I think Star Wars material has explained away this Lucas goof by saying there's an harder route through the Kessel Run that's much shorter, but also much more dangerous.
Yeah? How long will it take to debug it? How long will it take to get this custom-made Linux certified for DoD use? What is your definition of "easy to use"? Easiest of all to use is the most annoyingly ubiquitous commercial OS and Office apps, which most people already know how to use before they join. Who's gonna teach thoswe dopes in the finance corps how to use this custom OS? Who do they call when something doesn't work? Linus himself? Will the army really want to pay for its own in-house OS tech support? Where will they find enough people to man the phones who know how this particular custom-built version of Linux works?
Nitpicks:
DOD can contact NSA for a copy of their Linux. Surely the NSA knows how to put together a hardened system. If they don't, I want my money back.
Windows/Office isn't necessarily easier to use, ceteris paribus; it's just ubiquitous.
You're ignoring the fact that most FOSS apps are work-a-likes to their Windows cousins. If an IE user can click on links in Mozilla, surely a Word user can set the font to Bold in OOo or Abiword. If you're talking about modding out their desktop with fancy screensavers and shit, fuck that. This is a job, not their home computer.
Hans Reiser said his company will support any Linux. He also recommends not getting support from the vendor due to conflict of interest problems. If the Army said "Well, we think this NSA Linux is the shit", I bet a number of Linux support companies would bid on it.
Who would the users call? First, their local sysadmin; second, the Linux support contractor.
Drive letters are useful for networking, say, if you migrate your apps from the old server to the new server, your clients still just see "R:\appz". However, if machines could simply have more than one Windows name, like in Unix land, then you could use UNC so that all you did was make \\Appz point to \\FS2 instead of \\FS1.
It's definitely critical to me. I've been looking for a job for the last month and the best places to look are on the Net. Of course, dial-up is sufficient for that... but I also run my own little server (mail, web) on my connection. Consequently DSL is the only legal option since Roadrunner's idea of residential "service" is a cold ass ramming.
I shouldn't have to lie, cheat, and steal to get great service. This is why I use Open Source software. This is why I chose DSL over Cable, despite the bandwidth and latency differences. The cost is the same with DSL and I get great TOS/AUP.
I think you misunderstood him. He's not making an appeal to the future as justification for a present claim. He's just saying that while it may be a useful heuristic to presently relegate theories-without-predictions to the proverbial "corner", it is the height of folly to forget old speculations altogether.
Put differently, it's like burning all sci-fi books that don't make falsifiable claims. The smart thing to do is to look at some of the dreams and see if you can make them happen.
Banks only loan out the non-reserve portion (and, actually, too much loaning out is inflationary because money is created in the process, not just "moved").
Banks tend to make less investments in new business than entrepreneurs. This isn't always the case, of course... (c.f., the oil shock of the 70s and investment in Latin America).
Redistributing the wealth at the time of death allows for both demand and supply side growth; whereas, sticking it in the bank tends to be only a supply side gain. The supply side is needed for long-term growth. The demand side is needed for short-term growth and keeping people eating.:)
On the libertarian side of the argument, over-concentration of wealth in the upper classes is a de facto monopoly and therefore inefficient and bad for the free market.
1) Linux predates FreeBSD, so the BSD hackers who went on to work on FreeBSD should've quit BSD and moved over to Linux instead.;)
2) It remains to be seen if the message passing overhead of the microkernel can be made small enough to rival the throughput/latency balance of a quality monolithic kernel. That's sort of Linus' challenge to the microkernel community. Having said that, Linux is becoming more of an evolved blend of mono- and micro- architectures. Modules, user-mode Linux, user filesystems, etc. tend to blur the line between the two.
... when some external force screws up the market so that the man with the most money isn't the one who provides the most value... as long as we have government, we will have those who take more than they give. The goal is to keep that negative effect as small as possible.
Eh, but don't forget the aristocracy problem. Putting money into a bank for your little brats does decidedly less good overall for the economy than investing in new business. This (among other reasons) is why Bill Gates, Sr. and I agree that a reasonable estate tax is important for meritocracy in the free market.
The ancient Egyptians built great pyramids. Would you like to have built them? Not I.
Actually... the Egyptian laborers were well-paid, well-fed, and guaranteed a steady job for a very long time unless they screwed up or there was a huge drought or something. There may have been some slave labor involved in some of the simpler tasks, but for the most part, the people working on the pyramids were paid, skilled labor. It was considered an honor to build the future resting place of the king.
Close, but that's not 100% accurate. Chlorine and other necessities for water treatment have been on the sanctions list since the Gulf War. Of course, had Hussein been willfully compliant I'm sure the sanctions would've been lifted years ago. But there's still a goodly amount of time between: 1) when the U.S. bombed the plants and 2) when Iraq could've reasonably completed construction. Any deaths between [1] and [2] are on the Pentagon's hands because the Pentagon could have easily chosen not to bomb them.
Of course, some one will inevitably say "well, if Hussein hadn't started the war in the first place...". That's bullshit because that's equivalent to saying "well, since Hussein started the war, we are justified in taking any action." So, we'd be justified in soaking Baghdad with VX gas? Just because someone else broke the rules doesn't make it ok for you to break them too.
Nah, the revenge is because Hussein tried to have Bush, Sr. assassinated. How do we know this is part of it? GWB says of Hussein, "After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad":
That said, I still think there are legitimate reasons for a war against Hussein if diplomatic resolution failed. However, diplomacy-backed-by-threat had NOT been exhausted yet when Bush & Blair decided to wage war... and that's my beef.
In the modern world, the word "democracy" is almost always used as shorthand for "democratic republic". The "democratic" bit is more important than the "republic" part because it distinguishes from, say, an "aristocratic republic", such as the Romans had.
Of course, our two party system has some insulation features akin to an aristocracy, but it also has some democratic ones (such as genuine primaries). That said, I still think a multi-party system better counters aristocratic tendencies in parties.
Anyone who believes this is is as clueless as you seem to be. The only reason that "diplomacy" has shown any success whatsoever in the last 6 months is because George Bush had essentially put a loaded gun to Saddam's head and has been slowly pulling back the hammer.
Right, and had disarmament been Bush's goal ala Res. 1441, continued build up on the border probably would have been enough to convince Hussein to go along with Blix and co. That Bush could not wait for diplomacy-under-threat to work is indicative of his real goal: revenge for his "Daddy" via regime change. 1441 was simply a means to an end... disarmament was never the goal at all. I think, and this is pure speculation, that the Bush administration never wanted Hussein to comply, just so that he would have some justification for invasion. Hussein's begrudging compliance simply muddied the clarity of this justification in the international community.
The real failure of the Bush administration was its inability to paint Hussein as the tyrant he is. His record on human rights is appalling. Instead of using abstract and absolute terms such as "evil" and "dictator", evidenciary claims such as paying off suicide bomber families, murdering the opposition, etc. (I saw a lot of this on PBS Frontline) would have been a much more convincing argument for the anti-war folk -- many of whom care very deeply for human rights.
Instead, he pissed everyone off with his 800 lbs. gorilla attitude, false support for Res. 1441 (false in that it was not their goal at all), and inability to sufficiently convey even his own "compassionate conservatism" for human rights. Diplomacy has never been a strength of this administration, however laudable its goals.
Eh, I think the "middle" position of caps has far worse ramifications than either loser pays or the present situation, primarily because the States still won't be doing their job of licensing and revoking licenses... sort of like they don't revoke corporate charters even in the case of gross systemic problems at a given "evil" corporation.
After all, the cost of malpractice insurance has remained flat for the last 10 years and the number of doctors has been steadily increasing, not decreasing, even in areas supposedly hurt worst by the current situation (e.g., the Valley in Texas). Thus, unless the industry can show some evidence that a doomsday situation is really around the corner, I'll continue to view their arguments as "chicken little" arguments designed to hedge their profits at the expense of patients and doctors.
I wouldn't have a problem with a well thought out loser pays solution, so long as only frivolous or fraudulant losers had to pay. For example, I don't think the the government should have to pay the ACLU's lawyer fees just b/c some law was ruled unconstitutional... that's just silly. However, former Sen. McGovern should've been able to collect for fees related to defending against the lawsuit where the guy got in a fight on his hotel's premises and sued because "there wasn't enough security".
The US issue is that we don't have a loser pays legal system so doctors order many, many tests that are not required in order to avoid a career ending trip in front of a jury that might view them as a deep pocket and impoverish them, destroying their practice.
Actually, the underlying problem is that States do not do a good job of investigating and revoking licenses of quacks. Furthermore, they don't have a good way of sharing licensing databases across state lines.
What the insurance lobby doesn't want you to know is that the vast majority of malpractice claims are owed due to only a handful of doctors, some of whom still have a license with 4+ claims won against them! However, if the insurers can keep their overall trial costs down, it will discourage both legitimate and silly claims against them while allowing them to charge MORE for malpractice insurance for licensed quacks. Lastly, the States won't have to spend more money on the licensing boards which sounds good in a recession.
The losers are claimees, who may not be able to recoup enough money to pay for a crippled life (or whathaveyou) and patients in general since the quacks will still be out there, insured as much as ever...
Right, and child labor is not a 100% Dubya-style evil like it's always painted to be. Sometimes, in poor countries, the choice is: 1) the whole family starves or 2) the kids have to work. The question is whether that labor is fair, age-appropriate, allows some time for school, and whether it might lead toward a rewarding vocational career or missing limbs.
If anything, in the U.S., older kids aren't working enough and don't have enough responsibility in their talents: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
The very first one I bought burnt out, so I took it back to Target and exchanged it. The rest of them have lasted (well, since January, anyway). BTW, these are G.E. bulbs that fit in "normal" size sockets, just in case there is any confusion.
Slashdot Mirror
I think Star Wars material has explained away this Lucas goof by saying there's an harder route through the Kessel Run that's much shorter, but also much more dangerous.
Anyone have a reference?
-l
Nitpicks:
-l
Drive letters are useful for networking, say, if you migrate your apps from the old server to the new server, your clients still just see "R:\appz". However, if machines could simply have more than one Windows name, like in Unix land, then you could use UNC so that all you did was make \\Appz point to \\FS2 instead of \\FS1.
-l
a punk Eagle Scout. now that's an amusing image!
-l
It's definitely critical to me. I've been looking for a job for the last month and the best places to look are on the Net. Of course, dial-up is sufficient for that... but I also run my own little server (mail, web) on my connection. Consequently DSL is the only legal option since Roadrunner's idea of residential "service" is a cold ass ramming.
I shouldn't have to lie, cheat, and steal to get great service. This is why I use Open Source software. This is why I chose DSL over Cable, despite the bandwidth and latency differences. The cost is the same with DSL and I get great TOS/AUP.
Anyway, randomness,
-l
I think you misunderstood him. He's not making an appeal to the future as justification for a present claim. He's just saying that while it may be a useful heuristic to presently relegate theories-without-predictions to the proverbial "corner", it is the height of folly to forget old speculations altogether.
Put differently, it's like burning all sci-fi books that don't make falsifiable claims. The smart thing to do is to look at some of the dreams and see if you can make them happen.
-l
Right, which is why I made my little bitch comment about the BSD guys switching to Linux. Irony is not a metal. :)
-l
-l
1) Linux predates FreeBSD, so the BSD hackers who went on to work on FreeBSD should've quit BSD and moved over to Linux instead. ;)
2) It remains to be seen if the message passing overhead of the microkernel can be made small enough to rival the throughput/latency balance of a quality monolithic kernel. That's sort of Linus' challenge to the microkernel community. Having said that, Linux is becoming more of an evolved blend of mono- and micro- architectures. Modules, user-mode Linux, user filesystems, etc. tend to blur the line between the two.
-l
reminds me of Explorers! http://us.imdb.com/Title?0089114
-l
Eh, but don't forget the aristocracy problem. Putting money into a bank for your little brats does decidedly less good overall for the economy than investing in new business. This (among other reasons) is why Bill Gates, Sr. and I agree that a reasonable estate tax is important for meritocracy in the free market.
Reference: http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript203_fu ll.html
-l
A nitpick:
The ancient Egyptians built great pyramids. Would you like to have built them? Not I.
Actually... the Egyptian laborers were well-paid, well-fed, and guaranteed a steady job for a very long time unless they screwed up or there was a huge drought or something. There may have been some slave labor involved in some of the simpler tasks, but for the most part, the people working on the pyramids were paid, skilled labor. It was considered an honor to build the future resting place of the king.
Cheers,
-l
Close, but that's not 100% accurate. Chlorine and other necessities for water treatment have been on the sanctions list since the Gulf War. Of course, had Hussein been willfully compliant I'm sure the sanctions would've been lifted years ago. But there's still a goodly amount of time between: 1) when the U.S. bombed the plants and 2) when Iraq could've reasonably completed construction. Any deaths between [1] and [2] are on the Pentagon's hands because the Pentagon could have easily chosen not to bomb them.
Of course, some one will inevitably say "well, if Hussein hadn't started the war in the first place...". That's bullshit because that's equivalent to saying "well, since Hussein started the war, we are justified in taking any action." So, we'd be justified in soaking Baghdad with VX gas? Just because someone else broke the rules doesn't make it ok for you to break them too.
$0.02USD,
-l
Nah, the revenge is because Hussein tried to have Bush, Sr. assassinated. How do we know this is part of it? GWB says of Hussein, "After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad":
w ar .talk/
:)
9 30 fr_archive02
http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/27/bush.
Here's an analysis of the attempt (which I haven't read yet cause it's long and I've got more crap to do today...
http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?archive/020
That said, I still think there are legitimate reasons for a war against Hussein if diplomatic resolution failed. However, diplomacy-backed-by-threat had NOT been exhausted yet when Bush & Blair decided to wage war... and that's my beef.
-l
In the modern world, the word "democracy" is almost always used as shorthand for "democratic republic". The "democratic" bit is more important than the "republic" part because it distinguishes from, say, an "aristocratic republic", such as the Romans had.
Of course, our two party system has some insulation features akin to an aristocracy, but it also has some democratic ones (such as genuine primaries). That said, I still think a multi-party system better counters aristocratic tendencies in parties.
$0.02USD,
-l
Right, and had disarmament been Bush's goal ala Res. 1441, continued build up on the border probably would have been enough to convince Hussein to go along with Blix and co. That Bush could not wait for diplomacy-under-threat to work is indicative of his real goal: revenge for his "Daddy" via regime change. 1441 was simply a means to an end... disarmament was never the goal at all. I think, and this is pure speculation, that the Bush administration never wanted Hussein to comply, just so that he would have some justification for invasion. Hussein's begrudging compliance simply muddied the clarity of this justification in the international community.
The real failure of the Bush administration was its inability to paint Hussein as the tyrant he is. His record on human rights is appalling. Instead of using abstract and absolute terms such as "evil" and "dictator", evidenciary claims such as paying off suicide bomber families, murdering the opposition, etc. (I saw a lot of this on PBS Frontline) would have been a much more convincing argument for the anti-war folk -- many of whom care very deeply for human rights.
Instead, he pissed everyone off with his 800 lbs. gorilla attitude, false support for Res. 1441 (false in that it was not their goal at all), and inability to sufficiently convey even his own "compassionate conservatism" for human rights. Diplomacy has never been a strength of this administration, however laudable its goals.
-l
Eh, that's what I think when I think "grok".
-l
Oh man, I'm so excited about:
gimp2.0_x86-64 provides gimp
gimp2.0_x86-32 provides gimp
yes, the little things in life...
-l
Eh, I think the "middle" position of caps has far worse ramifications than either loser pays or the present situation, primarily because the States still won't be doing their job of licensing and revoking licenses... sort of like they don't revoke corporate charters even in the case of gross systemic problems at a given "evil" corporation.
After all, the cost of malpractice insurance has remained flat for the last 10 years and the number of doctors has been steadily increasing, not decreasing, even in areas supposedly hurt worst by the current situation (e.g., the Valley in Texas). Thus, unless the industry can show some evidence that a doomsday situation is really around the corner, I'll continue to view their arguments as "chicken little" arguments designed to hedge their profits at the expense of patients and doctors.
I wouldn't have a problem with a well thought out loser pays solution, so long as only frivolous or fraudulant losers had to pay. For example, I don't think the the government should have to pay the ACLU's lawyer fees just b/c some law was ruled unconstitutional... that's just silly. However, former Sen. McGovern should've been able to collect for fees related to defending against the lawsuit where the guy got in a fight on his hotel's premises and sued because "there wasn't enough security".
That sound reasonable to you?
-l
Oh I wasn't saying it was the same as loser pays. I was arguing that the "tort reform" touted by those currently in power is a masquerade, that's all.
-l
Actually, the underlying problem is that States do not do a good job of investigating and revoking licenses of quacks. Furthermore, they don't have a good way of sharing licensing databases across state lines.
What the insurance lobby doesn't want you to know is that the vast majority of malpractice claims are owed due to only a handful of doctors, some of whom still have a license with 4+ claims won against them! However, if the insurers can keep their overall trial costs down, it will discourage both legitimate and silly claims against them while allowing them to charge MORE for malpractice insurance for licensed quacks. Lastly, the States won't have to spend more money on the licensing boards which sounds good in a recession.
The losers are claimees, who may not be able to recoup enough money to pay for a crippled life (or whathaveyou) and patients in general since the quacks will still be out there, insured as much as ever...
-l
Right, and child labor is not a 100% Dubya-style evil like it's always painted to be. Sometimes, in poor countries, the choice is: 1) the whole family starves or 2) the kids have to work. The question is whether that labor is fair, age-appropriate, allows some time for school, and whether it might lead toward a rewarding vocational career or missing limbs.
If anything, in the U.S., older kids aren't working enough and don't have enough responsibility in their talents: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
$0.02USD,
-l
hehehe I dunno what the mozilla mailer is capable of, but I have Evolution blacklisting several non-English character sets. You should give it a shot!
-l
"Risked" is a strong word.
-l
The very first one I bought burnt out, so I took it back to Target and exchanged it. The rest of them have lasted (well, since January, anyway). BTW, these are G.E. bulbs that fit in "normal" size sockets, just in case there is any confusion.
-l