
Quote:
For the entire article, try this
From what I've heard about the sharks in Disney's legal department, I would not count on this. Even if they could not legally stop you, they would certainly try their best to make your life miserable in the meantime.
I see this as an excellent incentive to port P2P tools and media players to this environment. Anyone care to try coding this stuff in RPG? ;)
Instead of a simple numeric readout of calories, why not allow the victi^H^H^H^Hexercise enthusiast to select the high-calorie food item of their choice, then as they work out, have a proportional piece of the food item consumed. You select a pizza/chocolate cake/french fries/nachos and as you burn up, say, 100 calories, you see 100 calories worth of the item vanish.
Despite much criticism of Palladium, I do think there is a need for a trusted security function built into hardware (so it will resist Trojan horse programs and kernel compromises).
I receive errors stating the setup is invalid or there are fatal errors when upgrading from Windows 98 or Windows Me. How do I fix this?
That will get a definite response here....
And in Utah, there would be a sensor under your drink napkin so that it would not serve another drink when you have not finished your previous one.
Naw, they are just off early for Friday Happy Hour.
Its hard to see how to do this with an open Internet. Perhaps if the ISP also hosted ecommerce sites, they could have an arrangement similar to this - where the ISP would perform billing and collections as part of the hosting arrangement.
Hate to say it, but sometimes these older closed online services could do things better than the Internet.
Your worth in the marketplace is what the marketplace values your current skill set and your history. Someone skilled in one area is always less desirable in a different one, regardless of their desire and ability to learn.
You will meet lots of smart people in that unemployment line. They used to think they were just as smart as you did. Maybe some of them thought only loser could find themselves out of an occupation. It is a terrible thing when your sense of self-value battles the marketplace and loses.
Not true after a few years. Technical changes after a few years lead them to either change careers (get out of tech), start all over at the bottom of a new field, or cling like mad to the jobs they had.
If all you have is the "grey matter between your ears", you are just another mass of unemployed protoplasm once your skills are obsolete. What is so valuable now will soon be worthless. The fact you are so good at it now makes you LESS trainable in the next new technology.
Markets have an interesting way of periodically devaluing technical skills. It helps depress wages. It also knocks the wind out of those who believe they are too good to have to depend on anyone else. Having to stand in an unemployment line with the rest of humanity is a good lesson in humility.
Or as once said, "Christopher Columbus was an illegal immigrant"
Interesting that a slander against Bill Clinton during his initial campaign revolved around him having the audacity to visit Eastern European countries as a student, while the Vietnam war was in full force. Seeing Prague as a 20-year old student was viewed as a sort of treason.
National origins are heavily scrutinized too. Having a spouse that is a non-citizen will cause you trouble, as well as any sort of other direct family ties.
BTW, I'm told that for a top secret clearance, one of the things you are expected to answer under polygraph is whether you or anyone you know are members of Greenpeace. AFAIK, no questions are asked about militia groups.
And no, I'm not advocating any of this - just showing where it comes from (and where it might lead).
Saw a convincing explanation that the point of the bomb was not to convince the Japanese to surrender, but to stop Stalin from occupying northern Japan (and who knows what else - Alaska?). Two bombs were needed to show the US possibly had an arsenal - if one bomb were dropped Stalin could believe that was all we had. After the fall of Germany, Soviet troops were turned eastwards. Truman may have had a well founded fear of where they would go next. Can't find ref - believe History Channel presented this theory.
That said, it was very terrible to kill so many Japanese civilians in so horrible a fashion to make this point
Advantages of a dog over a gun:
Dog will protect your home even if you are not there
Criminal can't steal dog from you and use it against you, as they can with a gun
Dogs cannot be used to commit suicide
A dog cannot be (easily) used to attack a loved one in a fit of irrational rage
In the dark, a dog can tell an intruder from a member of the household more easily than you can - hence fewer accidental shootings
In the act of defending against an intruder, you don't have to reload a dog
Dogs can be fun to have around even if you don't need protection - no gun ever will greet you when you come home and lick your face
I love my job. I love all the people I work with. Especially my Boss, who is the kindest, hardest working, most intelligent Boss there is.
Of course, my praise does not extend to the secret, semi-secret, sort-of-secret, and almost-secret stuff we do here at work. Oh no, I couldn't praise that at all, it would violate my NDA
Now leave me alone while I watch TV....
The government officials proposing this all have very clear memories of the Vietnam war and of the extent of domestic opposition to it. This opposition made it very difficult to prosecute that war - a fact not lost on Bush, Ashcroft, etc. They do not want to repeat the "mistakes" of the past.
Tracking the activities of dissenters allows more effective neutralization of their activities. Monitoring personal communications makes blackmail easier. It makes disrupting organized opposition activities easier, whether these are demonstrations or just running a peace candidate for office.
You all are aware that there is still mandatory registration for a military draft? During Vietnam, many folks managed to slip through the cracks and evade serving in that unpopular war. Not a chance this time around. You try to slip across the border to Canada, you will never get out of the country.
A. One is a desert island filled with extinct carnivorous reptiles. The other is a movie.
And:
Kill Rock Stars
The LA school district's non-instructional staff includes facility maintenance, police, computer systems folks, etc. They don't teach students but they do support the instructional process.
Consider what this MIGHT be useful for. Say there is another large scale war. Say the government needs to start drafting young adults to fight this war. Assume the war is very unpopular, and many of these young adults would prefer not to be drafted, in fact not to register for the draft after all. Wouldn't a database such as TIA be eminently useful for this purpose?
It was relatively easy to avoid registering for the draft in the Vietnam War era. It will be impossible in the next war.
Keep in mind avoiding conscription is a criminal act, and keep in mind those attempting to do so will easily be labeled terrorists.
... laws break YOU.