I'm sorry, but if your service is taken down by a single data center failure, you are not using the cloud to its full potential. Data centers do go down, drop out of sight, or otherwise become unusable now and again. Plan on it, design for it, and use the tools available to manage it.
... It's still wrong to deprive people of the means to defend themselves...
Last I checked, in the US no one is depriving people of the means to defend themselves (a.k.a. "guns"). People _are_ being asked to demonstrate that they can handle a deadly weapon responsibly. Because (drum-roll please) with rights come responsibilities and when it comes to the right to carry a deadly weapon, it is reasonable to be held to a certain level of responsibility as well. Like taking precautions to make sure your eight-year old can't blow his little friend's head off accidentally, even if means it takes you 500ms longer to release the safety. Or making sure you have acknowledged accountability if you're going to be free to walk around my neighborhood with a concealed weapon.
When was the last time a new version of Microsoft Windows came out with a faster user interface?
When was the last time Microsoft Windows needed to come out with a faster user interface?
Having spent plenty of time in wowsers, text editors and other such exciting applications on Windows and in KDE, I can assure you that while Windows has its issues, speed when doing basic things like toggling tabs in applications, and switching between windows is not one of them, particularly not in comparison to KDE or any other Linux desktop I've touched. I can easily outrace KDE with the keyboard; not Windows unless the box is bogged down by some stupid CPU-hogging app.
Designing an Atomic weapons isn't that hard. Just get a bullet with appropriate fission material and shoot it at a core of enriched Uranium...
Right: that design is easy, but...
Get some plutonium and put it in a sphere and detonate with appropriate explosives to get it to implode.
That design is not. A fair percentage of the folks in Los Alamos during World War II were working on the problem of designing and _building_ a working explosive lense, that would focus enough force quickly enough on a core to get it to explode effectively. A slight miscalculation in either direction, and the result would be a lot of radioactive silt scattered all over... not an explosion.
If you think designing an explosive lense for an atomic bomb "isn't that hard", perhaps you should give it a go yourself. And then try building one.
Some of the best minds in physics weren't sure they had it quite right the first time: hence, Trinity. It's not an easy problem.
When you pay someone a wage, that relative to those of the people they deal with, they will become angry and resentful.
Cool theory: where is the evidence in this case?
Given the number of cases we've seen the last few years in the US of very well paid executives committing crimes to make more money... were they angry and resentful too?
My manager, and I suspect many of my newer coworkers (since hiring wages seem to increase faster than existing salaries) are making more than I am. Should I be angry and resentful? (Oddly: I'm not.) Since my cost of living is several times that of folks in, say, India, does it really make sense for them to be upset that I'm being paid several times more?
Cool theory, but it might need some fleshing out. And some evidence that it actually applies to this particular problem.
Do you really believe that average persons actually read press releases, much less know anything about FireFox or download statistics?
Given that a high percentage of "news" stories are simply regurgitated press releases: Yeah, I believe a fair number of "average persons" (WTF that means) have heard of Firefox, and that without too much help would readily translate "100 million downloads" to "100 million users". How many "average persons" readily equate "hits" to "page views"? You and I know they aren't the same thing, but folks who don't spend hours a day with their hands on this stuff may not even suspect there's a difference.
Poor MS bigots, can't take a little of your own medicine eh?
I know this is completely OT and will be accordingly down-moderated if not outright ignored, but...
skilled investigative reporters with the resources to pursue stories in depth.
Errr? We actually had those at one time?...
If the papers want money, maybe they should improve the quality of their stories, eh?
Cool. Then here's the deal. If you (generic "you") think that the NYT and Washington Post and London Times, etc., have unskilled reporters and publish unreliable crap... then don't fucking read those papers.
But it is completely cynical to say "Fuck the Registration" (because all you're getting is "unskilled reporting") while at the same time violating copyright law and reposting content you have no legal right to so (presumably) that others can more intelligently discuss the matter at hand.
If the NYT is publishing crap, there's nothing to discuss and no reason at all to repost it. If it's not publishing crap, then for fuck's sake, register and get to the content legitimately. Playing it both ways is sickenly hypocrytical.
I'm not sure if you need to type this every reboot, or just once. Since it requires re-enabling, I'm hoping it's just once.
regsvr32 registers a COM/ActiveX "server" by modifying Windows registry entries. So, in theory, you need only run it once.
It is possible, however, that if you later install other software, the installer may re-register the DLL in question, in which case you'd want to manually unregister it again.
(Hmm. I suppose it's only coincidence that this novel approach to registering appeared on thedailywtf yesterday...)
Re:Lets hope they open source it
on
Google to Buy Opera?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Seriously, why would you choose Opera over Firefox? The whole forced banner ads thing kind of drove me away from it (not that I ever used it, but it kept me from ever using it again even).
(Note to mods: How "insightful" are comments made about a product by a person who's never used the product going to be?)
Opera has never forced banner ads on anyone. Currently, you can download the browser free, with no banner ads. Prior to a few months ago, you could pay (gasp) and not have to put up with the banners. In either case, it's your choice.
Last time I checked, it forced you to download this really crappy email client of theirs and address book and other things.
Which swelled the download file to, what?, 3.7mb? Looks like the Firefox download is 5mb. You're not forced to use the e-mail client, address book, etc. Hell, until you mentioned them, I'd forgotten they existed. Moreover, Opera, "out of the box", comes with many bells-and-whistles that are only available to Firefox as plug-ins. I'd rather do one install and have things just work, than have to download a half-dozen other bits, install them, and then pray that they don't break when the next FF version comes out.
Opera may be a fine browser, but we already have a really good (and open) thing going on with Firefox.
Opera is not new on the scene: it predated FF by many years. Many features in FF (most famously, tabbed browsing) were in Opera far earlier. Opera is light, fast, stable, ready-to-roll out of the box. No, it's not open source, but it's silly to think that code is high quality if and only if it's open source. We already have a good thing going on with Opera.
I have a hard time believing they're going to intentionally wedge the browser market even further rather than back more work and collaboration and progress behind the already great open source browser that we have.
If "wedging the browser market" is really your concern, then I'm surprised that you are so loyal to a relative late-comer to the market, and can't be bothered to look at a high-quality, non-IE browser that has been on the market for many more years.
How many wars have started directly because of oil supply? And what is the death toll for these wars?
Japan's critical need for oil directly directly contributed to the start of the Pacific war (1941-1945) with the United States, the United Kingdom and others. Depending on how you want to count (do you include China or not), that war lead to deaths of ~2M to well over 10M people, a number which easily "holds it own" compared to traditional wars.
Adequate energy supplies are a strategic necessity for any modestly industrialized nation. Force is not the only way to assure those needs are met (e.g., Japan was not forced to attack to assure adequate supplies), but no one should be surprised if it's used.
Honestly, the wars for oil have contributed very little to the death toll due to violence in our history...
Wrong. And, as ever, past performance does not predict future results.
Indeed, it sounds like the problem may be more a case of there just not being anywhere for the staff to advance to. It would be pointless, and probably more problematic than beneficial, to artificially create managerial positions just to make the staff feel better.
Right, but...
Give each staff member a raise.
Wrong. You pinpointed the problem, but that can't be the solution.
I work in a tech firm that faces a similar problem to the OP's. I suspect most if not all tech firms face the same problem. What is is the career track for folks on the technical side? On the management side, it's very clear cut: as you move upwards in your career, you progress through manager, director, VP, SVP and maybe even President. At every point, you assume greater responsibility over more parts of the business.
What's the track for developers, engineers, sysadmins, DBAs, etc.? How do folks from those areas of the business acquire as much influence as those in the managerial track? Should they acquire that much influence?
It's a big question, and "give 'em a raise" is not the right answer. By the time folks get to the level of principal/architect/guru/what-have-you, they aren't going to be satisfied with another 5%. They want influence, and they want considerable autonomy. How do you give them that without pressing them into management?
Don't work in cubicles, ever. Working in cubicles is the sure sign that you're not working for a successful company.... If the company will not or can not spend the money to create offices for its knowledge workers, so they can get into the zone, the odds of it creating a successful software product [are not good]
Huh. I work at one successful company with plenty o' cubes, my girlfriend at a very successful company where practically no one below VP has an office. So, there's probably something more going on here.
First off, a small company, or a startup, has a hell of lot better things to do with its money than build offices for its employees. If it's not demonstrably benefiting the customer, it's not worth the investment.
Second, yes, cubes do allow more noise in, and yes, it can sometimes be a problem. But the root cause is usually not the absence of a door and ceiling: it's the lack of self-discipline that causes some folks to holler back and forth over cube walls, and it's the lack of an ability to focus that causes some folks to be distracted by any conversation in earshot. As engineers, we shouldn't be paid big bucks just because we can crank out good software under ideal working conditions. We should be able to do quality work under less than ideal conditions, and we should have enough discipline to not create those conditions for others.
Now, if your company doesn't recognize that excessive noise is a distraction and a productivity killer, then that might be a good reason to leave. But at the end of the day, demanding complete quiet and isolation is a prima donna attitude. Learning to filter out minor distractions is achievable, and greatly increases the range of places you'll be able to be productive in. That will only help you in the long run.
I do know of MANY people who have zero interest in even trying Firefox. They don't care about tabbed browsing, they already know the ins and outs of MSIE.
Opera, while certainly better than IE, hurts the world wide web by dividing the population even further.
Oh puleeze. At least get the history right if you're going to start pissing and moaning about there being too many browsers.
Opera was around long before Firefox, or Mozilla. If you can't work that basic fact into your "no more browsers" philosophy, then it's clear that your agenda isn't to further standards: it's to promote the browser that you happen to like.
I'm sure a for-profit company will be ecstatic about the ridiculous anal-retentive security procedures and public transparency, plus downtime of literally months every time there's hint of a problem, that has been the hallmark of NASA and is currently probably being taken so far overboard it's preventing NASA from doing any real work.
That risk doesn't seem to stop Boeing or Airbus from building vehicles that crash now and then and kill hundreds of people at a time.
I'm not sure why our tolerance for risk for sending humans into space is so much less. (I understand that in terms of deaths per flight, commercial aviation is far less risky than flying NASA.) But private companies have been building vehicles whose failures can cause many deaths for quite some time now.
Almost every post here is a defense of the nuclear attack on Japan or of atom bombs in general (while almost every one is written as if this was a very radical and unique position). It gets me a little worried.
I'm seeing a fairly equal number of posts claiming that Japan was "trying hard" to surrender and that a simple demonstration of the bomb over water would have been more effective in bringing about the end of the war.
Look: While I believe that of the available options the atomic bomb was the best option for bringing a quick end to the war, that doesn't mean that I "like" atomic bombs or think they are the solution to every diplomatic problem. They were and are horrible weapons, and it was a tragedy that they were ever used in anger. But the entire war was a tragedy. Any sort of understanding of what happened in the Pacific and -- of more significance in terms of human catastrophe -- what happened on mainland Asia in the 1930's-40's seems to be very scarce these days. For example, the war in the Pacific was just part of the conflict that Japan was embroiled in. At the time of her surrender, the majority of her army was still active on the Asian mainland, where its aggression was causing roughly 100,000 non-combatant deaths a month through the first half of 1945. While Japan's navy had been all but destroyed, relatively little pressure had been exerted on her army in the field. How many people know that today? Heck, how many people have ever heard of Guadalcanal and know that it wasn't a canal? And how many people know of the Potsdam Declaration, when it was delivered, what its import was, and what response Japan -- which some say was "trying hard" to surrender -- gave to it? Precious few, I'm willing to bet.
So if the argument that the bombs were a tragic necessity seems to be presented as if it was "a very radical and unique position", that might be because those presenting the argument know that they are having to make it in the face of a huge amount of ignorance about the scope and history of the war, and the context in which the bombs were dropped. The bombs weren't dropped in a historical vacuum. They had been preceded by a dozen years of war in Asia, entirely due to Japanese aggression, millions of war-related deaths in mainland Asia -- never mind combatant deaths in the Pacific and southwest Asia -- a very bloody campaign marked by the unwillingness of Japan's fighting forces to surrender even when the situation was hopeless, etc. None of that suggests that someone who thinks the atomic bombs were appropriate in the context in which they were used thinks that they should be used whenever the going gets tough.
If reminders of what the context in which the bombs were used make you a little worried, then you have some idea of how reminders of the sheer amount of ignorance about Japan's war make others feel.
(BTW: in fairness, Japan did have an envoy in Moscow who was trying pretty hard to start surrender talks. Unfortunately, his superiors in Tokyo were being very unsupportive of his efforts. This envoy was trying hard to bring about a surrender: unfortunately, his goverment was not.)
Imagine if the US had blown up a small ghost town or uninhabited island - maybe even right next to Japan and said "surrender now or this will happen to you."
Please tell us why you think that would have been more effective than what happened historically. Japan didn't surrender after the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. A coup attempt nearly derailed their surrender efforts after Nagasaki was hit. Why on earth do you think they would have surrendered more readily had The Bomb been dropped on a bunch of fish instead? That makes no sense.
It's a god damn mystery why opera has close to zero marketshare and Firefox has 5% when according to some opera fanbois all features of every browser is copied from opera. So where is opera lacking? Why isn't marketshare larger?
Where have you been? The answer is guaranteed to appear around here at least once a week. Let me summarize the usual explanations for you.
Opera isn't Open Source, therefore it's crap.
Opera isn't free, therefore it's crap.
Opera isn't (MS-abused) Netscape reborn, so it gets far fewer sympathy-downloads.
In other words, Firefox has a lot more appeal on some kind of emotional level to a number of geeks, though it may not be technologically superior to all of its competition.
Maybe you should ask yourself that question instead of picking on successfull browsers such as Firefox.
I don't see much picking on Firefox, just observations that other browsers, like Opera, have offered the same "new" features for years. Don't blame Opera users for being acutely aware of that.
But, if the NYT wants to use digital news (and news archives) as a revenue stream, they will need to (eventually) digitalize their entire news archives, not just for the previous year.
The terminology has been around for years, most of it is self-explanatory... there's really no excuse for not knowing.
I don't think 'years' is long enough.
To take another angle on the car analogy, there is not a person on this earth who was born before the invention of the modern automobile (which I'm taking as being in 1885 by Karl Friedrich Benz). Most of us have had cars in our lives since we were an infant, and have been driving them since our teenage years, if not earlier. Cars, the basic facts of their operation, the basic vocabulary around them is part of our lives from virtually day zero. It's second nature to many of us.
It's going to take several more (human) generations before you can say the same thing about personal computer. There are millions of users out there who were adults long before PCs made a splash. You may have grown up with a computer in your cradle, but many, many, many users did not. It's all new to them. Many of them are not idiots or 'lusers'. They are simply wrestling with what is to them a very new and very foreign technology. In terms of having an intuitive understanding the machine and the vocabulary, a person who grew up with a PC in their home or elementary school has a huge advantage over those who didn't. Those that didn't are going to be around for quite a while longer. Get used to it.
All that TFA really does is confirm what I've always said: lusers are stupid.
Oh, one other thing, on the subject of 'lusers'. If your job is to help people with their PCs, then stop bitching and help them, or find another job. Your job is little different from that of a mechanic. People have things, those things break, sometimes the owner is to blame but sometimes not. Your job is to fix things: not to bitch about what 'lusers' your customers are. Honest to God, if you really feel that way, why on earth do you have a job giving tech support?
I just can't help thinking it also makes perfect sense to your average 9year old thinking of a name for his new super duper weapon
Says a lot for how far we've gone in the last 50-60 years (not sure what direction), when kids were supposibly less inured to violence, despite the military using names like Avenger, Hellcat, Helldiver, Devastator, Marauder, etc.
I really doubt that the moral-boosting -- if not always appropriate -- weapon names are to blame for corrupting the minds of our children. I much more strongly suspect it's how those weapons are used (or portrayed as being used).
Canadains treat most Americans reasonably well because they are generally nice people but they aren't likely to really accept you and frequently will do their best screw you given the chance, just because you live in a country that tries to screw the rest of the world at every opportunity in every way.
Anyone with that kind of attitude is a fool to believe that they're somehow secure on the moral high ground.
Anyone with an ounce of common sense would consider that:
In this election, close to half of all voting Americans voted against Bush. That's not to take anything away from his victory. That's to demonstrate that it's stupid to assume that every American you see agrees with the Bush and his policies.
In the long term, judging people for whom their personal actions demonstrate them to be as individuals is likely to lead to a much more peaceful world than one were individuals are written off because of their nationality. That kind of prejudice -- which your comment is dripping with -- is no more acceptable than is prejudice based on race, religion, and so on.
You want the world to get along better? Start with your own attitude first.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, but if your service is taken down by a single data center failure, you are not using the cloud to its full potential. Data centers do go down, drop out of sight, or otherwise become unusable now and again. Plan on it, design for it, and use the tools available to manage it.
Last I checked, in the US no one is depriving people of the means to defend themselves (a.k.a. "guns"). People _are_ being asked to demonstrate that they can handle a deadly weapon responsibly. Because (drum-roll please) with rights come responsibilities and when it comes to the right to carry a deadly weapon, it is reasonable to be held to a certain level of responsibility as well. Like taking precautions to make sure your eight-year old can't blow his little friend's head off accidentally, even if means it takes you 500ms longer to release the safety. Or making sure you have acknowledged accountability if you're going to be free to walk around my neighborhood with a concealed weapon.
What is so threatening about this?
When was the last time Microsoft Windows needed to come out with a faster user interface?
Having spent plenty of time in wowsers, text editors and other such exciting applications on Windows and in KDE, I can assure you that while Windows has its issues, speed when doing basic things like toggling tabs in applications, and switching between windows is not one of them, particularly not in comparison to KDE or any other Linux desktop I've touched. I can easily outrace KDE with the keyboard; not Windows unless the box is bogged down by some stupid CPU-hogging app.
Right: that design is easy, but ...
That design is not. A fair percentage of the folks in Los Alamos during World War II were working on the problem of designing and _building_ a working explosive lense, that would focus enough force quickly enough on a core to get it to explode effectively. A slight miscalculation in either direction, and the result would be a lot of radioactive silt scattered all over ... not an explosion.
If you think designing an explosive lense for an atomic bomb "isn't that hard", perhaps you should give it a go yourself. And then try building one.
Some of the best minds in physics weren't sure they had it quite right the first time: hence, Trinity. It's not an easy problem.
Cool theory: where is the evidence in this case?
Given the number of cases we've seen the last few years in the US of very well paid executives committing crimes to make more money ... were they angry and resentful too?
My manager, and I suspect many of my newer coworkers (since hiring wages seem to increase faster than existing salaries) are making more than I am. Should I be angry and resentful? (Oddly: I'm not.) Since my cost of living is several times that of folks in, say, India, does it really make sense for them to be upset that I'm being paid several times more?
Cool theory, but it might need some fleshing out. And some evidence that it actually applies to this particular problem.
Given that a high percentage of "news" stories are simply regurgitated press releases: Yeah, I believe a fair number of "average persons" (WTF that means) have heard of Firefox, and that without too much help would readily translate "100 million downloads" to "100 million users". How many "average persons" readily equate "hits" to "page views"? You and I know they aren't the same thing, but folks who don't spend hours a day with their hands on this stuff may not even suspect there's a difference.
Huh?
Cool. Then here's the deal. If you (generic "you") think that the NYT and Washington Post and London Times, etc., have unskilled reporters and publish unreliable crap ... then don't fucking read those papers.
But it is completely cynical to say "Fuck the Registration" (because all you're getting is "unskilled reporting") while at the same time violating copyright law and reposting content you have no legal right to so (presumably) that others can more intelligently discuss the matter at hand.
If the NYT is publishing crap, there's nothing to discuss and no reason at all to repost it. If it's not publishing crap, then for fuck's sake, register and get to the content legitimately. Playing it both ways is sickenly hypocrytical.
regsvr32 registers a COM/ActiveX "server" by modifying Windows registry entries. So, in theory, you need only run it once.
It is possible, however, that if you later install other software, the installer may re-register the DLL in question, in which case you'd want to manually unregister it again.
(Hmm. I suppose it's only coincidence that this novel approach to registering appeared on thedailywtf yesterday...)
(Note to mods: How "insightful" are comments made about a product by a person who's never used the product going to be?)
Opera has never forced banner ads on anyone. Currently, you can download the browser free, with no banner ads. Prior to a few months ago, you could pay (gasp) and not have to put up with the banners. In either case, it's your choice.
Which swelled the download file to, what?, 3.7mb? Looks like the Firefox download is 5mb. You're not forced to use the e-mail client, address book, etc. Hell, until you mentioned them, I'd forgotten they existed. Moreover, Opera, "out of the box", comes with many bells-and-whistles that are only available to Firefox as plug-ins. I'd rather do one install and have things just work, than have to download a half-dozen other bits, install them, and then pray that they don't break when the next FF version comes out.
Opera is not new on the scene: it predated FF by many years. Many features in FF (most famously, tabbed browsing) were in Opera far earlier. Opera is light, fast, stable, ready-to-roll out of the box. No, it's not open source, but it's silly to think that code is high quality if and only if it's open source. We already have a good thing going on with Opera.
If "wedging the browser market" is really your concern, then I'm surprised that you are so loyal to a relative late-comer to the market, and can't be bothered to look at a high-quality, non-IE browser that has been on the market for many more years.
Japan's critical need for oil directly directly contributed to the start of the Pacific war (1941-1945) with the United States, the United Kingdom and others. Depending on how you want to count (do you include China or not), that war lead to deaths of ~2M to well over 10M people, a number which easily "holds it own" compared to traditional wars.
Adequate energy supplies are a strategic necessity for any modestly industrialized nation. Force is not the only way to assure those needs are met (e.g., Japan was not forced to attack to assure adequate supplies), but no one should be surprised if it's used.
Wrong. And, as ever, past performance does not predict future results.
Right, but ...
Wrong. You pinpointed the problem, but that can't be the solution.
I work in a tech firm that faces a similar problem to the OP's. I suspect most if not all tech firms face the same problem. What is is the career track for folks on the technical side? On the management side, it's very clear cut: as you move upwards in your career, you progress through manager, director, VP, SVP and maybe even President. At every point, you assume greater responsibility over more parts of the business.
What's the track for developers, engineers, sysadmins, DBAs, etc.? How do folks from those areas of the business acquire as much influence as those in the managerial track? Should they acquire that much influence?
It's a big question, and "give 'em a raise" is not the right answer. By the time folks get to the level of principal/architect/guru/what-have-you, they aren't going to be satisfied with another 5%. They want influence, and they want considerable autonomy. How do you give them that without pressing them into management?
Huh. I work at one successful company with plenty o' cubes, my girlfriend at a very successful company where practically no one below VP has an office. So, there's probably something more going on here.
First off, a small company, or a startup, has a hell of lot better things to do with its money than build offices for its employees. If it's not demonstrably benefiting the customer, it's not worth the investment.
Second, yes, cubes do allow more noise in, and yes, it can sometimes be a problem. But the root cause is usually not the absence of a door and ceiling: it's the lack of self-discipline that causes some folks to holler back and forth over cube walls, and it's the lack of an ability to focus that causes some folks to be distracted by any conversation in earshot. As engineers, we shouldn't be paid big bucks just because we can crank out good software under ideal working conditions. We should be able to do quality work under less than ideal conditions, and we should have enough discipline to not create those conditions for others.
Now, if your company doesn't recognize that excessive noise is a distraction and a productivity killer, then that might be a good reason to leave. But at the end of the day, demanding complete quiet and isolation is a prima donna attitude. Learning to filter out minor distractions is achievable, and greatly increases the range of places you'll be able to be productive in. That will only help you in the long run.
They already use Opera.
Oh puleeze. At least get the history right if you're going to start pissing and moaning about there being too many browsers.
Opera was around long before Firefox, or Mozilla. If you can't work that basic fact into your "no more browsers" philosophy, then it's clear that your agenda isn't to further standards: it's to promote the browser that you happen to like.
"A lie can travel half-way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." - Mark Twain
And that was before the Internet!
The threat of being sued for libel or slander has a valid purpose in preventing lies from even getting out of the starting gate.
That risk doesn't seem to stop Boeing or Airbus from building vehicles that crash now and then and kill hundreds of people at a time.
I'm not sure why our tolerance for risk for sending humans into space is so much less. (I understand that in terms of deaths per flight, commercial aviation is far less risky than flying NASA.) But private companies have been building vehicles whose failures can cause many deaths for quite some time now.
I'm seeing a fairly equal number of posts claiming that Japan was "trying hard" to surrender and that a simple demonstration of the bomb over water would have been more effective in bringing about the end of the war.
Look: While I believe that of the available options the atomic bomb was the best option for bringing a quick end to the war, that doesn't mean that I "like" atomic bombs or think they are the solution to every diplomatic problem. They were and are horrible weapons, and it was a tragedy that they were ever used in anger. But the entire war was a tragedy. Any sort of understanding of what happened in the Pacific and -- of more significance in terms of human catastrophe -- what happened on mainland Asia in the 1930's-40's seems to be very scarce these days. For example, the war in the Pacific was just part of the conflict that Japan was embroiled in. At the time of her surrender, the majority of her army was still active on the Asian mainland, where its aggression was causing roughly 100,000 non-combatant deaths a month through the first half of 1945. While Japan's navy had been all but destroyed, relatively little pressure had been exerted on her army in the field. How many people know that today? Heck, how many people have ever heard of Guadalcanal and know that it wasn't a canal? And how many people know of the Potsdam Declaration, when it was delivered, what its import was, and what response Japan -- which some say was "trying hard" to surrender -- gave to it? Precious few, I'm willing to bet.
So if the argument that the bombs were a tragic necessity seems to be presented as if it was "a very radical and unique position", that might be because those presenting the argument know that they are having to make it in the face of a huge amount of ignorance about the scope and history of the war, and the context in which the bombs were dropped. The bombs weren't dropped in a historical vacuum. They had been preceded by a dozen years of war in Asia, entirely due to Japanese aggression, millions of war-related deaths in mainland Asia -- never mind combatant deaths in the Pacific and southwest Asia -- a very bloody campaign marked by the unwillingness of Japan's fighting forces to surrender even when the situation was hopeless, etc. None of that suggests that someone who thinks the atomic bombs were appropriate in the context in which they were used thinks that they should be used whenever the going gets tough.
If reminders of what the context in which the bombs were used make you a little worried, then you have some idea of how reminders of the sheer amount of ignorance about Japan's war make others feel.
(BTW: in fairness, Japan did have an envoy in Moscow who was trying pretty hard to start surrender talks. Unfortunately, his superiors in Tokyo were being very unsupportive of his efforts. This envoy was trying hard to bring about a surrender: unfortunately, his goverment was not.)
Please tell us why you think that would have been more effective than what happened historically. Japan didn't surrender after the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. A coup attempt nearly derailed their surrender efforts after Nagasaki was hit. Why on earth do you think they would have surrendered more readily had The Bomb been dropped on a bunch of fish instead? That makes no sense.
Millions of those who entered Nazi concentration camps proved otherwise.
Now, if you mean poison gas was not used in combat, you may be right, but blanket dismissal of its use is in error.
Where have you been? The answer is guaranteed to appear around here at least once a week. Let me summarize the usual explanations for you.
In other words, Firefox has a lot more appeal on some kind of emotional level to a number of geeks, though it may not be technologically superior to all of its competition.
I don't see much picking on Firefox, just observations that other browsers, like Opera, have offered the same "new" features for years. Don't blame Opera users for being acutely aware of that.
I don't think 'years' is long enough.
To take another angle on the car analogy, there is not a person on this earth who was born before the invention of the modern automobile (which I'm taking as being in 1885 by Karl Friedrich Benz). Most of us have had cars in our lives since we were an infant, and have been driving them since our teenage years, if not earlier. Cars, the basic facts of their operation, the basic vocabulary around them is part of our lives from virtually day zero. It's second nature to many of us.
It's going to take several more (human) generations before you can say the same thing about personal computer. There are millions of users out there who were adults long before PCs made a splash. You may have grown up with a computer in your cradle, but many, many, many users did not. It's all new to them. Many of them are not idiots or 'lusers'. They are simply wrestling with what is to them a very new and very foreign technology. In terms of having an intuitive understanding the machine and the vocabulary, a person who grew up with a PC in their home or elementary school has a huge advantage over those who didn't. Those that didn't are going to be around for quite a while longer. Get used to it.
Oh, one other thing, on the subject of 'lusers'. If your job is to help people with their PCs, then stop bitching and help them, or find another job. Your job is little different from that of a mechanic. People have things, those things break, sometimes the owner is to blame but sometimes not. Your job is to fix things: not to bitch about what 'lusers' your customers are. Honest to God, if you really feel that way, why on earth do you have a job giving tech support?
This came up in the wake of the Columbia disaster.
At the time, the answer was that it was very difficult, and not a practical solution.
Apparently, things have changed: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/rtf_schedule_ 040430.html. Scroll down about halfway, to "Repairs in space".
Says a lot for how far we've gone in the last 50-60 years (not sure what direction), when kids were supposibly less inured to violence, despite the military using names like Avenger, Hellcat, Helldiver, Devastator, Marauder, etc.
I really doubt that the moral-boosting -- if not always appropriate -- weapon names are to blame for corrupting the minds of our children. I much more strongly suspect it's how those weapons are used (or portrayed as being used).
Anyone with that kind of attitude is a fool to believe that they're somehow secure on the moral high ground.
Anyone with an ounce of common sense would consider that:
You want the world to get along better? Start with your own attitude first.