Re:Who cares what america does? America != The Wor
on
SSSCA Hearing
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· Score: 1
I don't know what you mean. The last time there was widespread forced labor in Europe was WWII (if we regard the Soviet Union as Asian, otherwise later). The last time there was a war of aggression in Europe was the 1990's (or, if for some reason you don't count the Yugoslavia mess, then the various Soviet invasions, or--if those somehow don't count--then WWII). The last time there was genocide in Europe was, again, the 1990's (or again, sans Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, WWII). Open your eyes. There's ugly all over.
Re:Who cares what america does? America != The Wor
on
SSSCA Hearing
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· Score: 1
Ah, you took advantage of my American blind spot--everything is so new here we tend to forget how long a long time is. You make a good point; know that there are a lot of us raising our children to mistrust our government. A few even tell their kids that there's more to the world than the U.S. Right now, America's hegemonistic urges seem to be confined to the corporate sphere (and there we have very stiff competition from many parts of the globe); if this country ever turned imperialistic, I would probably end up in jail (or dead) fighting it. I like to believe there are enough who feel as I do to keep that from happening, but I don't pretend to know for sure.
Re:Who cares what america does? America != The Wor
on
SSSCA Hearing
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· Score: 1
While I certainly don't condone the wiping out of anybody anywhere, this was done: a: before the U.S. was a super-anything b: all over the "New World" including that paragon of civilization, Canada c: by people who were basically just transplanted Europeans.
Although we're still grappling with the problem of reparations, it has been a long time since the U.S. has fought a war of aggression or taken a slave. One could argue that as we have distanced ourselved from our European roots we have become more civilized.
Re:Who cares what america does? America != The Wor
on
SSSCA Hearing
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· Score: 1
Um, if what happens in the U.S. doesn't affect people outside the country, why would this make "life easier for those of us who don't live there"?
I can understand why the rest of the world gets tired of us; I live here and I get plenty tired of us sometimes. But railing against reality just makes you look stupid. This is America's day in the sun; what happens here matters everywhere. In time that will change and we can all feel pissed off and inferior about somebody else for a while. Lighten up--we're the nicest dominant power the world has seen yet. If we were imperial England or imperial Russia or imperial Rome or any of a dozen others, there wouldn't be a Canada or a Mexico, or a thumb-their-nose-at-us-for-40-years-Cuba. They would just be U.S. territories.
Interestingly, since we don't annex the world, the world seems to want to come to us. Did you know that as of the year 2000, one in five people in the U.S. is either an immigrant or a first-generation American? We may not get out much, but we're not as provincial as you may think; we meet a lot of people from around the world because they want to live here. So get a better attitude.
Oh, and by the way, I think you mean "Your country's..." instead of "Your countries..."
So, like, you caught me using IE6 this time. It was funny the last six times (when I was browsing with Konqueror), but it's kind of a pain in the ass in IE. Is there a patch for this? Wait, let me guess...there's no patch 'cause it's not a bug, it's a feature.
Clearly, laws against behavior which is undertaken in private, particularly by many, consenting, people, and perceived as harmless by the rest are counterproductive, in that they do not stop the "crime" and they _do_ undermine the authority of law. Prostitution statutes fall into this category.
Well, we agree that stupid laws are counterproductive.
Everyone _hates_ spam (except the miniscule fraction who are committing it), it's a completely public activity, and nonconsensual on the part of the recipient and the relays in the middle. Laws against spam (unless totally botched in their construction) would be extremely popular. Everyone would help the law enforcement agencies in the execution of these laws.
Perhaps I was unclear in my use of the term "unenforceable". As a few totalitarian regimes have demonstrated through history, there are damn few laws that are physically unenforceable in the sense that catching and punishing the "criminals" is so difficult that the behavior in question can't be deterred. In a theoretically free state, however, many things that a lot of people wish would go away are very difficult to get rid of (like atheism and pornography and daytime talk shows). I am of the opinion that, for a variety of reasons ranging from free speech issues to lack of enthusiasm on the part of law enforcement for getting caught up in something so trivial as toner ads in your email box, this is an issue that will prove resistant to legislation. Hence, my belief that it's best left alone by Congress.
Not to mention the school of thought (obviously I agree) that says that unenforceable laws are corrosive to society as a whole. In the U.S. we constantly ignore everything from posted speed limits to nanny-tax laws to anti-sodomy laws to EULAs. We don't give it a second thought, but it's a bad thing(tm). Once everyone is deciding for themselves which laws to ignore because they're inconvenient or unfair, it's a very slippery slope that leads to chaos.
Mind you, I don't blame the citizens--we're all just trying to get along here in topsy-turvy land. I blame the idiots that pass laws just to try to score a few public relations points with no concern for how the damns things are to be enforced (or whether they're constitutional, either, but that's another rant.)
...but does anybody know if there was any hint this could be done before the movie was made? Either there was some indication this stuff could be made and the writers grabbed onto it, or this is an amazing coincidence, or (and this is the one that I find most intriguing) it was tried because somebody saw the movie and said "hmmmm..."
If that were the case it would be kind of spooky. Just how many "impossible" things are only a few years of research from reality if we only had the idea to try.
There is no such rule. Many patents have already been issued for perpetual motion machines and other stupidities.
Re:At least they acknowledge they do this.
on
Read the Fine Print
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· Score: 1
This is, of course, one of the evils that the FSF warns us of in proprietary software. Unfortunately, their assertion that open source software is safer in this regard because of the transparency that access to the source code yields doesn't really comfort your average computer user.
Fact: almost no one has the time, energy, knowledge or desire to audit the source of every piece of software they use.
Fact: Joe and Jane Computeruser are still quite foggy on the difference between the "hackers" who have supposedly written Linux and other free software in their spare time, and the "hackers" that Dan Rather tells them just stole their Visa Card number from their favorite internet retailer.
Fact: most people don't have anything to hide, and can't figure out what all the fuss is about if corporations want to access their hard drive, as long as it lets them run Quicken and download dirty pictures without having to learn anything about their machines.
I'm afraid we're pissing into the wind trying to make a big deal out of this with the general public. It's just another reason for businesses to adopt Linux, while Mr. and Mrs. AOL just keep on paying for those upgrades.
I agree it's a bad thing if people choose their representatives during a football commercial. But it gets worse later on. If we ever fall into this trap of click-to-vote to pick our President and Congressmen, it won't be long before there's a movement to start calling referenda for every little question that comes up. Idiots all over the country will start hollering for "true democracy," and before you know it the rights of every minority in the country will be trampled. Our current legislative branch may not be a bunch of geniuses, but they do appear to give a passing nod to writing legislation that will pass judicial review. If we go to internet voting, I don't thing 20 Supreme Courts would be able to keep up with the wave of mindless, unconstitutional, WASP-centric, daytime talk-show quality crap that would get voted into law. (No offense to my fellow mindless, unconstitutional WASPs.)
Sorry. I assumed such good fortune would extend to airplane fares as well. Those of us unlucky enough to live in Atlanta, for instance, have been bombarded lately with offers to fly roundtrip to various trans-Atlantic destinations for about $300US.
I find this humorous, and would gladly mod it up, except that, as usual, my latest batch of mod points dropped unused yesterday (for lack of mod-upable material, natch). Why exactly is the deadline for using mod points so short?
By no means. The GPL says that if one chooses to distribute modified software, the source code must be made available as well. There can be a fee for the software, and even a fee for the source (not to exceed the price of the object or executable). Details here. There is no requirement to provide downloadable source; rather, the requirement is to provide a copy on some physical medium if requested (see this)
Well, for no apparent reason, I read your whole post, so I got to the part about your being tired. Perhaps that's why you don't account for the part of the article where they say the Intel compiler achieves virtually identical performance improvements (as with Intel systems) on systems with AMD processors. That would seem to make it a lot less likely that all this magic is achieved through unmatchably intimate knowledge of the hardware. Maybe they're just unmatchably staid and steadfast compiler-writers.
...of linux as we know it. The RH distro will be dumbed down, commercialized, and proprietized (is that a word?). It has to be--the only marketing AOL knows is to send 17 copies on cd to every address in the country. Dumb, commercial, and proprietary equals three strikes in the game of open source, and the volunteers will bail out and move on to the next geek toy. AOL will pour enough money into making RH (by that time, RH==Linux) a competitor to Windows to keep it viable in the marketplace, but its value to most of us will have been lost.
Suddenly I'm haunted by the fear that all of life may devolve into a cosmic-scale Slashdot experience. You can't just go out to eat at a restaurant any more--you have to check out the posts about the food and the service, then you have to moderate a few of the more enlightening/idiotic posts, then take a few more minutes to flame a couple of the most egregiously taste-challenged ("Honey, I told you it would only piss you off to browse at -1"). A couple times a month it's your turn to moderate, and of course it's your civic duty to meta-moderate....AAAAAAAARRRGGGGHHHHH
Yes, but you have to be in view of more satellites, (five for altitude, as I recall, versus three for lat/longs). Also, it's not as useful because what is good accuracy with respect to your location on the map is pretty crappy with respect to altitude (e.g. 20 foot error puts you on the 32nd floor of a building instead of the 30th.)
Okay, I have to ask a question. You're obviously an intelligent person, and I agree with almost all of your post. But you're officially the one-millionth person I've seen write 'loose' for 'lose', and I gotta know: is this some kind of running joke, or is it really that hard for people to remember how to spell 'lose'?
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I don't know what you mean. The last time there was widespread forced labor in Europe was WWII (if we regard the Soviet Union as Asian, otherwise later). The last time there was a war of aggression in Europe was the 1990's (or, if for some reason you don't count the Yugoslavia mess, then the various Soviet invasions, or--if those somehow don't count--then WWII). The last time there was genocide in Europe was, again, the 1990's (or again, sans Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, WWII). Open your eyes. There's ugly all over.
Ah, you took advantage of my American blind spot--everything is so new here we tend to forget how long a long time is. You make a good point; know that there are a lot of us raising our children to mistrust our government. A few even tell their kids that there's more to the world than the U.S. Right now, America's hegemonistic urges seem to be confined to the corporate sphere (and there we have very stiff competition from many parts of the globe); if this country ever turned imperialistic, I would probably end up in jail (or dead) fighting it. I like to believe there are enough who feel as I do to keep that from happening, but I don't pretend to know for sure.
While I certainly don't condone the wiping out of anybody anywhere, this was done:
a: before the U.S. was a super-anything
b: all over the "New World" including that paragon of civilization, Canada
c: by people who were basically just transplanted Europeans.
Although we're still grappling with the problem of reparations, it has been a long time since the U.S. has fought a war of aggression or taken a slave. One could argue that as we have distanced ourselved from our European roots we have become more civilized.
Um, if what happens in the U.S. doesn't affect people outside the country, why would this make "life easier for those of us who don't live there"?
I can understand why the rest of the world gets tired of us; I live here and I get plenty tired of us sometimes. But railing against reality just makes you look stupid. This is America's day in the sun; what happens here matters everywhere. In time that will change and we can all feel pissed off and inferior about somebody else for a while. Lighten up--we're the nicest dominant power the world has seen yet. If we were imperial England or imperial Russia or imperial Rome or any of a dozen others, there wouldn't be a Canada or a Mexico, or a thumb-their-nose-at-us-for-40-years-Cuba. They would just be U.S. territories.
Interestingly, since we don't annex the world, the world seems to want to come to us. Did you know that as of the year 2000, one in five people in the U.S. is either an immigrant or a first-generation American? We may not get out much, but we're not as provincial as you may think; we meet a lot of people from around the world because they want to live here. So get a better attitude.
Oh, and by the way, I think you mean "Your country's..." instead of "Your countries..."
So, like, you caught me using IE6 this time. It was funny the last six times (when I was browsing with Konqueror), but it's kind of a pain in the ass in IE. Is there a patch for this? Wait, let me guess...there's no patch 'cause it's not a bug, it's a feature.
Clearly, laws against behavior which is undertaken in private, particularly by many, consenting, people, and perceived as harmless by the rest are counterproductive, in that they do not stop the "crime" and they _do_ undermine the authority of law. Prostitution statutes fall into this category.
Well, we agree that stupid laws are counterproductive.
Everyone _hates_ spam (except the miniscule fraction who are committing it), it's a completely public activity, and nonconsensual on the part of the recipient and the relays in the middle. Laws against spam (unless totally botched in their construction) would be extremely popular. Everyone would help the law enforcement agencies in the execution of these laws.
Perhaps I was unclear in my use of the term "unenforceable". As a few totalitarian regimes have demonstrated through history, there are damn few laws that are physically unenforceable in the sense that catching and punishing the "criminals" is so difficult that the behavior in question can't be deterred. In a theoretically free state, however, many things that a lot of people wish would go away are very difficult to get rid of (like atheism and pornography and daytime talk shows). I am of the opinion that, for a variety of reasons ranging from free speech issues to lack of enthusiasm on the part of law enforcement for getting caught up in something so trivial as toner ads in your email box, this is an issue that will prove resistant to legislation. Hence, my belief that it's best left alone by Congress.
Not to mention the school of thought (obviously I agree) that says that unenforceable laws are corrosive to society as a whole. In the U.S. we constantly ignore everything from posted speed limits to nanny-tax laws to anti-sodomy laws to EULAs. We don't give it a second thought, but it's a bad thing(tm). Once everyone is deciding for themselves which laws to ignore because they're inconvenient or unfair, it's a very slippery slope that leads to chaos.
Mind you, I don't blame the citizens--we're all just trying to get along here in topsy-turvy land. I blame the idiots that pass laws just to try to score a few public relations points with no concern for how the damns things are to be enforced (or whether they're constitutional, either, but that's another rant.)
...but does anybody know if there was any hint this could be done before the movie was made? Either there was some indication this stuff could be made and the writers grabbed onto it, or this is an amazing coincidence, or (and this is the one that I find most intriguing) it was tried because somebody saw the movie and said "hmmmm..."
If that were the case it would be kind of spooky. Just how many "impossible" things are only a few years of research from reality if we only had the idea to try.
There is no such rule. Many patents have already been issued for perpetual motion machines and other stupidities.
This is, of course, one of the evils that the FSF warns us of in proprietary software. Unfortunately, their assertion that open source software is safer in this regard because of the transparency that access to the source code yields doesn't really comfort your average computer user.
Fact: almost no one has the time, energy, knowledge or desire to audit the source of every piece of software they use.
Fact: Joe and Jane Computeruser are still quite foggy on the difference between the "hackers" who have supposedly written Linux and other free software in their spare time, and the "hackers" that Dan Rather tells them just stole their Visa Card number from their favorite internet retailer.
Fact: most people don't have anything to hide, and can't figure out what all the fuss is about if corporations want to access their hard drive, as long as it lets them run Quicken and download dirty pictures without having to learn anything about their machines.
I'm afraid we're pissing into the wind trying to make a big deal out of this with the general public. It's just another reason for businesses to adopt Linux, while Mr. and Mrs. AOL just keep on paying for those upgrades.
LOL! This got modded up as interesting. I guess about 30 years ago I would have considered this a hot tip too ;)
I agree it's a bad thing if people choose their representatives during a football commercial. But it gets worse later on. If we ever fall into this trap of click-to-vote to pick our President and Congressmen, it won't be long before there's a movement to start calling referenda for every little question that comes up. Idiots all over the country will start hollering for "true democracy," and before you know it the rights of every minority in the country will be trampled. Our current legislative branch may not be a bunch of geniuses, but they do appear to give a passing nod to writing legislation that will pass judicial review. If we go to internet voting, I don't thing 20 Supreme Courts would be able to keep up with the wave of mindless, unconstitutional, WASP-centric, daytime talk-show quality crap that would get voted into law. (No offense to my fellow mindless, unconstitutional WASPs.)
Sorry. I assumed such good fortune would extend to airplane fares as well. Those of us unlucky enough to live in Atlanta, for instance, have been bombarded lately with offers to fly roundtrip to various trans-Atlantic destinations for about $300US.
Well, maybe they figure if you're that hard up for the price of a few plane seats they'll spot you some freebies.
So now some fucking retard with a spare point mods me down for saying a post was funny. Mod this one down too, shithead. Karma is free and plentiful.
I find this humorous, and would gladly mod it up, except that, as usual, my latest batch of mod points dropped unused yesterday (for lack of mod-upable material, natch). Why exactly is the deadline for using mod points so short?
By no means. The GPL says that if one chooses to distribute modified software, the source code must be made available as well. There can be a fee for the software, and even a fee for the source (not to exceed the price of the object or executable). Details here. There is no requirement to provide downloadable source; rather, the requirement is to provide a copy on some physical medium if requested (see this)
At least, that's what I make of it.
Well, for no apparent reason, I read your whole post, so I got to the part about your being tired. Perhaps that's why you don't account for the part of the article where they say the Intel compiler achieves virtually identical performance improvements (as with Intel systems) on systems with AMD processors. That would seem to make it a lot less likely that all this magic is achieved through unmatchably intimate knowledge of the hardware. Maybe they're just unmatchably staid and steadfast compiler-writers.
um, that would be what a $5 million profit works out to: $.01 per share.
...of linux as we know it. The RH distro will be dumbed down, commercialized, and proprietized (is that a word?). It has to be--the only marketing AOL knows is to send 17 copies on cd to every address in the country. Dumb, commercial, and proprietary equals three strikes in the game of open source, and the volunteers will bail out and move on to the next geek toy. AOL will pour enough money into making RH (by that time, RH==Linux) a competitor to Windows to keep it viable in the marketplace, but its value to most of us will have been lost.
This is my fear, anyway.
Holy Shit! What a picture you paint!
Suddenly I'm haunted by the fear that all of life may devolve into a cosmic-scale Slashdot experience. You can't just go out to eat at a restaurant any more--you have to check out the posts about the food and the service, then you have to moderate a few of the more enlightening/idiotic posts, then take a few more minutes to flame a couple of the most egregiously taste-challenged ("Honey, I told you it would only piss you off to browse at -1"). A couple times a month it's your turn to moderate, and of course it's your civic duty to meta-moderate....AAAAAAAARRRGGGGHHHHH
Kill me now.
Yes, but you have to be in view of more satellites, (five for altitude, as I recall, versus three for lat/longs). Also, it's not as useful because what is good accuracy with respect to your location on the map is pretty crappy with respect to altitude (e.g. 20 foot error puts you on the 32nd floor of a building instead of the 30th.)
Well, normally I would agree that we're being hypocritical, but damn, this thing is a whole new kind of ugly.
Well, thanks for that, but unfortunately the literal translation is gibberish in English. Anyone know what it really means?
Okay, I have to ask a question. You're obviously an intelligent person, and I agree with almost all of your post. But you're officially the one-millionth person I've seen write 'loose' for 'lose', and I gotta know: is this some kind of running joke, or is it really that hard for people to remember how to spell 'lose'?