A crowd of protestors gathered in front of the royal palace today to protest the decision to send troops to Freedonia. Police estimated the crowd at 10,000 people, while the protest leaders estimated 25,000.
It depends on the situation. If the crowd was throwing rocks at the police and swarming barricades, this blurb would be an attempt minimize their actions and show them in a favorable light. If the troops being sent over were actually army engineers and they were going to teach the locals how to build bridges, using the word 'troops' would imply some kind of forceful incursion, and would be misleading.
Bias is shown as much by what you don't say, as what you do say.
Colony farming planets, somewhat off the beaten track, have a lot more use for horses and cows than fancy gadgets. Fancy gadgets such as the internal combustion engine?
Some farms use tractors, but many in the world today still use horses. When you're miles away from the nearest gas station, a horse pays for itself in a way that a tractor can't.
Now you're just showing off your ignorance. Every farm in North America today that has actual food production as a primary goal uses farm implements such as tractors. One farmer with modern machinery can out-produce a hundred with horses, which is what makes your 'colony farming planet' argument laughable. Machinery is more reliable and powerful than horses. Machinery doesn't get sick and die, and doesn't eat when you aren't using it.
Are we supposed to believe that a civilization advanced enough to build space ships could not come up with farm machines? Or that transporting horses (including water and feed) through space is easier than shipping equipment? That notion is ridiculous, and so was the show.
As long as you don't lead people to believe that it actually heals anything, go ahead. You can't lie in order to make a sale. See: False Advertising That's not government interference, that's enforcement of basic standards. That's best for everybody.
I'm of the opinion that most of the real basic stuff is done. It's going to take Huge Sums Of Money and Large Professional Staffs of Very Smart People to really kick over the next cycle of innovation.
Example: software. Sure: anyone can code stuff, but most of the simple things have been done. I'm sure someone in a garage somewhere will eventually find that one or two points ofentry, but most of the big innovations are going to come at very great expense with large teams of people - some doing programming, others QA, other hardware, bla bla bla, and a support staff and marketing group to make it happen and give it some penetration in the market.
Another example: nanotechnology. I don't see someone in a garage gettin' down with some electron microscope to build micro-buckyball bearings. Heck - he microscoe would eat up most of the garage, never mind the material science machines that made the damn things, andthe hyper-short wavelength lasers, etc. Back in the 1930s - sure - H & P could cobble together some electronics and build a fucking oscillator in a garage, but the kind of innovations in basic research needed today are mostly beyond the reach of some guy in a garage.
Don't forget that all of us have a huge lead on H&P in terms of knowledge availability (through the Internet), education and tools. You can build your own scanning tunnelling microscope, for example. To build something innovative today takes a greater achievement than it did in the 30's, but we have far more to draw on.
I don't think that it's gotten much tougher since H&P did their work. Consider the state and general knowledge of electronics in the 30's. Like then, to do something innovative today will take imagination, vision and persistence (probably in that order). Lots of work needs to be done by large, expensive teams, but imagination is cheap. And it's imagination that can show someone what he can build out of what he's got.
Someone help me out here. Changing passwords on a regular basis is a 'generally accepted' security procedure. I don't understand why. The common rationale is that it makes passwords harder to guess, but I don't believe it does. If an attacker is working through a dictionary attack on an account, a password change is just as likely to make it easier to guess as harder.
Now if an account is compromised, a password change by the user would lock out the intruder. It's unlikely this would happen before damage was done. It's more likely that forced password changes would result in passwords written down and posted on stickies.
It's scary how activity of destroying life is more accepted that creating it
Problem is, porn doesn't create life. Sex does (well, sometimes). The sex depicted in porn doesn't seem to have creating life as an objective. The goal of porn is physical gratification, not life. Linking porn to creating life is disingenuous at best.
The big problem with porn is that it is a caricature of the real thing - ie. sex with a live person. Porn is to sex as a roadrunner cartoon is to real life. Both exaggerate and distort; they don't represent or characterize.
How do you propose to implement such a policy in any western government?
I propose that our governments stop robbing it's citizens for the sake of things that only benefit a few. Police, fire, roads and basic welfare, sure. Entertainment and business bailouts, no.
Secondly, I propose that all government-supported monopolies be dismantled.
Thirdly, we can start working on allowing choice in provided services. Let an area vote on who does things like garbage pickup and snow clearing, along with how often.
You see, I believe that most people are smart enough to decide how to spend their own money. The product of one's hands deserves as much protection as the product as one's mouth. I realize that sentiment will get me labelled as some kind of wild-eyed radical in some places, but c'est la vie.
Free enterprise isnt concerned with truth or equality or insightfullness or universal access. Neither is the CBC. If we, as a society, have learned anything, it's that truth, equality, insightfullness and universal access comes from being able to choose from many different viewpoints and opinions. The CBC doesn't provide that. The CBC provides whatever thier programming directors, under the guidance of their superiors, give us.
The CBC is evidence that state-funded enterprise can have Freedom Hmmm... here I thought that the role of the government was to ensure and maintain freedom for it's citizens, not for corporate entities. I'm sure that I heard that somewhere...
I would recommend Canada uses the BBC as a model and we Canadians implement a MORE usefull and worthwhile broadcast system. Commercial interests are anethma to worthwhile broadcasting. Great - that's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. The problem is, what if someone disagrees? What if someone out there, a hapless, over-burdened Canadian taxpayer perhaps, doesn't agree? Can he decide to take his business elsewhere? Can he decide not to support the CBC? What if someone witheld a portion of his taxes because he didn't want to pay for someone else's entertainment? The cops would show up, with guns drawn, and confiscate anything of value, including children's toys - that's what would happen. That is the core of the problem. Don't like the CBC? tough. Don't agree with their viewpoint? tough. Not represented by the CBC? tough. You can choose not to watch or listen, but as a Canadian taxpayer, you will still be forced, via threat of arms, to pay for someone else's entertainment.
I heard something interesting recently wrt. the softwood lumber issue. It seems that some Canadian lumberyards close to the border are doing good business selling houses to Americans. Apparently it's cheaper to buy the house in Canada because when the peices get shipped over the border, it is taxed as a house, rather than as softwood lumber.
When confronted by mindless Slashbot tripe such as:
There's a lot of scary things here, but to me what is most scary is that American copyright owners can mobilize foreign police to do their bidding.
I find it refreshing to look at the pertinent facts:
the Berne Convention, which first established the recognition of copyrights between sovereign nations, was the brainchild of Victor Hugo, a French author.
The aforementioned agreement was first adopted in Berne, Switzerland. - Berne Convention
The European Union extended copyrights to life of the author plus seventy years in 1993, a full five years before the US did with the Sonny Bono act - European Copyright Harmonization
As mentioned elsewhere, the Finnish police acted independantly, with no input from any of those 'evil American copyright owners'
The anti-American whining is making you look stupid. Stop it.
Any device that perfoms all of those functions will perform them poorly. An MP3 player needs to be small and lightweight, while a PDA needs a relatively large rectangular surface for a screen, while a phone needs to be vaguely phone-shaped to reach from your ear to your mouth. The usage patterns for these classes of devices are different, and you can bet that if the phone companies are involved, you will have to pay a fee for just about everything (You can forget about surfing for free over your own wireless link). Also - this would put all of your eggs in one basket. If you dropped your 'Holy Grail' device while jogging with it, there goes your phone and PDA as well.
A pox on digital convergence! Any device that does everything would have to compromise so much it would be pretty much useless. Too big for an MP3 player, too small for a PDA, an awkward camera and the wrong shape for a phone. The key is not a 'Holy Grail' device, but individual ones that perform their own functions very well, and can communicate and integrate with each other. (Kind of like the modular Unix philosophy vs the monolithic Windows one)
Yes, I am shouting. Every friggin time a story like this comes up, someone trots out the 'you can't keep XP up long enough to download the service pack' line. Good GOD people, how long is it going to take for the painfully freaking obvious to sink in?
A hardware NAT/firewall box is the easiest portion of your network defense strategy. They're cheap and plentiful. Use one yourself and convince all of your family and friends to use one as well.
1. The spyware and ad complaints have been shown to be non-starters, so we're down to "the game might be unplayable sometime in the future". A valid complaint when and if it ever happens. But right now, that facts are that Valve has never orphaned any users through Steam, nor has given any indications that it ever will.
2. Valve bankrupt in five years? After releasing two games that set the standard for all that follow? Please - I'm expecting Half-Life 3 around then!
3. FWIW - I paid $59(CDN) for my copy, which included a rain check for a mouse (which was delayed in shipping). I've seen other games debut higher.
4. Steam's primary purpose is to give Valve their own distribution mechanism so they won't have to rely on a distributor to get their game out. The anti-piracy features were a nice 'add-on' for Valve. I read somewhere that Valve makes $30 on a Steam purchase vs. $7 on a box purchase. If that's true, Valve loses more money to their distributor than to piracy. It's simply not in Valve's best interest to use Steam for ads, spyware, or anything but delivering games.
I think you're a victim of bad information. I suggest that you do some fact-checking before spreading FUD next time.
I just can't help cringing whenever I see Novell associated with Linux. For the past ten years, Novell has leapt onto every industry fad at it's peak, proclaimed it as the saviour of the company, then watched it die underneath them . Anyone else remember SuperNOS? How about 'Netware - the fastest Java execution environment'? Or the Wordperfect debacle? Maybe we should try getting Novell interested in the wonderfullness of.Net.
Here's hoping that Novell can break it's loosing streak - and not drag Linux down with it.
The cult of Apple
on
The Cult of Mac
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Putting on a shirt and tie and carrying a briefcase won't make you smart
Wearing black leather and driving a Harley won't make you tough
Listening an indie band that no-one else has heard of doesn't make you an 'individual'
Swearing undying fealty to Apple ( or Sony or IBM...) doesn't make you 'hip' or 'cool'.
But these things will make you into a trend-humping fashion lemming.
Apple's core product isn't computers or electronics. It's elitism.
There, there. I'm Canadian, and I like you:-) Not everyone up here is a weepy, self-flagellating, achiever-despising socialist. (thank you for that one, BTW) Just most of us. Unfortunately.
There is no correlation between security and liberty
Blatantly untrue. Bruce Schneier talks about it constantly.
"The proper question to ask is whether the trade-off is worth it. Is the level of security gained worth the costs, whether in money, in liberties, in privacy or in convenience?" from his site
Also check out this article, all about the costs of security, liberties being one of them.
I also recommend subscribing to his Crypto-Gram newsletter.
how often do you ever see the originators of ideas become the primary winner (profit, corporate health) from those ideas?
How do you recognise pioneers? They're the ones with arrows in their backs. Just look at Farnsworth vs. RCA (television), Tesla vs Edison (AC power), Andreeson vs Microsoft (web browser).
[SCO vs Linux - ha - just kidding]
That being said, all many inventors want to do is to invent new stuff. Their time is best spent doing that, rather than working out business and marketing plans. I do wish that our society would give more attention and financial rewards to the true innovators, without needing to get hordes of lawyers involved.
Slashdot Mirror
A crowd of protestors gathered in front of the royal palace today to protest the decision to send troops to Freedonia. Police estimated the crowd at 10,000 people, while the protest leaders estimated 25,000.
It depends on the situation. If the crowd was throwing rocks at the police and swarming barricades, this blurb would be an attempt minimize their actions and show them in a favorable light. If the troops being sent over were actually army engineers and they were going to teach the locals how to build bridges, using the word 'troops' would imply some kind of forceful incursion, and would be misleading.
Bias is shown as much by what you don't say, as what you do say.
Colony farming planets, somewhat off the beaten track, have a lot more use for horses and cows than fancy gadgets.
Fancy gadgets such as the internal combustion engine?
Some farms use tractors, but many in the world today still use horses. When you're miles away from the nearest gas station, a horse pays for itself in a way that a tractor can't.
Now you're just showing off your ignorance. Every farm in North America today that has actual food production as a primary goal uses farm implements such as tractors. One farmer with modern machinery can out-produce a hundred with horses, which is what makes your 'colony farming planet' argument laughable. Machinery is more reliable and powerful than horses. Machinery doesn't get sick and die, and doesn't eat when you aren't using it.
Are we supposed to believe that a civilization advanced enough to build space ships could not come up with farm machines? Or that transporting horses (including water and feed) through space is easier than shipping equipment? That notion is ridiculous, and so was the show.
(Take note - you with the mod points)
What that the one where people would get out of a spaceship and onto a horse? No great mystery as to why people didn't buy into THAT.
As another former EDS employee, I'd like to verify and second that sentiment. You sir, are 100% correct.
'Specially with the 'BITE ME' parts.
As long as you don't lead people to believe that it actually heals anything, go ahead. You can't lie in order to make a sale. See: False Advertising
That's not government interference, that's enforcement of basic standards. That's best for everybody.
I'm of the opinion that most of the real basic stuff is done. It's going to take Huge Sums Of Money and Large Professional Staffs of Very Smart People to really kick over the next cycle of innovation.
Example: software. Sure: anyone can code stuff, but most of the simple things have been done. I'm sure someone in a garage somewhere will eventually find that one or two points ofentry, but most of the big innovations are going to come at very great expense with large teams of people - some doing programming, others QA, other hardware, bla bla bla, and a support staff and marketing group to make it happen and give it some penetration in the market.
Another example: nanotechnology. I don't see someone in a garage gettin' down with some electron microscope to build micro-buckyball bearings. Heck - he microscoe would eat up most of the garage, never mind the material science machines that made the damn things, andthe hyper-short wavelength lasers, etc. Back in the 1930s - sure - H & P could cobble together some electronics and build a fucking oscillator in a garage, but the kind of innovations in basic research needed today are mostly beyond the reach of some guy in a garage.
Don't forget that all of us have a huge lead on H&P in terms of knowledge availability (through the Internet), education and tools. You can build your own scanning tunnelling microscope, for example. To build something innovative today takes a greater achievement than it did in the 30's, but we have far more to draw on.
I don't think that it's gotten much tougher since H&P did their work. Consider the state and general knowledge of electronics in the 30's. Like then, to do something innovative today will take imagination, vision and persistence (probably in that order). Lots of work needs to be done by large, expensive teams, but imagination is cheap. And it's imagination that can show someone what he can build out of what he's got.
Simple - he's an idiot. :-)
Someone help me out here. Changing passwords on a regular basis is a 'generally accepted' security procedure. I don't understand why. The common rationale is that it makes passwords harder to guess, but I don't believe it does. If an attacker is working through a dictionary attack on an account, a password change is just as likely to make it easier to guess as harder.
Now if an account is compromised, a password change by the user would lock out the intruder. It's unlikely this would happen before damage was done. It's more likely that forced password changes would result in passwords written down and posted on stickies.
So - why force password changes?
Bah. This is more of an arguement against circumstantial evidence than against the evils of store discount cards. Nothing to see here.
It's scary how activity of destroying life is more accepted that creating it
Problem is, porn doesn't create life. Sex does (well, sometimes). The sex depicted in porn doesn't seem to have creating life as an objective. The goal of porn is physical gratification, not life. Linking porn to creating life is disingenuous at best.
The big problem with porn is that it is a caricature of the real thing - ie. sex with a live person. Porn is to sex as a roadrunner cartoon is to real life. Both exaggerate and distort; they don't represent or characterize.
How do you propose to implement such a policy in any western government?
I propose that our governments stop robbing it's citizens for the sake of things that only benefit a few. Police, fire, roads and basic welfare, sure. Entertainment and business bailouts, no.
Secondly, I propose that all government-supported monopolies be dismantled.
Thirdly, we can start working on allowing choice in provided services. Let an area vote on who does things like garbage pickup and snow clearing, along with how often.
You see, I believe that most people are smart enough to decide how to spend their own money. The product of one's hands deserves as much protection as the product as one's mouth. I realize that sentiment will get me labelled as some kind of wild-eyed radical in some places, but c'est la vie.
Free enterprise isnt concerned with truth or equality or insightfullness or universal access.
... here I thought that the role of the government was to ensure and maintain freedom for it's citizens, not for corporate entities. I'm sure that I heard that somewhere ...
Neither is the CBC. If we, as a society, have learned anything, it's that truth, equality, insightfullness and universal access comes from being able to choose from many different viewpoints and opinions. The CBC doesn't provide that. The CBC provides whatever thier programming directors, under the guidance of their superiors, give us.
The CBC is evidence that state-funded enterprise can have Freedom
Hmmm
I would recommend Canada uses the BBC as a model and we Canadians implement a MORE usefull and worthwhile broadcast system.
Commercial interests are anethma to worthwhile broadcasting.
Great - that's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. The problem is, what if someone disagrees? What if someone out there, a hapless, over-burdened Canadian taxpayer perhaps, doesn't agree? Can he decide to take his business elsewhere? Can he decide not to support the CBC? What if someone witheld a portion of his taxes because he didn't want to pay for someone else's entertainment? The cops would show up, with guns drawn, and confiscate anything of value, including children's toys - that's what would happen.
That is the core of the problem.
Don't like the CBC? tough.
Don't agree with their viewpoint? tough.
Not represented by the CBC? tough. You can choose not to watch or listen, but as a Canadian taxpayer, you will still be forced, via threat of arms, to pay for someone else's entertainment.
I heard something interesting recently wrt. the softwood lumber issue. It seems that some Canadian lumberyards close to the border are doing good business selling houses to Americans. Apparently it's cheaper to buy the house in Canada because when the peices get shipped over the border, it is taxed as a house, rather than as softwood lumber.
The anti-American whining is making you look stupid. Stop it.
Any device that perfoms all of those functions will perform them poorly. An MP3 player needs to be small and lightweight, while a PDA needs a relatively large rectangular surface for a screen, while a phone needs to be vaguely phone-shaped to reach from your ear to your mouth. The usage patterns for these classes of devices are different, and you can bet that if the phone companies are involved, you will have to pay a fee for just about everything (You can forget about surfing for free over your own wireless link). Also - this would put all of your eggs in one basket. If you dropped your 'Holy Grail' device while jogging with it, there goes your phone and PDA as well.
A pox on digital convergence! Any device that does everything would have to compromise so much it would be pretty much useless. Too big for an MP3 player, too small for a PDA, an awkward camera and the wrong shape for a phone. The key is not a 'Holy Grail' device, but individual ones that perform their own functions very well, and can communicate and integrate with each other. (Kind of like the modular Unix philosophy vs the monolithic Windows one)
USE A FIREWALL.
Yes, I am shouting. Every friggin time a story like this comes up, someone trots out the 'you can't keep XP up long enough to download the service pack' line. Good GOD people, how long is it going to take for the painfully freaking obvious to sink in?
A hardware NAT/firewall box is the easiest portion of your network defense strategy. They're cheap and plentiful. Use one yourself and convince all of your family and friends to use one as well.
Try a 'Tax Freedom Day' calculator here:
TFD Calc
also look here for some good Cdn. tax info:
Cdn. Taxpayers Federation
In short - lots.
I resent that. We produce a lot more than snow.
... that's about it.
Bureaucrats
Hockey Players
Comedians
ummm
Take a deep breath. Please.
1. The spyware and ad complaints have been shown to be non-starters, so we're down to "the game might be unplayable sometime in the future". A valid complaint when and if it ever happens. But right now, that facts are that Valve has never orphaned any users through Steam, nor has given any indications that it ever will.
2. Valve bankrupt in five years? After releasing two games that set the standard for all that follow? Please - I'm expecting Half-Life 3 around then!
3. FWIW - I paid $59(CDN) for my copy, which included a rain check for a mouse (which was delayed in shipping). I've seen other games debut higher.
4. Steam's primary purpose is to give Valve their own distribution mechanism so they won't have to rely on a distributor to get their game out. The anti-piracy features were a nice 'add-on' for Valve. I read somewhere that Valve makes $30 on a Steam purchase vs. $7 on a box purchase. If that's true, Valve loses more money to their distributor than to piracy. It's simply not in Valve's best interest to use Steam for ads, spyware, or anything but delivering games.
I think you're a victim of bad information. I suggest that you do some fact-checking before spreading FUD next time.
I just can't help cringing whenever I see Novell associated with Linux. For the past ten years, Novell has leapt onto every industry fad at it's peak, proclaimed it as the saviour of the company, then watched it die underneath them . Anyone else remember SuperNOS? How about 'Netware - the fastest Java execution environment'? Or the Wordperfect debacle? Maybe we should try getting Novell interested in the wonderfullness of .Net.
Here's hoping that Novell can break it's loosing streak - and not drag Linux down with it.
But these things will make you into a trend-humping fashion lemming.
Apple's core product isn't computers or electronics. It's elitism.
There, there. I'm Canadian, and I like you :-)
Not everyone up here is a weepy, self-flagellating, achiever-despising socialist. (thank you for that one, BTW) Just most of us.
Unfortunately.
There is no correlation between security and liberty
Blatantly untrue. Bruce Schneier talks about it constantly.
"The proper question to ask is whether the trade-off is worth it. Is the level of security gained worth the costs, whether in money, in liberties, in privacy or in convenience?"
from his site
Also check out this article, all about the costs of security, liberties being one of them.
I also recommend subscribing to his Crypto-Gram newsletter.
how often do you ever see the originators of ideas become the primary winner (profit, corporate health) from those ideas?
How do you recognise pioneers? They're the ones with arrows in their backs. Just look at Farnsworth vs. RCA (television), Tesla vs Edison (AC power), Andreeson vs Microsoft (web browser).
[SCO vs Linux - ha - just kidding]
That being said, all many inventors want to do is to invent new stuff. Their time is best spent doing that, rather than working out business and marketing plans. I do wish that our society would give more attention and financial rewards to the true innovators, without needing to get hordes of lawyers involved.