I agree with that, but I also appreciate it when devices I buy work with Linux. I've been browsing for laser printers for a while and I find that the cheaper variants all use proprietary windows drivers... but that value loss comes from the manufacturer's choice. Many common components do work quite well with Linux these days though...
Re:Similar items...
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Funny... the first item I saw when I clicked your WIRED link was "Getting Naked for Big Brother".
Coincidental or not... any technology will eventually be (attempted to be) used for something that involves people being naked:-)
Ah, but dear child... if only life were that easy! Every place.. every place has its advantages and disadvantages. However, what all countries regardless of political framework have in common is that the majority consist of not-so-intelligent masses not very much unlike yourself. So you see.. it's not possible to get away from such folkies by "moving away". Instead, you have to stay where you are and fix things, educate the people.. and that is what our friend mbogosian has attempted to do: to educate people.
I may of course be jumping a bit to a conclusion regarding your education, but it appears obvious that you have not travelled much if at all.
Does it really matter which country is "the best"? Even if IF you would agree place X is the best, would you really want to move out of your normal surroundings and maybe even learn another language? Which place is "the best" is very relative. It is part of human nature to find exactly someone's own configuration of abilities and surroundings "the best". Look beyond it.
Please take the time to read his post again and also read his listed publications this time!
Good luck on your path to education and understanding.
Hello bigmattana, thanks for your reply. I will give my own response below:
This is a typical response from people of the Left to people who don't have the same beliefs that they do.
Interesting. You're jumping to a lot of instant conclusions about me based on my post. I will make a few clarifications:
1) I'm actually right-wing - at least, I've always voted for a rightist party. By categorizing me with leftists (eww) kind of goes against your whole point, since you yourself are accusing me of something I'm not;-)
2) I'm against extreme right-wing. In fact, I'm against extreme-anything. Although I do not respect their views, they do exist and they do form the outer margins of the complete spectrum.
3) As for spreading fear. The site you mentioned tried to do plenty of that. Mentioning "terrorists" is pointless - the INS itself granted visa extensions to two of the sept. 11 hijackers.
4) I'm strongly in favour of free speech, regardless of how idiotic it is. However, I do not consider extreme ends of the spectrum as the vanguards of a just cause. This is something else than being in favour of "suppression". It just means that *I* will not be fighting for their rights.
This is absolutely sick and pathetic.
As you yourself put it: "name calling does not help anything".
It seems to me that you kind of missed the underlying point in my post and it triggered a standard response using a cut&paste reply. I repeat: I'm not in favour of any limitations on free speech, but extremers (left OR right) will never get MY support.
is that you have certain basic rights that the majority cannot take away
You're exactly right there - democracy is about majority rule and individual protection.
We don't even have to look farther than across our northern border to find a country that doesn't have freedom of speech. Canadianfreespeech.com [canadianfreespeech.com]
Bwah, what rubbish! Go read that site - it's full of religious fanatism and discrimination. There's a banner there showing little kids and the text "immigration hurts her future!". Somehow, I can't feel any outrage about action taken against extreme right-wing folks. I guess that people who target minorities based on their own 'moral high ground' find it highly annoying that they themselves are a targeted minority based on other people's 'moral high ground'. Isn't it ironic? Besides, Canada is a democratic country - if full free speech (i.e. trolling) were something the democratic majority of the population wanted, then it'd be there by now.
As for elections - how much choice is there really? Every four years, there's a choice between two equally incompetent people. There are disturbing trends going on nowadays and people rightly speak up against it. It has nothing to do with hating their country. It has to do with a government that doesn't accurately represent what they believe their country stands for.
I got this message: "The following Blog*Spot page was not found:/servlet/BlogSpot=dearraed" -- Would you happen to have another (working) link for this blog?
Well, I certainly hope it's a good workaround, because the non-modules box is a co-located one... and I'm not a big fan of doing remote reboots;-) After previous security problems on that machine (being rootkitted), I decided to turn off modules altogether.. this seems to have been a good choice.
I tried this on two systems of mine... on one system it worked, on the other I got "[-] Unable to attach: Operation not permitted" -- I have modules disabled on that system.
Is it a valid workaround to have modules disabled in the kernel??
I'm curious... for NWLink, what would have been the right way for fending off the DoS attacks? Dropping their client in the hope that the kiddies will stop is a bit of a kludge. The existence of their business still depends on the mercy of anonymous criminals.
There appears to be a pretty big need for a form of accountability.. right now, you can get almost any small site/organization off the net, simply by flooding them and getting them to run up their ISP bill. What would be the appropriate course of action for victims to such attacks?
If you may only use a product on the basis of not sharing your experiences, then I'd see that as a WARNING that the product probably sucks and doesn't hold up in comparisons without optimal boundary conditions.
It signals a BIG lack of confidence from side of the manufacturer if it believes the quality of its product won't shine through reviews naturally. Sure, there'll be a few bad/dishonest reviews, but the majority of (semi-)reliable ones should be positive. That is... if the manufacturer agrees that its product is indeed excellent. In this case, apparently not;-)
This case is good news.. I hope it sets a precedent.
Doesn't seem very likely. As some people have noted, obscurity in this case would better help reach the stated goal. In this case, the goal appears more along the lines of scaring people away from some vague threat.
Besides.. the name says it all.. what they did with the story was indeed "to gobble".
I used the term "indistinguishable" since the article mentioned that the source was hidden, i.e. no means of verification (to my knowledge). I'm not sure either if such tricks are already being used there, but given the motivation of the regime (staying in power), I'm guessing that a lot of resources are being allocated to demotivating defections. Personally, I think that inherently, such a structure will never yield the most motivated people, since they have to defend themselves against both the outside enemy force and inside dangers.
I agree with your (more gently put) statement regarding the limitations on my knowledge. Since my analysis is based on publically available information, it is indeed certain that the military will know a lot more. In that context, their analysis will likely be more accurate.
My analysis is based on how it would be like for me, as a person/civilian, to be in such a situation and receive such an email. I am quite well informed about my own feelings and thoughts and my own instant reaction would be "oh, they're trying to test my loyalty!" - I'm curious if that has been taken into account. But ok, there is little to lose anyway, even if no one reacts to it. Spam is cheap as we know;-)
I think the main psychological effect is having an immense buildup of troops that can strike at any time. Current cooperation seems to be a result of that. It may be that there's not even an intention to seriously engage in war... but as long as the other side THINKS they will, then the battle is already won (more or less along the lines of what otter has brought up).
susano_otter, thank you very much for your reply. Unfortunately, in your hurry to reassure and wish to make a correction, you have missed the point. As your own information will tell you, Iraq is a bit of a special case and uncomparable in many ways to other regimes in the region. For example, it is one of the most secular states around there.
As for morale.. it appears that the regime there itself is most effective at breaking the morale of its troops. Also, it is well documented that Saddam himself sleeps in another house every day and routinely shifts people around on important positions. I'd say that he has already taken the trust factor into account. The reason he cannot trust his troops is not because of some 'PsyOp' mission, it's because he's ruining their country and they know it.
The point is... in order to keep the power structure in place, constant weeding against possible defectors must take place. The email in question is not distinguishable from what could be a normal trick from their own government. The fact that it's difficult to distinguish between demoralization by your own government and that of a foreign one is of course not a good sign.
So, it appears that Iraqi command has also taken a number of factors into account... for some reason, they're trying to avoid a war in the desert and are instead opting for one in cities.. I wonder why;-)
So.. next time please don't be so quick to assert yourself.. sometimes it's good not to base thinking just on manuals;-)
So they expect Iraqis to take emails seriously of which they cannot verify the source to take action that could cost the lives of themselves and their families. To my understanding, paranoia is very common in Iraq and it's assumed that everybody spies on everybody. Upon receipt of such an email, the likely assumption would be that it came from the government in an attempt to weed out potential defectors.
It's a nice idea, but it again shows a poor understanding of the local situation by the West and most likely little consideration for the lives of exactly those insider people willing to oppose the regime.
I haven't heard it either. He means octaves on a piano. I'll remember it. It'll at least give me an original pickup line: "Hey baby, I've got a 1.5 octave spanning thingie. Wanna get some music going?"
How about putting a clause in the contract that says that the client has to pay $10000 for every spamming incident that takes place using any of the company hardware?
He's evil, he's fascist, he kills his own people, his own countrymen... He lives in luxury, while his own public starves.
You do realize that this of course also applies to the fundamentalistic theocracy of Saudi Arabia? The country where medieval style punishment is still 'ok', women are not allowed to drive, homosexuals simply do not exist, the increasingly larger poorer segment of the population barely has enough food to live of, while the filthy rich 'princes' live in luxury in their palaces
The difference between a friend (Saudi Arabia) and a foe (Iraq) doesn't appear to lie in the extent to which their leadership is despicable, it's about the extent to which they are willing to play along. Saddam wasn't any more of a 'swell guy' when his regime was considered friendly to the western countries...
And yeah, oil makes everything all the more relevant
I agree... my understanding is that attacking military is "ok" in the sense that people in the military, by definition have made a set of clear choices and are prepared to take corresponding action. Civilians on the other hand are by definition considered innocent, since they have not made such choices and may even disagree with them. I'd say that terrorism almost inherently involves a (large) number of civilian casualties, to strenghten the "it can happen to everyone" feeling.
Thanks for your reply. It's difficult to gauge what a general 'position' of a religion is as there are so many different and contradictory opinions around of people who follow it. However, my feeling is that within religions, there can be scrutiny, but with a fixed outcome.
I don't believe that e.g. creation as the bible puts it has to have taken place *literally* in 6 earth days. The mechanism described by evolution theory could very well be the mechanism that God used as a tool of creation... after all, we find 'genetic algorithms' in computer science... and couldn't it be argued that God is the biggest scientist that can possibly exist?
I think it could be argued, even to a religious person, that God has a lot of respect for the laws of nature and allows it to be consistent enough to make a study of it possible. Where those laws come from or who created those laws is a matter of belief and interpretation.
I think religion and science don't need to be mutually exclusive.. the basic mechanisms used to approach reality appear to have more merit when used supplementary.
Slashdot Mirror
While these developments are quite good, I think the best would be biological replacements. Is there any development in that area?
On the other hand, I wonder if these replacements have any use in making the wearer of it stronger than with the (original) biological component.
I agree with that, but I also appreciate it when devices I buy work with Linux. I've been browsing for laser printers for a while and I find that the cheaper variants all use proprietary windows drivers... but that value loss comes from the manufacturer's choice. Many common components do work quite well with Linux these days though...
Funny... the first item I saw when I clicked your WIRED link was "Getting Naked for Big Brother".
:-)
Coincidental or not... any technology will eventually be (attempted to be) used for something that involves people being naked
If you disagree, then move!
Ah, but dear child... if only life were that easy! Every place.. every place has its advantages and disadvantages. However, what all countries regardless of political framework have in common is that the majority consist of not-so-intelligent masses not very much unlike yourself. So you see.. it's not possible to get away from such folkies by "moving away". Instead, you have to stay where you are and fix things, educate the people.. and that is what our friend mbogosian has attempted to do: to educate people.
I may of course be jumping a bit to a conclusion regarding your education, but it appears obvious that you have not travelled much if at all.
Does it really matter which country is "the best"? Even if IF you would agree place X is the best, would you really want to move out of your normal surroundings and maybe even learn another language? Which place is "the best" is very relative. It is part of human nature to find exactly someone's own configuration of abilities and surroundings "the best". Look beyond it.
Please take the time to read his post again and also read his listed publications this time!
Good luck on your path to education and understanding.
Hello bigmattana, thanks for your reply. I will give my own response below:
;-)
.
This is a typical response from people of the Left to people who don't have the same beliefs
that they do.
Interesting. You're jumping to a lot of instant conclusions about me based on my post. I will make a few clarifications:
1) I'm actually right-wing - at least, I've always voted for a rightist party. By categorizing me with leftists (eww) kind of goes against your whole point, since you yourself are accusing me of something I'm not
2) I'm against extreme right-wing. In fact, I'm against extreme-anything. Although I do not respect their views, they do exist and they do form the outer margins of the complete spectrum.
3) As for spreading fear. The site you mentioned tried to do plenty of that. Mentioning "terrorists" is pointless - the INS itself granted visa extensions to two of the sept. 11 hijackers.
4) I'm strongly in favour of free speech, regardless of how idiotic it is. However, I do not consider extreme ends of the spectrum as the vanguards of a just cause. This is something else than being in favour of "suppression". It just means that *I* will not be fighting for their rights.
This is absolutely sick and pathetic
As you yourself put it: "name calling does not help anything".
It seems to me that you kind of missed the underlying point in my post and it triggered a standard response using a cut&paste reply. I repeat: I'm not in favour of any limitations on free speech, but extremers (left OR right) will never get MY support.
is that you have certain basic rights that the majority cannot take away
You're exactly right there - democracy is about majority rule and individual protection.
We don't even have to look farther than across our northern border to find a country that doesn't have freedom of speech. Canadianfreespeech.com [canadianfreespeech.com]
Bwah, what rubbish! Go read that site - it's full of religious fanatism and discrimination. There's a banner there showing little kids and the text "immigration hurts her future!". Somehow, I can't feel any outrage about action taken against extreme right-wing folks. I guess that people who target minorities based on their own 'moral high ground' find it highly annoying that they themselves are a targeted minority based on other people's 'moral high ground'. Isn't it ironic?
Besides, Canada is a democratic country - if full free speech (i.e. trolling) were something the democratic majority of the population wanted, then it'd be there by now.
As for elections - how much choice is there really? Every four years, there's a choice between two equally incompetent people. There are disturbing trends going on nowadays and people rightly speak up against it. It has nothing to do with hating their country. It has to do with a government that doesn't accurately represent what they believe their country stands for.
I got this message: "The following Blog*Spot page was not found: /servlet/BlogSpot=dearraed" -- Would you happen to have another (working) link for this blog?
Well, I certainly hope it's a good workaround, because the non-modules box is a co-located one... and I'm not a big fan of doing remote reboots ;-) After previous security problems on that machine (being rootkitted), I decided to turn off modules altogether.. this seems to have been a good choice.
I tried this on two systems of mine... on one system it worked, on the other I got "[-] Unable to attach: Operation not permitted" -- I have modules disabled on that system.
Is it a valid workaround to have modules disabled in the kernel??
Would it help to set the fonts bigger or isn't that an option?
I was thinking of buying an Inspiron 8200, but now I'd rather wait for a bit longer ;-) The monthly price is a funny number, btw.
I'm curious... for NWLink, what would have been the right way for fending off the DoS attacks? Dropping their client in the hope that the kiddies will stop is a bit of a kludge. The existence of their business still depends on the mercy of anonymous criminals.
There appears to be a pretty big need for a form of accountability.. right now, you can get almost any small site/organization off the net, simply by flooding them and getting them to run up their ISP bill. What would be the appropriate course of action for victims to such attacks?
If you may only use a product on the basis of not sharing your experiences, then I'd see that as a WARNING that the product probably sucks and doesn't hold up in comparisons without optimal boundary conditions.
;-)
It signals a BIG lack of confidence from side of the manufacturer if it believes the quality of its product won't shine through reviews naturally. Sure, there'll be a few bad/dishonest reviews, but the majority of (semi-)reliable ones should be positive. That is... if the manufacturer agrees that its product is indeed excellent. In this case, apparently not
This case is good news.. I hope it sets a precedent.
Regards,
Moz.
Doesn't seem very likely. As some people have noted, obscurity in this case would better help reach the stated goal. In this case, the goal appears more along the lines of scaring people away from some vague threat.
Besides.. the name says it all.. what they did with the story was indeed "to gobble".
Regards,
Moz.
Hi again,
;-)
I used the term "indistinguishable" since the article mentioned that the source was hidden, i.e. no means of verification (to my knowledge). I'm not sure either if such tricks are already being used there, but given the motivation of the regime (staying in power), I'm guessing that a lot of resources are being allocated to demotivating defections. Personally, I think that inherently, such a structure will never yield the most motivated people, since they have to defend themselves against both the outside enemy force and inside dangers.
I agree with your (more gently put) statement regarding the limitations on my knowledge. Since my analysis is based on publically available information, it is indeed certain that the military will know a lot more. In that context, their analysis will likely be more accurate.
My analysis is based on how it would be like for me, as a person/civilian, to be in such a situation and receive such an email. I am quite well informed about my own feelings and thoughts and my own instant reaction would be "oh, they're trying to test my loyalty!" - I'm curious if that has been taken into account. But ok, there is little to lose anyway, even if no one reacts to it. Spam is cheap as we know
Regards,
Moz.
I think the main psychological effect is having an immense buildup of troops that can strike at any time. Current cooperation seems to be a result of that. It may be that there's not even an intention to seriously engage in war... but as long as the other side THINKS they will, then the battle is already won (more or less along the lines of what otter has brought up).
Just some thoughts...
Moz.
susano_otter, thank you very much for your reply. Unfortunately, in your hurry to reassure and wish to make a correction, you have missed the point. As your own information will tell you, Iraq is a bit of a special case and uncomparable in many ways to other regimes in the region. For example, it is one of the most secular states around there.
;-)
;-)
As for morale.. it appears that the regime there itself is most effective at breaking the morale of its troops. Also, it is well documented that Saddam himself sleeps in another house every day and routinely shifts people around on important positions. I'd say that he has already taken the trust factor into account. The reason he cannot trust his troops is not because of some 'PsyOp' mission, it's because he's ruining their country and they know it.
The point is... in order to keep the power structure in place, constant weeding against possible defectors must take place. The email in question is not distinguishable from what could be a normal trick from their own government. The fact that it's difficult to distinguish between demoralization by your own government and that of a foreign one is of course not a good sign.
So, it appears that Iraqi command has also taken a number of factors into account... for some reason, they're trying to avoid a war in the desert and are instead opting for one in cities.. I wonder why
So.. next time please don't be so quick to assert yourself.. sometimes it's good not to base thinking just on manuals
Regards,
Moz.
So they expect Iraqis to take emails seriously of which they cannot verify the source to take action that could cost the lives of themselves and their families. To my understanding, paranoia is very common in Iraq and it's assumed that everybody spies on everybody. Upon receipt of such an email, the likely assumption would be that it came from the government in an attempt to weed out potential defectors.
It's a nice idea, but it again shows a poor understanding of the local situation by the West and most likely little consideration for the lives of exactly those insider people willing to oppose the regime.
Moz.
I haven't heard it either. He means octaves on a piano. I'll remember it. It'll at least give me an original pickup line: "Hey baby, I've got a 1.5 octave spanning thingie. Wanna get some music going?"
Moz.
Check out www.riaa.com to see their news script hacked...
I read it as "DMCA" at first and I was like... great, another depressing story... then I saw it was CDMA, hehe :-)
Moz.
How about putting a clause in the contract that says that the client has to pay $10000 for every spamming incident that takes place using any of the company hardware?
Moz.
He's evil, he's fascist, he kills his own people, his own countrymen... He lives in luxury, while his own public starves.
You do realize that this of course also applies to the fundamentalistic theocracy of Saudi Arabia? The country where medieval style punishment is still 'ok', women are not allowed to drive, homosexuals simply do not exist, the increasingly larger poorer segment of the population barely has enough food to live of, while the filthy rich 'princes' live in luxury in their palaces
The difference between a friend (Saudi Arabia) and a foe (Iraq) doesn't appear to lie in the extent to which their leadership is despicable, it's about the extent to which they are willing to play along. Saddam wasn't any more of a 'swell guy' when his regime was considered friendly to the western countries...
And yeah, oil makes everything all the more relevant
Moz.
I agree... my understanding is that attacking military is "ok" in the sense that people in the military, by definition have made a set of clear choices and are prepared to take corresponding action. Civilians on the other hand are by definition considered innocent, since they have not made such choices and may even disagree with them. I'd say that terrorism almost inherently involves a (large) number of civilian casualties, to strenghten the "it can happen to everyone" feeling.
Moz.
Thanks for your reply. It's difficult to gauge what a general 'position' of a religion is as there are so many different and contradictory opinions around of people who follow it. However, my feeling is that within religions, there can be scrutiny, but with a fixed outcome.
I don't believe that e.g. creation as the bible puts it has to have taken place *literally* in 6 earth days. The mechanism described by evolution theory could very well be the mechanism that God used as a tool of creation... after all, we find 'genetic algorithms' in computer science... and couldn't it be argued that God is the biggest scientist that can possibly exist?
I think it could be argued, even to a religious person, that God has a lot of respect for the laws of nature and allows it to be consistent enough to make a study of it possible. Where those laws come from or who created those laws is a matter of belief and interpretation.
I think religion and science don't need to be mutually exclusive.. the basic mechanisms used to approach reality appear to have more merit when used supplementary.
Moz.