Yeah, whoever comes up with names at Microsoft really needs to get promoted to somewhere useless. The Xbox One, which is not the same as the Xbox one, and is in fact the Xbox three, being the sequel to the Xbox 360... that one is so stupid it makes me angry.
So far, I haven't seen an indication that he's willing to do anything about NSA wrongdoing.
Well, Keith Alexander is getting the boot and there's a new nominee, Michael Rogers. That's something happening this month, though I don't know if it's Obama's doing or if Keith just decided to leave.
I'm not bumping responsibility down, I'm just not bumping it up. I'm not claiming that Keith Alexander is lord of the NSA any more than Obama is, and I certainly don't want him to be held responsible for everything that the NSA does either. That's just another cop-out. I would like Keith Alexander to be held responsible for the decisions that he makes and the responsibilities that fall to him and no more than that.
I know there's this idea that a good leader should take responsibility for everything that their underlings do, but this is just a way of circumventing justice. The underlings commit all manner of crimes, the guy at the top says "I'm in charge, I take responsibility." and it all goes away.
I'll grant that there are a lot of situations where pushing the responsibility down can be just as bad or worse than pushing it up, but so what? All that's illustrating is that this sort of thing is complicated. Figuring out just who it is who has committed a crime is often not an easy or simple thing to do.
No personal experience with this, but according to Anandtech Intel's Iris Pro graphics are reasonably fast but don't provide any power consumption advantage over discrete offerings. In fact they're worse, and with the power benefits in the new chips mentioned above they should be a lot worse in the future. Seeing as power consumption and cost are the only compelling reasons to be using integrated graphics, discrete chips still seem to have a fair amount of life in them.
Oh for gods' sake, it's Keith Alexander. Any idiot can look that up. Where did this idea come from that the president is lord of all things governmental?
Have a look at the first document (number 78) here. The birth rate / death rate ratio has been decreasing over time, but it's still positive. The reason for the minority / majority inversion that you're talking about is in the bottom chart on that document - the birth rate among current minorities (except Cubans) is higher than that of the current majority (white people).
I'm sure that part of the reason for that is the fact that hispanics are mostly catholic, but the bigger reason is likely what the other poster mentioned: the richer a group is, the fewer children they have.
We didn't prevent childbirth in hospitals and childhood vaccinations... I can tell that this is supposed to be some sort of sarcasm, but I'm not following it. What gives you the confidence that we'll find social solutions? Our rampant overpopulation is a new problem - we've only exceeded sustainability just in the last two generations, and we're still cruising on fossil fuels to provide both our energy and our fertilizer.
It's true that birth rates among wealthier nations are lower, but the world's current population is already more than double what can be sustained at the elevated rate of consumption found in wealthier nations. And, what's more, slower != stopped: the world's most populace wealthy nation, The United States, still has a positive birth rate. Economies in those wealthier nations are also tied to an ever-expanding population - Japan may have a negative birth rate, but for the sake of their economy they're trying to provide incentives to encourage their people to have more children, not less.
The biblical pharaoh is generally believed to be either Ramesses the second (Ramesses the great) or his son, Merenptah. The first mention of Israelites happens during Merenptah's reign. This is about a hundred years after Akhenaten.
Incidentally, the Red Sea in the biblical account is a mistranslation - it's actually supposed to be the "sea of reeds." In other words, a marsh. This makes sense for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the Israelites lived in the delta region in Egypt, which has plenty of marshes but isn't very close to the Red Sea.
Tutankhamun himself didn't have a terribly interesting life or reign, but the circumstances surrounding him is easily one of the most fascinating stories from ancient Egypt. His father was Akhenaten, easily the most bizarre pharaoh - he basically forsook running the kingdom in favor of starting a cult out in the middle of nowhere. His religion was the first known monotheistic one and he drastically changed the art and practices of what was arguably the most conservative culture that there has ever been. Akhenaten's wife (not Tutankhamun's mother) was Nefertiti, who's bust is one of the most iconic symbols of Egypt.
After Akhenaten's death, Tutankhamun and his sister / wife, Ankhesenamun, were too young to rule so the vizier, named Ay, took over and basically tried to undo what Akhenaten had done. The "amun" at the end of the two children's names is significant - Amun was the most worshiped god of the old religion, Tut's father's god was called the Aten. Tut's birth name was Tutankhaten, and the change came with a lot of reversals of his father's religious policies.
For a long time Tutankhamun was believed to have been murdered, but I guess that's in dispute now. Regardless, we have a heartbreaking letter from just after his death sent by his sister / wife to the Hittite king. Remember that Ay, in his seventies, has been ruling the country unofficially for the last nine years, that Egypt was the most powerful country in the world at this time, that the Hittites were traditional enemies of Egypt, and that Ankhesenamun, now eighteen and alone, is the only surviving member of the pure royal bloodline. This is from memory, so don't get mad if it's slightly off:
My husband is dead and I have no sons. I understand that you have many - send me one of yours and I will marry him and make him king of Egypt. Never will I marry a servant.
I am afraid.
A Hittite prince was sent, and he and his retinue were murdered en route. The only other record that we have of Ankhesenamun is her name and Ay's written together in way that signifies that they were married. Ay becomes the next pharaoh, and she disappears after this.
Newsweek has already provided plenty of evidence. They haven't provided proof, that's not the same thing, but there is more than sufficient evidence to believe that this is the right guy.
This is easily the most entertaining Slashdot interview I've read. I can't say that writing is your true calling, since I've played (and listened to) some of the games that you've worked on, but you are clearly a multi talented person. Thanks a lot for making this worth reading.
They might not have know the details about the weakness, but why else would the NSA be paying them to use a particular algorithm? They thought they were getting money for no reason?
We already have a culture of anti-government rhetoric building. While many are chaotic, and completely lacking organization, there might be enough just to start trouble across the board. In short, they will probably end up reaping what they sew.
You're not wrong about the culture of anti-government rhetoric, but your last comment, about reaping what they sew, is off the mark and makes me sad. Our "culture of anti-government rhetoric" has been sculpted to treat the government as a monolithic entity. Government is government. Thus, a story about an invasion of privacy or one like this, about perverting speech, can be turned into an attack on the EPA or health care reform or an argument against the regulation of financial markets. The government can't be trusted, after all.
Even worse, that paranoid atmosphere is exactly what drives legislation like the Patriot Act in the first place. People want to feel safe, it's self-propagating.
If you really want to stop this sort of abuse, what you need to foster in your self and in others is not paranoia, or mistrust, but confidence. Keep your outrage, that's certainly appropriate, but recognize this as a problem that can be fixed and move towards that solution.
quite simply, Cogent is trying to push more data into Verizon than they are paying Verizon to handle.
The problem being that there's really no reason why Cogent should be paying Verizon any money at all. Verizon's customers have already payed for that bandwidth.
This is an end-run around network neutrality: Verizon can claim that they're staying neutral because they're slowing down all of Cogent's traffic evenly, rather than targeting Netflix specifically, but the great bulk of Cogent traffic is Netflix.
Aside from the bit about Obama being head of the executive branch, this is completely wrong. The president has the power to nominate commissioners to the FCC, which are subject to the approval of congress. That's it - the full extent of his influence. Federal agencies are designed to be independent in this way to help combat corruption.
He sort of fails to notice the Courts just took away all of that Congressionally Granted Power.
The courts took away nothing. Anyone who was following the story knew that it was almost certain to go that way - the FCC didn't have the authority to create a "third option" the way that it did. The FCC can either classify ISPs as telecommunications providers or not, that's pretty much it.
Obama has weighed in to the extent that he's able. It would be nice if people would some day figure out that the independent agencies that comprise the federal government are independent for a reason. Every time you push for Obama to just roll in and take over the FCC or the justice department, etc., and make them do what you want them to do, and every time you blame Obama for failing to take these drastic steps, what you're really pushing for is a greater degree of authoritarianism. When you say that you hold the president accountable for everything that the federal government does, what you're really saying is that you want the president to directly control all of the federal government.
Rankings tend to be event based, so in a year that a certain country does something particularly egregious it can drop a bunch of ranks. This year the US's drop in rank is probably related to Snowden. So yes, it's inconsistent but that doesn't mean that it's arbitrary.
But as someone else pointed out below, if it can't be wielded, it's not a weapon.
This is what differentiates a weapon of mass destruction from another weapon. It's not size, it's the ability to pick your targets. A weapon of mass destruction is one that kills indiscriminately.
Denmark is the only one from that list that's interesting. Luxembourg is a tax shelter, and Greece and Mexico are too poor to fit in the same category. You can always take it to extremes: what are the working hours in North Korea? What's the GDP there?
Remember that 99% of your ancestors married at 15 or younger.
If you're of European decent, this is really only true for your wealthy ancestors. Women in medieval Europe tended to marry in their late twenties / early thirties for the necessity of the time that it took to accumulate a suitable dowry.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, whoever comes up with names at Microsoft really needs to get promoted to somewhere useless. The Xbox One, which is not the same as the Xbox one, and is in fact the Xbox three, being the sequel to the Xbox 360... that one is so stupid it makes me angry.
If the company can make extra money by selling after market proprietary chargers, then USB isn't the cheapest path.
So far, I haven't seen an indication that he's willing to do anything about NSA wrongdoing.
Well, Keith Alexander is getting the boot and there's a new nominee, Michael Rogers. That's something happening this month, though I don't know if it's Obama's doing or if Keith just decided to leave.
I'm not bumping responsibility down, I'm just not bumping it up. I'm not claiming that Keith Alexander is lord of the NSA any more than Obama is, and I certainly don't want him to be held responsible for everything that the NSA does either. That's just another cop-out. I would like Keith Alexander to be held responsible for the decisions that he makes and the responsibilities that fall to him and no more than that.
I know there's this idea that a good leader should take responsibility for everything that their underlings do, but this is just a way of circumventing justice. The underlings commit all manner of crimes, the guy at the top says "I'm in charge, I take responsibility." and it all goes away.
I'll grant that there are a lot of situations where pushing the responsibility down can be just as bad or worse than pushing it up, but so what? All that's illustrating is that this sort of thing is complicated. Figuring out just who it is who has committed a crime is often not an easy or simple thing to do.
No personal experience with this, but according to Anandtech Intel's Iris Pro graphics are reasonably fast but don't provide any power consumption advantage over discrete offerings. In fact they're worse, and with the power benefits in the new chips mentioned above they should be a lot worse in the future. Seeing as power consumption and cost are the only compelling reasons to be using integrated graphics, discrete chips still seem to have a fair amount of life in them.
Oh for gods' sake, it's Keith Alexander. Any idiot can look that up. Where did this idea come from that the president is lord of all things governmental?
Have a look at the first document (number 78) here. The birth rate / death rate ratio has been decreasing over time, but it's still positive. The reason for the minority / majority inversion that you're talking about is in the bottom chart on that document - the birth rate among current minorities (except Cubans) is higher than that of the current majority (white people).
I'm sure that part of the reason for that is the fact that hispanics are mostly catholic, but the bigger reason is likely what the other poster mentioned: the richer a group is, the fewer children they have.
We didn't prevent childbirth in hospitals and childhood vaccinations... I can tell that this is supposed to be some sort of sarcasm, but I'm not following it. What gives you the confidence that we'll find social solutions? Our rampant overpopulation is a new problem - we've only exceeded sustainability just in the last two generations, and we're still cruising on fossil fuels to provide both our energy and our fertilizer.
It's true that birth rates among wealthier nations are lower, but the world's current population is already more than double what can be sustained at the elevated rate of consumption found in wealthier nations. And, what's more, slower != stopped: the world's most populace wealthy nation, The United States, still has a positive birth rate. Economies in those wealthier nations are also tied to an ever-expanding population - Japan may have a negative birth rate, but for the sake of their economy they're trying to provide incentives to encourage their people to have more children, not less.
The biblical pharaoh is generally believed to be either Ramesses the second (Ramesses the great) or his son, Merenptah. The first mention of Israelites happens during Merenptah's reign. This is about a hundred years after Akhenaten.
Incidentally, the Red Sea in the biblical account is a mistranslation - it's actually supposed to be the "sea of reeds." In other words, a marsh. This makes sense for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the Israelites lived in the delta region in Egypt, which has plenty of marshes but isn't very close to the Red Sea.
After Akhenaten's death, Tutankhamun and his sister / wife, Ankhesenamun, were too young to rule so the vizier, named Ay, took over and basically tried to undo what Akhenaten had done. The "amun" at the end of the two children's names is significant - Amun was the most worshiped god of the old religion, Tut's father's god was called the Aten. Tut's birth name was Tutankhaten, and the change came with a lot of reversals of his father's religious policies.
For a long time Tutankhamun was believed to have been murdered, but I guess that's in dispute now. Regardless, we have a heartbreaking letter from just after his death sent by his sister / wife to the Hittite king. Remember that Ay, in his seventies, has been ruling the country unofficially for the last nine years, that Egypt was the most powerful country in the world at this time, that the Hittites were traditional enemies of Egypt, and that Ankhesenamun, now eighteen and alone, is the only surviving member of the pure royal bloodline. This is from memory, so don't get mad if it's slightly off:
My husband is dead and I have no sons. I understand that you have many - send me one of yours and I will marry him and make him king of Egypt. Never will I marry a servant.
I am afraid.
A Hittite prince was sent, and he and his retinue were murdered en route. The only other record that we have of Ankhesenamun is her name and Ay's written together in way that signifies that they were married. Ay becomes the next pharaoh, and she disappears after this.
What, seriously? I said: Newsweek. It's the very first link in the summary, you can't find that?
Fine, for your lazy ass: link.
Newsweek has already provided plenty of evidence. They haven't provided proof, that's not the same thing, but there is more than sufficient evidence to believe that this is the right guy.
This is easily the most entertaining Slashdot interview I've read. I can't say that writing is your true calling, since I've played (and listened to) some of the games that you've worked on, but you are clearly a multi talented person. Thanks a lot for making this worth reading.
They might not have know the details about the weakness, but why else would the NSA be paying them to use a particular algorithm? They thought they were getting money for no reason?
Anthropomorphic Global Warming?
The global warming got greedy and started whaling for profit?
(The word you're looking for is anthropogenic.)
We already have a culture of anti-government rhetoric building. While many are chaotic, and completely lacking organization, there might be enough just to start trouble across the board. In short, they will probably end up reaping what they sew.
You're not wrong about the culture of anti-government rhetoric, but your last comment, about reaping what they sew, is off the mark and makes me sad. Our "culture of anti-government rhetoric" has been sculpted to treat the government as a monolithic entity. Government is government. Thus, a story about an invasion of privacy or one like this, about perverting speech, can be turned into an attack on the EPA or health care reform or an argument against the regulation of financial markets. The government can't be trusted, after all.
Even worse, that paranoid atmosphere is exactly what drives legislation like the Patriot Act in the first place. People want to feel safe, it's self-propagating.
If you really want to stop this sort of abuse, what you need to foster in your self and in others is not paranoia, or mistrust, but confidence. Keep your outrage, that's certainly appropriate, but recognize this as a problem that can be fixed and move towards that solution.
quite simply, Cogent is trying to push more data into Verizon than they are paying Verizon to handle.
The problem being that there's really no reason why Cogent should be paying Verizon any money at all. Verizon's customers have already payed for that bandwidth.
This is an end-run around network neutrality: Verizon can claim that they're staying neutral because they're slowing down all of Cogent's traffic evenly, rather than targeting Netflix specifically, but the great bulk of Cogent traffic is Netflix.
That's a great line, very quotable. I will probably reference you (without attribution) at some point in the future.
It's a bureaucratic problem. What are you suggesting, a military solution?
Aside from the bit about Obama being head of the executive branch, this is completely wrong. The president has the power to nominate commissioners to the FCC, which are subject to the approval of congress. That's it - the full extent of his influence. Federal agencies are designed to be independent in this way to help combat corruption.
He sort of fails to notice the Courts just took away all of that Congressionally Granted Power.
The courts took away nothing. Anyone who was following the story knew that it was almost certain to go that way - the FCC didn't have the authority to create a "third option" the way that it did. The FCC can either classify ISPs as telecommunications providers or not, that's pretty much it.
Obama has weighed in to the extent that he's able. It would be nice if people would some day figure out that the independent agencies that comprise the federal government are independent for a reason. Every time you push for Obama to just roll in and take over the FCC or the justice department, etc., and make them do what you want them to do, and every time you blame Obama for failing to take these drastic steps, what you're really pushing for is a greater degree of authoritarianism. When you say that you hold the president accountable for everything that the federal government does, what you're really saying is that you want the president to directly control all of the federal government.
Rankings tend to be event based, so in a year that a certain country does something particularly egregious it can drop a bunch of ranks. This year the US's drop in rank is probably related to Snowden. So yes, it's inconsistent but that doesn't mean that it's arbitrary.
But as someone else pointed out below, if it can't be wielded, it's not a weapon.
This is what differentiates a weapon of mass destruction from another weapon. It's not size, it's the ability to pick your targets. A weapon of mass destruction is one that kills indiscriminately.
Denmark is the only one from that list that's interesting. Luxembourg is a tax shelter, and Greece and Mexico are too poor to fit in the same category. You can always take it to extremes: what are the working hours in North Korea? What's the GDP there?
Remember that 99% of your ancestors married at 15 or younger.
If you're of European decent, this is really only true for your wealthy ancestors. Women in medieval Europe tended to marry in their late twenties / early thirties for the necessity of the time that it took to accumulate a suitable dowry.