Okay, so perhaps it is over-simplifying the over-all issue and doesn't recognize the increased understanding of what affects what in what ways. It's important, so I'm not going to discount that value.
But the short of it is always this:
1. The body is a chemical machine. It needs good balance. When people screw with it too much beyond its tollerance, it's bad. We know this already. We hear "balanced diet" all the time. Trouble is, "balanced diets" are mostly a lie and because of human diversity, what is balanced for one person isn't balanced for another. 2. People are constantly trying to cut the head off of the body when it comes to illness. If it's "mental illness" they want to blame something mental. If it's something else, they want to blame the body in some way. It's as if this "blood brain barrier" is a thing that people believe contains the soul and spirit of a person. "Magic" right?
It's just not like that. We're all machines through and through. We know chemicals can affect our mood, our judgement, our response time, out ability to think clearly and some would say even enhance our thinking on some ways (I disagree, but okay...) We know we can affect our minds with chemicals and yet we STILL want to believe the mind is separate from the body.
Everyone needs to stop thinking this. Everyone. Laymen, Medical professionals, Police, Justice, Welfare services, Employers and more. Just Everyone.
I see this as completely obvious. Other people still cling to their ideas which are simply and demonstrably wrong.
If a bunch of tech companies got together and created an email protocol set with security and privacy as the focus and completely dropped compatibility with SMTP, IMAP/POP and all that, something could happen.
Part of the trouble is that, like bit torrent, a lot of things just have to start off as non-mainstream. And if something were to attempt to start off as mainstream, it would be so corrupted by business interests that it would be just about useless.
And then there's the problem of platform support...
The way things are now, it's a lot harder to make larger sweeping changes.
The whoie thing about Google devices and the AOSP is that people can get the source and make their own custom (filtered and examined) system load. And the reason many of us will use the Google devices at all is because of AOSP. AOSP gives us the chance to trust the platform a little more than we would if it were completely closed.
Now there are lots of binary blobs in this and that's disturbing enough, but at least it narrows down potential sources of any compromises of unwanted data movement and such. (And there are definitely people who are watching the data I/O from their devices. We've had some stories right here on Slashdot on that very topic.)
But the other thing I wanted to add to this is that while "the drama is over" the damage is still done. We lost a guy with much experience on the matter. (I don't know the guy personally. Was he good at his job? Don't know... but who is doing it now?)
Trusting Google is a hard thing to do. It's getting harder and harder. But trusitng Microsoft and Apple is even harder still. So there just aren't so many options.
I honestly didn't expect things to change as quickly as all that. And in actuality, I rather expected (though didn't express) the US government backpedal and cease most of the offending activity. In fact, I rather hoped the defunding of the NSA went through. It did not and I am sure that had a lot to do with the accelleration of efforts to "route around the damage."
I think it's time we either change our national anthem or change our nation. "Land of the free and home of the brave" we are neither.
And while I feel that the global financial crises are engineered and intentional, I think one thing the engineers are failing to appreciate is that when people have nothing to lose, that is when they are the biggest threat to those in power and/or in control. (French revolution anyone?) And while it seems apparent they have been planning for that eventuality by militarizing police and working to register and eventually take all the guns, things may be failing faster than they can roll these changes out.
The more people begin to mistrust US technologies, US companies and anything connected or influenced by US government, the more the rest of the world will begin to heal. Meanwhile, the US will become an extremely challenged nation... sad, but it needs to happen.
It's presumption, more or less. But it is presumption based on the knowledge and experience of dealing with Windows. For every file open, for every TCP session, for every database connection, Windows seems to require a lot more of everything to do the same things. What's more the specs seem to say the same things when it comes to system requirements. For Windows they always recommend more memory and more processor power than for Linux. That can't be because they just like Windows better.
A Microsoft exit strategy is a pretty hard thing to do. It's funny to me because even though ALL of the core infrastructure products my company runs from Cisco Unity phone and voicemail, Cisco's NAC, VMWare to Falconstor and others ALL run Linux, my boss's boss and my boss and his peers have knocked Linux as a toy. We had the option of running our Documentum servers on Linux or Windows and they went with Windows even though Oracle would have fully support Linux. The hit in performance and resources of Windows has resulted in a Documentum collection that just doesn't perform as well as it should or could.
The short of it is that they don't know enough about Linux to want to go with it. The sad reality is that they actually don't know enough about Windows to make a reasonable decision which favors Windows either -- they just expect it to work because everything else is Windows to them... except for the core infrastructure.
That's right... you'll never catch me driving a crappy Toyota car. I'll drive a Lexus any and every day.
Idiots.
Now Microsoft on the desktop is another matter... a lot harder to get away from.
Oh I know... I've seen that before and it is all about the people and their ability to communicate with their contractors. At my company, I brought in a guy I know and trust to do a web based database product. It worked great. It was a great experience for the company and for my friend. But the next project with my friend involved a different interface person. Same company, same contractor, different company person leading the project. It went to hell.
Demonstrably, it was not a bad contractor. It is all about knowledge and communications.
Indeed. IBM's reputation is pretty well established. They are slow, tedious and yet effective. They are a glacier in IT. But I see it everywhere -- people making decisions in an IT project that have know knowledge of what it takes to make things happen. The illusion that "it's all so easy" has really gotten buried too deep in someone's head somewhere.
I wouldn't say he assumes it. But we all KNOW it is possible. And that knowledge is bad enough. We all end up making decisions in life without knowing everything we need to know. But there are some things we do know. You know? At the moment, things which have been compromsed by the US government can't be fully trusted. It's just that simple.
Google is a for-profit enterprise but it is a geek and techy operated enterprise and it would be stupid to presume none of them influence decisions made by the company. And anything that threatens Google's geek and techy fan base is a serious threat to Google.
If Qualcomm doesn't come around quickly, it will be the last time Qualcomm and Google are even so cozy in the future.
I wanted to say what you said but I don't think I could have said it as well.
Microsoft just seems impaired where it comes to thinking in ways compatible with today's environment. It made sense for Microsoft to give "alternative platforms" a cripled version -- Microsoft had dominance and they wanted to maintain it, however illegally it may have been. (It was ruled illegal for them to leverage one product to boost another and that they were in violation of the law in their practice.)
But today, Microsoft is at a disadvantage where mobile devices are concerned. To use a product which has no established presense in a market where Microsoft is losing. It's like they are trying way too hard to leverage their existing busines/desktop PC monopoly in a market where people are more interested in doing new things in new ways.
People don't want it? Price must not be low enough right?
Holy crap Microsoft! Reality is in your faces. People don't want what they don't want. Your market is saturated. You can't grow. Anything "new" is heartily rejected, opposed, protested and battled against. In the history of all consumer products in the world, I can think of no other product so publicly rejected as Microsoft's newest products.
People don't want your crap, Microsoft. Take a good hard look in the mirror and be honest with yourself. Find out why people don't want your crap and then do whatever is needed to address the WHY. Just creating new crap and expecting people to buy it like they did in the 90s (hint: that was 20 fucking years ago!!) is ridiculous and demonstrably does not work any longer.
For a long time, commercial activities have claimed that only through commercial enterprise could quality and value be achieved. This has been claimed of software for a long time as well as with other industries. Among these is the drug/pharmaceutical industry because only they can afford the R&D needed to make important things happen. (Conveniently we forget that many of the most important drugs predate the big pharma industry.)
With 3D printing edging into device manufacturing space, just about everything is going to face free/public competition, not the least of which will be energy production. Big business with its dependency on having the public dependent on them has its days numbered. I look forward to those days... I wonder if I will live that long?
Government does, on the other hand, understand infrastructure needs. Matters such as minimum standards, right of way and others help to prevent cherry-picking businesses from servicing and improving only the most profitable areas which leads to all manner of growth and development problems not the least of which are population densities in small and concentrated areas (which leads to high real estate/housing, high violent crime and many other problems) and extremely underdeveloped areas where the population cannot participate in modern life.
At first basic needs included roads, then sewage, then public water (not so sure that's as much of a great thing these days), then electricity, then telephone. We all agree these things are not just good, but necessary for a civilized area to exist today. And the internet? I think we've gone far beyond it being considered a novelty and no one uses FAX machines any more... (okay, almost no one) As far as I'm concerned, it's as much of an infrastructure/utility need as the rest and internet needs to replace the telephone and it cannot do that without first having efficient and usable broadband. Also, we need some open standards for internet telephony that doesn't mean paying someone or something like Skype or other commercial entities.
Anyway... I have too much to say on the subject, but while I agree we can expect waste and mismanagement from government, you have to understand it goes back to the motives of government. Ideally, government should not be for profit. (Invariably it is because business people help get government into office which supports their business interests... a whole other discussion)
I wanted to buy another of those Antec USB power adapters. They are really nice and work well in my car plugged into my 750w power inverter. (Those damned car-power adapters just suck and usually top out at 0.5a which isn't enough for my tablet which draws more power than that from its battery.
No. If bugs were delicious, we would eat them. Plain and simple. The ones people experimentally or as a novelty are usually covered in chocolate or something else which will mask the taste and/or texture.
Bugs, in large numbers, might fill a belly, but there is also a lot of other stuff (ike their exoskeleton) just doesn't do anything for taste even if it might supply us with some useful body building material. It might be useful to recognize that crabs are not all that different from insects in many ways. We don't usually eat their shells (exoskeletons) so why we would want to eat bug shells escapes me.
To make use of insects, we would have to ground and process them into some sort of paste and somehow reduce undesirable matter within.
This is not a measure of how bad our government is becoming. The is now a measure of how stupid and blind the people of the US are. And the people who expect to earn a living as professional bullies, thugs and murderers? It's time for people to wake up and just say "no more." So far, everything they've got will not withstand the light of day and people simply saying "no" in large numbers. Everything they have are tricks for small numbers of people.
Who here thinks any of this is right or acceptable?
I know Americans are pretty dumb as it is. But when hicks from the sticks mistake a planet for a drone or a UFO, it's understandable. But I tend to think we would have figured it out before it became a military operation. This is pretty ridiculous.
That's just the thing here. Banking controls the world right now. We think it is government, but it's pretty much banking and money. As the global financial crisis comes closer to "the end of things" it's getting more and more serious. Now that the people hacking, cracking and exploiting vulnerabilities in money systems and services are becoming heroes to the people, the government can no longer be trusted to handle these people through official means.
We're going to see a lot more assassinations and mysterious deaths than we have been seeing lately.
I don't think you get it yet. You're tanking your approval ratings and are likely to lose your seat as you continue down your path. The world is now waking up. Even the people of the US are waking up. And "telling the truth about crimes being committed" is not treason. It's just not. And trying to support, defend and protect people in criminal activies? Well, I think that's a crime too if understand it correctly. So what are you doing exactly?
It's funny that the slant here is about rehabilitation. It seems to show how they can fool those doing the rehabilitation long enough to get back out in the world to screw it up some more.
It's a work in progress. At the moment, I am using a typical case not unlike the poetic case. When it's open and strapped down, the back side has a hook. So for the moment, I use that to hang it below the console and in front of the drink holders in my Nissan Versa. But there is a single DIN compartment where I am building a device which consists of some thin wood and a couple of strong flat steel rods which I harvested from some office furniture. There will also be mounted some rubber standoffs to ensure a good fit within the dash compartment. The rods will be bent at the appropriate angle and will have the pogo dock mounted there. Finally a mechanical arm will hold the top of the Nexus 7 to keep it from bouncing out of place. Wiring for audio and charging will be managed through the dock and likely through the 1 DIN compartment.
I have already installed other supporting gear as the typical car power chargers will not keep the battery charged while playing music, running Torque pro and TomTom GPS at the same time. So I am using a power inverter which happens to also supply USB power. I bought some rather long USB extender cables through eBay to handle the distance of concealed routing. Only one exposed wire for now -- the "AUX IN" jack in the front. But I have a nice gold-plated right-angle plug there and it's not terribly unsightly.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, so perhaps it is over-simplifying the over-all issue and doesn't recognize the increased understanding of what affects what in what ways. It's important, so I'm not going to discount that value.
But the short of it is always this:
1. The body is a chemical machine. It needs good balance. When people screw with it too much beyond its tollerance, it's bad. We know this already. We hear "balanced diet" all the time. Trouble is, "balanced diets" are mostly a lie and because of human diversity, what is balanced for one person isn't balanced for another.
2. People are constantly trying to cut the head off of the body when it comes to illness. If it's "mental illness" they want to blame something mental. If it's something else, they want to blame the body in some way. It's as if this "blood brain barrier" is a thing that people believe contains the soul and spirit of a person. "Magic" right?
It's just not like that. We're all machines through and through. We know chemicals can affect our mood, our judgement, our response time, out ability to think clearly and some would say even enhance our thinking on some ways (I disagree, but okay...) We know we can affect our minds with chemicals and yet we STILL want to believe the mind is separate from the body.
Everyone needs to stop thinking this. Everyone. Laymen, Medical professionals, Police, Justice, Welfare services, Employers and more. Just Everyone.
I see this as completely obvious. Other people still cling to their ideas which are simply and demonstrably wrong.
"Standards" is why it didn't happen.
If a bunch of tech companies got together and created an email protocol set with security and privacy as the focus and completely dropped compatibility with SMTP, IMAP/POP and all that, something could happen.
Part of the trouble is that, like bit torrent, a lot of things just have to start off as non-mainstream. And if something were to attempt to start off as mainstream, it would be so corrupted by business interests that it would be just about useless.
And then there's the problem of platform support...
The way things are now, it's a lot harder to make larger sweeping changes.
Oh why am I responding to this? Dumb I guess.
The whoie thing about Google devices and the AOSP is that people can get the source and make their own custom (filtered and examined) system load. And the reason many of us will use the Google devices at all is because of AOSP. AOSP gives us the chance to trust the platform a little more than we would if it were completely closed.
Now there are lots of binary blobs in this and that's disturbing enough, but at least it narrows down potential sources of any compromises of unwanted data movement and such. (And there are definitely people who are watching the data I/O from their devices. We've had some stories right here on Slashdot on that very topic.)
But the other thing I wanted to add to this is that while "the drama is over" the damage is still done. We lost a guy with much experience on the matter. (I don't know the guy personally. Was he good at his job? Don't know... but who is doing it now?)
Trusting Google is a hard thing to do. It's getting harder and harder. But trusitng Microsoft and Apple is even harder still. So there just aren't so many options.
I honestly didn't expect things to change as quickly as all that. And in actuality, I rather expected (though didn't express) the US government backpedal and cease most of the offending activity. In fact, I rather hoped the defunding of the NSA went through. It did not and I am sure that had a lot to do with the accelleration of efforts to "route around the damage."
I think it's time we either change our national anthem or change our nation. "Land of the free and home of the brave" we are neither.
And while I feel that the global financial crises are engineered and intentional, I think one thing the engineers are failing to appreciate is that when people have nothing to lose, that is when they are the biggest threat to those in power and/or in control. (French revolution anyone?) And while it seems apparent they have been planning for that eventuality by militarizing police and working to register and eventually take all the guns, things may be failing faster than they can roll these changes out.
The more people begin to mistrust US technologies, US companies and anything connected or influenced by US government, the more the rest of the world will begin to heal. Meanwhile, the US will become an extremely challenged nation... sad, but it needs to happen.
Sorry. The point is that people don't know what they're buying when they buy it. They just buy brand names.
It's presumption, more or less. But it is presumption based on the knowledge and experience of dealing with Windows. For every file open, for every TCP session, for every database connection, Windows seems to require a lot more of everything to do the same things. What's more the specs seem to say the same things when it comes to system requirements. For Windows they always recommend more memory and more processor power than for Linux. That can't be because they just like Windows better.
A Microsoft exit strategy is a pretty hard thing to do. It's funny to me because even though ALL of the core infrastructure products my company runs from Cisco Unity phone and voicemail, Cisco's NAC, VMWare to Falconstor and others ALL run Linux, my boss's boss and my boss and his peers have knocked Linux as a toy. We had the option of running our Documentum servers on Linux or Windows and they went with Windows even though Oracle would have fully support Linux. The hit in performance and resources of Windows has resulted in a Documentum collection that just doesn't perform as well as it should or could.
The short of it is that they don't know enough about Linux to want to go with it. The sad reality is that they actually don't know enough about Windows to make a reasonable decision which favors Windows either -- they just expect it to work because everything else is Windows to them... except for the core infrastructure.
That's right... you'll never catch me driving a crappy Toyota car. I'll drive a Lexus any and every day.
Idiots.
Now Microsoft on the desktop is another matter... a lot harder to get away from.
Oh I know... I've seen that before and it is all about the people and their ability to communicate with their contractors. At my company, I brought in a guy I know and trust to do a web based database product. It worked great. It was a great experience for the company and for my friend. But the next project with my friend involved a different interface person. Same company, same contractor, different company person leading the project. It went to hell.
Demonstrably, it was not a bad contractor. It is all about knowledge and communications.
Indeed. IBM's reputation is pretty well established. They are slow, tedious and yet effective. They are a glacier in IT. But I see it everywhere -- people making decisions in an IT project that have know knowledge of what it takes to make things happen. The illusion that "it's all so easy" has really gotten buried too deep in someone's head somewhere.
I wouldn't say he assumes it. But we all KNOW it is possible. And that knowledge is bad enough. We all end up making decisions in life without knowing everything we need to know. But there are some things we do know. You know? At the moment, things which have been compromsed by the US government can't be fully trusted. It's just that simple.
Google is a for-profit enterprise but it is a geek and techy operated enterprise and it would be stupid to presume none of them influence decisions made by the company. And anything that threatens Google's geek and techy fan base is a serious threat to Google.
If Qualcomm doesn't come around quickly, it will be the last time Qualcomm and Google are even so cozy in the future.
I wanted to say what you said but I don't think I could have said it as well.
Microsoft just seems impaired where it comes to thinking in ways compatible with today's environment. It made sense for Microsoft to give "alternative platforms" a cripled version -- Microsoft had dominance and they wanted to maintain it, however illegally it may have been. (It was ruled illegal for them to leverage one product to boost another and that they were in violation of the law in their practice.)
But today, Microsoft is at a disadvantage where mobile devices are concerned. To use a product which has no established presense in a market where Microsoft is losing. It's like they are trying way too hard to leverage their existing busines/desktop PC monopoly in a market where people are more interested in doing new things in new ways.
They just aren't getting it!
Let's vote on it. The eyes have it!
She couldn't say no, but her eyes said yes!
Sure, it's impressive, but if looks could kill, she'd have a future in the US armed services!
Oh no, I remember New Coke. I also remember how quickly Coke responded.
People don't want it? Price must not be low enough right?
Holy crap Microsoft! Reality is in your faces. People don't want what they don't want. Your market is saturated. You can't grow. Anything "new" is heartily rejected, opposed, protested and battled against. In the history of all consumer products in the world, I can think of no other product so publicly rejected as Microsoft's newest products.
People don't want your crap, Microsoft. Take a good hard look in the mirror and be honest with yourself. Find out why people don't want your crap and then do whatever is needed to address the WHY. Just creating new crap and expecting people to buy it like they did in the 90s (hint: that was 20 fucking years ago!!) is ridiculous and demonstrably does not work any longer.
For a long time, commercial activities have claimed that only through commercial enterprise could quality and value be achieved. This has been claimed of software for a long time as well as with other industries. Among these is the drug/pharmaceutical industry because only they can afford the R&D needed to make important things happen. (Conveniently we forget that many of the most important drugs predate the big pharma industry.)
With 3D printing edging into device manufacturing space, just about everything is going to face free/public competition, not the least of which will be energy production. Big business with its dependency on having the public dependent on them has its days numbered. I look forward to those days... I wonder if I will live that long?
Government does, on the other hand, understand infrastructure needs. Matters such as minimum standards, right of way and others help to prevent cherry-picking businesses from servicing and improving only the most profitable areas which leads to all manner of growth and development problems not the least of which are population densities in small and concentrated areas (which leads to high real estate/housing, high violent crime and many other problems) and extremely underdeveloped areas where the population cannot participate in modern life.
At first basic needs included roads, then sewage, then public water (not so sure that's as much of a great thing these days), then electricity, then telephone. We all agree these things are not just good, but necessary for a civilized area to exist today. And the internet? I think we've gone far beyond it being considered a novelty and no one uses FAX machines any more... (okay, almost no one) As far as I'm concerned, it's as much of an infrastructure/utility need as the rest and internet needs to replace the telephone and it cannot do that without first having efficient and usable broadband. Also, we need some open standards for internet telephony that doesn't mean paying someone or something like Skype or other commercial entities.
Anyway... I have too much to say on the subject, but while I agree we can expect waste and mismanagement from government, you have to understand it goes back to the motives of government. Ideally, government should not be for profit. (Invariably it is because business people help get government into office which supports their business interests... a whole other discussion)
I wanted to buy another of those Antec USB power adapters. They are really nice and work well in my car plugged into my 750w power inverter. (Those damned car-power adapters just suck and usually top out at 0.5a which isn't enough for my tablet which draws more power than that from its battery.
I guess I'll end up paying more elsewhere.
No. If bugs were delicious, we would eat them. Plain and simple. The ones people experimentally or as a novelty are usually covered in chocolate or something else which will mask the taste and/or texture.
Bugs, in large numbers, might fill a belly, but there is also a lot of other stuff (ike their exoskeleton) just doesn't do anything for taste even if it might supply us with some useful body building material. It might be useful to recognize that crabs are not all that different from insects in many ways. We don't usually eat their shells (exoskeletons) so why we would want to eat bug shells escapes me.
To make use of insects, we would have to ground and process them into some sort of paste and somehow reduce undesirable matter within.
This is not a measure of how bad our government is becoming. The is now a measure of how stupid and blind the people of the US are. And the people who expect to earn a living as professional bullies, thugs and murderers? It's time for people to wake up and just say "no more." So far, everything they've got will not withstand the light of day and people simply saying "no" in large numbers. Everything they have are tricks for small numbers of people.
Who here thinks any of this is right or acceptable?
I know Americans are pretty dumb as it is. But when hicks from the sticks mistake a planet for a drone or a UFO, it's understandable. But I tend to think we would have figured it out before it became a military operation. This is pretty ridiculous.
That's just the thing here. Banking controls the world right now. We think it is government, but it's pretty much banking and money. As the global financial crisis comes closer to "the end of things" it's getting more and more serious. Now that the people hacking, cracking and exploiting vulnerabilities in money systems and services are becoming heroes to the people, the government can no longer be trusted to handle these people through official means.
We're going to see a lot more assassinations and mysterious deaths than we have been seeing lately.
I don't think you get it yet. You're tanking your approval ratings and are likely to lose your seat as you continue down your path. The world is now waking up. Even the people of the US are waking up. And "telling the truth about crimes being committed" is not treason. It's just not. And trying to support, defend and protect people in criminal activies? Well, I think that's a crime too if understand it correctly. So what are you doing exactly?
It's funny that the slant here is about rehabilitation. It seems to show how they can fool those doing the rehabilitation long enough to get back out in the world to screw it up some more.
It's a work in progress. At the moment, I am using a typical case not unlike the poetic case. When it's open and strapped down, the back side has a hook. So for the moment, I use that to hang it below the console and in front of the drink holders in my Nissan Versa. But there is a single DIN compartment where I am building a device which consists of some thin wood and a couple of strong flat steel rods which I harvested from some office furniture. There will also be mounted some rubber standoffs to ensure a good fit within the dash compartment. The rods will be bent at the appropriate angle and will have the pogo dock mounted there. Finally a mechanical arm will hold the top of the Nexus 7 to keep it from bouncing out of place. Wiring for audio and charging will be managed through the dock and likely through the 1 DIN compartment.
I have already installed other supporting gear as the typical car power chargers will not keep the battery charged while playing music, running Torque pro and TomTom GPS at the same time. So I am using a power inverter which happens to also supply USB power. I bought some rather long USB extender cables through eBay to handle the distance of concealed routing. Only one exposed wire for now -- the "AUX IN" jack in the front. But I have a nice gold-plated right-angle plug there and it's not terribly unsightly.