Libertarianism seeks to minimize the extent and regulatory powers of the state and deny special interest groups from achieving political power. Noam Chomasky, Ralph Nader and whonot wants to increase the state's size, reach, power to legislate over private life, forcibly redistribute income, and turn a blind eye/allow union transgressions against both their own members, non-union employees and employers.
From dictionary.com
libertarian: One who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state.
Chomsky is very keen to maximise individual rights, he just focuses very heavily on social rights - so privacy rights, and civil liberties etc. - and is less interested in economic rights.
I think if you actually read Chomsky you would find that he would be quite keen to drastically reduce the size of government, and its role.
The only real points you disagree with Chomsky on are those of economic rights. He would seek to maintain some level of socialist infrastrcuture to attempt to maintain equity, you would not. Really, that's one issue. It may be an issue you feel strongly about, and hence would never support Chomky or his views, and that's fine, but that one issue does not stop him being a libertarian.
Sure there is the free MS Word Viewer, though that only says it supports MS Word 2000 and doesn't mention WinXP. So it may or may not work.
Rather more significantly (for me, and many others) it is only available for Microsoft operating systems. That means the "free viewer" is useless to anyone using a Mac, Linux, BSD, Solaris, or any of a number of other operating systems. Yes, they're all small percentages of the market, but according to Google by the time you add all those up, you're looking at almost 10% of the desktop market. That's a pretty significant chunk that you've just relegated to being completely unable to read Word Documents properly.
People do not want to be informed -- they want to feel informed. I agree with everything you say, but it is this which has doomed true journalism. People want so much more to be "right" than to understand, to think, or to suffer challenge to their long-held beliefs.
What we get in America today is not true journalism. Partisan bias, which is largely demonstrated in the choice of what is and isn't "newsworthy", has been pushed to the fore of our media.
There is a very interesting study here that basically tries to gauge how minsinformed the US public is, and then break that down by which candidates they support, which news channels they watch, how clseoly they follow the news etc.
Now, the report has its biases in the sorts of questions they ask, and to some extend how they present the data, but if you read the report as well as just skimming through the somewhat damning graphs littered throughout, you'll see that there are some real systemic problems with US media coverage. In general, if you watched/listened major news outlets (Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC etc.) you tended to be more misinformed the more closely you thought you followed the news.
And then there's the problem that this study didn't even consider - all the significant and interesting questions that are simply never be asked by the mainstream US media. Ah well, what can you do? Try and seek out other news sources I guess.
You'll note that amongst the replies to the original post was a post from the author of the article, noting the error (apparently a typo) and saying he had now corrected it. I suspect you saw the corrected version (and I agree, it now is).
As for the amount of mod points my post got - who knows, mods on crack. I was just trying to write something useful for all the people who failed to note the original posters point. Check the immediate parent of my post if you're curious - there was some misunderstanding initially.
Sure you can compile for AMD64 for if you like, but if your processor is an ordinary Intel Pentium 4 you probably won't be getting many benefits from doing so.
As some of the more insightful people have pointed out, there is a difference between mcpu=x86-64 which will make optimaztions assuming amd64 architecture (which is just silly, as you'll get no gains from it on a Pentium chip), and march=x86-64 which breaks binary compatability and just won't run on a Pentium.
So, either he's stupid and optimized for a CPU he doesn't have, or he is horribly incorrect about that configuration he specified, because it wouldn't be running. Take you pick.
For making a full game, much much more is needed. Player control/input handling, level loading when needed, loading saving of progress. Physics. AI. And , well, a _whole_ lot of other code.
Indeed, and sound, which I can't find any mention of on their website. Sound is often overlooked - consider how effective in creating atmosphere the advanced sound engine in Doom3 was, it made a significant difference to the feel of the game.
If you're looking to make a game I'd usggest you consider tenebrae2 which is a GPL game engine, based on the GPLd quake source code, beefed up to include all the latest eye candy like bump mapping, specular highlights, dynamic lighting etc. Check out somescreenshotstogettheidea. It uses OpenAL for sound, so that is pretty useful too.
As far as I know there is no physics engine, and certainly no AI - but then AI tends to be game specific. It does represent a good base for anyone looking to create a graphically impressive 3D game.
So you spent more on SuSe Pro then an OEM copy of Windows XP Home would have run you. But you complain that XP is overpriced. Shesh.
I could see sense in him claiming that yes. An OEM version of XP is a pretty simple affair, and doesn't compare to say XP Pro, but then consider what comes with SuSE Proffesional (beyond the basic OS and core Desktop environment):
OpenOffice Rekall (an Access like GUI databse frontend) Project Management Software Web Browsers, Mail Clients, and IM Clients VideoConferencing software MainActor (Video editing software) Various Audio and Video players Music Recording and Composition software Sound editing software TV and Radio reception software Desktop Publishing/Professional layout software Photoediting software Digital Camera and scanning software 3D modelling and animation software Software development tools, including IDEs etc. A variety of games All manner of other bits an pieces
And along with that you actually have the CDs a User Guide, an Installation Guide, and an Administation Guide all in hardcopy - and before you mock those, SUSe produces very impressive docs.
I think that fares pretty favourably to an OEM version of XP even if you are paying a tiny bit more.
That's the only scene that comes to mind for me as well - Though I can see some similarities. Mostly in the bragging language used by the young toughs, and the very calm attitude of Sanjuro compares well with Obi Wan once he tries to bail Luke out of trouble. Certainly not a direct rip off, but some very clear influences.
One must remember that while Star Wars was based on Hidden Fortress, the Mifune character in that case was split to create both Han and Obi Wan (the two sides of a complex character become two separate characters). I think, in turn Mifune's character in Yojimbo and Sanjuro was an influence on Both Han and Obi Wan. I would suggest this to be a very strong argument for Lucas' having Han shoot first - consider the scene we're discussing in front of Seibei's shop - a similar fairly callous approach by our hero.
In my mind, Bush turned the Repbulican Party away from the small-government principals it used to stand for, and into the party of "claim the oil in the mideast"
Because Bush Snr. and Reagan, the two previous Republican presidents didn't run up the two previous records for budget deficits - no, wait, they did.
The government grows under either party, because they're most interested in gravy. If you want to shrink the government, try voting for parties that will actually do it.
Voting for "the one that will grow it slower" isn't going to do much toward fixing the problem.
The Pro-Life platform has nothing to do with Capital Punishment. Capital Punishment is about killing the guilty. Pro-Life is about saving the lives of innocents.
And many of the campaigns against Capital Punishment are about saving the innocent. Take a look at the records of states that actually had a rigourous appeals process. Illinois is a fabulous example: a total of 13 people have completely exonerated and released after being convicted of capital crimes and being placed on death row. That's a rather surprisingly high number. It makes one wonder how many innocent people have been executed for capital crimes, especiially in states like Texas.
Have you seen any of the very regular open press grillings that Blair was undergoing when there was the scandal over how doctored the WMD reports on Iraq were? He had to field plenty of hard questions, and anything short of a very good answer only got him pounded with even more pointed questions. So yes, that's exactly what Blair gets.
What you say is true, but consider this. Bush's chances of continuing his current policies: x% Kerry's chances of continuing Bush's current policies: x% Which is greater? I'd rather take the chance with Kerry than Bush.
For comparison however: Cobb's chances of continuing Bush's policies (if he were atually elected) 0%. I'll take Cobb over Bush and Kerry on environmental issues any day.
Jedidiah.
Re:It doesn't take a scientist to figure out...
on
Bush vs. Kerry on Science
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Maybe the video shows him bumbling and stumbling a bit more than the text of the interview shows?
No. No bumbling (I don't recall saying he did). It did show the clash of styles though - Coleman looked very frustrated when Bush refused to actually enter into a conversation, and Bush looked decidedly annoyed by her interjections. What came across to me (being mostly familiar with European style poltical interviews) was that Coleman wanted to conduct a conversational interview, responding to points as they came up, and digging down into issues. In contrast Bush seemed more inclined to simply give speeches. He seemed to have a variety of pre-canned anecdotes and short speeches, and tended to use the question to springboard into those (which then potentially drifted off into making a different point).
Still, I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't think this was a bad interview for Bush. After all, why would the Whitehouse website put it up if it was?
Interesting question. It was the Whitehouse who sent a formal complaint to the Irish embassy and cancelled Coleman's next scheduled interview. Presmably you don't do that if you think it went swimmingly well.
I don't think it was a bad interview for Bush - it may have been in the hands of a more forceful interviewer (Coleman mostly let Bush run over top of her the few times she tried to interject a question), but as it was, it simply showed the difference in style. US politicians are mostly used to givign pre-canned speeches, and not actually being probed on an issue.
I think you are looking at it through Kerry-colored glasses and seeing the messenger bumble, perhaps, without actually seeing the message...
I don't think so. I'm no fan of Kerry, and I would expect him to perform pretty much the same - mostly canned speeches that he extemporises around to fit it to the question. That's generally how US politicians work, because the people who rise in US politics are the people who are very good at doing just that.
In essence, an Irish reporter, Carole Coleman, was granted a sit-down interview with Bush a few weeks ago. She gave a BBC-style interview (in depth, follow-up questions), following which they White House lodged an official complaint with the Irish embassy.
I just watched the interview, and it made for interesting viewing. There was definitely a clash of styles. Bush basically took each question as a chance to give a speech (which often ran off in different directions, and ended up talking about something else altogether), and was didn't take kindly to the interviewer trying to interject herself into some of his pauses as he ran off track.
It was clear that Coleman wanted to have a conversation and discuss the issues, while Bush merely wanted to make uninterrupted speeches. It began to feel as if many of Bushes answers were somewhat canned - he would launch of a question into a long anecdote or story that ended up with him making a point about somethign completely different. In turn, Coleman seemed very frustrated with this, and said several times somethign to the effect of "But moving on, about Iraq..." which was her attempt to steer things back after Bush had lead a trail away.
Certainly worth watching if you're interested in how such tings would pan out. The video is here. I guess I should go and google for anythign similar with Kerry - I suspect he would be just as uncomfortable with the interview style.
I always log out of KDE at the end of the session (*), but my machine (home-office workstation) normally stays up until it has to be hardware-serviced or I want to upgrade the kernel. I maxed this in about 100 days. X never locked me up badly, at least not since Xfree 3.1 or (ie, a long time ago).
I'll have to agree there actually. Most recently even when a program has managed to lock X up, it still respects Ctrl-Alt-F1, from which I can kill the offedning program(s) and X bounces back happily. I guess this is the equivalent of Ctrl-Alt-Delete and using the Task Manager in Windows. The Linux method (while less user friendly) has the advantage that you drop right out of X, and hence have full control of your machine again. Trying to haul up the task manager when the GUI is locking can be rather difficult sometimes.
Jedidiah.
Re:It doesn't take a scientist to figure out...
on
Bush vs. Kerry on Science
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Wow. Thank you. Worth pointing out that there's even a link to the video. Worth watching really, especially because they don't edit Bush into soundbites - they let him ramble (until he fails to answer the question). Bush really didn't like being interrupted whenever he ran off track - he wanted to use it as a platform to give speeches.
For those who can't see the video, there's the transcript.
If you ues a computer as a server, you generally leave it running until it fails somehow, or until you've upgraded it. If you're using it to run applications, you probably turn it off every night, and clean up a lot of gunk in the process.
The article quite clearly says that these are only workstations that we're talking about. That's desktop machines running Excel. Those generally get powered down or logged out of every night, thus ending the session (especially in coporate environments). A failure rate of 8% in those circumstances is pretty bad really.
came here to say exactly what you said. The amount of clueless people downloading spyware, viruses, and just general crap onto thier computers is ridiculous, and I'm suprised that the failure rate isn't higher. However, if we were to take a look at the professional usage only, where there are IT depts and such supposedly taking care of the machines, I think that the numbers would be drastically reversed.
According to the article there were no home users involved in this. It was all company workstations from about 1000 European companies. That means it pretty much is all in managed environments with an IT dept looking after it.
The best I can find is this (excuse my babelfish translation) from TFA:
"To also note, without surprise, that 95% of the stations customers are equipped with a Windows environment, version 2000 being prevalent at the professionals. In place under 42% of the stations, this version largely replaced Windows NT 4 which counts nothing any more but 16%. As for Windows XP, it pains to find its public, in particular at the industrialists who choose to 83% for Windows 2000. Only the service companies have 5% of their data-processing park under Windows XP while the general average is around the 2%."
Which is about the best I can find for figures breaking down how the different versions were distributed. It seems like XP was largely uncommon except at service companies (and was then still uncommon), so maybe you could claim low sample size - but there were 1.2 million workstations in the total sample, so I don't think that'll wash either.
If someone with far better French than me could provide a proper translation of the relevant paragraph I would be grateful.
And what is the reboot rate of various Linux distros? Unless they're willing to do a comparison under the same protocols, I very much hope that no one here points to this as more proof of needing to switch to Linux, even though I know it will come up.
I would suggest that my "per session" rate of failures in Linux is quite high. Sure, I don't get kernel panics, but if X locks badly (locking out the keyboard) then my session is pretty much gone. Rebooting X is considerably faster than rebooting the machine.
The real reason that my "per session" rate would be high is that I hardly ever log out. I run a session until something comes out that convinces me to log out (travel, new kernel, or some sort of problem). Sessions last weeks or months.
Throughout his time in office, President George Bush has been slammed by environmentalists for avoiding steps to reduce global warming. Climate experts recommend cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions - and John Kerry pledges to take a greener stance.
Kerry is also very careful to not actually commit to anything. He'll consider options, but potentially he could continue right along with Bush's current policy, and it would not actually contradict what he said.
I would have liked to hear what the other candidates' responses would have been, for contrast. Kucinic in particular.
In a chart, even better.
I would have liked to have seen responses from Cobb, Badnarik and Nader. I think that would have made the whole thing look a lot less bland. We might actually have a few radically different opinions interjected in there instead of the usual bland drivel.
Jedidiah
Re:It doesn't take a scientist to figure out...
on
Bush vs. Kerry on Science
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I really don't see the point of this kind of 'interview.' Basically, each candidate is asked a series of questions, each of which has a 'good' or 'bad' answer. The results will shock you.
You mean the fact that, even on the fairly open questions, they bot do their best to hedge their bets and say as little as is possible with as many words as possible? Yes, that's what happens when you interview professional politicians, and I have begun to wonder about the point as well.
Why do we put up with interviews that simply give these politicians a platform to speak, rather than interviews that actually question them in depth? How about trying to actually fish a position and some definitive words out of them, instead of letting them answer with the usual nice sounding but empty rhetoric.
Okay, to be fair to Nature this was a written interview, so they didn't really have much choice, but this style of political interview is pretty much all you see in the US.
1. Politician is asked a question. 2. Politician gives a stirring mostly pre-prepared speech that may even have some vague relevance to the question asked. 3. Interviewer moves on to the next question.
What's with that?! Watch some BBC interviewers - I'd love to see nice half hour or hour interview of Kerry or Bush conducted by some of the BBC political interviewers. I think I would learn far more in that half hour than I have in all the election coverage so far.
Jedidiah.
Re:And now, for your delectation and delight...
on
RFID Not Just for Kids
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I use to work in data mining software for casinos. The only thing they'd love more than RFID tagging everyone that walks in the door is being able to get personal data (age, sex, address, income...) logged against each tag. If casinos can find an ecuse to do this, believe they will. They already track people in every possible way they can, and have a myriad of tools to slice and dice that data to squeeze every last penny out.
Which means it is no surprise at all to me that the theme park is largely using this for data collection purposes to optimise layouts and rides. As you say "finding lost children" is just the convenient limp excuse to get the system in place. After a while people will just take it for granted.
At the same time - there's really nothing at all wrong with this. In a sense they're just trying to provide the best service possible, and it's their property, so really they can do what they like. You dont want to be RFIDd and tracked? Don't go to that theme park. Nobody is forcing you to go there.
Slashdot Mirror
Libertarianism seeks to minimize the extent and regulatory powers of the state and deny special interest groups from achieving political power. Noam Chomasky, Ralph Nader and whonot wants to increase the state's size, reach, power to legislate over private life, forcibly redistribute income, and turn a blind eye/allow union transgressions against both their own members, non-union employees and employers.
From dictionary.com
libertarian: One who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state.
Chomsky is very keen to maximise individual rights, he just focuses very heavily on social rights - so privacy rights, and civil liberties etc. - and is less interested in economic rights.
I think if you actually read Chomsky you would find that he would be quite keen to drastically reduce the size of government, and its role.
The only real points you disagree with Chomsky on are those of economic rights. He would seek to maintain some level of socialist infrastrcuture to attempt to maintain equity, you would not. Really, that's one issue. It may be an issue you feel strongly about, and hence would never support Chomky or his views, and that's fine, but that one issue does not stop him being a libertarian.
Jedidiah.
What's with the for loop? Given that you're using -i and -pe you may as well just do
perl -i.bak -ple 's/\s+$//' *.c
Which will do exactly the same thing.
Jedidiah.
Sure there is the free MS Word Viewer, though that only says it supports MS Word 2000 and doesn't mention WinXP. So it may or may not work.
Rather more significantly (for me, and many others) it is only available for Microsoft operating systems. That means the "free viewer" is useless to anyone using a Mac, Linux, BSD, Solaris, or any of a number of other operating systems. Yes, they're all small percentages of the market, but according to Google by the time you add all those up, you're looking at almost 10% of the desktop market. That's a pretty significant chunk that you've just relegated to being completely unable to read Word Documents properly.
Jedidiah.
People do not want to be informed -- they want to feel informed. I agree with everything you say, but it is this which has doomed true journalism. People want so much more to be "right" than to understand, to think, or to suffer challenge to their long-held beliefs.
What we get in America today is not true journalism. Partisan bias, which is largely demonstrated in the choice of what is and isn't "newsworthy", has been pushed to the fore of our media.
There is a very interesting study here that basically tries to gauge how minsinformed the US public is, and then break that down by which candidates they support, which news channels they watch, how clseoly they follow the news etc.
Now, the report has its biases in the sorts of questions they ask, and to some extend how they present the data, but if you read the report as well as just skimming through the somewhat damning graphs littered throughout, you'll see that there are some real systemic problems with US media coverage. In general, if you watched/listened major news outlets (Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC etc.) you tended to be more misinformed the more closely you thought you followed the news.
And then there's the problem that this study didn't even consider - all the significant and interesting questions that are simply never be asked by the mainstream US media. Ah well, what can you do? Try and seek out other news sources I guess.
Jedidiah
You'll note that amongst the replies to the original post was a post from the author of the article, noting the error (apparently a typo) and saying he had now corrected it. I suspect you saw the corrected version (and I agree, it now is).
As for the amount of mod points my post got - who knows, mods on crack. I was just trying to write something useful for all the people who failed to note the original posters point. Check the immediate parent of my post if you're curious - there was some misunderstanding initially.
Sorry for any confusion.
Jedidiah.
For the people here not getting his point:
AMD64 kernel
Intel P4 processor
Sure you can compile for AMD64 for if you like, but if your processor is an ordinary Intel Pentium 4 you probably won't be getting many benefits from doing so.
As some of the more insightful people have pointed out, there is a difference between mcpu=x86-64 which will make optimaztions assuming amd64 architecture (which is just silly, as you'll get no gains from it on a Pentium chip), and march=x86-64 which breaks binary compatability and just won't run on a Pentium.
So, either he's stupid and optimized for a CPU he doesn't have, or he is horribly incorrect about that configuration he specified, because it wouldn't be running. Take you pick.
I hope that clarifies things.
Jedidiah.
For making a full game, much much more is needed. Player control/input
handling, level loading when needed, loading saving of progress. Physics. AI. And , well, a _whole_ lot of other code.
Indeed, and sound, which I can't find any mention of on their website. Sound is often overlooked - consider how effective in creating atmosphere the advanced sound engine in Doom3 was, it made a significant difference to the feel of the game.
If you're looking to make a game I'd usggest you consider tenebrae2 which is a GPL game engine, based on the GPLd quake source code, beefed up to include all the latest eye candy like bump mapping, specular highlights, dynamic lighting etc. Check out some screenshots to get the idea. It uses OpenAL for sound, so that is pretty useful too.
As far as I know there is no physics engine, and certainly no AI - but then AI tends to be game specific. It does represent a good base for anyone looking to create a graphically impressive 3D game.
Jedidiah
So you spent more on SuSe Pro then an OEM copy of Windows XP Home would have run you. But you complain that XP is overpriced. Shesh.
I could see sense in him claiming that yes. An OEM version of XP is a pretty simple affair, and doesn't compare to say XP Pro, but then consider what comes with SuSE Proffesional (beyond the basic OS and core Desktop environment):
OpenOffice
Rekall (an Access like GUI databse frontend)
Project Management Software
Web Browsers, Mail Clients, and IM Clients
VideoConferencing software
MainActor (Video editing software)
Various Audio and Video players
Music Recording and Composition software
Sound editing software
TV and Radio reception software
Desktop Publishing/Professional layout software
Photoediting software
Digital Camera and scanning software
3D modelling and animation software
Software development tools, including IDEs etc.
A variety of games
All manner of other bits an pieces
And along with that you actually have the CDs a User Guide, an Installation Guide, and an Administation Guide all in hardcopy - and before you mock those, SUSe produces very impressive docs.
I think that fares pretty favourably to an OEM version of XP even if you are paying a tiny bit more.
Jedidiah.
That's the only scene that comes to mind for me as well - Though I can see some similarities. Mostly in the bragging language used by the young toughs, and the very calm attitude of Sanjuro compares well with Obi Wan once he tries to bail Luke out of trouble. Certainly not a direct rip off, but some very clear influences.
One must remember that while Star Wars was based on Hidden Fortress, the Mifune character in that case was split to create both Han and Obi Wan (the two sides of a complex character become two separate characters). I think, in turn Mifune's character in Yojimbo and Sanjuro was an influence on Both Han and Obi Wan. I would suggest this to be a very strong argument for Lucas' having Han shoot first - consider the scene we're discussing in front of Seibei's shop - a similar fairly callous approach by our hero.
Jedidiah.
In my mind, Bush turned the Repbulican Party away from the small-government principals it used to stand for, and into the party of "claim the oil in the mideast"
Because Bush Snr. and Reagan, the two previous Republican presidents didn't run up the two previous records for budget deficits - no, wait, they did.
The government grows under either party, because they're most interested in gravy. If you want to shrink the government, try voting for parties that will actually do it.
Voting for "the one that will grow it slower" isn't going to do much toward fixing the problem.
Jedidiah.
The Pro-Life platform has nothing to do with Capital Punishment. Capital Punishment is about killing the guilty. Pro-Life is about saving the lives of innocents.
And many of the campaigns against Capital Punishment are about saving the innocent. Take a look at the records of states that actually had a rigourous appeals process. Illinois is a fabulous example: a total of 13 people have completely exonerated and released after being convicted of capital crimes and being placed on death row. That's a rather surprisingly high number. It makes one wonder how many innocent people have been executed for capital crimes, especiially in states like Texas.
Jedidiah.
Is this what happens to Blair?
Have you seen any of the very regular open press grillings that Blair was undergoing when there was the scandal over how doctored the WMD reports on Iraq were? He had to field plenty of hard questions, and anything short of a very good answer only got him pounded with even more pointed questions. So yes, that's exactly what Blair gets.
Jedidiah.
What you say is true, but consider this. Bush's chances of continuing his current policies: x% Kerry's chances of continuing Bush's current policies: x% Which is greater? I'd rather take the chance with Kerry than Bush.
For comparison however: Cobb's chances of continuing Bush's policies (if he were atually elected) 0%. I'll take Cobb over Bush and Kerry on environmental issues any day.
Jedidiah.
Maybe the video shows him bumbling and stumbling a bit more than the text of the interview shows?
No. No bumbling (I don't recall saying he did). It did show the clash of styles though - Coleman looked very frustrated when Bush refused to actually enter into a conversation, and Bush looked decidedly annoyed by her interjections. What came across to me (being mostly familiar with European style poltical interviews) was that Coleman wanted to conduct a conversational interview, responding to points as they came up, and digging down into issues. In contrast Bush seemed more inclined to simply give speeches. He seemed to have a variety of pre-canned anecdotes and short speeches, and tended to use the question to springboard into those (which then potentially drifted off into making a different point).
Still, I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't think this was a bad interview for Bush. After all, why would the Whitehouse website put it up if it was?
Interesting question. It was the Whitehouse who sent a formal complaint to the Irish embassy and cancelled Coleman's next scheduled interview. Presmably you don't do that if you think it went swimmingly well.
I don't think it was a bad interview for Bush - it may have been in the hands of a more forceful interviewer (Coleman mostly let Bush run over top of her the few times she tried to interject a question), but as it was, it simply showed the difference in style. US politicians are mostly used to givign pre-canned speeches, and not actually being probed on an issue.
I think you are looking at it through Kerry-colored glasses and seeing the messenger bumble, perhaps, without actually seeing the message...
I don't think so. I'm no fan of Kerry, and I would expect him to perform pretty much the same - mostly canned speeches that he extemporises around to fit it to the question. That's generally how US politicians work, because the people who rise in US politics are the people who are very good at doing just that.
Jedidiah.
In essence, an Irish reporter, Carole Coleman, was granted a sit-down interview with Bush a few weeks ago. She gave a BBC-style interview (in depth, follow-up questions), following which they White House lodged an official complaint with the Irish embassy.
I just watched the interview, and it made for interesting viewing. There was definitely a clash of styles. Bush basically took each question as a chance to give a speech (which often ran off in different directions, and ended up talking about something else altogether), and was didn't take kindly to the interviewer trying to interject herself into some of his pauses as he ran off track.
It was clear that Coleman wanted to have a conversation and discuss the issues, while Bush merely wanted to make uninterrupted speeches. It began to feel as if many of Bushes answers were somewhat canned - he would launch of a question into a long anecdote or story that ended up with him making a point about somethign completely different. In turn, Coleman seemed very frustrated with this, and said several times somethign to the effect of "But moving on, about Iraq..." which was her attempt to steer things back after Bush had lead a trail away.
Certainly worth watching if you're interested in how such tings would pan out. The video is here. I guess I should go and google for anythign similar with Kerry - I suspect he would be just as uncomfortable with the interview style.
Jedidiah
I always log out of KDE at the end of the session (*), but my machine (home-office workstation) normally stays up until it has to be hardware-serviced or I want to upgrade the kernel. I maxed this in about 100 days. X never locked me up badly, at least not since Xfree 3.1 or (ie, a long time ago).
I'll have to agree there actually. Most recently even when a program has managed to lock X up, it still respects Ctrl-Alt-F1, from which I can kill the offedning program(s) and X bounces back happily. I guess this is the equivalent of Ctrl-Alt-Delete and using the Task Manager in Windows. The Linux method (while less user friendly) has the advantage that you drop right out of X, and hence have full control of your machine again. Trying to haul up the task manager when the GUI is locking can be rather difficult sometimes.
Jedidiah.
Wow. Thank you. Worth pointing out that there's even a link to the video. Worth watching really, especially because they don't edit Bush into soundbites - they let him ramble (until he fails to answer the question). Bush really didn't like being interrupted whenever he ran off track - he wanted to use it as a platform to give speeches.
For those who can't see the video, there's the transcript.
Jedidiah.
If you ues a computer as a server, you generally leave it running until it fails somehow, or until you've upgraded it. If you're using it to run applications, you probably turn it off every night, and clean up a lot of gunk in the process.
The article quite clearly says that these are only workstations that we're talking about. That's desktop machines running Excel. Those generally get powered down or logged out of every night, thus ending the session (especially in coporate environments). A failure rate of 8% in those circumstances is pretty bad really.
Jedidiah.
came here to say exactly what you said. The amount of clueless people downloading spyware, viruses, and just general crap onto thier computers is ridiculous, and I'm suprised that the failure rate isn't higher. However, if we were to take a look at the professional usage only, where there are IT depts and such supposedly taking care of the machines, I think that the numbers would be drastically reversed.
According to the article there were no home users involved in this. It was all company workstations from about 1000 European companies. That means it pretty much is all in managed environments with an IT dept looking after it.
The best I can find is this (excuse my babelfish translation) from TFA:
"To also note, without surprise, that 95% of the stations customers are equipped with a Windows environment, version 2000 being prevalent at the professionals. In place under 42% of the stations, this version largely replaced Windows NT 4 which counts nothing any more but 16%. As for Windows XP, it pains to find its public, in particular at the industrialists who choose to 83% for Windows 2000. Only the service companies have 5% of their data-processing park under Windows XP while the general average is around the 2%."
Which is about the best I can find for figures breaking down how the different versions were distributed. It seems like XP was largely uncommon except at service companies (and was then still uncommon), so maybe you could claim low sample size - but there were 1.2 million workstations in the total sample, so I don't think that'll wash either.
If someone with far better French than me could provide a proper translation of the relevant paragraph I would be grateful.
Thanks.
Jedidiah
And what is the reboot rate of various Linux distros? Unless they're willing to do a comparison under the same protocols, I very much hope that no one here points to this as more proof of needing to switch to Linux, even though I know it will come up.
I would suggest that my "per session" rate of failures in Linux is quite high. Sure, I don't get kernel panics, but if X locks badly (locking out the keyboard) then my session is pretty much gone. Rebooting X is considerably faster than rebooting the machine.
The real reason that my "per session" rate would be high is that I hardly ever log out. I run a session until something comes out that convinces me to log out (travel, new kernel, or some sort of problem). Sessions last weeks or months.
Jedidiah.
Voldemort? I didn't realize he was running
He's not. Cthulhu/Yog-Sothoth '04 is the "Greater Evil" ticket this year, having beaten Voldemort out in the primaries in May.
"Why Choose the Lesser Evil: Cthulhu/Yog-Sothoth '04"
Jedidiah.
Throughout his time in office, President George Bush has been slammed by environmentalists for avoiding steps to reduce global warming. Climate experts recommend cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions - and John Kerry pledges to take a greener stance.
Kerry is also very careful to not actually commit to anything. He'll consider options, but potentially he could continue right along with Bush's current policy, and it would not actually contradict what he said.
Jedidiah
I would have liked to hear what the other candidates' responses would have been, for contrast. Kucinic in particular.
In a chart, even better.
I would have liked to have seen responses from Cobb, Badnarik and Nader. I think that would have made the whole thing look a lot less bland. We might actually have a few radically different opinions interjected in there instead of the usual bland drivel.
Jedidiah
I really don't see the point of this kind of 'interview.' Basically, each candidate is asked a series of questions, each of which has a 'good' or 'bad' answer. The results will shock you.
You mean the fact that, even on the fairly open questions, they bot do their best to hedge their bets and say as little as is possible with as many words as possible? Yes, that's what happens when you interview professional politicians, and I have begun to wonder about the point as well.
Why do we put up with interviews that simply give these politicians a platform to speak, rather than interviews that actually question them in depth? How about trying to actually fish a position and some definitive words out of them, instead of letting them answer with the usual nice sounding but empty rhetoric.
Okay, to be fair to Nature this was a written interview, so they didn't really have much choice, but this style of political interview is pretty much all you see in the US.
1. Politician is asked a question.
2. Politician gives a stirring mostly pre-prepared speech that may even have some vague relevance to the question asked.
3. Interviewer moves on to the next question.
What's with that?! Watch some BBC interviewers - I'd love to see nice half hour or hour interview of Kerry or Bush conducted by some of the BBC political interviewers. I think I would learn far more in that half hour than I have in all the election coverage so far.
Jedidiah.
I use to work in data mining software for casinos. The only thing they'd love more than RFID tagging everyone that walks in the door is being able to get personal data (age, sex, address, income...) logged against each tag. If casinos can find an ecuse to do this, believe they will. They already track people in every possible way they can, and have a myriad of tools to slice and dice that data to squeeze every last penny out.
Which means it is no surprise at all to me that the theme park is largely using this for data collection purposes to optimise layouts and rides. As you say "finding lost children" is just the convenient limp excuse to get the system in place. After a while people will just take it for granted.
At the same time - there's really nothing at all wrong with this. In a sense they're just trying to provide the best service possible, and it's their property, so really they can do what they like. You dont want to be RFIDd and tracked? Don't go to that theme park. Nobody is forcing you to go there.
Jedidiah.