Slashdot is turning into a hypocritical pro-USA outlet
Slashdot is, and has always been, a US site.
with all this demonizing of China.
You can't "demonize" a demon. China is still a corrupt communist dictatorship.
I think the Chinese should stop beating around the bush and just kick all big American corporations out of their country.
They tried isolationism for a few centuries and it didn't work: the West surpassed them technologically and economically and then kicked their butts. The Chinese leadership is corrupt and totalitarian, but it isn't stupid. They keep Western companies in China to steal their technology, and the West plays along because we get cheap consumer goods. It's probably a reasonable deal, since technology is as short lived as a Chinese-made Barbie doll.
So, the Chinese government is new to this. Companies and governments in the West are much better at recruiting each other and the people to do their propagandistic bidding for them.
An "issue" is not a "crisis". A "crisis" is something that occurs within a short period of time and it's where something is changing fundamentally. None of that applies to illegals, or the budget, or sequestration, or health care, or drugs, or guns, or any of the other fabricated "crises".
As for illegals, until someone figures out the right thing to do, we can live with the current situation for a few more years, just like we have lived with it for decades. And make no mistake about it: Democrats are just as responsible for failure of meaningful immigration reform as Republicans, because Democrats want to protect their union buddies from competition.
"Scientists" isn't some coherent group that "knows" something. Some take guesses, some succeed, some fail. Many get it wrong too, and quite frequently.
You need neither scientific or political "oversight". If a technology leads to cheaper energy, companies will work on it. If a technology doesn't lead to cheaper energy, it doesn't matter how much you subsidize its R&D.
What the US government needs to do is relax regulations and obstacles for the deployment of new energy technologies, foremost new nuclear technologies.
Of course, the ones creating all of these crisis and not compromising in the least, are the republicans.
There is no "crisis". The sequester doesn't even make a dent in the federal budget. The idea that this is a "crisis" is a fabrication of the administration.
Seems like an accurate characterization in this case. Are you saying that the progressives in the Obama administration are not "lefties"? Where on the political spectrum would you place them then?
If the USSR had won the cold war, you would not be living under a communist dictatorship, but rather in condition similar to Russia in the nineties - basically a libertarian utopia.
remains total bullshit. The USSR in the 90's was the aftermath of the USSR losing the cold war, a time of rampant lawlessness that has nothing to do with either communism or libertarianism. If the USSR had one the cold war, we'd be living under actual communism, like the 1960's. That's what "the USSR wins the cold war" means.
All I want is a decent smartphone with a battery life comparable to my "dumbphones" that I have been carrying for the last 7 years - I can charge on Sunday and go until Thursday with heavy (3 hours a day talktime) usage without needing a charge
That's pretty easy: get an Android phone with a small screen, replace the battery with a high capacity battery, and disable data and sync by default (just turn them on briefly when you need to).
Apple Haters - totally ignoring Apple successes for twenty years and counting.
Twenty years? Apple nearly went out of business in the late 90s and their OS and Mac business was in shambles. And the original Mac, OS X, and iPhone were all basically rip-offs of other people's technology.
And all those cores are of little use without software to use them. iOS still has a huge quality and power lead in apps.
Funny, the reason I gave up on iOS was the limited app selection: no keyboards, no launchers, restricted VPN, no widgets, no third party tethering, no file system apps, limited ssh and web servers, limited third party music and video stores, etc.
No need. I run Ubuntu on several machines. Generally, Ubuntu only requires reboots when an OS should require reboots: after kernel and firmware upgrades. I think after upgrades to the core C library, reboots are recommended but not required. Packages requiring unnecessary reboots are considered broken.
On Windows, on the other hand, many installs and upgrades that shouldn't require a reboot do so anyway. I don't know whether it's laziness or some limitation of Windows, but it clearly is much worse than Ubuntu and it's clearly broken.
Congress has burdened government employees with far more mandatory rules and regulations than businesses are subject to. In addition to mantory training, full documentation of all purchases with several levels of authorization for every penny so they can audit it later, and periodic investigations to make sure they interpret the rules properly, government employees must adhere to OSHA rules to the letter.
And there is good reason for all that: when private businesses become wasteful or corrupt, they go out of business (unless dumb governments "rescue" them). When governmental organizations become wasteful or corrupt, there is no automatic mechanism to counteract that. That's why governmental organizations need such strict supervision.
You want to make it possible for government employees to save the government and the country money? Start with Congress.
If we spend more and more money on entitlements, crony capitalism, global warming remediation, and bailing out home owners who can't afford their McMansions, there will be just less and less money left for interesting stuff like space exploration.
Having said that, NASA's budget in constant dollars is actually historically fairly high:
Of course, given rampant fiscal irresponsbility, its percentage share of the total federal budget is declining, but that's hardly a decline in funding.
I don't see a "grudge" in his statements; he is just pointing out that (in his view) Plait's blog has problems, and that's a useful thing for other readers to keep in mind.
No, you don't have to reboot at all or "kick services", since upgraded services will just get restarted automatically; the only reason to reboot is if the kernel gets updated. Don't blame the OS for your irrational choices.
I moved back from OS X to Ubuntu, in part because I disliked Apple's policies, and in part because I disliked the OS X UI and its numerous quirks. Unfortunately, the joke's been on me since Ubuntu went on this kick to thoroughly mess up the default Ubuntu UI and Gnome 3 also breaks a lot of traditional paradigms and behaviors. You can run another desktop on Ubuntu (I suppose until they get around to breaking that with Mir), but it's an uphill battle since a lot of stuff just won't work. Right now, there simply don't seem to be any good choices.
So? You're still a jerk for your completely unwarranted and untrue statement about life under communism. The fact that you dishonor your own relative's suffering only makes your statement even more offensive.
Google passively recorded unencrypted broadcast signals. That should be legal and Google should not have received any punishment.
Swartz physically broke into a private network and was threatened with a maximum of 6 months in jail, a reasonable position for the prosecutor to take.
An acquaintance of mine whose husband snorted both of their entire retirement funds up his nose might question that. So might a friend whose father consistently gambled away most of his take home pay. There's more to consider than just the direct participants.
Are these people incapable of making decisions for themselves? If you're married to a creep, leave him. And if you're an adult and your father gambles his money away, that's none of your business.
That presumes the adult in question is consenting and knowledgeable. There's a reason why the lottery is often called 'a tax on people bad at math".
Your point being what exactly? That it is the government's job to protect people from their own stupidity? Why do we let these people vote then?
Slashdot Mirror
Fermented beverages are important because they tend to kill off food-borne and water-borne pathogens, pathogens that would frequently just kill you.
Not thinking about what used to be in your food and water because you get drunk is just a pleasant side effect.
Slashdot is, and has always been, a US site.
You can't "demonize" a demon. China is still a corrupt communist dictatorship.
They tried isolationism for a few centuries and it didn't work: the West surpassed them technologically and economically and then kicked their butts. The Chinese leadership is corrupt and totalitarian, but it isn't stupid. They keep Western companies in China to steal their technology, and the West plays along because we get cheap consumer goods. It's probably a reasonable deal, since technology is as short lived as a Chinese-made Barbie doll.
So, the Chinese government is new to this. Companies and governments in the West are much better at recruiting each other and the people to do their propagandistic bidding for them.
An "issue" is not a "crisis". A "crisis" is something that occurs within a short period of time and it's where something is changing fundamentally. None of that applies to illegals, or the budget, or sequestration, or health care, or drugs, or guns, or any of the other fabricated "crises".
As for illegals, until someone figures out the right thing to do, we can live with the current situation for a few more years, just like we have lived with it for decades. And make no mistake about it: Democrats are just as responsible for failure of meaningful immigration reform as Republicans, because Democrats want to protect their union buddies from competition.
"Scientists" isn't some coherent group that "knows" something. Some take guesses, some succeed, some fail. Many get it wrong too, and quite frequently.
You need neither scientific or political "oversight". If a technology leads to cheaper energy, companies will work on it. If a technology doesn't lead to cheaper energy, it doesn't matter how much you subsidize its R&D.
What the US government needs to do is relax regulations and obstacles for the deployment of new energy technologies, foremost new nuclear technologies.
There is no "crisis". The sequester doesn't even make a dent in the federal budget. The idea that this is a "crisis" is a fabrication of the administration.
The taxes on fossil fuels should be used to pay down the debt.
The US government should get out of the business of handing out money for product-oriented research.
The G1 was faster, but its apps were mostly written in interpreted Java (no JIT) and hence appeared slower.
Seems like an accurate characterization in this case. Are you saying that the progressives in the Obama administration are not "lefties"? Where on the political spectrum would you place them then?
Your statement
remains total bullshit. The USSR in the 90's was the aftermath of the USSR losing the cold war, a time of rampant lawlessness that has nothing to do with either communism or libertarianism. If the USSR had one the cold war, we'd be living under actual communism, like the 1960's. That's what "the USSR wins the cold war" means.
But keep on demonstrating your ignorance.
It actually helps with battery life: you use 8 cores when you need the performance, but you can turn most of them off for day-to-day use.
That's pretty easy: get an Android phone with a small screen, replace the battery with a high capacity battery, and disable data and sync by default (just turn them on briefly when you need to).
Twenty years? Apple nearly went out of business in the late 90s and their OS and Mac business was in shambles. And the original Mac, OS X, and iPhone were all basically rip-offs of other people's technology.
Funny, the reason I gave up on iOS was the limited app selection: no keyboards, no launchers, restricted VPN, no widgets, no third party tethering, no file system apps, limited ssh and web servers, limited third party music and video stores, etc.
No need. I run Ubuntu on several machines. Generally, Ubuntu only requires reboots when an OS should require reboots: after kernel and firmware upgrades. I think after upgrades to the core C library, reboots are recommended but not required. Packages requiring unnecessary reboots are considered broken.
On Windows, on the other hand, many installs and upgrades that shouldn't require a reboot do so anyway. I don't know whether it's laziness or some limitation of Windows, but it clearly is much worse than Ubuntu and it's clearly broken.
And what would that conflict be, according to you?
And there is good reason for all that: when private businesses become wasteful or corrupt, they go out of business (unless dumb governments "rescue" them). When governmental organizations become wasteful or corrupt, there is no automatic mechanism to counteract that. That's why governmental organizations need such strict supervision.
There's a simple solutiion: privatize them.
If we spend more and more money on entitlements, crony capitalism, global warming remediation, and bailing out home owners who can't afford their McMansions, there will be just less and less money left for interesting stuff like space exploration.
Having said that, NASA's budget in constant dollars is actually historically fairly high:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA
Of course, given rampant fiscal irresponsbility, its percentage share of the total federal budget is declining, but that's hardly a decline in funding.
I don't see a "grudge" in his statements; he is just pointing out that (in his view) Plait's blog has problems, and that's a useful thing for other readers to keep in mind.
No, you don't have to reboot at all or "kick services", since upgraded services will just get restarted automatically; the only reason to reboot is if the kernel gets updated. Don't blame the OS for your irrational choices.
I moved back from OS X to Ubuntu, in part because I disliked Apple's policies, and in part because I disliked the OS X UI and its numerous quirks. Unfortunately, the joke's been on me since Ubuntu went on this kick to thoroughly mess up the default Ubuntu UI and Gnome 3 also breaks a lot of traditional paradigms and behaviors. You can run another desktop on Ubuntu (I suppose until they get around to breaking that with Mir), but it's an uphill battle since a lot of stuff just won't work. Right now, there simply don't seem to be any good choices.
So? You're still a jerk for your completely unwarranted and untrue statement about life under communism. The fact that you dishonor your own relative's suffering only makes your statement even more offensive.
Google passively recorded unencrypted broadcast signals. That should be legal and Google should not have received any punishment.
Swartz physically broke into a private network and was threatened with a maximum of 6 months in jail, a reasonable position for the prosecutor to take.
Are these people incapable of making decisions for themselves? If you're married to a creep, leave him. And if you're an adult and your father gambles his money away, that's none of your business.
Your point being what exactly? That it is the government's job to protect people from their own stupidity? Why do we let these people vote then?