You clearly are extremely hypersensitive to the entire subject.
I see you persist in denying that there is a common Italian culture.
There is such a thing as French, British and American cultures (and even separate Scottish and English cultures, which make up British Identity) but you think Italy is unique and assert that it does not have one. Well, it has a common culture whether you realise it or not and a bit of traveling to several different countries in Europe and to different parts of the US (East coast vrs. West coast) has made that clear to me.
Studying a regions laws, the way they do business and life styles of it's citizens is something that everyone who has access to a library or an uncensored internet connection can do and so ignorance is a poor excuse.
Your comments lead me to wonder how much time you actually spend studying your own politics and looking at other cultures as your responses seem knee jerk and poorly thought out, and are the sort of thing I'd expect to read in News International Tabloid.
The Italian populous let their government get away with being corrupt (taking bribes) colliding with organized crime (which the police have been too afraid and corrupt to tackle properly) and covertly murdering each other, journalists and case prosecution witness for years, you've been a poorer country because of it and religion most definitely interferes with the state despite what you think.
Italy has away from addressing this, which is why Italy has had to face many of the problems it has had in the recent past, particularly with reference so some of the scandals of the 90's. The fact the Italy did not address these problems is the reason it lags behind economically behind other European countries like France, the UK and Germany. Italy has a well educate populace with good infrastructure. If it can escape some of it's cultural pitfalls (white collar crime, corruption and the tolerance of it) then there is no reason it could not continue to grow has it has done in the late 90's.
However unless it persists in cleaning up it's act then it has little hope and I can't help but feel the election of it's current Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (the countries richest man who owns the majority of Italy's news, radio and newspapers and has faced numerous corruption allegations) is a shot in the foot for good governance, and Italy's future development. In fact, his election was act of downright stupidity (IMHO) by the populous and was criticized by main stream press the world over.
You can ignore that (and the fact that is is a legacy of a common Italian culture) and you can attest that the Church and state are separate all that all you like, but exactly how do you explain not only all the scandal's of the 90's and your government shutting down web sites on charges of "blasphemous" web sites? Certainly police charges of Blasphemy would never be brought against a web site UK, nor can I see such a thing happening in other countries (like Germany, France, Denmark, Austria, the USA, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Japan, Australia, New Zealand....) - it's the sort of thing that goes on in fundamentalist religious countries like Iraq, and does NOT belong in Europe!
For reference to your defense of the imprisonment of Galileo (as in "who was responsible"), see my previously post about the United Kingdom only coming into existence in 1801, in much the same way as Italy only "came into existence" in the 1860's
As I've also already said above in a previous post, the Romans referred the area known as "Italy" as "Italia" over 2000 years ago! Italian culture is not a culture that suddenly popped ino existence, it is a region that has shared a common culture for over two thousands years, like all culture it has continued to evolve and change, but it is still a shared culture as it was 2000 years ago.
Obviously I'm not suggesting *your* responsible, but your region's earlier religion dominated culture was and that dominance of religion in that culture still survives today. We all have responsibility for the actions of others in our society and if we do or say nothing then we are complicit in those actions. This recent action is clearly and example of the church exerting undue influence on the government on a police force that would do better to concentrate on other areas and so thusly to the detriment of your country (and so to the detriment of Europe as a whole which most certainly is my business!).
I was not surprised by your response, but was pleased to see that, as I suspect, Europeans are apparently less touchy than Americans on the subject of critisizim as you were the only person agitated enough by my comments to reply in such a defensive fashion (although given recent events, the Americans might be excused).
But to be clear, my post was not Flamebait nor a Troll - *EVERY* country has very serious social problems that needs to be addressed and we *must* admit to our own societies failings or they will not be addressed. It's of extreme importance now that Europe is pulling closer together, as any country not advancing itself culturally and reforming bad legislation quick enough is not seen to be pulling it's weight and is acting as a drag on the other nations.
As you point out, in the last century, film censorship was one of ours. Numerous films were banned and deemed unfit and shocking thanks to the 'Mary Whitehouse' mentality (sorry you'll have to look that reference up yourself:) that prevailed in film censorship long after the next generation had ceased to be shocked or even care about the films in question, but that's an act of typical British reservation for you, we have the same lingering attitudes towards sex and pornography censorship for the same reasons.
In the same way, Italy has serious issues with the separation of church and state and a separate more serious issue with corrupt officials. It needs to address these issues are reform it's legislation. If it doesn't do it in a timely enough fashion, it may discover that Europe will reform it for them (as the EU has done for many countries already in more pedestrian matters). I won't list all the failings of both our countries, we all know what our own societies cultural failings are and Europeans tend to have a pretty good grasp of our neighbors cultural failings;).
Which brings me neatly on to the next issue, you took offense at my use of Stereotypes. Well clearly stereotypes exist for a reason - they stem from truth and we are all the better for not hiding from them. I'm a Scotsman who, quite frankly, is a bit of a fat bastard and like's to drink. Should I ignore that and take offense at that stereotype, or should it trouble me and cause me to address that fact that Scotland has the worst instances of deaths from heart disease in Europe?
I would say that you need to turn round and address your own region's issues and admit to it's failings rather than being defensive about them.
Yes that's true but I'd say that's a insignificant minor technicality in the same way that the United Kingdom was only 'created' in 1801 and it's perfectly resonable to refer to that area as "Italy" even when refering to events in the middle ages - the Romans themeselves called the area "Italia" over 2000 years ago.
PS: This is not intended to be an attack on the Cathloic religion, as a disclaimer I am a rather militant atheist and dislike them all for the same reasons, but I'm more trying make a point about (a) the idea of seperation between state and religion is a good thing and (b) people being responsible for the behaviour of each other.
In Europe we are still not very good at keeping tabs on each other (witness the American intervention that was required in Bosnia because we were all sitting around bickering and arguing over what to do while atrocities and mass genocide was being commited), but with the help of the EU we are improving....
Sadly I live in one of the more isloated parts of the Union (Britian) where the Moronic Majority still remain skeptical of the whole EU idea (thanks partly to our historial isolation, and in no small part to News International who control the press over here and are constantly publishing the notion that the whole European intergration idea is a bad thing and trying to convince people that everybody else thinks that do, when in reality the journalists disagree with that viewpoint but are being told to take that line by Rupert Murdoch who personally does like it because he's liable to (a) be forced to pay taxes again in the UK and (b) come under fire from anti-monopoly legislation).
I'm not an American (I'm British) but it most certainly is their business and ours whenever other human beings are being oppressed without due cause.
Europe still remembers what happens when you let other countries get away with doing whatever they like unchecked. Italy in particular should remember this after the part the Italian army played in oppressing citizens of other countries in the last century. This, against the background of what the Israeli's are doing to Palestinians (and vice versa), and to what the Chinese and North Koreans are doing to their citizens is still relevant today.
On a separate point the entire idea is (almost) laughable as Italy still suffers from a corrupt government and business culture also prevalent throughout the judicial system. Admittedly it's a bit better that in was in the 90's but the Italian police would do better to spend more time focusing on there own corrupt judges, politicians, civil servants and police officers rather than concentration on futile and nasty, oppressive action like this (for which Italian culture has an particular tolerance for).
Time and again Italian judges, policemen and politicians have had formal charges of serious fraud, murder and of colliding with the Mafia laid against them - as an key example crooks like Giulio Andreotti (7 time prime mister of Italy) as devout Roman Catholic has been continually and repeatedly supported and defended by the Christian Democrat's in government and by the the Church.
Italy was the same country that imprisoned Galileo under house arrest for life and refused him all medical treatment for daring to suggest that Copernicus had been right and that the Earth went around the Sun - because it was deemed blasphemous. It is of note that the Vatican only admitted it was wrong in 1992, 350 years after his death. Quite frankly it's about time Italy stopped living in the middle ages and stopped persecuting it citizens for not following a decreed religion.
Hmm yes your right, I swear when I first saw this ~>2 years ago the review said it was a Diesel, not gas.
I wonder if Honda make one that looks like the Insight (as I couldnt swear the one I saw was called an "Insight", just that it was a Honda), or maybe the rep just got it wrong:/
Certainly as a Hybrid it's not the greenest solution (compared to an all-electric), but it fairs well (at nearly 70 Miles Per Gallon it's one of the most efficent Diesel engines in the world) and it has very quick acceleration for a Hybrid, and I think it still manages to look pretty sexy.
The real bonus is that although it is a Diesel/Electric Hybrid you never have to recharge! It automatically regarchages whenever you decelerate (IIRC). This means you can travel long distances, e.g. cross country, without worring about having to recharge.
Honda have been selling them at an 18,000 USD loss IIRC.
I don't own a car (mmm public transportation) but if I did it would be one of these.
I think the only downside would be lack of space, like a lot of regular environmentally friendly cars.
Yes *damn* Microsoft for writing a browser that lets you view improperly formatted pages!
Oh wait there *is* an excuse for rendering badly formatted pages - it makes life easier for the majority of people (~90%+ of web users) when one person fucks up (i.e. the HTML monkey).
So actually there is a reason and it's an excellent one that makes sense.
Maybe you would prefer a browser to utterly refuse to render any pages with invalid HTML As only a tiny minority of pages are fully valid HTML I don't think it would get many users, but if you wanted to it would be pretty trivial to set up a proxy via a Perl script to validate all pages and give you an error of they were improprely formattted, though I don't think it would do much to enhance your browsing experience.
For the record, at this time, Internet Explorer for Macintosh is the *most* compliant browser according to the W3C. Saying that fails to adheare to 'core programming standards' by having additional support for auto-correcting user error is illogical.
Rendering *some* useful content is a lot more useful than not rendering it at all.
Don't blame Microsoft for correcting errors, blame the user who put the error there in the first place!
I can entirely understand the European way of using the date (D-M-YY) because we all read left to right and that way you get to the day first, which is most likely to be the one you don't know and reason you are checking the date in the first place. The US system has always really confused me having the date buried in the middle, which seems pretty illogical.
Fortunately the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) already solved this problem ages ago.
I use the ISO 8601 for ALL my date's (e.g. cheque books, invoices, legal documents) because it's ambiguity free, the format being:
YYYY-M-D (e.g. 2002-7-5)
It would be much easier if everyone could get used to doing this. I like to rant on bank clerks and anybody who asks me to date a legal document and who don't understand this as all international organisations (e.g. banks) should be using this format (especially ones here in London and in other international cities like New York).
The ISO 8601 date standard also makes sense from a decimal point of view in that it is "biggest to smallest".
It's more likely to be from Mad Magazine where many of the jokes and articles are "From the $foo Department".
Mad Magazine remains one of the few credible printed journals left in the US (and apart from the "National Inquirer" it's probably the only decent publication sill out there). Go grab a copy!
A lot of large companies (like AOL TimeWarner, Sony and even Microsoft) run OpenSSH on BSD systems.
For example, at my previous company I did work for AOL, and we used FreeBSD servers to preprare user billing data for AOL - with OpenSSH of course. Personally I would have prefered Linux, but the other 2 systems engineers were FreeBSD fan's and I can respect that:-).
The only - and I mean only - reason to have a commercial SSH client is if you need support for a trusted operating environment (i.e. Trusted Solaris, Argus Pitbull) and you typically purchase these from the vendor that sold you the OS in the first place - though with privliage seperation now present in OpenSSH, this could be a thing of the past.
If you've worked in big business you see how many use BSD and OpenSSH - though not to Linux, as most have reservations about it's sutibility for a corporate environment - and the use of free (as in beer) software is increasing as the cost benifits of a no-cost OS and cheap commodity Intel hardware are encoraging companies to move away from Sun hardware in certain situations.
Bascially all you needed to do to expoit this was: a) Run an application (e.g. Terminal) b) Run NetInfo Manager (in/Applications/Utilites/) and leave it running as the foreground Application. c) Run the 1st application (e.g. Terminal) but this time start it from the "Apple->Recent Items->" menu and it will run as setuid root.
In the case of the Terminal application, this gave you a root prompt.
There is no good reason for your sysadmin not to let you on the network - they are being overbearing and unprofessional. If they were professional and genuinely worried they would have blocked incoming ports to your host at the switch (or at worst - the gateway).
Like most other administrators I have to work with, it sounds like they are simply exhibit big ego's and little professionalisim (though I would not wish to jump to conclusions, it's most likely in my experience).
Apart from upgrading the SSH and Apache binaries yourself (I know I was too lazy and waited for Apple because I knew one was coming out) you could simply have disabled thoses services - after all they are disabled by default on Mac OS X.
Lastly, in response the origional poster, Apple's response was slower than I would have liked (as the OpenSSH one was disclosed to vendors like Apple ~10 days before it was announced) but timely and the fix was very elegant and appears to be bug free (clean install all round, no reboot required, etc).
Your description of business is better suited to a communist society than a capitalist one.
Unlike the US my society (UK / Europe) is a socialist one, and that doesn't just reflect our currently elected poltical parties. By American political standards about 80-90% of all Europeans are socialists.
I consider myself a left leaning liberal, but our right wing parties (the UK's Conservative Party or France's RPR headed by Jacques Chirac) are quite far left of even left wing mainstream parties in the states.
In Europe as whole, like free heathcare, free higher education, and we don't mind paying significantly higher taxes than US citizens in order to pay for public services, in fact people vote explicitly to retain these things.
So yes, my society is more socialist, and we like it that way and putting people before business is just common sense to us.
Asserting that business requirements are more important over technical merits get's you sub standard solutions that people will hate to use and will waste thousands of man hours being unhappy and being unproductive when the technology could be making their lives easier.
New methodologies are not invented for fun. They are invented be cause they make things better, for developers, users and business.
Yes, you can sell poor quality software or technology products for a short period of time and make money, but so will selling drugs, doesn't make it ethical or help make the world a better place. Discounting new technologies and methodlogies is also foolish and bad business sense if a PM has no idea why they are being used in the first place.
The successful way to make good products that you can feel proud of, people will like and that you can sell is by have a wider world view point that does not revolve around money or technology but people and society (and how you can improve their lives *through* business and technology).
Clearly business is not more important than technology, unless business is your goal. Which is worrying, because it should revolve around people. Business is a way to encorage development in society and technology, it is not a goal in itself.
It's possible to make money from good products and good practice, a good example would be OmniGroup who have been doing this for many years. They are small but sucessful and make both some free and some commercial software of very high quality and by and large everybody really likes them. I have a couple of peices of software from them, and it's the only commercial software I use day to day.
Your quite correct, I am developing something at the moment and experiencing all of the above (fortunately I'm used to it).
What users *say* they want is not always what they *actually* want.
I would say it's good to listen to them if they want to point out a problem (something they find confusing or dislike) and try and do something about it but *never* simply listen to their advice on *how* to solve a UI issue!
If your good at software design, you should know more about it than they do and you should be able to come up with solutions they'd never have thought of. Generally they like to make statements without considering other factors or at least allowing the fact that their might be other factors.
In summary: Society should use the law to uphold the values we all agree on.
In a liberal democracy the cut off point is first passed the post, indeed this is of course famously what the Liberal Democrats in the the UK have been trying to achive in our electorial system.
Let's be very clear that if you accept that 50% or more of the population want a ban (which in fairness you havent said you do, but just supposing for sake of argument and bearing in mind that this is what almost every independant poll would suggest) that the appropriate democtratic thing to do would be to make it law.
Indeed, the Liberal Democratic party is in favour if introducing a ban if public weight is behind it (not to assert that that being liberal is the same as being a Liberal!).
If you don't think 50 % is a good cut off point - then what is? I don't mean that antagonistically, though I can see the problems with it, I just can't see a better alternative.
As an example, a mori poll from the end of last year ( http://www.mori.com/polls/2001/ifaw.shtml ) shows 7 out of 10 of Scots (I am a Scot myself) *oppose* any form of hunting with dogs. Only 1 in 10 were actually in favour of allowing it.
This was the Protection of Wild Mammals Bill.
Surely that is enough only 10% in favour, 90% abstaining or against!
I am proud to say, that under the relatively new Scottish parlament, it is now illegal to fox hunt on horses, or to bait foxes in Scotland. This was voted in by MSP at 83 to 36 with 5 absentions on Febuary 13th, 2002 and is truly an act of liberal democracy in every, even the most idealistic, sense.
I was not replying to you - try browsing at '0' or '-1' to view the origional posts. I'm certainly not accusing you of being a pro hunt lobbist, that would be grossly unfair as their would be no basis for say that, I was refering to the A/C poster (who it seems is because they are arguing on the issue, not simply because they belive the right to continue to do it should exist).
The law should protect peoples freedoms against intrusion from other people
But our law doesn't stop there. It goes as far as protecting other animals too, like cats, dogs and horses.
Is that a good thing? In your opinion is that permissiable in a liberal society?
With regard to your other comments, with issues of homosexuality, drug taking and boxing there are consenting people, and it's fairly clear what the law should be, and by and large everybody agrees and the law seems to be appropriate.
(Though the issue of drug taking is thorny and muddied because of the nature of the suppliers and the negitive effect's it can have on others in society [such as crime] and the varying ways in which it can negatively impact on the participants and there ability to function in society (and the exitance of a society and government is a requirement to the idea of a liberal state). That said, I'm in favour of the legaisation of cannabis in the UK, as are about half the populace it would seem, but we all know how complex the issues are. )
Oh I don't think the argument that animals do not feel pain in the same way or are self aware are true. Any claims they feel or interpret nerve impulses differently to us more advanced primates is purely justification for continued mal treatment by a much smarter dominating species who ought to know better.
Physically, despite differences in size and shape, we are very similarly constructed to other mammals (four limbs, two lungs, one heart, one brain, a spine, a nerve stem at the back of the neck, similar number of bones, similar design and layout of bones and organcs, etc).
The problem is we don't like to admit how similar we are because it makes us think about and face very awkward questions about the nature of our duality (like the way that we keep cat's and dog's as family pets yet eat sheep and chickens).
It's interesting to raise this with young children as I've had friends childen ask why I don't eat meat (say, when we go to McDonalds). When I explain why (very deliberately not in a pushy sense and certainly without trying to advocate!), many immediately delare that that's a really good idea because eating sheep and chickens seems genuinly revulsive to them (though of course they are only children and as soon as they are offered a hamburger they think twice, but as everyone else seems to be doing it so they just go a head and eat it). There lack of inhibition about stating their revulsion without first justifing it to themselves (as all adults do in such situations - including me!) is quite interesting though.
Relevant points are that animals both dream and not only that, they have emotions (Which are chemical reactions, not complex mental constructs. Though these reactions are often *manipulated* by mental processes they are themselves physical, chemical reactions common to most mammals.). We like sex for the same reasons rabbits do, we get pleasureable responses in our brain. Of course I do think that there is a deeper level of understanding with humans due to our vastly greater brain power which adds an amazing amount of dimension, but if it wern't for the chemical rewards, we wouldn't have any reason to bother, except to make babies (and of course these reactions are nature's way of making sure we do have babies).
Quite a few animals can dream which demonstraights some sort of self awareness on some level (to imagine 'yourself' doing something, you need to have a level of self awareness). We don't of course know what they are dreaming *about*, but with the muscle movement (snarling, tail wagging, and legs moving while dreaming) it's clear they are acting natural out movements and 'being' themselves. I would also *think* (so purely IMO) that they can, like us, tell the differences between dreams and reality when they awake (only because that would seem like mother nature fucked up quite a bit if they can dream but can't tell when they wake up! Though I know that *I* sometimes have problems remebering wheather something was a dream or not, but I tend to tream about boring things like having meetings and working at the computer a lot.:). Though I certainly accept there is room for debate about how much self awareness this demonstraights, and weather it demonstraights significant amounts at all.
Animals also behave differently emotionally depending on how you treat them and the experiences they have throughout life, this is particularly noticeable in cats (you can certainly see it in dogs too, but it seems dogs take a lot more rough and tumble than cat's will happily tolerate). This is very noticeable in maltreated animals and is much more than simple instinctive anger or fear and it can be very complex. It's notale that similar (non verbal) techniques for therapy used on on humans work on other mal treated animals like dogs, cats, and horses to help them work round problems like lack of trust, anger, fear and bulling (in instances where other animals are unusually dominant and cruel to others).
I don't think putting humans in the same category as animals is as black and white as a lot of people imagine it.
I think that one thing that is black and white about this issue, is that humans are animals.
When we refute or choose to ignore this we are ignoring much of our behavior that is very base and instinctive, and we are distancing ourselves from the greatly differing ways we treat different species.
I do think it's one thing to discuss how similar we are, and whether we should or are in any way obligated to treat them differently, but quite another not to admit we are a dominant and very advanced species, not an entirely different class of being.
#--I've posted this elsewhere but reprinted here ed because I think's it's important that we all are clear on the difference between what are two often misunderstood terms.--#
As I said, being a libertarian merely means advocating liberty. That is the (or strictly speaking 'a') definition of the word. It does not mean advocating anarchy which is *very* different and much more like what you are describing.
You can draw the line at liberty at the theft of ideas (copyright), or at theft of actual property, or at rape, or at murder, spousal abuse, or at cruelty to animals.
- Traditional western culture does not permit any of these. That is very typically libertarian.
Libertarian's are democrats, laissez-faire capitalists, and support the rule of law and government (with as little intervention as practically possible).
- Some cultures do permit quite a few of these (theft of 'copyright', rape, spousal abuse and cruelty to animals are all quite permissible in some countries).
This is much more anarchic. Countries with this more anarchic approach (like middle eastern countries, like Iran) tend to have less free market capitalism, less complicated legal systems and less protection for individual freedom's.
Needless to say, libertarian and anarchists are not exactly compatible as the latter have no interest in *protecting* - or asserting - freedoms (which libertarians do!)!
As I said, being a libertarian merely means advocating liberty. That is the (or strictly speaking 'a') definition of the word. It does not mean advocating anarchy which is *very* different and much more like what you are describing.
You can draw the line at liberty at the theft of ideas (copyright), or at theft of actual property, or at rape, or at murder, spousal abuse, or at cruelty to animals.
- Traditional western culture does not permit any of these. That is very typically libertarian.
Libertarian's are democrats, laissez-faire capitalists, and support the rule of law and government (with as little intervention as practically possible).
- Some cultures do permit quite a few of these (theft of 'copyright', rape, spousal abuse and cruelty to animals are all quite permissible in some countries).
This is much more anarchic. Countries with this more anarchic approach (like middle eastern countries, like Iran) tend to have less free market capitalism, less complicated legal systems and less protection for individual freedom's.
Needless to say, libertarian and anarchists are not exactly compatible as the latter have no interest in *protecting* freedoms (which libertarians do!)!
I agree with you, I certainly wouldn't stop people eating meat (after all we are omnivours and there are plenty of other animals only too happy eat us:), so there are certainly good arguments for eating meat from ethical standpoint.
Logically though, I've never been able to excuse the idea that we arn't just smart, bald monkeys with opposable thumbs (I've never belived I was created in the image of a mysterious being) and my primary reason for being vegetarian was that I've never been able to see how, logically, it's okay to kill some things but not other things (except where the other things are obviously dangerous and pose a serious threat, which I've found quite easy to justify).
Obviously the truth is we all rationalize it in a number of ways, by viewing some things as 'friendly' (pet's, humans) and others as 'enemy' (things that taste nice), but that varies so much from country to country it's clearly not very logcial (And of course, only a few hundred years ago it was okay to kill any human as long as they didn't come from the same bit of land as you).
To be honest, if the world were roaming with nasty pointy teethed things that were trying to eat me all the time, I'd be quite happy to kill them first, eat them and use them as rugs.
Though I hasten to add that I don't consider looking for wild bears the shouting 'it's coming right for us!' before shooting it between the eyes to equate to the same thing:)
Not pissed off at all about that. I'm rather glad, it's *much* better than living in a society were we have have to read what other people write based on their whim (ala Chairman Mao's Little Red Book).
Also, I think your patently wrong, I bet the friends and family of the young man who was run over by a tank during a peace protest care quite a bit about what we westerners think and do, as do many oppressed people throughout the world.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see how searching through the hard drive to find a program is any easier than a big button that says "start")
:P
A big bouncy shiny icon that sits at the bottom of the screen and that you only have to click once to run it is though
You clearly are extremely hypersensitive to the entire subject.
I see you persist in denying that there is a common Italian culture.
There is such a thing as French, British and American cultures (and even separate Scottish and English cultures, which make up British Identity) but you think Italy is unique and assert that it does not have one. Well, it has a common culture whether you realise it or not and a bit of traveling to several different countries in Europe and to different parts of the US (East coast vrs. West coast) has made that clear to me.
Studying a regions laws, the way they do business and life styles of it's citizens is something that everyone who has access to a library or an uncensored internet connection can do and so ignorance is a poor excuse.
Your comments lead me to wonder how much time you actually spend studying your own politics and looking at other cultures as your responses seem knee jerk and poorly thought out, and are the sort of thing I'd expect to read in News International Tabloid.
The Italian populous let their government get away with being corrupt (taking bribes) colliding with organized crime (which the police have been too afraid and corrupt to tackle properly) and covertly murdering each other, journalists and case prosecution witness for years, you've been a poorer country because of it and religion most definitely interferes with the state despite what you think.
Italy has away from addressing this, which is why Italy has had to face many of the problems it has had in the recent past, particularly with reference so some of the scandals of the 90's. The fact the Italy did not address these problems is the reason it lags behind economically behind other European countries like France, the UK and Germany. Italy has a well educate populace with good infrastructure. If it can escape some of it's cultural pitfalls (white collar crime, corruption and the tolerance of it) then there is no reason it could not continue to grow has it has done in the late 90's.
However unless it persists in cleaning up it's act then it has little hope and I can't help but feel the election of it's current Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (the countries richest man who owns the majority of Italy's news, radio and newspapers and has faced numerous corruption allegations) is a shot in the foot for good governance, and Italy's future development. In fact, his election was act of downright stupidity (IMHO) by the populous and was criticized by main stream press the world over.
You can ignore that (and the fact that is is a legacy of a common Italian culture) and you can attest that the Church and state are separate all that all you like, but exactly how do you explain not only all the scandal's of the 90's and your government shutting down web sites on charges of "blasphemous" web sites? Certainly police charges of Blasphemy would never be brought against a web site UK, nor can I see such a thing happening in other countries (like Germany, France, Denmark, Austria, the USA, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Japan, Australia, New Zealand....) - it's the sort of thing that goes on in fundamentalist religious countries like Iraq, and does NOT belong in Europe!
For reference to your defense of the imprisonment of Galileo (as in "who was responsible"), see my previously post about the United Kingdom only coming into existence in 1801, in much the same way as Italy only "came into existence" in the 1860's
;).
As I've also already said above in a previous post, the Romans referred the area known as "Italy" as "Italia" over 2000 years ago! Italian culture is not a culture that suddenly popped ino existence, it is a region that has shared a common culture for over two thousands years, like all culture it has continued to evolve and change, but it is still a shared culture as it was 2000 years ago.
Obviously I'm not suggesting *your* responsible, but your region's earlier religion dominated culture was and that dominance of religion in that culture still survives today. We all have responsibility for the actions of others in our society and if we do or say nothing then we are complicit in those actions. This recent action is clearly and example of the church exerting undue influence on the government on a police force that would do better to concentrate on other areas and so thusly to the detriment of your country (and so to the detriment of Europe as a whole which most certainly is my business!).
I was not surprised by your response, but was pleased to see that, as I suspect, Europeans are apparently less touchy than Americans on the subject of critisizim as you were the only person agitated enough by my comments to reply in such a defensive fashion (although given recent events, the Americans might be excused).
But to be clear, my post was not Flamebait nor a Troll - *EVERY* country has very serious social problems that needs to be addressed and we *must* admit to our own societies failings or they will not be addressed. It's of extreme importance now that Europe is pulling closer together, as any country not advancing itself culturally and reforming bad legislation quick enough is not seen to be pulling it's weight and is acting as a drag on the other nations.
As you point out, in the last century, film censorship was one of ours. Numerous films were banned and deemed unfit and shocking thanks to the 'Mary Whitehouse' mentality (sorry you'll have to look that reference up yourself:) that prevailed in film censorship long after the next generation had ceased to be shocked or even care about the films in question, but that's an act of typical British reservation for you, we have the same lingering attitudes towards sex and pornography censorship for the same reasons.
In the same way, Italy has serious issues with the separation of church and state and a separate more serious issue with corrupt officials. It needs to address these issues are reform it's legislation. If it doesn't do it in a timely enough fashion, it may discover that Europe will reform it for them (as the EU has done for many countries already in more pedestrian matters). I won't list all the failings of both our countries, we all know what our own societies cultural failings are and Europeans tend to have a pretty good grasp of our neighbors cultural failings
Which brings me neatly on to the next issue, you took offense at my use of Stereotypes. Well clearly stereotypes exist for a reason - they stem from truth and we are all the better for not hiding from them. I'm a Scotsman who, quite frankly, is a bit of a fat bastard and like's to drink. Should I ignore that and take offense at that stereotype, or should it trouble me and cause me to address that fact that Scotland has the worst instances of deaths from heart disease in Europe?
I would say that you need to turn round and address your own region's issues and admit to it's failings rather than being defensive about them.
Yes that's true but I'd say that's a insignificant minor technicality in the same way that the United Kingdom was only 'created' in 1801 and it's perfectly resonable to refer to that area as "Italy" even when refering to events in the middle ages - the Romans themeselves called the area "Italia" over 2000 years ago.
;)
PS: This is not intended to be an attack on the Cathloic religion, as a disclaimer I am a rather militant atheist and dislike them all for the same reasons, but I'm more trying make a point about (a) the idea of seperation between state and religion is a good thing and (b) people being responsible for the behaviour of each other.
In Europe we are still not very good at keeping tabs on each other (witness the American intervention that was required in Bosnia because we were all sitting around bickering and arguing over what to do while atrocities and mass genocide was being commited), but with the help of the EU we are improving....
Sadly I live in one of the more isloated parts of the Union (Britian) where the Moronic Majority still remain skeptical of the whole EU idea (thanks partly to our historial isolation, and in no small part to News International who control the press over here and are constantly publishing the notion that the whole European intergration idea is a bad thing and trying to convince people that everybody else thinks that do, when in reality the journalists disagree with that viewpoint but are being told to take that line by Rupert Murdoch who personally does like it because he's liable to (a) be forced to pay taxes again in the UK and (b) come under fire from anti-monopoly legislation).
But *ahem* that's another rant..
I'm not an American (I'm British) but it most certainly is their business and ours whenever other human beings are being oppressed without due cause.
Europe still remembers what happens when you let other countries get away with doing whatever they like unchecked. Italy in particular should remember this after the part the Italian army played in oppressing citizens of other countries in the last century. This, against the background of what the Israeli's are doing to Palestinians (and vice versa), and to what the Chinese and North Koreans are doing to their citizens is still relevant today.
On a separate point the entire idea is (almost) laughable as Italy still suffers from a corrupt government and business culture also prevalent throughout the judicial system. Admittedly it's a bit better that in was in the 90's but the Italian police would do better to spend more time focusing on there own corrupt judges, politicians, civil servants and police officers rather than concentration on futile and nasty, oppressive action like this (for which Italian culture has an particular tolerance for).
Time and again Italian judges, policemen and politicians have had formal charges of serious fraud, murder and of colliding with the Mafia laid against them - as an key example crooks like Giulio Andreotti (7 time prime mister of Italy) as devout Roman Catholic has been continually and repeatedly supported and defended by the Christian Democrat's in government and by the the Church.
Italy was the same country that imprisoned Galileo under house arrest for life and refused him all medical treatment for daring to suggest that Copernicus had been right and that the Earth went around the Sun - because it was deemed blasphemous. It is of note that the Vatican only admitted it was wrong in 1992, 350 years after his death. Quite frankly it's about time Italy stopped living in the middle ages and stopped persecuting it citizens for not following a decreed religion.
Hmm yes your right, I swear when I first saw this ~>2 years ago the review said it was a Diesel, not gas.
:/
I wonder if Honda make one that looks like the Insight (as I couldnt swear the one I saw was called an "Insight", just that it was a Honda), or maybe the rep just got it wrong
The Honda Insight is a lovely peice of work.
Certainly as a Hybrid it's not the greenest solution (compared to an all-electric), but it fairs well (at nearly 70 Miles Per Gallon it's one of the most efficent Diesel engines in the world) and it has very quick acceleration for a Hybrid, and I think it still manages to look pretty sexy.
The real bonus is that although it is a Diesel/Electric Hybrid you never have to recharge! It automatically regarchages whenever you decelerate (IIRC). This means you can travel long distances, e.g. cross country, without worring about having to recharge.
Honda have been selling them at an 18,000 USD loss IIRC.
I don't own a car (mmm public transportation) but if I did it would be one of these.
I think the only downside would be lack of space, like a lot of regular environmentally friendly cars.
Yes *damn* Microsoft for writing a browser that lets you view improperly formatted pages!
Oh wait there *is* an excuse for rendering badly formatted pages - it makes life easier for the majority of people (~90%+ of web users) when one person fucks up (i.e. the HTML monkey).
So actually there is a reason and it's an excellent one that makes sense.
Maybe you would prefer a browser to utterly refuse to render any pages with invalid HTML As only a tiny minority of pages are fully valid HTML I don't think it would get many users, but if you wanted to it would be pretty trivial to set up a proxy via a Perl script to validate all pages and give you an error of they were improprely formattted, though I don't think it would do much to enhance your browsing experience.
For the record, at this time, Internet Explorer for Macintosh is the *most* compliant browser according to the W3C. Saying that fails to adheare to 'core programming standards' by having additional support for auto-correcting user error is illogical.
Rendering *some* useful content is a lot more useful than not rendering it at all.
Don't blame Microsoft for correcting errors, blame the user who put the error there in the first place!
I can entirely understand the European way of using the date (D-M-YY) because we all read left to right and that way you get to the day first, which is most likely to be the one you don't know and reason you are checking the date in the first place. The US system has always really confused me having the date buried in the middle, which seems pretty illogical.
Fortunately the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) already solved this problem ages ago.
I use the ISO 8601 for ALL my date's (e.g. cheque books, invoices, legal documents) because it's ambiguity free, the format being:
YYYY-M-D (e.g. 2002-7-5)
It would be much easier if everyone could get used to doing this. I like to rant on bank clerks and anybody who asks me to date a legal document and who don't understand this as all international organisations (e.g. banks) should be using this format (especially ones here in London and in other international cities like New York).
The ISO 8601 date standard also makes sense from a decimal point of view in that it is "biggest to smallest".
It's more likely to be from Mad Magazine where many of the jokes and articles are "From the $foo Department".
Mad Magazine remains one of the few credible printed journals left in the US (and apart from the "National Inquirer" it's probably the only decent publication sill out there). Go grab a copy!
A lot of large companies (like AOL TimeWarner, Sony and even Microsoft) run OpenSSH on BSD systems.
:-).
For example, at my previous company I did work for AOL, and we used FreeBSD servers to preprare user billing data for AOL - with OpenSSH of course. Personally I would have prefered Linux, but the other 2 systems engineers were FreeBSD fan's and I can respect that
The only - and I mean only - reason to have a commercial SSH client is if you need support for a trusted operating environment (i.e. Trusted Solaris, Argus Pitbull) and you typically purchase these from the vendor that sold you the OS in the first place - though with privliage seperation now present in OpenSSH, this could be a thing of the past.
If you've worked in big business you see how many use BSD and OpenSSH - though not to Linux, as most have reservations about it's sutibility for a corporate environment - and the use of free (as in beer) software is increasing as the cost benifits of a no-cost OS and cheap commodity Intel hardware are encoraging companies to move away from Sun hardware in certain situations.
Sadly Apple has had a (local) exploit in the default install of Mac OS X (10.0 through 10.1).
. html).
/Applications/Utilites/) and leave it running as the foreground Application.
It was was 'gain root access' via NetInfo hack (details here: http://www.securiteam.com/securitynews/6T00O0K2UW
Bascially all you needed to do to expoit this was:
a) Run an application (e.g. Terminal)
b) Run NetInfo Manager (in
c) Run the 1st application (e.g. Terminal) but this time start it from the "Apple->Recent Items->" menu and it will run as setuid root.
In the case of the Terminal application, this gave you a root prompt.
:-(
There is no good reason for your sysadmin not to let you on the network - they are being overbearing and unprofessional. If they were professional and genuinely worried they would have blocked incoming ports to your host at the switch (or at worst - the gateway).
Like most other administrators I have to work with, it sounds like they are simply exhibit big ego's and little professionalisim (though I would not wish to jump to conclusions, it's most likely in my experience).
Apart from upgrading the SSH and Apache binaries yourself (I know I was too lazy and waited for Apple because I knew one was coming out) you could simply have disabled thoses services - after all they are disabled by default on Mac OS X.
Lastly, in response the origional poster, Apple's response was slower than I would have liked (as the OpenSSH one was disclosed to vendors like Apple ~10 days before it was announced) but timely and the fix was very elegant and appears to be bug free (clean install all round, no reboot required, etc).
The danish MacWulf doesn't seem so interesting.
Your right, I can't see why people reading apple.slashdot.org would be interested in reading about G4 clusters.
:P
Your description of business is better suited to a communist society than a capitalist one.
Unlike the US my society (UK / Europe) is a socialist one, and that doesn't just reflect our currently elected poltical parties. By American political standards about 80-90% of all Europeans are socialists.
I consider myself a left leaning liberal, but our right wing parties (the UK's Conservative Party or France's RPR headed by Jacques Chirac) are quite far left of even left wing mainstream parties in the states.
In Europe as whole, like free heathcare, free higher education, and we don't mind paying significantly higher taxes than US citizens in order to pay for public services, in fact people vote explicitly to retain these things.
So yes, my society is more socialist, and we like it that way and putting people before business is just common sense to us.
Asserting that business requirements are more important over technical merits get's you sub standard solutions that people will hate to use and will waste thousands of man hours being unhappy and being unproductive when the technology could be making their lives easier.
New methodologies are not invented for fun. They are invented be cause they make things better, for developers, users and business.
Yes, you can sell poor quality software or technology products for a short period of time and make money, but so will selling drugs, doesn't make it ethical or help make the world a better place. Discounting new technologies and methodlogies is also foolish and bad business sense if a PM has no idea why they are being used in the first place.
The successful way to make good products that you can feel proud of, people will like and that you can sell is by have a wider world view point that does not revolve around money or technology but people and society (and how you can improve their lives *through* business and technology).
Clearly business is not more important than technology, unless business is your goal. Which is worrying, because it should revolve around people. Business is a way to encorage development in society and technology, it is not a goal in itself.
It's possible to make money from good products and good practice, a good example would be OmniGroup who have been doing this for many years. They are small but sucessful and make both some free and some commercial software of very high quality and by and large everybody really likes them. I have a couple of peices of software from them, and it's the only commercial software I use day to day.
Your quite correct, I am developing something at the moment and experiencing all of the above (fortunately I'm used to it).
What users *say* they want is not always what they *actually* want.
I would say it's good to listen to them if they want to point out a problem (something they find confusing or dislike) and try and do something about it but *never* simply listen to their advice on *how* to solve a UI issue!
If your good at software design, you should know more about it than they do and you should be able to come up with solutions they'd never have thought of. Generally they like to make statements without considering other factors or at least allowing the fact that their might be other factors.
In summary: Society should use the law to uphold the values we all agree on.
In a liberal democracy the cut off point is first passed the post, indeed this is of course famously what the Liberal Democrats in the the UK have been trying to achive in our electorial system.
Let's be very clear that if you accept that 50% or more of the population want a ban (which in fairness you havent said you do, but just supposing for sake of argument and bearing in mind that this is what almost every independant poll would suggest) that the appropriate democtratic thing to do would be to make it law.
Indeed, the Liberal Democratic party is in favour if introducing a ban if public weight is behind it (not to assert that that being liberal is the same as being a Liberal!).
If you don't think 50 % is a good cut off point - then what is? I don't mean that antagonistically, though I can see the problems with it, I just can't see a better alternative.
As an example, a mori poll from the end of last year ( http://www.mori.com/polls/2001/ifaw.shtml ) shows 7 out of 10 of Scots (I am a Scot myself) *oppose* any form of hunting with dogs. Only 1 in 10 were actually in favour of allowing it.
This was the Protection of Wild Mammals Bill.
Surely that is enough only 10% in favour, 90% abstaining or against!
I am proud to say, that under the relatively new Scottish parlament, it is now illegal to fox hunt on horses, or to bait foxes in Scotland. This was voted in by MSP at 83 to 36 with 5 absentions on Febuary 13th, 2002 and is truly an act of liberal democracy in every, even the most idealistic, sense.
I was not replying to you - try browsing at '0' or '-1' to view the origional posts. I'm certainly not accusing you of being a pro hunt lobbist, that would be grossly unfair as their would be no basis for say that, I was refering to the A/C poster (who it seems is because they are arguing on the issue, not simply because they belive the right to continue to do it should exist).
The law should protect peoples freedoms against intrusion from other people
But our law doesn't stop there. It goes as far as protecting other animals too, like cats, dogs and horses.
Is that a good thing? In your opinion is that permissiable in a liberal society?
With regard to your other comments, with issues of homosexuality, drug taking and boxing there are consenting people, and it's fairly clear what the law should be, and by and large everybody agrees and the law seems to be appropriate.
(Though the issue of drug taking is thorny and muddied because of the nature of the suppliers and the negitive effect's it can have on others in society [such as crime] and the varying ways in which it can negatively impact on the participants and there ability to function in society (and the exitance of a society and government is a requirement to the idea of a liberal state). That said, I'm in favour of the legaisation of cannabis in the UK, as are about half the populace it would seem, but we all know how complex the issues are. )
Oh I don't think the argument that animals do not feel pain in the same way or are self aware are true. Any claims they feel or interpret nerve impulses differently to us more advanced primates is purely justification for continued mal treatment by a much smarter dominating species who ought to know better.
:). Though I certainly accept there is room for debate about how much self awareness this demonstraights, and weather it demonstraights significant amounts at all.
Physically, despite differences in size and shape, we are very similarly constructed to other mammals (four limbs, two lungs, one heart, one brain, a spine, a nerve stem at the back of the neck, similar number of bones, similar design and layout of bones and organcs, etc).
The problem is we don't like to admit how similar we are because it makes us think about and face very awkward questions about the nature of our duality (like the way that we keep cat's and dog's as family pets yet eat sheep and chickens).
It's interesting to raise this with young children as I've had friends childen ask why I don't eat meat (say, when we go to McDonalds). When I explain why (very deliberately not in a pushy sense and certainly without trying to advocate!), many immediately delare that that's a really good idea because eating sheep and chickens seems genuinly revulsive to them (though of course they are only children and as soon as they are offered a hamburger they think twice, but as everyone else seems to be doing it so they just go a head and eat it). There lack of inhibition about stating their revulsion without first justifing it to themselves (as all adults do in such situations - including me!) is quite interesting though.
Relevant points are that animals both dream and not only that, they have emotions (Which are chemical reactions, not complex mental constructs. Though these reactions are often *manipulated* by mental processes they are themselves physical, chemical reactions common to most mammals.). We like sex for the same reasons rabbits do, we get pleasureable responses in our brain. Of course I do think that there is a deeper level of understanding with humans due to our vastly greater brain power which adds an amazing amount of dimension, but if it wern't for the chemical rewards, we wouldn't have any reason to bother, except to make babies (and of course these reactions are nature's way of making sure we do have babies).
Quite a few animals can dream which demonstraights some sort of self awareness on some level (to imagine 'yourself' doing something, you need to have a level of self awareness). We don't of course know what they are dreaming *about*, but with the muscle movement (snarling, tail wagging, and legs moving while dreaming) it's clear they are acting natural out movements and 'being' themselves. I would also *think* (so purely IMO) that they can, like us, tell the differences between dreams and reality when they awake (only because that would seem like mother nature fucked up quite a bit if they can dream but can't tell when they wake up! Though I know that *I* sometimes have problems remebering wheather something was a dream or not, but I tend to tream about boring things like having meetings and working at the computer a lot.
Animals also behave differently emotionally depending on how you treat them and the experiences they have throughout life, this is particularly noticeable in cats (you can certainly see it in dogs too, but it seems dogs take a lot more rough and tumble than cat's will happily tolerate). This is very noticeable in maltreated animals and is much more than simple instinctive anger or fear and it can be very complex. It's notale that similar (non verbal) techniques for therapy used on on humans work on other mal treated animals like dogs, cats, and horses to help them work round problems like lack of trust, anger, fear and bulling (in instances where other animals are unusually dominant and cruel to others).
I don't think putting humans in the same category as animals is as black and white as a lot of people imagine it.
I think that one thing that is black and white about this issue, is that humans are animals.
When we refute or choose to ignore this we are ignoring much of our behavior that is very base and instinctive, and we are distancing ourselves from the greatly differing ways we treat different species.
I do think it's one thing to discuss how similar we are, and whether we should or are in any way obligated to treat them differently, but quite another not to admit we are a dominant and very advanced species, not an entirely different class of being.
#--I've posted this elsewhere but reprinted here ed because I think's it's important that we all are clear on the difference between what are two often misunderstood terms.--#
As I said, being a libertarian merely means advocating liberty. That is the (or strictly speaking 'a') definition of the word. It does not mean advocating anarchy which is *very* different and much more like what you are describing.
You can draw the line at liberty at the theft of ideas (copyright), or at theft of actual property, or at rape, or at murder, spousal abuse, or at cruelty to animals.
- Traditional western culture does not permit any of these. That is very typically libertarian.
Libertarian's are democrats, laissez-faire capitalists, and support the rule of law and government (with as little intervention as practically possible).
- Some cultures do permit quite a few of these (theft of 'copyright', rape, spousal abuse and cruelty to animals are all quite permissible in some countries).
This is much more anarchic. Countries with this more anarchic approach (like middle eastern countries, like Iran) tend to have less free market capitalism, less complicated legal systems and less protection for individual freedom's.
Needless to say, libertarian and anarchists are not exactly compatible as the latter have no interest in *protecting* - or asserting - freedoms (which libertarians do!)!
As I said, being a libertarian merely means advocating liberty. That is the (or strictly speaking 'a') definition of the word. It does not mean advocating anarchy which is *very* different and much more like what you are describing.
You can draw the line at liberty at the theft of ideas (copyright), or at theft of actual property, or at rape, or at murder, spousal abuse, or at cruelty to animals.
- Traditional western culture does not permit any of these. That is very typically libertarian.
Libertarian's are democrats, laissez-faire capitalists, and support the rule of law and government (with as little intervention as practically possible).
- Some cultures do permit quite a few of these (theft of 'copyright', rape, spousal abuse and cruelty to animals are all quite permissible in some countries).
This is much more anarchic. Countries with this more anarchic approach (like middle eastern countries, like Iran) tend to have less free market capitalism, less complicated legal systems and less protection for individual freedom's.
Needless to say, libertarian and anarchists are not exactly compatible as the latter have no interest in *protecting* freedoms (which libertarians do!)!
Ha! All this talk about libertarianisim (when you don't even know the difference between a libertarian and a Libertarian) is nothing but twaddle!
IT APPEARS YOUR A PRO FOX HUNTER AND TRYING TO JUSTIFY IT! Haha!
I should have guessed.
Like it or not foxes may not have the vote but animals in this country do have 'rights', to project them from you.
I agree with you, I certainly wouldn't stop people eating meat (after all we are omnivours and there are plenty of other animals only too happy eat us :), so there are certainly good arguments for eating meat from ethical standpoint.
:)
Logically though, I've never been able to excuse the idea that we arn't just smart, bald monkeys with opposable thumbs (I've never belived I was created in the image of a mysterious being) and my primary reason for being vegetarian was that I've never been able to see how, logically, it's okay to kill some things but not other things (except where the other things are obviously dangerous and pose a serious threat, which I've found quite easy to justify).
Obviously the truth is we all rationalize it in a number of ways, by viewing some things as 'friendly' (pet's, humans) and others as 'enemy' (things that taste nice), but that varies so much from country to country it's clearly not very logcial (And of course, only a few hundred years ago it was okay to kill any human as long as they didn't come from the same bit of land as you).
To be honest, if the world were roaming with nasty pointy teethed things that were trying to eat me all the time, I'd be quite happy to kill them first, eat them and use them as rugs.
Though I hasten to add that I don't consider looking for wild bears the shouting 'it's coming right for us!' before shooting it between the eyes to equate to the same thing
Not pissed off at all about that. I'm rather glad, it's *much* better than living in a society were we have have to read what other people write based on their whim (ala Chairman Mao's Little Red Book).
Also, I think your patently wrong, I bet the friends and family of the young man who was run over by a tank during a peace protest care quite a bit about what we westerners think and do, as do many oppressed people throughout the world.
How much do *you* are about other people?