"To be fair, not all biblical literalists think this 6000 year number is anywhere near accurate. Many accept values between 10 and 30 thousand years."
I don't know wether one would consider me a literalist or fundamentalist or not. I, personally, consider myself a pretty hardline Christian that doesn't particularly prescribe to any one denomination (all I know of are corrupt). I prefer to read the Bible and make up my own damn mind, plus I like to read other religious text and make up my own damn mind if they are right or wrong (the whole religion thing being between me and God thing, no one else can tell me how to live my life). It depends on your definition of fundi or literalist - some mean that to mean the "crazies", some mean it to be me.
Anyway, the Bible isn't clear on time tables - any attempt to make it so will not be verifiable, and likely not correct. We know some about the language, we know some about how the stories are written (say, taking 40 days and 40 nights literally is like taking "It's raining cats and dogs" literal today), and given that one can not be conclusive. In fact, God is very explicit that his version of time is not anything like ours. To paraphrase - "your life is but a blink of my eye". Some take that to mean the equivilent of as you get older 10 years is less signifigant, for an immortal hundreds is a flash. It could also be easily read as a true literal - time doesn't mean the same, literally that our life goes in a blink of his eye so what was "seven days"? It could also mean an amalgam of those (my personaly beliefe, along with the general idea that the Bible is a collection of oral stories told through the generations and has creep inherrent in it). Of course, you can find any number of beliefes on this.
"In any case, while I don't buy into evolution personally*,"
What is commonly meant by evolution I support fully (however, evolution as a concrete thing has been shown to be wrong, there are more modern theories that better fit the data set. But that is for Biologist nitpickers to argue over). I just do not see them as being mutually exclusive - why can God not act through natural events? Seems to me that the all powerful creator of the universe can do whatever the hell he wants even if it isn't what I would do. Not to mention I like the Futurama episode where Bender meets God, I really like that idea. That do too much and they become to dependant, not enough and they loose hope, the perfect balance is to not be sure someone/something is out there. There is just too many coincidences out there for me to think "nothing but random chance".
"I can't help but wonder why I don't ever see ID or creationist fossil research publications. Don't church-supported universities also engage in this kind of research?"
There is some, but it is hard to find. Nor do I find it particularly interesting. For one thing religion and science seem to ask different questions - one is how, one is why. I can perfectly believe that a rose is red because God wanted it so, I can also be interested in pigments and genetic research. Personally I can seperate the two - "because God wanted it so" is not a sufficient, or even relevant, answer to any question with regards to science.
"Even the 6000 year crowd must surely be interested in knowing how these dinosaurs lived."
No, they are not. That is the "crazy" group. Like any person who holds truth in the face of all opposition or without any evidence (this goes for believing that there is no Creator - something one can not show and may be true) there is nothing past the idea. They generally think that it is a test and can be safely ignored. Or that it was a smiting God bestowed on the animals. One should never exclude any idea that *may* be true (I'll even accept that "random chance" is true - it could work, though I will need proof that mine is wrong - or proof yours is right - before I change), once you go over that line you move into total and complete faith ragardless of reality.
One can pretty much conclusivly say that we aren't that fucked - why you ask? Well, it has happened so many times in the Earths history (while we had life on the planet) that if we are "fucked" we wouldn't be here discussing it.
This reminds me of what we were taught in middle school and high school (I graduated in 1993). That the entire lifecycle of many plants were dependant on the honey bee to polenate and continue to breed in a diverse enough fashion to live. If they died off then the plants couldn't breed, plants would die, oxygen would not be produced, and we would all die, or at least become a desert as the plants couldn't breed. Now, since we still had honey bees I couldn't say this was wrong, though I figured that if the entire ecosystem depended on a single species we wouldn't have made it to now and was quite sceptical.
Well, in about 2000 there was a mutation in some type of bacteria that pretty much eliminated the honey bee in a large part of the south east US (just now recovering from it somewhat, since 2000 I've seen less than 10 honey bees, 6 of them this year - typically we would not really want to walk barefoot for fear of stepping on them). Now, since I am still sitting here typing this I can assure you that all of our plants didn't die. Since I still see plenty of clover and flowers I can figure that the whole world didn't depend on the life of the honey bee. Seems we were either lied too or thier research was vastly flawed.
I highly suspect (but because it hasn't occured I can't say for sure) that an event that has happened thousands upon thousands of times will not cause the total collapse of the entire ecosytem and mass destruction (unless, of course, you can show it did everytime this occured).
Personally I wouldn't worry about it too much even were it to happen in our lifetime, but what ever floats your boat I guess. Maybe I'm wrong and this time the timid ant-mouse (or whatever species, genus, or family is key) will die off and that is the key to our entire ecosystem and we will all die. I can't say you are wrong until that event happens, until then I will look to the past and be reassured.
"Gillen seems to be suggesting that linking pacifism with good guys and violence with monsters is somehow "liberal." The corrollary, I suppose, is that in a game shop that could be characterized as "conservative," the monsters would be suggesting peace and the good ol' boys would be advocating random and terrible acts of violence.
On the one hand, I'm not convinced that a world view with "violent monsters" is inherently "liberal," and on the other hand I'm a little dismayed that anyone (whichever meaningless dogmatic label they choose) would argue that "conservatives" would make nice cheerful, peaceful monsters."
I can't speak for the poster, but I pretty much agree with his statement. The problem you are having is that I would want a third option: Kill the bad guys and not be a monster.
I don't know if you played Deus Ex or not, I did (and I really liked the game - the following is my only gripe). You had a choice of two characters: pacifist killing is never justified (wether that is "liberal: or not can be argued) and Kill 'em all and let God sort them out. People, like me, who killed the people who were willing or trying to kill millions while protecting and going out of thier way to *not* kill the others (more or less like a real soldier) had no option. After going through a few hour long mission thinking that way "Should I incapacitate this target?" with quite a few "No"'s it was not within charcter to have your characters dialog go on about how much they love killing and will kill anything and everything. The game only payed attention to if you killed and didn't take into account that you killed "terrorist" (whichever side that happened to be at that point in the game) and refused to kill others.
Black and White did something similar - IIRC your pet eating animals (not including humans - I mean the little sheep or whatever they were) made it evil, fish and grain made it good. There were other "moral" decisions that were pretty politically motivated.
I was *not* the type of character the game designers created in either game. That's OK, it's a game/story and I'm playing someone else's vision. I still played them and enjoyed them.
"the basic user only needs email, internet & office products which all can be operated easily from KDE, they don't really need to know powerful desktop functions."
Ok, normally I hate these types of introductions (and my issue with them is somewhat accurate even now - "I like the thing but I hate it"), but I use Linux in my professional life, will push for it everywhere I will ever work, and use it for many things in my private life. I really do not like windows, but unfortuantly for some uses relying on WINE and such isn't an option.
Saying that - this attitude is *exactly* what kills Linux on the desktop. Would you ever use or recommend something and say "It has only what you need, no easily used powerful desktop functions"? Everyone *should* realise why that is a NOT a winning strategy. While I even very much agree with that statement (hell, I even used BeOS for many a year for average desktop functions, great for that and "multimedia" stuff) - perception is what is important here, not so much reality. Saying what is said above kills Linux in a corperate environment (what if some key corperate venture somewhere in sometime in someplace *needs* those functions - windows has them and you are screwed)
Ultimatly the choice is going to have to made by someone or some people - will Linux move into the desktop as a force. I think that Linux (or some other open-source variant) will someday totally rule the server - it is not that far now, but untill software developers decide to write software they care nothing about (like most jobs) and make software they don't even want to use (like most jobs) it will never reach the desktop as is. Maybe someone like Apple will pick up the underlying tools and write a kilelr UI on top of it - but then you have done what I said above.
But then, I'm not really complaining about the state of affairs per-se - I have not sit down and wrote such a mosnter and I have no intention to do so. If I'm going to write software for free I will do something that interests me. I'm more complaining about that attitude - it does WAY more harm than good - better to focus on what we do well than what we do wrong (as an archery coach once told me - never focus on bad shots, you only learn how to make more bad one. focus on the good ones and go from there).
As to the poster I'm replying too - I really don't mean this as harsh it it seems (I agree with you).
Spot on - at the moment we begin arguing about the political background of a judge being relevant we have lost.
Being a facist, communist, or a feudalist shouldn't make you guilty or not guilty - or change what was meant by the constitution. Sure, there may be borderline cases where that reflects your leanings but, while they may be interesting cases, they shouldn't be *that* far reaching.
I think the issue that causes is that in some circles, and some judges, this becomes less true. Some low, some high. Some judges allow "creative thinking" to get out of things, others rule based on thier feelings (for the latter - see Judge Judy on TV). Many see people who rule with thier political feelings as an expressway into getting thier agenda's enforced, but that is purely short term thinking - works great as long as the judges always agree with your political bent, terrible when they do not.
The 8'th circuit court is one of the saner as far as I can tell (but then I'm neither a lawyer ot a judge - just a political junkie). I would rather have 9 of them one level up than the group we have now, regardless of thier political ideas.
"Yes, the same is true of any security system of any sort -- but for reasons I can't fathom, biometric-based security systems seem to give a higher "sense" of protection to the executives writing the checks."
Well, if one could ever get the biometric part to work - it should for many applications.
The biometric signiture should be no different from a password once scanned - so it can't be less secure. But, if the scanning was reliable, then it's something that you do not have to worry about someone writing down and loosing, accidentally telling someone else, dictionary lookups, and many other things people do to guess passwords. Pretty much a keycard that you can't let other people borrow or copy.
Of course if one intends a fairly widespread use it assumes that many different methods can be used. For example, if the only thing that can be scanned are these veins then you have the same password everywhere and are VERY prone to attacks where the biometrics are collected from fake appliances (simialar to the fake ATM machines - though in that specific case you still couldn't collect biometric data and reproduce it in front of another machine like you can an ATM card/pin number - though if the bank used biometric data to verify online transfers you are screwed). Especially given that you can not simply change your biometric.
I doubt these will be used in remote applications like passwords - you *have* to make sure that the scanner sending the information is reliable which degrades back to standard password security (except worse in that your password is immutable and the same everywhere), but for single limited use where a scanner is hooked directly to the authentication server (say access to your server room, your house, or standing in front of a bank teller) it would work very well if the scanner is ever made reliable - but I think that is a BIG "if". Yes, its still vulnerable to some attacks, but then if the thief is sophisticated and determined enough to break that (since this would require them to take the machine apart and fake being the scanner) then the current system would be broke even faster - no system is going to be foolproof, you just need to make it hard enough that it's not worth breaking.
I imagine that the first company to market with one will either be a big success ot huge failure. If they listen to thier techs then probably a success, if they bought the hype and put it in everything the first security violation will kill them.
You do not understand conservative thought at all. This ruling flies in the face of conservative ideas (and generally speaking, liberal ideas also).
Conservatives are not for strong state govt where the state (instead of the federal govt) can do anything. We believe in the limited govt with the federal govt being the most limited of the bunch.
This ruling falls under private property rights, it should be obvious that conservatives are all about "private property" seeing as how many of us do not even like govt parks and such.
Ultimately this is what happens when you appoint people who believe that the constitution is a living, breathing document. That we do not have to look to it for rulings but can go to personal opinion and other sources. Something that Reinquist, Scalia, and Thomas all very strongly believe against (especially scalia). You may get some rulings in your favor that you wouldn't with judges who view it as mutable (especially when they agree with you politically), but in the long run you get screwed.
the combat environment is more complex and demanding than the loading dock and you won't find power-ups hidden behind every crate.
Maybe not, but if you carry your trusty crow bar not only can you silently off some guards but I bet you could even bust some crates and find ammo or a new weapon (maybe even more powerful than your old one)!
" I don't see how they can assume that visitors who don't see cost as the key advantage must believe that FOSS isn't really free, unless they're rabid Adam Smith fans."
I'm betting you haven't read Adam Smith, or at the least failed to understand it. Free markets are just that - free. You can charge nothing, or a ton for your product and market forces will dictate how much they will be used and how much you will make. It doesn't require you to charge any particular amount, it doesn't require anything other than do whatever the hell you want. It is, in a word, Anarchy.
Do you mean adherents of charging where supply/demand curves meet? Or adherents of charging money for everything? That only assume you are trying to maximise profits or feel nothing can be free - not be "rabid Adam Smith fans". Adam Smith outlines what he thinks will happen in a free market - most will charge where a supply and demand curve meet.
A rabid Adam Smith fan will be just as happy with OSS as they will microsoft. Like other freedoms, any restrictions you place on something is no longer totally free. In fact, I would guess that rabid Adam Smith fans (such as myself) probably like the BSD liscense more than aything else. How can you get any more free than "do whatever the hell you want with this"?
"Finally, I do realise there is some basis for the author's statement. I do realise that there are "hunters" out there who are just in it for the guns and killing. I don't have much respect for them either. "
Even in rural East Tennessee (home of the hick rednecks) there are few like that. Most other hunters do not care for it either. But, as long as they folow game laws they are still putting several hundred a year into conservation (liscenes and taxes on some hunting supplies) and game laws are set to preserve the herd, it is irrelevent your reasons why. Unfortunatly those people are usually poachers too.
"Maybe there is a cultural difference between the US and Canada too (somebody please enlighten me) - muzzle-loading season for deer around here lasts one week, the rest of the time my brother-in-law has to hunt with a bow and arrow (crossbow in recent years actually)."
That would depend on your state. In much of the US crossbows are seen as an extremely unethical way of taking a deer. Most feel you might as well be shooting a gun and it takes the skill out of archery (personally, I don't really care). Since I hunt with bows and arrows I made myself few would want to be held to that standard - usually quite funny if I decide to be hardline back at the compound bow shooters like they are to the crossbow guys.
In Tennessee Archery season and gun season are quite long, muzzleloading is a week long. The big differences are in what you can and can't kill. Archery and muzzleloading are either sex hunts, you can kill both does and bucks. Gun season is buck only. The limit for the number of game taken is highest in archery (six where I hunt, at most two bucks), and lowest in gun (two, where I hunt, though season long limit on bucks is three - so if you kill two in archery, one in muzzleloading, your done for the year).
I don't understand why some feel one weapon is ethical and another isn't (as long as both provide a quick clean kill - amusingly enough many anti-hunters who talk about using a knife - that would be a very brutal, long, and painful way to die compared to hunting equipment). Double lung or heart - deer is dead in seconds regardles if from an arrow or bullet. Games laws usually are set up where the skill needed is about equal (gun you can only kill the older, smarter bucks - in archery you can kill any deer). If they are not set that way then you have a serious ecological problem that the game comission is trying to fix (two counties in Tennessee had a limit of 127 does per person during gun season - the deer had become so overpopulated the damage they were doing was incrediable and it will take decades for local wildlife population to return to normal, some species even need to be reintroduced as the deer made them extinct locally). I do know some states severely limit gun hunting because there are no backstops for bullets and a missed shot may travel 5 miles and hit something/someone (east Tennessee doesn't have that problem, too many mountains/hills), I would guess parts of Canada have the same issues.
Ultimatly as long as the kill is quick/clean, the game is managed properly, and the method is safe for everyone else I don't see why one would be against hunting by any method. Deer do not have a sense of comsic fulfillness from an arrow (or if the state or food packagers kill them) and regret from a hunters bullet, nor does game management care how they are killed.
Generally, judges do not like being yanked about. Do that at your own risk, even if you might have won a case, trying to "play the system" will most likely have you loose as punishment.
"1) How do you know those files are what they say they are? There's plenty fo files with fake names on filesharing networks. Sometimes it's people being assholes, sometimes it's small bands trying to pimp their shit, sometimes it's people who mislabeled because they are dumb. Since they don't download and check there's no real way to know."
On cross examination: "Mr Sycraft-fu, were they the files indicated in this lawsuit?" You better be able to tell a good lie, not only that but civil cases only need a preponderance of evidence, not beyond a shadow of doubt (and, chances are if you download "artist - name of song.mp3" then it is the song "name of song" by "artist" and not porn) so you better have enough evidence to counter thiers.
"2) For that matter, how do you know that list came form the right computer? Some networks, like Kazaa, aren't all that good at returning the correct list of files. You ask them for a list of files on host X, you get a list from host Y. How do you know this list is actually from the correct computer?"
This one, you may get, but then you better have been using Kazaa or a network that has those issue and better have more than your word that this is so. Also you better be able to lie well on cross-examination when asked (or I guess you can plead the fith?).
"3) For that matter, how do we know the company they pay isn't making it up? These people get money for finding this stuff, there's incentive to find bigger lists of files. How do you know they are adding to those list or in some other way pumping it up to get more cash?"
Do you really think this will work? If it did then it would be the defense for everything. They have evidence and you better have better than "Fakers!!!".
"4) How do you know the ISP gave you the right data for the IP? Espically with dynamic IPs, this can be hard to tell. Sure some geek says this is what it is but how do you know he's telling the truth? All you've got are some easily altered text logs. For that matter how do you know the logging software was working right?"
They bring the ISP administrator in an question him in court, he responds and is assumed thruthfull unless you can either show a lie or the judge/jury thinks that he us. This line will depend on his/her testimony.
"5) How do you know it was a certian computer behind that IP? Given the prevelance of wireless APs, it's easy to see that someone might ahve been using a connection without the owner's knowledge or consent. Where's the proof that it was actually a computer owned by that person that did it?"
Irrelevent - you take liability in this case anyway (again, preponderance of evidence, not beyond a shadow of doubt). After you loose based on this then you have the option to litigate against anyone you feel you can proove did it. There is a lawyer modded up somewhere in this thread that explains this better - but that is the way it goes. Again, this is a civil trial.
If it is a criminal case? You may get away with one or two of these points and not found guilty. None of them would hold up in civil court. In a civil suit you will be found guilty. If I (say, me being the RIAA) show that someone from an IP address directly linked to you (by expert testimony from your ISP) has downloaded multiple MP3's that either a) are all filenames that correlate to songs and nothing else, or even better (if I'm the RIAA) can show that they *were* those songs (easy enough - download the same binary, heck in most P2P systems that can get it directly from you) then you are violating copyright and you are guilty. The only hope you have is if you can convince the judge this law is wrong and he/she is a judge that goes for such things (well, unless you actually owned all the songs at the time of downloading and can show so).
Considering who the RIAA is and what they do, I would imagine 100% of the money.
I don't think that's exactly what you meant though. I don't think (google may say I'm wrong) that they use outside lawyers. Given that a large part of thier job is with legal handlings of the recordings I would say they *are* the lawyers. It's like asking when a law firm sues someone and wins how much do the lawyers get.
But, even if they use outside lawyers and they get 50% of the money both sides of the plantiff are making a lot of money.
Govt never flew supercomputers into space, land based they still have vastly superior computing power. I doubt many of us has a multi-teraflop computer in thier basement.
Space has always been about reliability, can't repair much when you are up there. All the processing happens Earth bound. The ratio has gotten *bigger* as time has gone on (look at the top 100 or top 500 supercomputing lists) - what we can run at home is *nothing* like what the large govt installations run. Even if you had the money the local power board isn't going to run your power needs into a residential zone, let alone you have a large staff 24 hours a day to maintain your l337 system.
You know, growing up and living in the Bible Belt (east Tennessee) I know quite a few religious people. From me (generally not what you would call a fundamentalist) all the way to some real fruitcakes.
The vast majority of those I know pretty much accept life outside of the Earth. In fact the kooky fundamentalist are generally ones that also buy into the kooky aliens infiltrate the earth.
Can I find some who don't? Can I find high profile religious leaders who don't? Of course, but then you can find Athiest scientist who do that also.
I wonder how many fundamentalist or christians you actually know or if you are basing this on TV and reputation. It is possible that the Appalachian bible belters are amongst the most technological savvy and accepting of science but I kinda figure that to not be the case. They are the only group I can really speak about with any authority and I guess the rest of the worlds fundamentalist my be years behind us.
To note, we also have TV's, figure the earth is billions of years old, the universe is very large - most of us do not see science/technology and religion interacting that much, let alone one proving the other "false".
Being 'designed' as a gaming platform doesn't mean anything. Windows was not designed as a gaming platform either. In fact, games were the last of the old DOS programs to make the shift to windows. That happened because Microsoft cleared the way for them by creating DirectX.
Of course it does - it gives quite a few things. First is known hardware - less testing. Second you aren't going to have to worry about a critical gaming API not working right or being too slow/fast on your hardware. Thirdly there are quite a few hardware additions specifically for graphics/sound that are only emulated on the PC (this relates to the second reason) making game coding much easier.
The open-or-closed status of drivers has relatively little to do with it. It's not a big problem for the graphics card people to recompile their drivers for the major distros. Games are a mass-market thing. So only mass-market Linux (i.e. major distros) are really relevant there anyway. You don't see them releasing drivers for NT 4 either.
This makes quite a bit of difference. With any commercial products there has to be a minimum of testing done. Unfortunatly you can't simply split it between "windows" and "linux" - if you could then things would be great. They generally only support a few versions of windows and there is not that much difference between them normally (there are exceptions). Between redhat and suse there is quite a bit and it all must be tested. Open source moves much of that to the consumers - at least if they mean open source in the sense of the whole shebang, not just one can read the source.
As for NT4 - you unintentionally have a good example - it's a pretty shitty gaming platform for the same reasons Linux is (and is why you see none for it).
The issue is the API:s. While Direct3D and OpenGL are pretty much on par, DirectX provides quite a lot of other stuff which OpenGL does not. And in those areas, the alternatives like SDL just aren't good enough.
If it was just API's there would be little porting needed to be done - just a recompile. Though API's are the main problems the details are what is killing it.
So what are the options? Develop for DirectX, and you have Windows and the Xbox covered. Develop for OpenGL and you'll probably need to write your own code for networking, keyboard/mouse/joysticks and so on. And rewrite it if you want to support other platforms.
This I agree with.
What the world would really need is a gaming API which could compete with (or be better than) DirectX in every respect, and which is cross-platform. Ideally, you would have a collaboration between Red Hat, SuSE, Apple and Sony. An API supporting Windows and Linux and Apple and the PS2 would certainly be a DirectX-killer. You could develop for four platforms for the price of one.
From the bold - right now, unless you get Microsft to at least play nice you are wasting time with the PC crowd. Better (at least in the sense of widespread adoption) would be for those four to adopt Direct-X.
Given that scenario, who wouldn't put out a Linux port (even an unsupported one)? It's certainly technically possible. I'm just waiting for someone important to 'get it'.
They get it quite well. If there were currently large sums of money to be made someone would fill it. Unfortunatly Linux (or even Apple) have such a small market share no one cares. The least of the market share problems is Linux Gaming - get it easy enough to install/use that a 55 year old can mostly do it and you have a fighting chance. Maybe in another 20-30 years as the technological generations grow older we may have a shot.
FWIW, I'll start that I am generally a die hard conservative and now am usually considered a neocon (though actions speak louder than words, can't say how many times I've seen people lie about thier political affiliation in order to have thier arguments contain more wieght).
In general I agree with the statement you have issue with. Many many things the govt gets involved with they should not - private industry will do much better. Even in your example I think that private industry would be better at spreading that wealth in that less goes into "red tape". Though I think you are taking too hard a line on that philiosophy, the govt can create wealth just not as good as private industry.
That being said, it isn't universally true. There are things that almost nothing but a govt entity can do because of thier resources available and little to no interest in profits. NASA being one of those (nationl defense being another). Do I think that a private corp could do it better? Sure. Do I think a private corp would do it better? Probably not.
Take for instance my last job (now layed off, so you can't think I'm peddling for money:) ). I did what would be called basic comp sci research. Not that it was easy, but that it was not domain specific. Phizer, Shell oil, Los Alamos, almost any place that does high performance computing has rolled thier own versions of the software we worked on. That had *a lot* of duplicate effort with little profit to a company that would produce a package to deal with maintenance of thier clusters. Thus private companies would most likely never release thier own versions - in steps the deep pockets of the federal govt. I made around 30k a year but with the federal govt's overhead I cost over 100k - private industry rarely has that over head.
Think of this as an x-prize vs federal contract for space flight. Right there epitomises the philosophy - who do you go to for a robust cheap system? It's *much* better than the lowest bidder or internal funding system the govt has.
Still, I would like to see the govt (and NASA) offer a *huge* prize along with a contract along the lines of the x-prize as only the govt has the resources to do the work needed. I think it could marry the best of both worlds.
Re:pussy christians vs. real christians
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I'm going to go out a limb here and assume you are neither conservative or Christian.
Being that I am both I generally have a good idea why those people believe as they do, I also know quite a few of the more radical ones like the site you linked too. Though I, personally, like the violence and sex on TV and especially in games quite a bit and have little problem with it.
As such, I seriously doubt that those radical Christians are going to have an issue that revolves around science delving into things they shouldn't and unleashing hell to destroy the sinners.
They may have great trouble with the violence on the screen, but the issue of demons destroying Athiest for ignoring religion isn't going to bother them.
I worked for the Department of Energy for a few years writing general purpose high performance computing libraries and system maintenance software. I knew mine was used in some of the nuclear programs on campus (both offensive and non-military nuclear research) Occasioanally had the same question asked of me.
My reponse was a little different than yours. I could sleep at night because I was damn proud if my chunk of the software went towards keeping our troops alive and killing the people we are fighting. If my software was used in simulations for training soldiers in Iraq, or designing a new missle, I couldn't be happier. In fact, should the DoD have wanted to hire me to work directly on any weapons I would have been very happy to do so (still would, but they aren't going to hire a Bachelors for that, or like the DoE I would be the first hit with layoffs).
This was both the truth and they were usually fairly confused that I said that to them and left me alone. Though on the internet it gets a different response based on where you post it - slashdot will flame any reponse like your or mine pretty heavily.
I don't on one hand, a run in with my right hand and a belt sander took care of those fingerprints nearly 15 years ago (freshman in high school, worst shop accident the school had ever had). Though I would not suggest you go through what I did (and still have trouble from) to loose your fingerprints. Though I may leave some DNA traces I guess, I don't know how much they can get from simply touching it.
Interesting note, I live in Tennessee and we have pretty easy to obtain handgun carry permits. One of the requirements is fingerprinting and then those fingerprints being run through the TBI and FBI. When they took my right hands fingerprints they circled the whole print (one large solid smudge for each finger) and wrote "scar tissue". The local police thought I may never be able to get one without going to court to press for my rights. A few months later my permit arrived and nothing was ever said. My mother had cut herself a few years before and had a small scar that could not be seen visably but showed up when fingerprinted (very clear and very obvious what it was). It was circled and "scar tissue" was written - she had to redo the prints *five* times because of it.
I'm not a lawyer, however there are many people who are who wrote said law, who wanted them to be retroactive but could not. It isn't my interpretation of the law, that is the reason given for the grandfather clause when the bill was passed. For some unknown reason I will take lawmakers and most lawyers interpretation on this issue over random slashdot posters.
Real estate law has the same thing, a house built in 1950 doesn't have to comform to current zoning or building code laws unless you are going to build something new on it. That chafe's many many people asses in planning commisions, my parents are land surveyors - I've seen it go to court several times only for the planning commision to loose (planning comiisions can not violate the constitution either, though many like to think that they can). Once more, not my interpretation but people far far more knowlegable on constitutional law than I am.
Re:the zero emissions fallacy
on
230mph Electric Car
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· Score: 2, Interesting
" This is especially true for Bush's "grandfathered" coal plants which can avoid pollution standards because they are really old (try to figure out the logic behind that reasoning)."
Don't know where you got that piece of info, but it is not correct.
The plants were grandfathered in because we can not pass laws that are retroactive - you can not currently be held to laws that will be passed in the future. That is in the constitution - the law had to have been made that way. That's the logic in that.
Bush did not pass the laws requiring cleaner emissions so they are not his laws anyway, they were passed well before Bush the Elder also.
You want to know fucked up logic? Here is how it stands now (and what Bush the Younger tried to change against the wishes of the "environmentalist"). If you have an old power plant you are grandfathered in - you have no need to follow current emissions guidlines. Current technology is also cheaper to produce power, if one could simply change them over then they would make back thier money plus in a few years (and thus, power companies prefer newer technology). But, should you take any of the grandfathered plants and put anything new on them the must, at that point, comply with all existing emissions standards. They can not comply with current emissions standards without putting new parts on them. See the deadlock? See why there *must* be something that gives - namely allowing them to maintain thier *current* level of pollution while installing new, clean, and cheap production facilities? It's not like they were saying "You can now produce 50% more pollution" - what problem do you have with "You can continue to pollute at your current rate while you switch to environmentally friendly equipment" given the "You can pollute at your current rate" is true otherwise?
It's not just power plants that have this. My family has worked on this project off and on since the 80's. Locally a river had raw sewage leak into it for over 20 years. In order to contain the sewage they needed to build a new sewage system, in order to get the EPA to allow them to build the new sewage system they had to contain the sewage. Again - deadlock. The person over our little section of the EPA saw nothing wrong with this, retired under Clinton's term, and the next one in immediatly recinded said laws. We saw the same type of rhetoric for a few years hear about how the EPA was allowing the utilities district to pollute the river (from a few environmentalist groups). In the end some people took a good deal of political heat but made the river capable of suporting fish again.
Instead of reading someone else synopsis go read the actual bill next time. You may very well find that someone has more of a political (vs actually improving the environment) agenda than you would think.
"These are the stories from a guy in the Telemark Battalion, when they were on excercise. Anyhoo, it is more a story on how the US soldiers ignored obvious climate changes, and that is why they train here to start with,"
You hit the nail on the head there. Any military, be it US, Hungary, Britain, Zibabwe, wherever, must train its soldiers to kill and think they can beat anyone - otherwise they will almost always loose. That is also known as hubris. This must be tempered with the ability to think.
For example, the local gun range is on a national guard base. A few times a year the Army uses it for "training". One of thier special forces (I don't know which - they will not say and I don't care enough to actually dig and see) trains there. It is the last few days of their training - they play war games mostly. On one of thier times occupying the base there was a scheduled shoot. We had to move it and needed some material (signup list for the shoot IIRC) from our club house. The general in charge allowed us access for the material as long as she escorted us. She and my father got to talking about training/coaching markmanship and he asked about what they do there in training (we had always wondered as there was usually quite a bit of damage to the facilities and odd structures built in the woods). She explained about the war games and other fairly mundane training excercises they did. She then told him that on the last night they did something "special". After all the training and convincing that they were the Greates Thing on the Planet they were given a rude awakening. The recruits were told to guard the barraks. During the night a group of Rangers crossed over the fence and forcefully captured each and every one of the recruits. It was supposedly a humbling experience (I know that it would be for me).
I would bet that the situation you describe was something similar. If they had performed flawlessly that would have been great. I bet that the people in charge got thier second best option - total routing and humiliation.
" and rely only on their egos."
That is *exactly* what they try and root out. No commander in any major country is stupid - all know that is bad and will loose wars. Do you really think that the US military is that stupid? I bet your country sends soldiers on training missions they know they will loose for exactly the same reason - militaries have been doing that for thousands of years.
You knew, from almost the very beginning, that there would be two realeases. They planned that well before the first movie was even in the theaters, maybe even before filming (too dang long ago to remember exactly).
There is absolutely nothing wrong with editing a "short" version for theaters - how many are going to run a 250 minute movie - while filming for a long version on home video. Especially if you announce it.
I purchased several of the editions of Star Wars thinking that each time I had what was the "final" form - or at least close too it. I didn't purchase the last version, not because of the irritants in it (while there, it was minor), but because it seemed to be a money grabber. "Look - here is the greatest edition - get them before they are gone forever!" repeated for each release. In the end, had Lucas been up front with his plans on release I may still have purchased multiple editions because each one had something different I liked, OTOH I do not like feeling like I got screwed so I quit purchasing them.
Jackson did none of that, it was public and easy to find that they planned multiple releases. I knew I wanted to wait and I did. Now, should PJ serially release updated versions without saying so - then I will not buy them.
That being said, I guess I'm still goign to get the Star Wars dvd's in some fashion (purchase or copy, haven't decided what it is worth to have a more durable version that I can actually watch - my VCR bit the dust a while back and "Star Wars" is pretty much the only tapes I care about watching). I just wish I had a capture board for the VCR tapes so I could burn to a DVD instead.
" don't know what cow college you studied math and statistics at but I'd say that a difference of 543,895 votes, or one half percent, is statistically significant."
Apparently a better cow college than you went too.
You should expect a much larger percent error than.5% (especially given manual voting devices used in most of the US, not to mention people not pushing the correct button or punch) - we saw that very well in Florida. Given that the difference was MUCH smaller than the error expected I fail to see how you can conlusivly say that the poster is wrong and that they went to a "cow college". We saw how much the vote can swing in Florida - it could very well do the same thing in the national popular vote either way. Now, if you were counting coin flips - that's another matter.
That is why we have election laws. It is partially why we have an electoral college (the other being to make sure large population centers can not run roughshod over the smaller). That way, at some point, there is a trigger that says "OK, final tally is xxxx". It may be time, number of recounts, percent difference between recounts, any number of things and it is up to the individual states to decide.
Under the laws going into the election Gore had the popular vote and Bush had the electoral college. Both were close enough that had we a little different set of triggers on recounts and when to stop, it could have very well been the other way around. The difference between the votes for the two candidates were well within the margin of error. Had we used the pure popular vote we would have been doing what they did in Florida over the entire country.
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"To be fair, not all biblical literalists think this 6000 year number is anywhere near accurate. Many accept values between 10 and 30 thousand years."
I don't know wether one would consider me a literalist or fundamentalist or not. I, personally, consider myself a pretty hardline Christian that doesn't particularly prescribe to any one denomination (all I know of are corrupt). I prefer to read the Bible and make up my own damn mind, plus I like to read other religious text and make up my own damn mind if they are right or wrong (the whole religion thing being between me and God thing, no one else can tell me how to live my life). It depends on your definition of fundi or literalist - some mean that to mean the "crazies", some mean it to be me.
Anyway, the Bible isn't clear on time tables - any attempt to make it so will not be verifiable, and likely not correct. We know some about the language, we know some about how the stories are written (say, taking 40 days and 40 nights literally is like taking "It's raining cats and dogs" literal today), and given that one can not be conclusive. In fact, God is very explicit that his version of time is not anything like ours. To paraphrase - "your life is but a blink of my eye". Some take that to mean the equivilent of as you get older 10 years is less signifigant, for an immortal hundreds is a flash. It could also be easily read as a true literal - time doesn't mean the same, literally that our life goes in a blink of his eye so what was "seven days"? It could also mean an amalgam of those (my personaly beliefe, along with the general idea that the Bible is a collection of oral stories told through the generations and has creep inherrent in it). Of course, you can find any number of beliefes on this.
"In any case, while I don't buy into evolution personally*,"
What is commonly meant by evolution I support fully (however, evolution as a concrete thing has been shown to be wrong, there are more modern theories that better fit the data set. But that is for Biologist nitpickers to argue over). I just do not see them as being mutually exclusive - why can God not act through natural events? Seems to me that the all powerful creator of the universe can do whatever the hell he wants even if it isn't what I would do. Not to mention I like the Futurama episode where Bender meets God, I really like that idea. That do too much and they become to dependant, not enough and they loose hope, the perfect balance is to not be sure someone/something is out there. There is just too many coincidences out there for me to think "nothing but random chance".
"I can't help but wonder why I don't ever see ID or creationist fossil research publications. Don't church-supported universities also engage in this kind of research?"
There is some, but it is hard to find. Nor do I find it particularly interesting. For one thing religion and science seem to ask different questions - one is how, one is why. I can perfectly believe that a rose is red because God wanted it so, I can also be interested in pigments and genetic research. Personally I can seperate the two - "because God wanted it so" is not a sufficient, or even relevant, answer to any question with regards to science.
"Even the 6000 year crowd must surely be interested in knowing how these dinosaurs lived."
No, they are not. That is the "crazy" group. Like any person who holds truth in the face of all opposition or without any evidence (this goes for believing that there is no Creator - something one can not show and may be true) there is nothing past the idea. They generally think that it is a test and can be safely ignored. Or that it was a smiting God bestowed on the animals. One should never exclude any idea that *may* be true (I'll even accept that "random chance" is true - it could work, though I will need proof that mine is wrong - or proof yours is right - before I change), once you go over that line you move into total and complete faith ragardless of reality.
One can pretty much conclusivly say that we aren't that fucked - why you ask? Well, it has happened so many times in the Earths history (while we had life on the planet) that if we are "fucked" we wouldn't be here discussing it.
This reminds me of what we were taught in middle school and high school (I graduated in 1993). That the entire lifecycle of many plants were dependant on the honey bee to polenate and continue to breed in a diverse enough fashion to live. If they died off then the plants couldn't breed, plants would die, oxygen would not be produced, and we would all die, or at least become a desert as the plants couldn't breed. Now, since we still had honey bees I couldn't say this was wrong, though I figured that if the entire ecosystem depended on a single species we wouldn't have made it to now and was quite sceptical.
Well, in about 2000 there was a mutation in some type of bacteria that pretty much eliminated the honey bee in a large part of the south east US (just now recovering from it somewhat, since 2000 I've seen less than 10 honey bees, 6 of them this year - typically we would not really want to walk barefoot for fear of stepping on them). Now, since I am still sitting here typing this I can assure you that all of our plants didn't die. Since I still see plenty of clover and flowers I can figure that the whole world didn't depend on the life of the honey bee. Seems we were either lied too or thier research was vastly flawed.
I highly suspect (but because it hasn't occured I can't say for sure) that an event that has happened thousands upon thousands of times will not cause the total collapse of the entire ecosytem and mass destruction (unless, of course, you can show it did everytime this occured).
Personally I wouldn't worry about it too much even were it to happen in our lifetime, but what ever floats your boat I guess. Maybe I'm wrong and this time the timid ant-mouse (or whatever species, genus, or family is key) will die off and that is the key to our entire ecosystem and we will all die. I can't say you are wrong until that event happens, until then I will look to the past and be reassured.
"Gillen seems to be suggesting that linking pacifism with good guys and violence with monsters is somehow "liberal." The corrollary, I suppose, is that in a game shop that could be characterized as "conservative," the monsters would be suggesting peace and the good ol' boys would be advocating random and terrible acts of violence.
On the one hand, I'm not convinced that a world view with "violent monsters" is inherently "liberal," and on the other hand I'm a little dismayed that anyone (whichever meaningless dogmatic label they choose) would argue that "conservatives" would make nice cheerful, peaceful monsters."
I can't speak for the poster, but I pretty much agree with his statement. The problem you are having is that I would want a third option: Kill the bad guys and not be a monster.
I don't know if you played Deus Ex or not, I did (and I really liked the game - the following is my only gripe). You had a choice of two characters: pacifist killing is never justified (wether that is "liberal: or not can be argued) and Kill 'em all and let God sort them out. People, like me, who killed the people who were willing or trying to kill millions while protecting and going out of thier way to *not* kill the others (more or less like a real soldier) had no option. After going through a few hour long mission thinking that way "Should I incapacitate this target?" with quite a few "No"'s it was not within charcter to have your characters dialog go on about how much they love killing and will kill anything and everything. The game only payed attention to if you killed and didn't take into account that you killed "terrorist" (whichever side that happened to be at that point in the game) and refused to kill others.
Black and White did something similar - IIRC your pet eating animals (not including humans - I mean the little sheep or whatever they were) made it evil, fish and grain made it good. There were other "moral" decisions that were pretty politically motivated.
I was *not* the type of character the game designers created in either game. That's OK, it's a game/story and I'm playing someone else's vision. I still played them and enjoyed them.
"the basic user only needs email, internet & office products which all can be operated easily from KDE, they don't really need to know powerful desktop functions."
Ok, normally I hate these types of introductions (and my issue with them is somewhat accurate even now - "I like the thing but I hate it"), but I use Linux in my professional life, will push for it everywhere I will ever work, and use it for many things in my private life. I really do not like windows, but unfortuantly for some uses relying on WINE and such isn't an option.
Saying that - this attitude is *exactly* what kills Linux on the desktop. Would you ever use or recommend something and say "It has only what you need, no easily used powerful desktop functions"? Everyone *should* realise why that is a NOT a winning strategy. While I even very much agree with that statement (hell, I even used BeOS for many a year for average desktop functions, great for that and "multimedia" stuff) - perception is what is important here, not so much reality. Saying what is said above kills Linux in a corperate environment (what if some key corperate venture somewhere in sometime in someplace *needs* those functions - windows has them and you are screwed)
Ultimatly the choice is going to have to made by someone or some people - will Linux move into the desktop as a force. I think that Linux (or some other open-source variant) will someday totally rule the server - it is not that far now, but untill software developers decide to write software they care nothing about (like most jobs) and make software they don't even want to use (like most jobs) it will never reach the desktop as is. Maybe someone like Apple will pick up the underlying tools and write a kilelr UI on top of it - but then you have done what I said above.
But then, I'm not really complaining about the state of affairs per-se - I have not sit down and wrote such a mosnter and I have no intention to do so. If I'm going to write software for free I will do something that interests me. I'm more complaining about that attitude - it does WAY more harm than good - better to focus on what we do well than what we do wrong (as an archery coach once told me - never focus on bad shots, you only learn how to make more bad one. focus on the good ones and go from there).
As to the poster I'm replying too - I really don't mean this as harsh it it seems (I agree with you).
Spot on - at the moment we begin arguing about the political background of a judge being relevant we have lost.
Being a facist, communist, or a feudalist shouldn't make you guilty or not guilty - or change what was meant by the constitution. Sure, there may be borderline cases where that reflects your leanings but, while they may be interesting cases, they shouldn't be *that* far reaching.
I think the issue that causes is that in some circles, and some judges, this becomes less true. Some low, some high. Some judges allow "creative thinking" to get out of things, others rule based on thier feelings (for the latter - see Judge Judy on TV). Many see people who rule with thier political feelings as an expressway into getting thier agenda's enforced, but that is purely short term thinking - works great as long as the judges always agree with your political bent, terrible when they do not.
The 8'th circuit court is one of the saner as far as I can tell (but then I'm neither a lawyer ot a judge - just a political junkie). I would rather have 9 of them one level up than the group we have now, regardless of thier political ideas.
"Yes, the same is true of any security system of any sort -- but for reasons I can't fathom, biometric-based security systems seem to give a higher "sense" of protection to the executives writing the checks."
Well, if one could ever get the biometric part to work - it should for many applications.
The biometric signiture should be no different from a password once scanned - so it can't be less secure. But, if the scanning was reliable, then it's something that you do not have to worry about someone writing down and loosing, accidentally telling someone else, dictionary lookups, and many other things people do to guess passwords. Pretty much a keycard that you can't let other people borrow or copy.
Of course if one intends a fairly widespread use it assumes that many different methods can be used. For example, if the only thing that can be scanned are these veins then you have the same password everywhere and are VERY prone to attacks where the biometrics are collected from fake appliances (simialar to the fake ATM machines - though in that specific case you still couldn't collect biometric data and reproduce it in front of another machine like you can an ATM card/pin number - though if the bank used biometric data to verify online transfers you are screwed). Especially given that you can not simply change your biometric.
I doubt these will be used in remote applications like passwords - you *have* to make sure that the scanner sending the information is reliable which degrades back to standard password security (except worse in that your password is immutable and the same everywhere), but for single limited use where a scanner is hooked directly to the authentication server (say access to your server room, your house, or standing in front of a bank teller) it would work very well if the scanner is ever made reliable - but I think that is a BIG "if". Yes, its still vulnerable to some attacks, but then if the thief is sophisticated and determined enough to break that (since this would require them to take the machine apart and fake being the scanner) then the current system would be broke even faster - no system is going to be foolproof, you just need to make it hard enough that it's not worth breaking.
I imagine that the first company to market with one will either be a big success ot huge failure. If they listen to thier techs then probably a success, if they bought the hype and put it in everything the first security violation will kill them.
You do not understand conservative thought at all. This ruling flies in the face of conservative ideas (and generally speaking, liberal ideas also).
Conservatives are not for strong state govt where the state (instead of the federal govt) can do anything. We believe in the limited govt with the federal govt being the most limited of the bunch.
This ruling falls under private property rights, it should be obvious that conservatives are all about "private property" seeing as how many of us do not even like govt parks and such.
Ultimately this is what happens when you appoint people who believe that the constitution is a living, breathing document. That we do not have to look to it for rulings but can go to personal opinion and other sources. Something that Reinquist, Scalia, and Thomas all very strongly believe against (especially scalia). You may get some rulings in your favor that you wouldn't with judges who view it as mutable (especially when they agree with you politically), but in the long run you get screwed.
the combat environment is more complex and demanding than the loading dock and you won't find power-ups hidden behind every crate.
Maybe not, but if you carry your trusty crow bar not only can you silently off some guards but I bet you could even bust some crates and find ammo or a new weapon (maybe even more powerful than your old one)!
" I don't see how they can assume that visitors who don't see cost as the key advantage must believe that FOSS isn't really free, unless they're rabid Adam Smith fans."
I'm betting you haven't read Adam Smith, or at the least failed to understand it. Free markets are just that - free. You can charge nothing, or a ton for your product and market forces will dictate how much they will be used and how much you will make. It doesn't require you to charge any particular amount, it doesn't require anything other than do whatever the hell you want. It is, in a word, Anarchy.
Do you mean adherents of charging where supply/demand curves meet? Or adherents of charging money for everything? That only assume you are trying to maximise profits or feel nothing can be free - not be "rabid Adam Smith fans". Adam Smith outlines what he thinks will happen in a free market - most will charge where a supply and demand curve meet.
A rabid Adam Smith fan will be just as happy with OSS as they will microsoft. Like other freedoms, any restrictions you place on something is no longer totally free. In fact, I would guess that rabid Adam Smith fans (such as myself) probably like the BSD liscense more than aything else. How can you get any more free than "do whatever the hell you want with this"?
"Finally, I do realise there is some basis for the author's statement. I do realise that there are "hunters" out there who are just in it for the guns and killing. I don't have much respect for them either. "
Even in rural East Tennessee (home of the hick rednecks) there are few like that. Most other hunters do not care for it either. But, as long as they folow game laws they are still putting several hundred a year into conservation (liscenes and taxes on some hunting supplies) and game laws are set to preserve the herd, it is irrelevent your reasons why. Unfortunatly those people are usually poachers too.
"Maybe there is a cultural difference between the US and Canada too (somebody please enlighten me) - muzzle-loading season for deer around here lasts one week, the rest of the time my brother-in-law has to hunt with a bow and arrow (crossbow in recent years actually)."
That would depend on your state. In much of the US crossbows are seen as an extremely unethical way of taking a deer. Most feel you might as well be shooting a gun and it takes the skill out of archery (personally, I don't really care). Since I hunt with bows and arrows I made myself few would want to be held to that standard - usually quite funny if I decide to be hardline back at the compound bow shooters like they are to the crossbow guys.
In Tennessee Archery season and gun season are quite long, muzzleloading is a week long. The big differences are in what you can and can't kill. Archery and muzzleloading are either sex hunts, you can kill both does and bucks. Gun season is buck only. The limit for the number of game taken is highest in archery (six where I hunt, at most two bucks), and lowest in gun (two, where I hunt, though season long limit on bucks is three - so if you kill two in archery, one in muzzleloading, your done for the year).
I don't understand why some feel one weapon is ethical and another isn't (as long as both provide a quick clean kill - amusingly enough many anti-hunters who talk about using a knife - that would be a very brutal, long, and painful way to die compared to hunting equipment). Double lung or heart - deer is dead in seconds regardles if from an arrow or bullet. Games laws usually are set up where the skill needed is about equal (gun you can only kill the older, smarter bucks - in archery you can kill any deer). If they are not set that way then you have a serious ecological problem that the game comission is trying to fix (two counties in Tennessee had a limit of 127 does per person during gun season - the deer had become so overpopulated the damage they were doing was incrediable and it will take decades for local wildlife population to return to normal, some species even need to be reintroduced as the deer made them extinct locally). I do know some states severely limit gun hunting because there are no backstops for bullets and a missed shot may travel 5 miles and hit something/someone (east Tennessee doesn't have that problem, too many mountains/hills), I would guess parts of Canada have the same issues.
Ultimatly as long as the kill is quick/clean, the game is managed properly, and the method is safe for everyone else I don't see why one would be against hunting by any method. Deer do not have a sense of comsic fulfillness from an arrow (or if the state or food packagers kill them) and regret from a hunters bullet, nor does game management care how they are killed.
Generally, judges do not like being yanked about. Do that at your own risk, even if you might have won a case, trying to "play the system" will most likely have you loose as punishment.
"1) How do you know those files are what they say they are? There's plenty fo files with fake names on filesharing networks. Sometimes it's people being assholes, sometimes it's small bands trying to pimp their shit, sometimes it's people who mislabeled because they are dumb. Since they don't download and check there's no real way to know."
On cross examination: "Mr Sycraft-fu, were they the files indicated in this lawsuit?" You better be able to tell a good lie, not only that but civil cases only need a preponderance of evidence, not beyond a shadow of doubt (and, chances are if you download "artist - name of song.mp3" then it is the song "name of song" by "artist" and not porn) so you better have enough evidence to counter thiers.
"2) For that matter, how do you know that list came form the right computer? Some networks, like Kazaa, aren't all that good at returning the correct list of files. You ask them for a list of files on host X, you get a list from host Y. How do you know this list is actually from the correct computer?"
This one, you may get, but then you better have been using Kazaa or a network that has those issue and better have more than your word that this is so. Also you better be able to lie well on cross-examination when asked (or I guess you can plead the fith?).
"3) For that matter, how do we know the company they pay isn't making it up? These people get money for finding this stuff, there's incentive to find bigger lists of files. How do you know they are adding to those list or in some other way pumping it up to get more cash?"
Do you really think this will work? If it did then it would be the defense for everything. They have evidence and you better have better than "Fakers!!!".
"4) How do you know the ISP gave you the right data for the IP? Espically with dynamic IPs, this can be hard to tell. Sure some geek says this is what it is but how do you know he's telling the truth? All you've got are some easily altered text logs. For that matter how do you know the logging software was working right?"
They bring the ISP administrator in an question him in court, he responds and is assumed thruthfull unless you can either show a lie or the judge/jury thinks that he us. This line will depend on his/her testimony.
"5) How do you know it was a certian computer behind that IP? Given the prevelance of wireless APs, it's easy to see that someone might ahve been using a connection without the owner's knowledge or consent. Where's the proof that it was actually a computer owned by that person that did it?"
Irrelevent - you take liability in this case anyway (again, preponderance of evidence, not beyond a shadow of doubt). After you loose based on this then you have the option to litigate against anyone you feel you can proove did it. There is a lawyer modded up somewhere in this thread that explains this better - but that is the way it goes. Again, this is a civil trial.
If it is a criminal case? You may get away with one or two of these points and not found guilty. None of them would hold up in civil court. In a civil suit you will be found guilty. If I (say, me being the RIAA) show that someone from an IP address directly linked to you (by expert testimony from your ISP) has downloaded multiple MP3's that either a) are all filenames that correlate to songs and nothing else, or even better (if I'm the RIAA) can show that they *were* those songs (easy enough - download the same binary, heck in most P2P systems that can get it directly from you) then you are violating copyright and you are guilty. The only hope you have is if you can convince the judge this law is wrong and he/she is a judge that goes for such things (well, unless you actually owned all the songs at the time of downloading and can show so).
Now, you may (or may not) fi
Considering who the RIAA is and what they do, I would imagine 100% of the money.
I don't think that's exactly what you meant though. I don't think (google may say I'm wrong) that they use outside lawyers. Given that a large part of thier job is with legal handlings of the recordings I would say they *are* the lawyers. It's like asking when a law firm sues someone and wins how much do the lawyers get.
But, even if they use outside lawyers and they get 50% of the money both sides of the plantiff are making a lot of money.
Govt never flew supercomputers into space, land based they still have vastly superior computing power. I doubt many of us has a multi-teraflop computer in thier basement.
Space has always been about reliability, can't repair much when you are up there. All the processing happens Earth bound. The ratio has gotten *bigger* as time has gone on (look at the top 100 or top 500 supercomputing lists) - what we can run at home is *nothing* like what the large govt installations run. Even if you had the money the local power board isn't going to run your power needs into a residential zone, let alone you have a large staff 24 hours a day to maintain your l337 system.
You know, growing up and living in the Bible Belt (east Tennessee) I know quite a few religious people. From me (generally not what you would call a fundamentalist) all the way to some real fruitcakes.
The vast majority of those I know pretty much accept life outside of the Earth. In fact the kooky fundamentalist are generally ones that also buy into the kooky aliens infiltrate the earth.
Can I find some who don't? Can I find high profile religious leaders who don't? Of course, but then you can find Athiest scientist who do that also.
I wonder how many fundamentalist or christians you actually know or if you are basing this on TV and reputation. It is possible that the Appalachian bible belters are amongst the most technological savvy and accepting of science but I kinda figure that to not be the case. They are the only group I can really speak about with any authority and I guess the rest of the worlds fundamentalist my be years behind us.
To note, we also have TV's, figure the earth is billions of years old, the universe is very large - most of us do not see science/technology and religion interacting that much, let alone one proving the other "false".
Being 'designed' as a gaming platform doesn't mean anything. Windows was not designed as a gaming platform either. In fact, games were the last of the old DOS programs to make the shift to windows. That happened because Microsoft cleared the way for them by creating DirectX.
Of course it does - it gives quite a few things. First is known hardware - less testing. Second you aren't going to have to worry about a critical gaming API not working right or being too slow/fast on your hardware. Thirdly there are quite a few hardware additions specifically for graphics/sound that are only emulated on the PC (this relates to the second reason) making game coding much easier.
The open-or-closed status of drivers has relatively little to do with it. It's not a big problem for the graphics card people to recompile their drivers for the major distros. Games are a mass-market thing. So only mass-market Linux (i.e. major distros) are really relevant there anyway. You don't see them releasing drivers for NT 4 either.
This makes quite a bit of difference. With any commercial products there has to be a minimum of testing done. Unfortunatly you can't simply split it between "windows" and "linux" - if you could then things would be great. They generally only support a few versions of windows and there is not that much difference between them normally (there are exceptions). Between redhat and suse there is quite a bit and it all must be tested. Open source moves much of that to the consumers - at least if they mean open source in the sense of the whole shebang, not just one can read the source.
As for NT4 - you unintentionally have a good example - it's a pretty shitty gaming platform for the same reasons Linux is (and is why you see none for it).
The issue is the API:s. While Direct3D and OpenGL are pretty much on par, DirectX provides quite a lot of other stuff which OpenGL does not. And in those areas, the alternatives like SDL just aren't good enough.
If it was just API's there would be little porting needed to be done - just a recompile. Though API's are the main problems the details are what is killing it.
So what are the options? Develop for DirectX, and you have Windows and the Xbox covered. Develop for OpenGL and you'll probably need to write your own code for networking, keyboard/mouse/joysticks and so on. And rewrite it if you want to support other platforms.
This I agree with.
What the world would really need is a gaming API which could compete with (or be better than) DirectX in every respect, and which is cross-platform. Ideally, you would have a collaboration between Red Hat, SuSE, Apple and Sony. An API supporting Windows and Linux and Apple and the PS2 would certainly be a DirectX-killer. You could develop for four platforms for the price of one.
From the bold - right now, unless you get Microsft to at least play nice you are wasting time with the PC crowd. Better (at least in the sense of widespread adoption) would be for those four to adopt Direct-X.
Given that scenario, who wouldn't put out a Linux port (even an unsupported one)? It's certainly technically possible. I'm just waiting for someone important to 'get it'.
They get it quite well. If there were currently large sums of money to be made someone would fill it. Unfortunatly Linux (or even Apple) have such a small market share no one cares. The least of the market share problems is Linux Gaming - get it easy enough to install/use that a 55 year old can mostly do it and you have a fighting chance. Maybe in another 20-30 years as the technological generations grow older we may have a shot.
FWIW, I'll start that I am generally a die hard conservative and now am usually considered a neocon (though actions speak louder than words, can't say how many times I've seen people lie about thier political affiliation in order to have thier arguments contain more wieght).
:) ). I did what would be called basic comp sci research. Not that it was easy, but that it was not domain specific. Phizer, Shell oil, Los Alamos, almost any place that does high performance computing has rolled thier own versions of the software we worked on. That had *a lot* of duplicate effort with little profit to a company that would produce a package to deal with maintenance of thier clusters. Thus private companies would most likely never release thier own versions - in steps the deep pockets of the federal govt. I made around 30k a year but with the federal govt's overhead I cost over 100k - private industry rarely has that over head.
In general I agree with the statement you have issue with. Many many things the govt gets involved with they should not - private industry will do much better. Even in your example I think that private industry would be better at spreading that wealth in that less goes into "red tape". Though I think you are taking too hard a line on that philiosophy, the govt can create wealth just not as good as private industry.
That being said, it isn't universally true. There are things that almost nothing but a govt entity can do because of thier resources available and little to no interest in profits. NASA being one of those (nationl defense being another). Do I think that a private corp could do it better? Sure. Do I think a private corp would do it better? Probably not.
Take for instance my last job (now layed off, so you can't think I'm peddling for money
Think of this as an x-prize vs federal contract for space flight. Right there epitomises the philosophy - who do you go to for a robust cheap system? It's *much* better than the lowest bidder or internal funding system the govt has.
Still, I would like to see the govt (and NASA) offer a *huge* prize along with a contract along the lines of the x-prize as only the govt has the resources to do the work needed. I think it could marry the best of both worlds.
I'm going to go out a limb here and assume you are neither conservative or Christian.
Being that I am both I generally have a good idea why those people believe as they do, I also know quite a few of the more radical ones like the site you linked too. Though I, personally, like the violence and sex on TV and especially in games quite a bit and have little problem with it.
As such, I seriously doubt that those radical Christians are going to have an issue that revolves around science delving into things they shouldn't and unleashing hell to destroy the sinners.
They may have great trouble with the violence on the screen, but the issue of demons destroying Athiest for ignoring religion isn't going to bother them.
I worked for the Department of Energy for a few years writing general purpose high performance computing libraries and system maintenance software. I knew mine was used in some of the nuclear programs on campus (both offensive and non-military nuclear research) Occasioanally had the same question asked of me.
My reponse was a little different than yours. I could sleep at night because I was damn proud if my chunk of the software went towards keeping our troops alive and killing the people we are fighting. If my software was used in simulations for training soldiers in Iraq, or designing a new missle, I couldn't be happier. In fact, should the DoD have wanted to hire me to work directly on any weapons I would have been very happy to do so (still would, but they aren't going to hire a Bachelors for that, or like the DoE I would be the first hit with layoffs).
This was both the truth and they were usually fairly confused that I said that to them and left me alone. Though on the internet it gets a different response based on where you post it - slashdot will flame any reponse like your or mine pretty heavily.
I don't on one hand, a run in with my right hand and a belt sander took care of those fingerprints nearly 15 years ago (freshman in high school, worst shop accident the school had ever had). Though I would not suggest you go through what I did (and still have trouble from) to loose your fingerprints. Though I may leave some DNA traces I guess, I don't know how much they can get from simply touching it.
Interesting note, I live in Tennessee and we have pretty easy to obtain handgun carry permits. One of the requirements is fingerprinting and then those fingerprints being run through the TBI and FBI. When they took my right hands fingerprints they circled the whole print (one large solid smudge for each finger) and wrote "scar tissue". The local police thought I may never be able to get one without going to court to press for my rights. A few months later my permit arrived and nothing was ever said. My mother had cut herself a few years before and had a small scar that could not be seen visably but showed up when fingerprinted (very clear and very obvious what it was). It was circled and "scar tissue" was written - she had to redo the prints *five* times because of it.
I'm not a lawyer, however there are many people who are who wrote said law, who wanted them to be retroactive but could not. It isn't my interpretation of the law, that is the reason given for the grandfather clause when the bill was passed. For some unknown reason I will take lawmakers and most lawyers interpretation on this issue over random slashdot posters.
Real estate law has the same thing, a house built in 1950 doesn't have to comform to current zoning or building code laws unless you are going to build something new on it. That chafe's many many people asses in planning commisions, my parents are land surveyors - I've seen it go to court several times only for the planning commision to loose (planning comiisions can not violate the constitution either, though many like to think that they can). Once more, not my interpretation but people far far more knowlegable on constitutional law than I am.
" This is especially true for Bush's "grandfathered" coal plants which can avoid pollution standards because they are really old (try to figure out the logic behind that reasoning)."
Don't know where you got that piece of info, but it is not correct.
The plants were grandfathered in because we can not pass laws that are retroactive - you can not currently be held to laws that will be passed in the future. That is in the constitution - the law had to have been made that way. That's the logic in that.
Bush did not pass the laws requiring cleaner emissions so they are not his laws anyway, they were passed well before Bush the Elder also.
You want to know fucked up logic? Here is how it stands now (and what Bush the Younger tried to change against the wishes of the "environmentalist"). If you have an old power plant you are grandfathered in - you have no need to follow current emissions guidlines. Current technology is also cheaper to produce power, if one could simply change them over then they would make back thier money plus in a few years (and thus, power companies prefer newer technology). But, should you take any of the grandfathered plants and put anything new on them the must, at that point, comply with all existing emissions standards. They can not comply with current emissions standards without putting new parts on them. See the deadlock? See why there *must* be something that gives - namely allowing them to maintain thier *current* level of pollution while installing new, clean, and cheap production facilities? It's not like they were saying "You can now produce 50% more pollution" - what problem do you have with "You can continue to pollute at your current rate while you switch to environmentally friendly equipment" given the "You can pollute at your current rate" is true otherwise?
It's not just power plants that have this. My family has worked on this project off and on since the 80's. Locally a river had raw sewage leak into it for over 20 years. In order to contain the sewage they needed to build a new sewage system, in order to get the EPA to allow them to build the new sewage system they had to contain the sewage. Again - deadlock. The person over our little section of the EPA saw nothing wrong with this, retired under Clinton's term, and the next one in immediatly recinded said laws. We saw the same type of rhetoric for a few years hear about how the EPA was allowing the utilities district to pollute the river (from a few environmentalist groups). In the end some people took a good deal of political heat but made the river capable of suporting fish again.
Instead of reading someone else synopsis go read the actual bill next time. You may very well find that someone has more of a political (vs actually improving the environment) agenda than you would think.
Talk about differences in thier abilities, one put a man on the moon and the other couldn't get a whore across a bridge...
"These are the stories from a guy in the Telemark Battalion, when they were on excercise. Anyhoo, it is more a story on how the US soldiers ignored obvious climate changes, and that is why they train here to start with,"
You hit the nail on the head there. Any military, be it US, Hungary, Britain, Zibabwe, wherever, must train its soldiers to kill and think they can beat anyone - otherwise they will almost always loose. That is also known as hubris. This must be tempered with the ability to think.
For example, the local gun range is on a national guard base. A few times a year the Army uses it for "training". One of thier special forces (I don't know which - they will not say and I don't care enough to actually dig and see) trains there. It is the last few days of their training - they play war games mostly. On one of thier times occupying the base there was a scheduled shoot. We had to move it and needed some material (signup list for the shoot IIRC) from our club house. The general in charge allowed us access for the material as long as she escorted us. She and my father got to talking about training/coaching markmanship and he asked about what they do there in training (we had always wondered as there was usually quite a bit of damage to the facilities and odd structures built in the woods). She explained about the war games and other fairly mundane training excercises they did. She then told him that on the last night they did something "special". After all the training and convincing that they were the Greates Thing on the Planet they were given a rude awakening. The recruits were told to guard the barraks. During the night a group of Rangers crossed over the fence and forcefully captured each and every one of the recruits. It was supposedly a humbling experience (I know that it would be for me).
I would bet that the situation you describe was something similar. If they had performed flawlessly that would have been great. I bet that the people in charge got thier second best option - total routing and humiliation.
" and rely only on their egos."
That is *exactly* what they try and root out. No commander in any major country is stupid - all know that is bad and will loose wars. Do you really think that the US military is that stupid? I bet your country sends soldiers on training missions they know they will loose for exactly the same reason - militaries have been doing that for thousands of years.
For me, the main difference is announcements.
You knew, from almost the very beginning, that there would be two realeases. They planned that well before the first movie was even in the theaters, maybe even before filming (too dang long ago to remember exactly).
There is absolutely nothing wrong with editing a "short" version for theaters - how many are going to run a 250 minute movie - while filming for a long version on home video. Especially if you announce it.
I purchased several of the editions of Star Wars thinking that each time I had what was the "final" form - or at least close too it. I didn't purchase the last version, not because of the irritants in it (while there, it was minor), but because it seemed to be a money grabber. "Look - here is the greatest edition - get them before they are gone forever!" repeated for each release. In the end, had Lucas been up front with his plans on release I may still have purchased multiple editions because each one had something different I liked, OTOH I do not like feeling like I got screwed so I quit purchasing them.
Jackson did none of that, it was public and easy to find that they planned multiple releases. I knew I wanted to wait and I did. Now, should PJ serially release updated versions without saying so - then I will not buy them.
That being said, I guess I'm still goign to get the Star Wars dvd's in some fashion (purchase or copy, haven't decided what it is worth to have a more durable version that I can actually watch - my VCR bit the dust a while back and "Star Wars" is pretty much the only tapes I care about watching). I just wish I had a capture board for the VCR tapes so I could burn to a DVD instead.
" don't know what cow college you studied math and statistics at but I'd say that a difference of 543,895 votes, or one half percent, is statistically significant."
.5% (especially given manual voting devices used in most of the US, not to mention people not pushing the correct button or punch) - we saw that very well in Florida. Given that the difference was MUCH smaller than the error expected I fail to see how you can conlusivly say that the poster is wrong and that they went to a "cow college". We saw how much the vote can swing in Florida - it could very well do the same thing in the national popular vote either way. Now, if you were counting coin flips - that's another matter.
Apparently a better cow college than you went too.
You should expect a much larger percent error than
That is why we have election laws. It is partially why we have an electoral college (the other being to make sure large population centers can not run roughshod over the smaller). That way, at some point, there is a trigger that says "OK, final tally is xxxx". It may be time, number of recounts, percent difference between recounts, any number of things and it is up to the individual states to decide.
Under the laws going into the election Gore had the popular vote and Bush had the electoral college. Both were close enough that had we a little different set of triggers on recounts and when to stop, it could have very well been the other way around. The difference between the votes for the two candidates were well within the margin of error. Had we used the pure popular vote we would have been doing what they did in Florida over the entire country.