Right, so just go ahead and let my guy win since it doesn't matter.
It only doesn't matter whether it is a Republican or a Democrat. A Green, or a Libertarian, or an Independent, or support for electoral reform would all matter. Which of those you might choose to pursue would, of course, depend on your actual political leanings, but there is an option C, so why not use it?
Grandma shouldn't be mixing repositories. Nor does she have needs outside say the 5000 standard packages. You are really trying to address is people with diverse sofware needs. But they aren't "grandma".
Because that lovely GNOME genealogy package (GRAMPS I think it's called) is never going to be needed by Grandma is it? Or some other obscure (to geeks) but useful package? Not everyone needs the same thing. Sure Grandma doesn't need all of those 5000 packages, but there will be a couple that she would really like that isn't included in the standard 1000 package repository.
I don't want to be told what the "standard" packages that I am allowed to install are, and neither does grandma. we all have our own peculiar needs. Packaging systems, and apt repositories are fantastic for organising and maintaining a large set of base packages - believe me, I wouldn't have it any other way - but it doesn't address the issue obscure, or special interest software any any way shape or form... and that IS an issue that needs to be addressed. Roll on autopackage.
Gore wouldn't have invaded Iraq, Gore wouldn't have cut hundreds of billions in capital gains taxes while proclaiming we were at war.
Neither would Nader have done so. Neither would Brown have done so. Neither would have most of the third party candidates. And oddly enough, most of those candidates would have actually set about dealing with some real issues, like health care, like social security, like electoral reform, like reforming foreign policy, like considering the question of whether we wis to grant corporations the full rights of individuals. What you believe should be done about those issues - well, that may vary, but I suspect, if you stop and think, you'll agree that something ought to be done (the current system does not appear sustainable). The difference is that most third parties would actually seek to address those issues (in various ways).
Sure, there are some differences between the parties, but the are few and far between, and a great many issues of real significance are being largely ignored. Try listening to third party candidate debates (there's a very good one between Badnarik and Cobb here) and listen to the variety of important issues you won't hear the major parties talk about.
He said he would've still voted to give the President authorization to attack Iraq because he believed it would give the US more bargaining power when he went to the UN. He claims he did not support going into the war without UN support, though.
Fair point. You are quite correct, he has not explicitly said he would have supported a war without UN sanction. I was too hasty.
Thank you for the correction.
I would still like to suggest that the differences are minimal - in the sense that those who are against the Iraq war really should be considering candidates who have actively spoken out against the war - but yes, there remains a somewhat significant difference on that point.
[wrt government spending] "republicans" in general might have done an OK job, but GW bush has done an awful job.
Yup, because the last 2 Republican presidents, Bush Snr. and Reagan, who created the previous record for a budget deficit did a much better job of keeping government spending down.
The Republicans will tell you daily that they are all for fiscal responsibility. They will point to the Democrats and say they are believers in big government and "tax and spend" mentality. Except the Republicans seem to be better at increasing spending than the Democrats! And the Democrats? Well, they talk about progressive social spending, but you know, Clinton didn't actaully get around to doing very much of it. In fact, he got around to doing very little indeed on that front. Mostly he reduced the deficit (though that was largely due to favourable economic conditions at the time).
Stop listening to what they say their positions are, because they never actually follow through. All the rhetoric is about giving themselves some points of differentiation. In practice they implement very little of what they talk about.
Both sides use scare tactics of what evils will befall the country should the other get elected - and yet when they get elected, it almost invariably fails to happen. In 2000 there were many bold claims that a vote for Bush was a vote to ban abortion. Certainly Bush has made brave talk of such things. He's had 4 years and a Republican congress and Senate. The scaremongering failed to eventuate.
This time around it's the Republicans claiming that thousands of Americans will fall victim to terrorists should Kerry get elected. Let's get real folks. It's not going to make much of a difference at all.
Get out of the "Us. vs. Them" and "Pick a Side!" mentality and spend some time really thinking about what issues truly matter to you.
What matters is the track record of the current administration (don't fool yourself their track record won't be any better over the next four years if they're still in power. It will be more of the same.) And, whether it's even possible for kerry's future track record to be as bad as bush's.
"Why choose the lesser evil? Vote Cthulhu" -- Cthulhu/Yog-Sothoth '04
I'm not trying to claim that Bush is good, I'm trying to say that voting for something that will be "hopefully less bad" isn't exactly a great way to go. Try voting for what you believe in instead. If enough people did so, it might even make a difference. How about voting for people who aren't supportive of the Iraq war (as Kerry is) is you feel that was a bad mistake (as many do).
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to take the richest and most powerful people in the world, toss out the ones with any scruples, then let the remainder run the U.S.A.?
Because the Democrats are demonstrably different arent they? Stop listening to what they say and start looking at what they do.
Personally, I think the entire US political system is in dire need of ground up reform. It has stagnated - ground to a halt. The US is now incredibly polar and partisan, and screaming at each other over minor random social issues, and misplaced perceptions of what "their side" stands for. All I'm suggesting is to take a step back, stop looking at it as any form of "Us vs. Them", and consider what you can do to build the America that you believe in. No, I don't mean "stopping America going in the wrong direction", I mean actually moving forward in a positive way
And I guess it also depends on what your threshold for signifigance is. To me, it is very significant that under Bush's watch mercury compounds have suddenly been downgraded from toxic chemical status to "volatile organic compounds" and that manufacturers have been given the right to violate clean air acts.
I also think it is very significant that the Defense of Marriage Act was signed into law with little protest by Clinton.
Oh, I agree there are differences. My point was not that there aren't differences, but rather that they are, for the most part, fairly insignificant. US voters have become so used to splitting hairs, and debates over irrelevant issues as a means to differentiate that they have lost sight of just how similar these parties are.
Yes, the parties are different but compared to pretty much anywhere else in the world the differences between them are on very minor issues.
I'm most familiar with New Zealand politics, so I'll use that as an easy example. In the last election there were several parties standing. There was a party proposing a flat across the board 20% tax rate. There was a party seeking to institute a new top tax rate of 50%. There was a party seeking complete decriminalisation of marijuana and carbon taxes. And yes, all of those parties currently have seats in the New Zealand parliament (though none has a majority). Yes New Zealand has 2 major parties that are fairly centrist and consume most of the votes - but should either of those parties fall to close to the center they risk rapidly losing their votes to the more fringe parties (as has happened in previous elections) giving much greater sway to more radical points of view. Equally, should the electorate itself ever swing significantly, there are significant parties with credible support and reasonable expectations of receiving significant representation in parliament that people may vote for.
Spoken by someone who either doesn't know the differences or doesn't want you to know.
Or perhaps spoken by someone used to considering more diverse views, and looking at results rather than rhetoric. Let's have a look at things shall we...
The relatives of 1,000 soldiers who died needlessly in Iraq disagree with you.
Which is interesting, because the democrat candidate has said, many times, that despite the lack of WMD found, he would still have gone to war against Iraq. If you wish to vote for someone who wouldn't have entered a war that has killed 1,000 US servicemen, and many many Iraqi military and civilians, then perhaps you should look somewhere other than the democrats.
Those of us who live near toxic waste sites that were slated for cleanup until Bush was appointed disagree with you.
I freely admit I know very little about that one, though I would be curious as to how differently it would have been handled under the Democrats. And as terrible as this is for the people involved, on the broader scheme of things, this is a very trivial difference.
Minotities in Florida whose votes were not counted disagree with you.
Well, there would have been an inquiry into that if the objections of various congresspersons had been allowed. Unfortunately their complaints required the signature of a US Senator (just 1 would have been enough). I don't honestly know how many senators are currently Democrats, but I do believe the number is significantly greater than 1. Once again, for all the rhtoric and ballyhoo, in practical terms the democrats did as fine a job of making sure those voters remained disenfranchised as the Republicans.
Women who value their right to choose abortion disagree with you.
Yes, because for all Bush's anti-abortion rhetoric he has enacted... wait, what bills did he initiate and see passed on that? Abortion is now illegal in the US because of Bush right? Ignore the rhetoric, and look at what they actually do.
Even judges who value the constitution disagree with you.
Because not a single Democrat senator or congressperson voted for the PATRIOT act. Because seeing a ban on gay marriage written into the US constitution was ever at all likely (Bush could happily back that all he liked to garner conservative christian support, it was never going to happen and he knew it).
Truly the divide is deep and significant.
In turn, I would ask you if you have looked at political debate in other countries much. Have you seen the differences of opinion that can crop up there?
Democrats:"Here are some documents relating to dubious military service 30 years ago!"
Republicans:"Liars they are forged! Here are some potential reasons to prove it!"
Which is to say, there are two parties, that are essentially identical (yes, yes, they have their differences, but compared to the differences in other countries, they are trivial), that find pleasantly obscure and largely irrelevant issues to have long and involved debates over, which the media (of course) buys into heavily. Don't let them waste your time! Don't get caught up in senseless hype chanting mantras about being AWOL, or faked documents - it mostly doesn't matter!
Take a step back, ignore "the other side" for a moment, and actually consider what is important.
Do you believe in larger government or smaller government? Good, now realise that it doesn't matter whether you vote Republican or Democrat because, regardless of rhetoric, if you look at the records they do an equally good job of growing government and government spending.
Do you believe conservative or liberal social policy? Good, now realise that it doesn't matter whether you vote Republican or Democrat because, regardless of rhetoric, if you look at the records neither side has actually implemented any significant social policy change in the last 20 years.
Stop getting distracted by soap operas over trivialities designed to distract you from the fact that neither side ever gets around to doing much of anything with regard to all their rhetoric. Stop letting yourself get dragged in to caring about petty debates over non issues. Take a look at what you actually believe in from a purely political philosophy point of view, and spend some time looking at what is going to work the best to see those ideas actually get implemented!
Don't forget that Badnarik and Cobb have already faced off in the first Presidential debate -- probably the only debate this year that will honestly deal with the issues affecting America's future.
Excellent - anyone know of anywhere I can get transcripts, audio, or video of this debate? Will there be any more?
The catch is that the vast majority of IP is unowned at present, which means right now we're experiencing a huge landgrab. We're seeing people saying "I saw a continent over that away, so any land east of here is now mine!", and the USPTO going "um, yeah, okay". People aren't interested in the land, or whether there were actually people living on it already (prior art, obviousness of invention), or whether it has broader value and should be preserved for all (like national parks). Nope, they're just making a grab, and beating senseless anyone who was already there, and even those in the near vicinity, because they are bigger, and have bigger sticks.
Which is all pretty sickening really. You'd have thought we'd have learned our lessons from history. Apparently not.
The key here is this: I am not at all interested in a system that fundamentally assumes I am stupid. I will be utterly devoted to a system that fundamentally assumes I am lazy.
WinFS and masses of metadata assumes the stupid and not the lazy. The reason I don't want to have complicated trees of directories is that i am too damn lazy to do so and maintain it. Requiring me to add masses of metadata instead of a directory heirarchy does not address the problem: I am lazy!
Such a system will work well for limited uses - anything that has self populating metadata (such as music collections where files will either come with suitable metadata attached, or if I rip a CD I'll automatically attach suitable metadata via FreeDB or what have you. Similarly for a certain amount of video etc.
Such a system will work passingly well when you have a reasonable amount of attached metadata automatically, for instance email.
It won't work well for general user created documents and the like.
In the end a lot of data is purely user created - from speadsheets and letters to photos downloaded off digital cameras.
Find a way for me to be lazy and still have quick and easy access to all of those, and then you'll have my interest.
You are correct, people must remeber that during election time, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle.
Realistically I think it is often more likely that the truth is somewhere in a completely different direction away from the nice artificial dichotomy that the media have chosen to draw on an issue. Having a very narrow (but vociferous and heavily partisan) debate is a very effective way of moulding opinion. Remember, the media doesn't work for either the Republicans or the Democrats, the media works for themselves.
No, it's just you. The Australian election hasn't been like that, where current issues are headline tv news, as opposed where the candidate is at a particular moment, or who did what fifteen years ago. Even Mark Latham's very "checkered" past blew over in a week or so, and it just got down to issues.
Of course you still managed to elect Pauline Hanson, so you don't have too much to crow about.
Sure, but when High level representatives actually meet face to face, this is indicative of futher contact and greater collaboration, so while Saddaam and Osama never sat around a campfire and sang kumbaya, members of their team with authority to make decisions shared intel and likely co-ordinated areas of "interest".
And Reagan and Kruschev meeting during the Cold War was indicative of what? Should we be concerned that high level people from North Korea have talked with high level people from China and Japan? Does this mean Japan is cooperating with North Korea?
People meet to talk. Unless we are party to the exact content of such meetings it is indicative of very little.
But I think WindowsBlinds predates GTK 1.2 (though I also heard that WB is awfully slow).
Early versions of WB weren't fully themeable anyway I don't think. I seem to recall being frustrated with WB because there were a few widgets I couldn't theme.
Virtual desktops are somewhat overrated too. What happens if I want to be notified of an incoming IM, and I have sound disabled, while working in another desktop?
Oh - you mean badly implemented virtual desktops? Yes, those tend to suck. Interestingly that's mostly what you get for virtual desktops in windows (if you download the addon) - it does the basics, but has none of the finesse.
A sensible virtual desktop system allows sticky notificaton windows. Cunning systems manage to understand which notifications to put on the current desk, and which to leave with the window.
Mod the parent up please. Dan Brown is probably the most clueless person writing about encryption I have ever encountered.
As for chained encryption: In the end there's only so much shuffling of bits you can do before your algorithm isn't making any improvements to randomness of the output. If there's an exploitable hole in the algorithm (which is a given for being able to break any symmetric algorithm of significatn key size) then further rounds don't necessarily represent any significant extra difficulty. Check up on why 2DES is never used if you're curious - it effectively provides NO extra security.
A severely debilitating disease usually associated with malnutrition in the form of severe caffeine deficiency.
Jedidiah.
Re:Nope, wrong, invalid.. nothing to see here.
on
The End of Encryption?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Factoring is overrated. A good solution to factoring will only really kill RSA. What you really want is a fast solution to the discrete Log Problem for arbitrary groups. Solve that and Diffie-Hellman, El-Gamal systems (pretty much all public key crypto, including elliptic curve crypto) are out the window, and serious problems result.
Lyx and similar software provides WYSIWYG for those people who need it, but really this is like complaining that Photoshop is hard to use compared to MS Paint. Yes, it's a little trickier, but the results are so night and day different that really, who cares?
Abiword doesn't even have text boxes or math equation editors yet.
Word doesn't have an equation editor either. Oh it's got some cute toy thing that let's you randomly plop a small selection of mathematical symbols on the page with no respect whatsoever for math typesetting, but it doesn't have an equation editor.
Take a look at TeX, and properly typeset mathematics, then get back to me when word has a real equation editor.
In this world, if you get something for free (as in beer), you should be able to do anything you want with it.
Interestingly the business world seems quite happy with the concept that if you pay for it you certainly can't do anything you want with it. Witness software licensing, the RIAA, and many other practices that amount to "You bought it? So what, you can only do what we tell you to do with it". It seems odd that while this is perfectly acceptable practice, if they get something for free they can't comprehend that there might still be the same sort of strings attached.
I don't know of any virtual desktop manager that does that. (I wouldn't really want to use one that did either...)
It is hard to be certain of exactly what they mean, but check out Enlightenments pager, which is scaled screenshot of the actual desktop, and hovering over a window in the pager causes the window in the pager to zoom in to show the contents of the window. Sounds suspiciously like what they're talking about, and I'm quite sure it has been around a long time (how long have we been waiting for DR17?)
Because you, being a liberal, like the decision, you automatically assume that conservatives will not. However while some issues draw lines strongly along partisan lines (abortion, death penalty, religious freedom, etc.), others, like copyright law or space exploration have no particular "liberal" or "conservative" stance.
"The more issues a person tries to crudely shoehorn down into an artifical liberal/conservative dichotomy, the more certain you can be that the person is an American."
--Fisher's Deduction
It's not that all Americans have a need to paint everything into some arbitrary left/right liberal/conservative Democrat/Republican dichotomy - it's just that the people who most often feel the need to make any issue into a "you're with us, or you're with them!" split, classifying whatever opinion is against theirs on a given issue as being the [Liberal/Conservative] stand on that issue, are almost always American. Perhaps it is the overly strong 2 party system in America. It's hard to say. But certainly it is remarkably common for Americans to try and dissect an issue into some arbitrary labelled Left/Right split.
Slashdot Mirror
Right, so just go ahead and let my guy win since it doesn't matter.
It only doesn't matter whether it is a Republican or a Democrat. A Green, or a Libertarian, or an Independent, or support for electoral reform would all matter. Which of those you might choose to pursue would, of course, depend on your actual political leanings, but there is an option C, so why not use it?
Jedidiah.
Grandma shouldn't be mixing repositories. Nor does she have needs outside say the 5000 standard packages. You are really trying to address is people with diverse sofware needs. But they aren't "grandma".
Because that lovely GNOME genealogy package (GRAMPS I think it's called) is never going to be needed by Grandma is it? Or some other obscure (to geeks) but useful package? Not everyone needs the same thing. Sure Grandma doesn't need all of those 5000 packages, but there will be a couple that she would really like that isn't included in the standard 1000 package repository.
I don't want to be told what the "standard" packages that I am allowed to install are, and neither does grandma. we all have our own peculiar needs. Packaging systems, and apt repositories are fantastic for organising and maintaining a large set of base packages - believe me, I wouldn't have it any other way - but it doesn't address the issue obscure, or special interest software any any way shape or form... and that IS an issue that needs to be addressed. Roll on autopackage.
Jedidiah.
Gore wouldn't have invaded Iraq, Gore wouldn't have cut hundreds of billions in capital gains taxes while proclaiming we were at war.
Neither would Nader have done so. Neither would Brown have done so. Neither would have most of the third party candidates. And oddly enough, most of those candidates would have actually set about dealing with some real issues, like health care, like social security, like electoral reform, like reforming foreign policy, like considering the question of whether we wis to grant corporations the full rights of individuals. What you believe should be done about those issues - well, that may vary, but I suspect, if you stop and think, you'll agree that something ought to be done (the current system does not appear sustainable). The difference is that most third parties would actually seek to address those issues (in various ways).
Sure, there are some differences between the parties, but the are few and far between, and a great many issues of real significance are being largely ignored. Try listening to third party candidate debates (there's a very good one between Badnarik and Cobb here) and listen to the variety of important issues you won't hear the major parties talk about.
Jedidiah
He said he would've still voted to give the President authorization to attack Iraq because he believed it would give the US more bargaining power when he went to the UN. He claims he did not support going into the war without UN support, though.
Fair point. You are quite correct, he has not explicitly said he would have supported a war without UN sanction. I was too hasty.
Thank you for the correction.
I would still like to suggest that the differences are minimal - in the sense that those who are against the Iraq war really should be considering candidates who have actively spoken out against the war - but yes, there remains a somewhat significant difference on that point.
Jedidiah.
[wrt government spending] "republicans" in general might have done an OK job, but GW bush has done an awful job.
Yup, because the last 2 Republican presidents, Bush Snr. and Reagan, who created the previous record for a budget deficit did a much better job of keeping government spending down.
The Republicans will tell you daily that they are all for fiscal responsibility. They will point to the Democrats and say they are believers in big government and "tax and spend" mentality. Except the Republicans seem to be better at increasing spending than the Democrats! And the Democrats? Well, they talk about progressive social spending, but you know, Clinton didn't actaully get around to doing very much of it. In fact, he got around to doing very little indeed on that front. Mostly he reduced the deficit (though that was largely due to favourable economic conditions at the time).
Stop listening to what they say their positions are, because they never actually follow through. All the rhetoric is about giving themselves some points of differentiation. In practice they implement very little of what they talk about.
Both sides use scare tactics of what evils will befall the country should the other get elected - and yet when they get elected, it almost invariably fails to happen. In 2000 there were many bold claims that a vote for Bush was a vote to ban abortion. Certainly Bush has made brave talk of such things. He's had 4 years and a Republican congress and Senate. The scaremongering failed to eventuate.
This time around it's the Republicans claiming that thousands of Americans will fall victim to terrorists should Kerry get elected. Let's get real folks. It's not going to make much of a difference at all.
Get out of the "Us. vs. Them" and "Pick a Side!" mentality and spend some time really thinking about what issues truly matter to you.
Jedidiah.
What matters is the track record of the current administration (don't fool yourself their track record won't be any better over the next four years if they're still in power. It will be more of the same.) And, whether it's even possible for kerry's future track record to be as bad as bush's.
"Why choose the lesser evil? Vote Cthulhu" -- Cthulhu/Yog-Sothoth '04
I'm not trying to claim that Bush is good, I'm trying to say that voting for something that will be "hopefully less bad" isn't exactly a great way to go. Try voting for what you believe in instead. If enough people did so, it might even make a difference. How about voting for people who aren't supportive of the Iraq war (as Kerry is) is you feel that was a bad mistake (as many do).
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to take the richest and most powerful people in the world, toss out the ones with any scruples, then let the remainder run the U.S.A.?
Because the Democrats are demonstrably different arent they? Stop listening to what they say and start looking at what they do.
Personally, I think the entire US political system is in dire need of ground up reform. It has stagnated - ground to a halt. The US is now incredibly polar and partisan, and screaming at each other over minor random social issues, and misplaced perceptions of what "their side" stands for. All I'm suggesting is to take a step back, stop looking at it as any form of "Us vs. Them", and consider what you can do to build the America that you believe in. No, I don't mean "stopping America going in the wrong direction", I mean actually moving forward in a positive way
Jedidiah.
And I guess it also depends on what your threshold for signifigance is. To me, it is very significant that under Bush's watch mercury compounds have suddenly been downgraded from toxic chemical status to "volatile organic compounds" and that manufacturers have been given the right to violate clean air acts.
I also think it is very significant that the Defense of Marriage Act was signed into law with little protest by Clinton.
Oh, I agree there are differences. My point was not that there aren't differences, but rather that they are, for the most part, fairly insignificant. US voters have become so used to splitting hairs, and debates over irrelevant issues as a means to differentiate that they have lost sight of just how similar these parties are.
Yes, the parties are different but compared to pretty much anywhere else in the world the differences between them are on very minor issues.
I'm most familiar with New Zealand politics, so I'll use that as an easy example. In the last election there were several parties standing. There was a party proposing a flat across the board 20% tax rate. There was a party seeking to institute a new top tax rate of 50%. There was a party seeking complete decriminalisation of marijuana and carbon taxes. And yes, all of those parties currently have seats in the New Zealand parliament (though none has a majority). Yes New Zealand has 2 major parties that are fairly centrist and consume most of the votes - but should either of those parties fall to close to the center they risk rapidly losing their votes to the more fringe parties (as has happened in previous elections) giving much greater sway to more radical points of view. Equally, should the electorate itself ever swing significantly, there are significant parties with credible support and reasonable expectations of receiving significant representation in parliament that people may vote for.
Jedidiah.
Spoken by someone who either doesn't know the differences or doesn't want you to know.
Or perhaps spoken by someone used to considering more diverse views, and looking at results rather than rhetoric. Let's have a look at things shall we...
The relatives of 1,000 soldiers who died needlessly in Iraq disagree with you.
Which is interesting, because the democrat candidate has said, many times, that despite the lack of WMD found, he would still have gone to war against Iraq. If you wish to vote for someone who wouldn't have entered a war that has killed 1,000 US servicemen, and many many Iraqi military and civilians, then perhaps you should look somewhere other than the democrats.
Those of us who live near toxic waste sites that were slated for cleanup until Bush was appointed disagree with you.
I freely admit I know very little about that one, though I would be curious as to how differently it would have been handled under the Democrats. And as terrible as this is for the people involved, on the broader scheme of things, this is a very trivial difference.
Minotities in Florida whose votes were not counted disagree with you.
Well, there would have been an inquiry into that if the objections of various congresspersons had been allowed. Unfortunately their complaints required the signature of a US Senator (just 1 would have been enough). I don't honestly know how many senators are currently Democrats, but I do believe the number is significantly greater than 1. Once again, for all the rhtoric and ballyhoo, in practical terms the democrats did as fine a job of making sure those voters remained disenfranchised as the Republicans.
Women who value their right to choose abortion disagree with you.
Yes, because for all Bush's anti-abortion rhetoric he has enacted... wait, what bills did he initiate and see passed on that? Abortion is now illegal in the US because of Bush right? Ignore the rhetoric, and look at what they actually do.
Even judges who value the constitution disagree with you.
Because not a single Democrat senator or congressperson voted for the PATRIOT act. Because seeing a ban on gay marriage written into the US constitution was ever at all likely (Bush could happily back that all he liked to garner conservative christian support, it was never going to happen and he knew it).
Truly the divide is deep and significant.
In turn, I would ask you if you have looked at political debate in other countries much. Have you seen the differences of opinion that can crop up there?
Jedidiah.
This seems to be what US politics is all about.
Democrats:"Here are some documents relating to dubious military service 30 years ago!"
Republicans:"Liars they are forged! Here are some potential reasons to prove it!"
Which is to say, there are two parties, that are essentially identical (yes, yes, they have their differences, but compared to the differences in other countries, they are trivial), that find pleasantly obscure and largely irrelevant issues to have long and involved debates over, which the media (of course) buys into heavily. Don't let them waste your time! Don't get caught up in senseless hype chanting mantras about being AWOL, or faked documents - it mostly doesn't matter!
Take a step back, ignore "the other side" for a moment, and actually consider what is important.
Do you believe in larger government or smaller government? Good, now realise that it doesn't matter whether you vote Republican or Democrat because, regardless of rhetoric, if you look at the records they do an equally good job of growing government and government spending.
Do you believe conservative or liberal social policy? Good, now realise that it doesn't matter whether you vote Republican or Democrat because, regardless of rhetoric, if you look at the records neither side has actually implemented any significant social policy change in the last 20 years.
Stop getting distracted by soap operas over trivialities designed to distract you from the fact that neither side ever gets around to doing much of anything with regard to all their rhetoric. Stop letting yourself get dragged in to caring about petty debates over non issues. Take a look at what you actually believe in from a purely political philosophy point of view, and spend some time looking at what is going to work the best to see those ideas actually get implemented!
Jedidiah
Don't forget that Badnarik and Cobb have already faced off in the first Presidential debate -- probably the only debate this year that will honestly deal with the issues affecting America's future.
Excellent - anyone know of anywhere I can get transcripts, audio, or video of this debate? Will there be any more?
Thanks.
Jedidiah.
The catch is that the vast majority of IP is unowned at present, which means right now we're experiencing a huge landgrab. We're seeing people saying "I saw a continent over that away, so any land east of here is now mine!", and the USPTO going "um, yeah, okay". People aren't interested in the land, or whether there were actually people living on it already (prior art, obviousness of invention), or whether it has broader value and should be preserved for all (like national parks). Nope, they're just making a grab, and beating senseless anyone who was already there, and even those in the near vicinity, because they are bigger, and have bigger sticks.
Which is all pretty sickening really. You'd have thought we'd have learned our lessons from history. Apparently not.
Jedidiah.
The key here is this: I am not at all interested in a system that fundamentally assumes I am stupid. I will be utterly devoted to a system that fundamentally assumes I am lazy.
WinFS and masses of metadata assumes the stupid and not the lazy. The reason I don't want to have complicated trees of directories is that i am too damn lazy to do so and maintain it. Requiring me to add masses of metadata instead of a directory heirarchy does not address the problem: I am lazy!
Such a system will work well for limited uses - anything that has self populating metadata (such as music collections where files will either come with suitable metadata attached, or if I rip a CD I'll automatically attach suitable metadata via FreeDB or what have you. Similarly for a certain amount of video etc.
Such a system will work passingly well when you have a reasonable amount of attached metadata automatically, for instance email.
It won't work well for general user created documents and the like.
In the end a lot of data is purely user created - from speadsheets and letters to photos downloaded off digital cameras.
Find a way for me to be lazy and still have quick and easy access to all of those, and then you'll have my interest.
Jedidiah.
You are correct, people must remeber that during election time, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle.
Realistically I think it is often more likely that the truth is somewhere in a completely different direction away from the nice artificial dichotomy that the media have chosen to draw on an issue. Having a very narrow (but vociferous and heavily partisan) debate is a very effective way of moulding opinion. Remember, the media doesn't work for either the Republicans or the Democrats, the media works for themselves.
Jedidiah.
No, it's just you. The Australian election hasn't been like that, where current issues are headline tv news, as opposed where the candidate is at a particular moment, or who did what fifteen years ago. Even Mark Latham's very "checkered" past blew over in a week or so, and it just got down to issues.
Of course you still managed to elect Pauline Hanson, so you don't have too much to crow about.
Jedidiah.
Sure, but when High level representatives actually meet face to face, this is indicative of futher contact and greater collaboration, so while Saddaam and Osama never sat around a campfire and sang kumbaya, members of their team with authority to make decisions shared intel and likely co-ordinated areas of "interest".
And Reagan and Kruschev meeting during the Cold War was indicative of what? Should we be concerned that high level people from North Korea have talked with high level people from China and Japan? Does this mean Japan is cooperating with North Korea?
People meet to talk. Unless we are party to the exact content of such meetings it is indicative of very little.
Jedidiah,
But I think WindowsBlinds predates GTK 1.2 (though I also heard that WB is awfully slow).
Early versions of WB weren't fully themeable anyway I don't think. I seem to recall being frustrated with WB because there were a few widgets I couldn't theme.
Jedidiah.
Virtual desktops are somewhat overrated too. What happens if I want to be notified of an incoming IM, and I have sound disabled, while working in another desktop?
Oh - you mean badly implemented virtual desktops? Yes, those tend to suck. Interestingly that's mostly what you get for virtual desktops in windows (if you download the addon) - it does the basics, but has none of the finesse.
A sensible virtual desktop system allows sticky notificaton windows. Cunning systems manage to understand which notifications to put on the current desk, and which to leave with the window.
Jedidiah.
Mod the parent up please. Dan Brown is probably the most clueless person writing about encryption I have ever encountered.
As for chained encryption: In the end there's only so much shuffling of bits you can do before your algorithm isn't making any improvements to randomness of the output. If there's an exploitable hole in the algorithm (which is a given for being able to break any symmetric algorithm of significatn key size) then further rounds don't necessarily represent any significant extra difficulty. Check up on why 2DES is never used if you're curious - it effectively provides NO extra security.
Jedidiah.
sleep, what's that?
A severely debilitating disease usually associated with malnutrition in the form of severe caffeine deficiency.
Jedidiah.
Factoring is overrated. A good solution to factoring will only really kill RSA. What you really want is a fast solution to the discrete Log Problem for arbitrary groups. Solve that and Diffie-Hellman, El-Gamal systems (pretty much all public key crypto, including elliptic curve crypto) are out the window, and serious problems result.
Jedidiah
Lyx and similar software provides WYSIWYG for those people who need it, but really this is like complaining that Photoshop is hard to use compared to MS Paint. Yes, it's a little trickier, but the results are so night and day different that really, who cares?
Jedidiah.
Abiword doesn't even have text boxes or math equation editors yet.
Word doesn't have an equation editor either. Oh it's got some cute toy thing that let's you randomly plop a small selection of mathematical symbols on the page with no respect whatsoever for math typesetting, but it doesn't have an equation editor.
Take a look at TeX, and properly typeset mathematics, then get back to me when word has a real equation editor.
Jedidiah.
In this world, if you get something for free (as in beer), you should be able to do anything you want with it.
Interestingly the business world seems quite happy with the concept that if you pay for it you certainly can't do anything you want with it. Witness software licensing, the RIAA, and many other practices that amount to "You bought it? So what, you can only do what we tell you to do with it". It seems odd that while this is perfectly acceptable practice, if they get something for free they can't comprehend that there might still be the same sort of strings attached.
Jedidiah.
I don't know of any virtual desktop manager that does that. (I wouldn't really want to use one that did either...)
It is hard to be certain of exactly what they mean, but check out Enlightenments pager, which is scaled screenshot of the actual desktop, and hovering over a window in the pager causes the window in the pager to zoom in to show the contents of the window. Sounds suspiciously like what they're talking about, and I'm quite sure it has been around a long time (how long have we been waiting for DR17?)
Jedidiah
Because you, being a liberal, like the decision, you automatically assume that conservatives will not. However while some issues draw lines strongly along partisan lines (abortion, death penalty, religious freedom, etc.), others, like copyright law or space exploration have no particular "liberal" or "conservative" stance.
"The more issues a person tries to crudely shoehorn down into an artifical liberal/conservative dichotomy, the more certain you can be that the person is an American."
--Fisher's Deduction
It's not that all Americans have a need to paint everything into some arbitrary left/right liberal/conservative Democrat/Republican dichotomy - it's just that the people who most often feel the need to make any issue into a "you're with us, or you're with them!" split, classifying whatever opinion is against theirs on a given issue as being the [Liberal/Conservative] stand on that issue, are almost always American. Perhaps it is the overly strong 2 party system in America. It's hard to say. But certainly it is remarkably common for Americans to try and dissect an issue into some arbitrary labelled Left/Right split.
Jedidiah.