I can see them integrating it with their install of Office on a mac though.
I see them integrating it with their search. Remember, Ballmer claims MS will catch up with Google.. As someone mentioned in that thread, the real money, for both MS and Google, is in the marketable information that your input to the search function represents.
If it isn't dried up, we could try to land near it and do research on the liquid.
Not to belabour the point, but likewise I would imagine we could land near (or even in) a dried up lake and do research on the deposits?
I guess my original question was: why would the dried-up-ness matter so much? TFA is sort of neutral but the summary suggests that it would be a big disappointment if it were dried up. Presumably this is because of a belief that some fluids are prerequisite to life, but where exactly does that come from (other than Earthling experience)?
Being a lake of methane does create unique problems I guess. It might be hard to do things around it with electrical equipment without blowing up the entire lake. I wonder if methane can blow up in a place without oxygen.
No idea, we're talking about liquid methane so it is below -160 degrees Celsius. Can you burn liquid methane at all, even on Earth? For sure an explosion would not make for a satisfactory KABOOM, what with no atmosphere:)
But don't get too excited yet [...] it could also be a dried up lake that left dark deposits.
IANA rocket scientist but.. Would we not be excited if it turned out to be a lake -- dried up or otherwise? I mean, are dried-up lakes often found out there, relative to not-yet-dried-up ones? Just curious.
.. organizations [like IM] have the sole purpose of pushing leftist heart string stories to gain the support of the global public. This kind of manipulation outrages me.
Just curious, wouldn't you agree the US administration (the corporate interests they represent, and by extension the mainstream media) are guilty of precisely the same kind of manipulation? For instance, pushing heart string stories about "free" Iraqis to attenuate the opposition of the global public?
That's why we call it 'Left' and 'Right' and not 'Port' and 'Starbord'. It's relative, not absolute.
I think I know what you were trying to say -- except port and starbord are also relative (to the direction you're sailing.)
Having got my pedantic tendencies out of the way, I think the GP's whole point was in fact that -- relative to European "average opinion" -- what you call "liberals" in the US alligns quite well with what we would call fringe right wing nuts.
the level of national dialogue has declined at the same rate as communication has improved
Once again, where is the sad-but-true mod when I need it.. But really, isn't the problem that this "improvement" in communications, even as it may have reduced overhead costs and whatnot, is false diversity? I mean, sure you have 100 channels, but for most of those you can pretty much predict the kind of spin they'll apply.
If you ask me (which of course no one does) the real problem here is that people mistake themselves for "demand" in the media business. They're not. They're the *product* which the broadcaster sells to advertisers, that's the deal.
I want those bastards to know what I read, and that I disagree with their policies.
Commendable, to be sure. But do expect nasty visitors when you check out significant amounts of Subcommandante Marcos or even good-old Noam Chomsky.
Your statement reminds me of a documentary I saw the other day about women in Iran. Many of them disagree with the fact that the veil is forced on them by law. But instead of protesting by not wearing the veil and rendered powerless in some jail, they accept the vail for the moment and concentrate on other targets (for instance, learning English so they can present their case on an international platform)
Sometimes you have to accept the bad, temporarily, to have a realistic chance of improving the situation later. I'm not sure the same applies to the Patriot Act though, but wanted to make the point anyway.
Maybe as an engineer who uses computers to actually accomplish something I just have a different point of view.
Ugh.
I would agree this is an awkward way of putting it -- but stressing the different usage-patterns of your typical engineer vs your typical joe 6p is in itself a valid point, I would say. There is a point where insisting things being in some respect "equal" is self-defeating.
Recognizing a difference does not necessarily invalidate one or the other "variant," in fact it often allows the best to emerge in each.
I guess what I mean is that, though perhaps poorly worded, my GP actually just pointed out the different usage patterns, but perhaps was not actually saying that computing the "joe 6p way" is inferior somehow. Just different, is all.
Well, thanks, I will take that as a compliment to my command of the English language.. But in fact it was coming from the land (formerly known as water) of wooden shoes and legal weed.
Considering that the US gets dragged into many hot spots in the world, I would prefer that they're not armed with poison gases or nukes
Well yes, except that the US usually drag themselves into hot spots, and are quite often responsible for the spots being hot in the first place. Besides, obviously they're in fact very selective in doing so -- I mean, how many US troops in Sudan?
Other countries sniff at our hyprocracy, but frankly, put up or shut up. Most countries don't even give a damn as to what happens to the people in other countries.
Agreed, absolutely. My own government could do much much more in the way of caring for other peoples. That said, do you really believe those troops are in Iraq for altruistic reasons? Torturing Iraqis for their own good? Oil and similar corporate interests have nothing to do with it? Again - how many troops in, say, Sudan?
Start spending huge amounts of blood and treasure in other places and then say "Sure! We think it's ok for you to have completely indiscriminate weapons of destruction in your unstable country."
The reason those soldiers are willing to spill their blood, or the only reason I can imagine at least, is they actually believe they are "helping Iraqis" or "defending the Homeland". Both arguments are easy to take apart. And the treasure, well that treasure is actually really just another channel from US taxpayer's wallets to corporate bank accounts. Unless you can point out the flaw in the following: Pentagon uses taxpayer's money to buy bombs from Lockheed et al. Blows up Iraqi houses. Uses MORE taxpayer's money to hire AMERICAN companies to rebuild what was destroyed.
You, my friend, should really read up on some info rather than just repeat the propaganda lines. For instance, read Baghdad Year Zero by Naomi Klein. Either tell me where she's wrong or admit at least there's more going on then they're telling you..
And why can the US have them? Well, we sure don't get foriegn aid when we have a disaster, do we?
So, you're saying that not receiving aid gives you right to have WMD? Are you even serious? Well what's your beef with North Korea then? How much aid are you giving Iran? Come on..
But I'm curious, if the next 9/11 is going to be the US's fault. Why is that, and how would the US have to change to not have it happen?"
If such an attack would come from the outside, like it did last time, I believe it will very likely be the son of someone you bombed or tortured or dissappeared. Face it, current policies are only creating more terrorists -- even your own agencies are sort of saying this.
One idea would be to change your definition of a "free country" to actually involve freedom, not only subservience to US corporate interests.
It's easy to say from across the pond, I know -- but you guys..
So it would appear the plan is to protect your freedom by taking it away from you. Way to go.
Sure if you believe the terrorists "hate our freedom" and want to destroy it, these measures may appear to make some kind of sense.
But the fact is most of these terrorists don't mind your freedom, they mind US foreign policy which is supporting their dictators and exploiting their peoples. They are not fighting the US, they are fighting the US' ruthless protection of corporate interests overseas.
Add to that the sheer hypocrisy of imposing measures on others (e.g. no trade tariffs, no agricultural subsidies, no profileration of WMD, etc) while openly refusing to impose same on yourselves.. Frankly, although I despise violence even more than imperialism, I think I understand why people would fight that tooth and nail.
I really hope that you will stop this madness from within -- otherwise the next 911 is just waiting to happen.. And I hate to say it but that one will be your own goddamn fault.
There is another option; (3): the world economy gradually loses its dependency on the US economy, then other countries pull out of the US, and the rest of the world is just fine.
The problem is, the way there is a knife's edge since it is stated US policy to prevent it from happening - if force by necessary. This has long been the practice, both under R & D admins, but has been made explicit in September 2002.
And the status quo they are prepared to maintain by force is an increasing economical assymmetry which, if not curbed, is bound to reach a point where a critical mass of third-world "terrorists" is sufficiently pissed off to cast away the yoke and start a revolution in the global village, aka WW3.
The outcome of said revolution would be difficult to predict. On the one hand the US spends about as much on weapons as the rest of the world combined, but on the other hand the previously "unalligned bloc" denotes a vast majority of people and an enormous geographical advantage in terms of natural resources.
But as economical contrasts grow, there must also be an inevitable increase in the resources and ruthlesness required to maintain it, and if at at any point the propaganda machine fails the US people could well put a stop to it.
BTW People bitch about Saudi capital constituting full percentage points of the US economy, but too often overlook the fact that virtually the entire US national debt is to China!
I'd heard that before - can anyone confirm or deny it's actually true? I clicked around MS' site for their FP licenses but got annoyed before I found it and won't be downloading the mongrel to find out. Wikipedia also does not mention it in their article, BUT the discussion of that article suggests MS have been editing it themselves..
Well, that's it, I'm moving to Sweden, bork bork:)
Seriously, thanks for the info -- I'm very suprised! If I understand you correctly then Swedes can safely ignore most "pop-up contracts"? I wonder though, surely there must be vicious corporate pressure to change this.. And how does this affect GPLed software? Could a Swede take legal action if, say, they lose data due to a kernel panic? Again, just curious.
This privilege is like other privileges, such as attorney-client privilege and doctor-patient privilege, in that it doesn't give anyone any more "freedom of speech," but it does allow people who can take advantage of the privilege to avoid speaking in court.
There's a few cases recently where "bloggers" have tried to assert these journalist privileges to avoid revealing a source, and this has brought up the question as to just what is a journalist, and should they have a privilege to begin with.
There's one important difference: "journalist" is not a protected profession, as is for instance lawyer or doctor. Not just anyone can call themselves a medical doctor, in journalism things are different. Question is, should journalist be a protected profession in this sense? In light of Gannongate I'd say hell yes.
all of the words that trigger spam filters are in the graphics included in the HTML email
Depends which client you use, I guess. My Thunderbird never downloads images unless I request them manually.
Apart from the problem you describe, this also inhibit "beacon" images to function (you know, embed a single-pixel image from some webserver so you can look at the logs as a kind of spam delivery notification.)
Slashdot Mirror
[..] bombing random developing-world nations is probably not any sort of solution.
Sweet Jesus, does Dubya know about this?
I can see them integrating it with their install of Office on a mac though.
I see them integrating it with their search. Remember, Ballmer claims MS will catch up with Google.. As someone mentioned in that thread, the real money, for both MS and Google, is in the marketable information that your input to the search function represents.
a satisfactory KABOOM, what with no atmosphere
Oh, wait. Titan of course DOES have an atmosphere, so they'd better have a mic up there.
If it isn't dried up, we could try to land near it and do research on the liquid.
:)
Not to belabour the point, but likewise I would imagine we could land near (or even in) a dried up lake and do research on the deposits?
I guess my original question was: why would the dried-up-ness matter so much? TFA is sort of neutral but the summary suggests that it would be a big disappointment if it were dried up. Presumably this is because of a belief that some fluids are prerequisite to life, but where exactly does that come from (other than Earthling experience)?
Being a lake of methane does create unique problems I guess. It might be hard to do things around it with electrical equipment without blowing up the entire lake. I wonder if methane can blow up in a place without oxygen.
No idea, we're talking about liquid methane so it is below -160 degrees Celsius. Can you burn liquid methane at all, even on Earth? For sure an explosion would not make for a satisfactory KABOOM, what with no atmosphere
But don't get too excited yet [...] it could also be a dried up lake that left dark deposits.
IANA rocket scientist but.. Would we not be excited if it turned out to be a lake -- dried up or otherwise? I mean, are dried-up lakes often found out there, relative to not-yet-dried-up ones? Just curious.
Mod parent AC insightful!
Even though GP was only playing devil's advocate that's not how patents work.. These are not defense tactics but an offensive.
.. organizations [like IM] have the sole purpose of pushing leftist heart string stories to gain the support of the global public. This kind of manipulation outrages me.
Just curious, wouldn't you agree the US administration (the corporate interests they represent, and by extension the mainstream media) are guilty of precisely the same kind of manipulation? For instance, pushing heart string stories about "free" Iraqis to attenuate the opposition of the global public?
That's why we call it 'Left' and 'Right' and not 'Port' and 'Starbord'. It's relative, not absolute.
I think I know what you were trying to say -- except port and starbord are also relative (to the direction you're sailing.)
Having got my pedantic tendencies out of the way, I think the GP's whole point was in fact that -- relative to European "average opinion" -- what you call "liberals" in the US alligns quite well with what we would call fringe right wing nuts.
From what I know about the past, it seems to me that ignorance and intolerance are doing just fine in modern day America..
But you've got to grant it, sick as it may be, some sense of humour / irony / cynicism.
FTFA: Anyone can "opt out" of the system by providing detailed personal information [..]
It's funny, laugh!
Opera is configured by default to
identify itself as Internet Explorer
who's fault is that?
Good question. Opera or MS?
Not Mozilla, though, that much for damn sure.
My .sig says it all -- please contact your MEP and stop this madness!
the level of national dialogue has declined at the same rate as communication has improved
Once again, where is the sad-but-true mod when I need it.. But really, isn't the problem that this "improvement" in communications, even as it may have reduced overhead costs and whatnot, is false diversity? I mean, sure you have 100 channels, but for most of those you can pretty much predict the kind of spin they'll apply.
If you ask me (which of course no one does) the real problem here is that people mistake themselves for "demand" in the media business. They're not. They're the *product* which the broadcaster sells to advertisers, that's the deal.
I want those bastards to know what I read, and that I disagree with their policies.
Commendable, to be sure. But do expect nasty visitors when you check out significant amounts of Subcommandante Marcos or even good-old Noam Chomsky.
Your statement reminds me of a documentary I saw the other day about women in Iran. Many of them disagree with the fact that the veil is forced on them by law. But instead of protesting by not wearing the veil and rendered powerless in some jail, they accept the vail for the moment and concentrate on other targets (for instance, learning English so they can present their case on an international platform)
Sometimes you have to accept the bad, temporarily, to have a realistic chance of improving the situation later. I'm not sure the same applies to the Patriot Act though, but wanted to make the point anyway.
Maybe as an engineer who uses computers to actually accomplish something I just have a different point of view.
Ugh.
I would agree this is an awkward way of putting it -- but stressing the different usage-patterns of your typical engineer vs your typical joe 6p is in itself a valid point, I would say. There is a point where insisting things being in some respect "equal" is self-defeating.
Recognizing a difference does not necessarily invalidate one or the other "variant," in fact it often allows the best to emerge in each.
I guess what I mean is that, though perhaps poorly worded, my GP actually just pointed out the different usage patterns, but perhaps was not actually saying that computing the "joe 6p way" is inferior somehow. Just different, is all.
Thanks for passing it along
:) Naomi Klein keeps a public archive, most of it quite good imho, at No Logo.
You're welcome
Well, thanks, I will take that as a compliment to my command of the English language.. But in fact it was coming from the land (formerly known as water) of wooden shoes and legal weed.
Considering that the US gets dragged into many hot spots in the world, I would prefer that they're not armed with poison gases or nukes
Well yes, except that the US usually drag themselves into hot spots, and are quite often responsible for the spots being hot in the first place. Besides, obviously they're in fact very selective in doing so -- I mean, how many US troops in Sudan?
Other countries sniff at our hyprocracy, but frankly, put up or shut up. Most countries don't even give a damn as to what happens to the people in other countries.
Agreed, absolutely. My own government could do much much more in the way of caring for other peoples. That said, do you really believe those troops are in Iraq for altruistic reasons? Torturing Iraqis for their own good? Oil and similar corporate interests have nothing to do with it? Again - how many troops in, say, Sudan?
Start spending huge amounts of blood and treasure in other places and then say "Sure! We think it's ok for you to have completely indiscriminate weapons of destruction in your unstable country."
The reason those soldiers are willing to spill their blood, or the only reason I can imagine at least, is they actually believe they are "helping Iraqis" or "defending the Homeland". Both arguments are easy to take apart. And the treasure, well that treasure is actually really just another channel from US taxpayer's wallets to corporate bank accounts. Unless you can point out the flaw in the following:
Pentagon uses taxpayer's money to buy bombs from Lockheed et al. Blows up Iraqi houses. Uses MORE taxpayer's money to hire AMERICAN companies to rebuild what was destroyed.
You, my friend, should really read up on some info rather than just repeat the propaganda lines. For instance, read Baghdad Year Zero by Naomi Klein. Either tell me where she's wrong or admit at least there's more going on then they're telling you..
And why can the US have them? Well, we sure don't get foriegn aid when we have a disaster, do we?
So, you're saying that not receiving aid gives you right to have WMD? Are you even serious? Well what's your beef with North Korea then? How much aid are you giving Iran? Come on..
But I'm curious, if the next 9/11 is going to be the US's fault. Why is that, and how would the US have to change to not have it happen?"
If such an attack would come from the outside, like it did last time, I believe it will very likely be the son of someone you bombed or tortured or dissappeared. Face it, current policies are only creating more terrorists -- even your own agencies are sort of saying this.
One idea would be to change your definition of a "free country" to actually involve freedom, not only subservience to US corporate interests.
Home of the free, land of the brave.
It's easy to say from across the pond, I know -- but you guys..
So it would appear the plan is to protect your freedom by taking it away from you. Way to go.
Sure if you believe the terrorists "hate our freedom" and want to destroy it, these measures may appear to make some kind of sense.
But the fact is most of these terrorists don't mind your freedom, they mind US foreign policy which is supporting their dictators and exploiting their peoples. They are not fighting the US, they are fighting the US' ruthless protection of corporate interests overseas.
Add to that the sheer hypocrisy of imposing measures on others (e.g. no trade tariffs, no agricultural subsidies, no profileration of WMD, etc) while openly refusing to impose same on yourselves.. Frankly, although I despise violence even more than imperialism, I think I understand why people would fight that tooth and nail.
I really hope that you will stop this madness from within -- otherwise the next 911 is just waiting to happen.. And I hate to say it but that one will be your own goddamn fault.
Mod parent up.
There is another option;
(3): the world economy gradually loses its dependency on the US economy, then other countries pull out of the US, and the rest of the world is just fine.
The problem is, the way there is a knife's edge since it is stated US policy to prevent it from happening - if force by necessary. This has long been the practice, both under R & D admins, but has been made explicit in September 2002.
And the status quo they are prepared to maintain by force is an increasing economical assymmetry which, if not curbed, is bound to reach a point where a critical mass of third-world "terrorists" is sufficiently pissed off to cast away the yoke and start a revolution in the global village, aka WW3.
The outcome of said revolution would be difficult to predict. On the one hand the US spends about as much on weapons as the rest of the world combined, but on the other hand the previously "unalligned bloc" denotes a vast majority of people and an enormous geographical advantage in terms of natural resources.
But as economical contrasts grow, there must also be an inevitable increase in the resources and ruthlesness required to maintain it, and if at at any point the propaganda machine fails the US people could well put a stop to it.
BTW People bitch about Saudi capital constituting full percentage points of the US economy, but too often overlook the fact that virtually the entire US national debt is to China!
I'd heard that before - can anyone confirm or deny it's actually true? I clicked around MS' site for their FP licenses but got annoyed before I found it and won't be downloading the mongrel to find out. Wikipedia also does not mention it in their article, BUT the discussion of that article suggests MS have been editing it themselves..
For some reason you got moderated "funny." I must be missing the joke - was wondering the same thing but seriously...
Well, that's it, I'm moving to Sweden, bork bork :)
Seriously, thanks for the info -- I'm very suprised! If I understand you correctly then Swedes can safely ignore most "pop-up contracts"? I wonder though, surely there must be vicious corporate pressure to change this.. And how does this affect GPLed software? Could a Swede take legal action if, say, they lose data due to a kernel panic? Again, just curious.
some countries doesn't allow for vaiwing liability like that, especially not to consumers
[sic]
Could you give us an example? A country where, by law, MS are actually liable if their software has (provably) caused losses? Just curious..
This privilege is like other privileges, such as attorney-client privilege and doctor-patient privilege, in that it doesn't give anyone any more "freedom of speech," but it does allow people who can take advantage of the privilege to avoid speaking in court.
There's a few cases recently where "bloggers" have tried to assert these journalist privileges to avoid revealing a source, and this has brought up the question as to just what is a journalist, and should they have a privilege to begin with.
There's one important difference: "journalist" is not a protected profession, as is for instance lawyer or doctor. Not just anyone can call themselves a medical doctor, in journalism things are different. Question is, should journalist be a protected profession in this sense? In light of Gannongate I'd say hell yes.
all of the words that trigger spam filters are in the graphics included in the HTML email
Depends which client you use, I guess. My Thunderbird never downloads images unless I request them manually.
Apart from the problem you describe, this also inhibit "beacon" images to function (you know, embed a single-pixel image from some webserver so you can look at the logs as a kind of spam delivery notification.)