Re:Interesting comment in related news...
on
Microsoft's Future
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· Score: 1
"The point is not to defeat every lunatic who wants to pin the [phrase "Drug Producer"] (or Nazi) to his shirt, the point is to wipe out the world wide organization that allows them to carefully plan large-scale [Production and Shipment]. The point is to wipe out the leadership. The point is to eliminate governments who sponsor [Drug Production], and use [Drug Funded] groups as part of their military."
Bracketed language altered by me. Try reading it this way for just a moment.
You're right, they are not the same morally, nor functionally. However, they are both asymetrical and ambiguous and stem from root causes that are difficult to identify and eliminate.
I'm a rather hard core liberal here. Missle defense is one of the issues that he seriously screwed up.
At the time I accepted it under the idea that testing is always good. But that testing has opened the door to get things totally out of control.
The Bush administrations plans to begin implementation would be bad enough if the thing even worked, which it doesn't.
I have two questions here. 1. Why would any country spend a whole lot of money to develop a weapon that a. is very high profile to develop, b.is extremely expensive, and c. (as someone noted earlier) has a return address on it and d. (assuming billions of dollars is enough to make this bloody thing work) is totally useless.
Instead they could spend a fraction and get a nice suitcase and fly off the coast of LA and have some real missle shield bypassing fun.
Anyone for a pork barrel masterpiece of a Maginot Line?
Actually it really really didn't. It was an idealistic ploy to prove that the February revolution was, in fact a worker's revolution. It was instituted briefly and caused among other things, an incredible inflation of wages and benifits (you get eleted by promising people stuff that you can't afford; how very democratic)that the state could not afford. Shortly thereafter, they put loyal party members in charge to tow the party line directly and therebye centralize administrative control.
Gorbechev tried it in order to eliminate corruption and increase productivity in the late eighties. It, again, rapidly inflated and reduced productivity as well as recurrent strikes.
I'm looking at building a system for general use, but primarily as a platform for video editing. I've been kind of waiting for a dual Athlon system 'cause I need something with lots of speed.
I need something with lots and lots of speed, lots of memory and multiple large hard drive. I'll probably run Win2k as a my primary OS (it seems to support the widest range of video capture cards).
Can I get some/. opinions on system bases for this application? I'm not married to athlon or p4 and since I'm not certain the application will take advantage of multi-cpu's, I'm flexible there too.
Just looking for some opinions before I shell out lots of cash.
You guys have good points, but I think that we're still trying to solve a problem within the current paradigm rather than creating a new one.
What about distributed power grids? Each building has its own solar panels(panels which can be transparent from the inside could serve as windows) and other power generation (windmills). Then each building might draw power from a general grid on some days and distribute it back to the grid on others.
Doesn't obviate the need for power plants, but does reduce the need dramatically. And I think a distributed system might be more scalable and robust.
Sounds like a solution from another technology, hmm...
I disagree with you on several points, but the one on which I differ the with you the most is the idea of public executions. I think that they SHOULD be on the cover of every newspaper and broadcast live on every channel.
I'll give you two good reasons.
1. You think our court system is so flawless that you can risk disposing of an innocent person and you're so self-rightcheous that you think you deserve the revenge? Fine, you can watch. It's not obscene to kill, but it's obscene to have to see the consequences of your judgment? I think not.
2. For all of you fine people who think we need to have a deterrant to maintain civilization? Fine, let's see this deterrant. Let's show the world what the consequences really are.
See the thing about nature is that it's always in balance. We are part of nature and anything we do affects the future of "natural" development.
Populations reach equilibrium with their environments no matter how they develop (are developed).
The question is, do we want to preserve the natural status quo? In which case we are unnaturally deciding that there is a "natural" state of nature that WE need to preserve. And why? To save our conscience from the idea that we may have had an unnatural affect on the world around us? People, take a look around, the jury's not exactly still out on that one.
Instead, we can decide what we want nature to be, how it is best for us. Does that mean protecting the environment? Yes! After all, your mom always told you to pick up after yourselves. Does that mean preserving the variety of species? Yes! Does that mean eliminating species that cause us some form of harm? Maybe. After all, if we're going to alter nature, might as well be to our benifit.
By this rational, essentially every media industry could claim a percentage of any number of consumer tools, from a computer to a VCR to a bloody piece of paper and a pencil.
There's just no way to draw a line. Media is reproducable people, get over it!
If someone is using a technology to create their own cottage industry to make large profits off of unlicensed media, then fine. Bust 'em. But this buisness of cracking down on people that copy and trade media is just crap.
You're saying that every input x bytes has to be compressable to y bytes where y < x. But, in that case (since by definition there are fewer y's than x's) more than one x will have to have the same value of y. Which would mean that there is no way to decompress to the appropriate x value.
Either that or for some values of x, x = y.
But if the funky logic of the press release were correct, wouldn't you be able to compress indefinately?
Please, someone slap me if I'm not following this!
I had that one in cartridge version for my commadore 64.
Ah the commadore. Simpler days...
Re:Sorry, Dude. You're not a Communist.
on
Spidergoats
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· Score: 1
The communist thing is just my sig. Most of the things I have to say (at least in their underlying principles) fall under that category.
Anyway, what I'm talking about is a situation where there just isn't enough to go around; in that case I'll fight for what I can get.
Or, how about abstinence? That's the lowest-tech form of birth control that I know of. And it's the most foolproof.
Yeah, it's real nice to prech abstinence. Yes it is the most foolproof method. But you can't just tell a group of people, "Oh, I realize your land won't produce enough food to sustain you and you don't have the wealth to move and you don't have the education to build the wealth, so I guess you're just gonna die. Oh and by the way, make sure that none of you have sex, because you might produce offspring that would suffer the same fate as you!"
Now I agree with you (or whoever that has mentioned this point) that just giving starving people food is not a long term solution. But spreading out wealth and education to try to ensure that fewer large groups get left behind not only will increase there ability to compete, it will also increase markets, which will increase the size of the available pie to be eaten.
Besides starving people get angry, and angry people get violent. Just ask Marie Antoinette.
Yeah, I've got PacBell. It took me FIVE calls (with about 30 min.- 1 hour on hold each time) to get them to get the order right.
I'm just praying nothing goes wrong 'cause I could get old real fast waiting to get it fixed.
Dangerous Population Explosion
on
Spidergoats
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· Score: 1
Humans are all always dangerously conflicted. Except for the really scary ones who have true belief (as in religion).
Our major conflict is with the pathos we have for other people and their families who are going to die because they don't and never will have enough to eat, and our natural desire to protect ourselves and our families by hoarding our wealth and status to stay alive and procreat. Is this wrong?
I don't know. I know that I will always protect myself and my family before I help someone else. After that we encounter the questions of can we help someone else and how do we? I don't think that we have answers to those.
It's ok to say that we don't know how to act. But to refuse admit that under the argument that the people we don't know how to help are stupid and that they should just move is simplistic and ignorant.
People who cannot feed themselves do not have the wealth to pick up and move to another, better location. In addition, what country would accept millions of refugees from a starving country, on the basis that they are hungry and need farmland?
Many people around the world are looking at exploding populations and hunger, but a people who cannot feed themselves do not have access to birth control, which would give them the freedom to intelligently consider the repurcussions of reproductions. Contraception and abortion (yes abortion) give a society reproductive options that help control exploding populations and societies time to develop new economic options.
Without those options they simply have to rely on high infant mortality.
Slashdot Mirror
"The point is not to defeat every lunatic who wants to pin the [phrase "Drug Producer"] (or Nazi) to his shirt, the point is to wipe out the world wide organization that allows them to carefully plan large-scale [Production and Shipment]. The point is to wipe out the leadership. The point is to eliminate governments who sponsor [Drug Production], and use [Drug Funded] groups as part of their military."
Bracketed language altered by me. Try reading it this way for just a moment.
You're right, they are not the same morally, nor functionally. However, they are both asymetrical and ambiguous and stem from root causes that are difficult to identify and eliminate.
1. Users have to download JVM to use Java.
2. Many users have slow connections and/or are reluctant to use Java.
3. Designers decide that they had better not use Java since most users do not have it installed.
3. Java go byebye.
4. It's okay though, because we have C#!
In this way, Microsoft can reduce the user base from both the end user and the developer standpoint.
At the time I accepted it under the idea that testing is always good. But that testing has opened the door to get things totally out of control.
The Bush administrations plans to begin implementation would be bad enough if the thing even worked, which it doesn't.
I have two questions here. 1. Why would any country spend a whole lot of money to develop a weapon that a. is very high profile to develop, b.is extremely expensive, and c. (as someone noted earlier) has a return address on it and d. (assuming billions of dollars is enough to make this bloody thing work) is totally useless.
Instead they could spend a fraction and get a nice suitcase and fly off the coast of LA and have some real missle shield bypassing fun.
Anyone for a pork barrel masterpiece of a Maginot Line?
Worked pretty well by all accounts.
Actually it really really didn't. It was an idealistic ploy to prove that the February revolution was, in fact a worker's revolution. It was instituted briefly and caused among other things, an incredible inflation of wages and benifits (you get eleted by promising people stuff that you can't afford; how very democratic)that the state could not afford. Shortly thereafter, they put loyal party members in charge to tow the party line directly and therebye centralize administrative control.
Gorbechev tried it in order to eliminate corruption and increase productivity in the late eighties. It, again, rapidly inflated and reduced productivity as well as recurrent strikes.
I'm looking at building a system for general use, but primarily as a platform for video editing. I've been kind of waiting for a dual Athlon system 'cause I need something with lots of speed.
I need something with lots and lots of speed, lots of memory and multiple large hard drive. I'll probably run Win2k as a my primary OS (it seems to support the widest range of video capture cards).
Can I get some /. opinions on system bases for this application? I'm not married to athlon or p4 and since I'm not certain the application will take advantage of multi-cpu's, I'm flexible there too.
Just looking for some opinions before I shell out lots of cash.
Thanks
What about distributed power grids? Each building has its own solar panels(panels which can be transparent from the inside could serve as windows) and other power generation (windmills). Then each building might draw power from a general grid on some days and distribute it back to the grid on others.
Doesn't obviate the need for power plants, but does reduce the need dramatically. And I think a distributed system might be more scalable and robust.
Sounds like a solution from another technology, hmm...
MMMMmmmmmmm, porn.
I'll give you two good reasons.
1. You think our court system is so flawless that you can risk disposing of an innocent person and you're so self-rightcheous that you think you deserve the revenge? Fine, you can watch. It's not obscene to kill, but it's obscene to have to see the consequences of your judgment? I think not.
2. For all of you fine people who think we need to have a deterrant to maintain civilization? Fine, let's see this deterrant. Let's show the world what the consequences really are.
See the thing about nature is that it's always in balance. We are part of nature and anything we do affects the future of "natural" development.
Populations reach equilibrium with their environments no matter how they develop (are developed).
The question is, do we want to preserve the natural status quo? In which case we are unnaturally deciding that there is a "natural" state of nature that WE need to preserve. And why? To save our conscience from the idea that we may have had an unnatural affect on the world around us? People, take a look around, the jury's not exactly still out on that one.
Instead, we can decide what we want nature to be, how it is best for us. Does that mean protecting the environment? Yes! After all, your mom always told you to pick up after yourselves. Does that mean preserving the variety of species? Yes! Does that mean eliminating species that cause us some form of harm? Maybe. After all, if we're going to alter nature, might as well be to our benifit.
There's just no way to draw a line. Media is reproducable people, get over it!
If someone is using a technology to create their own cottage industry to make large profits off of unlicensed media, then fine. Bust 'em. But this buisness of cracking down on people that copy and trade media is just crap.
You're saying that every input x bytes has to be compressable to y bytes where y < x. But, in that case (since by definition there are fewer y's than x's) more than one x will have to have the same value of y. Which would mean that there is no way to decompress to the appropriate x value.
Either that or for some values of x, x = y.
But if the funky logic of the press release were correct, wouldn't you be able to compress indefinately?
Please, someone slap me if I'm not following this!
Ah the commadore. Simpler days...
Anyway, what I'm talking about is a situation where there just isn't enough to go around; in that case I'll fight for what I can get.
Or, how about abstinence? That's the lowest-tech form of birth control that I know of. And it's the most foolproof.
Yeah, it's real nice to prech abstinence. Yes it is the most foolproof method. But you can't just tell a group of people, "Oh, I realize your land won't produce enough food to sustain you and you don't have the wealth to move and you don't have the education to build the wealth, so I guess you're just gonna die. Oh and by the way, make sure that none of you have sex, because you might produce offspring that would suffer the same fate as you!"
Now I agree with you (or whoever that has mentioned this point) that just giving starving people food is not a long term solution. But spreading out wealth and education to try to ensure that fewer large groups get left behind not only will increase there ability to compete, it will also increase markets, which will increase the size of the available pie to be eaten.
Besides starving people get angry, and angry people get violent. Just ask Marie Antoinette.
Yeah, I've got PacBell. It took me FIVE calls (with about 30 min.- 1 hour on hold each time) to get them to get the order right.
I'm just praying nothing goes wrong 'cause I could get old real fast waiting to get it fixed.
Humans are all always dangerously conflicted. Except for the really scary ones who have true belief (as in religion). Our major conflict is with the pathos we have for other people and their families who are going to die because they don't and never will have enough to eat, and our natural desire to protect ourselves and our families by hoarding our wealth and status to stay alive and procreat. Is this wrong? I don't know. I know that I will always protect myself and my family before I help someone else. After that we encounter the questions of can we help someone else and how do we? I don't think that we have answers to those. It's ok to say that we don't know how to act. But to refuse admit that under the argument that the people we don't know how to help are stupid and that they should just move is simplistic and ignorant. People who cannot feed themselves do not have the wealth to pick up and move to another, better location. In addition, what country would accept millions of refugees from a starving country, on the basis that they are hungry and need farmland? Many people around the world are looking at exploding populations and hunger, but a people who cannot feed themselves do not have access to birth control, which would give them the freedom to intelligently consider the repurcussions of reproductions. Contraception and abortion (yes abortion) give a society reproductive options that help control exploding populations and societies time to develop new economic options. Without those options they simply have to rely on high infant mortality.