Whatever the intent, it's a moot point. The point is that the workers are helped. The standard of living increases.
Spoken like a true imperialist! This is the same sort of argument the colonial empires used to justify their actions in the past. It was a dishonest self-serving justification then and it has not improved with age.
I suppose that given a choice between starvation and feudal subjugation one would choose not to starve. At the same time, it is highly patronizing to claim that the expoited are better off as a result. Sure, they will live a bit longer, but the quality of that life is far from the comfortable middle-class lifestyle most of us here at/. enjoy.
And they are free-thinking humans who should be allowed to make thier own decisions without having to worry about all-knowing western do-gooders (or an oppressive government).
You might be right if it was a freely-made, fair choice. Unfortunately, the article indicates that the workers do not have much by way of options. They can choose to starve or choose to work is a sweatshop. The women get a third option - they can choose to become prostitutes.
Are you sure that you read the same article I did?
I liked the No Logo book. Naomi Klein takes examples of child/slave/appalingly cheap labor for making IBM hard disks (if I remember correctly). She mentions China as one of the top countries for cheap, slave AND child labor.
It is a good book. I learned a great deal and she documents all of her sources with an extensive bibliography. While there are many potential upsides to globalization of manufacturing and trade, we in the first world have really failed the people in the third world. We have relaxed the restrictions on capital, but not raised the bar on things like environmental standards and working conditions. Who would have thought that feudalism was a viable alternative in 2002!
It is a shame that the moderator who decided that my post was flamebait hasn't taken the time to read the book.
It is an interesting read, but a bit incomplete. While the author certainly indicated that the people who make these products are exploited, not a lot of space in the article was devoted to that issue. In Naomi Klein's book No Logo, the author describes the working conditions, and wages the workers endure.
1- Photoshop isn't faster. Certain photoshop filters that have been optomized for the Altivec are faster. There's a difference. Photoshop filters non-optimized for the Altivec are not faster on the G4 than on the Athlon. Most things are not optimized for the Altivec.
I am not familiar with Photoshop, so I can't really comment on that. I do know a lot of people in the lithographic industry, and they all swear by Macs for design and layout.
2- I've never gotten a virus, neither have my parents (who are total morons when it comes to computers) It's called Norton Antivirus, and it's dirt cheap. There will be viruses for the Mac now that it's on BSD and Apple will be pissing people off left and right by touting its security. Trust me on this.
I've never gotten a virus either. But my office recently abandoned Lotus Notes in favour of the obviously inferior outlook. We all run anti-virus software, but we have a lot more viruses to deal with. The thing about anti-virus software is that it is totally reactive. If a trojan is active out in the wild, it can propagate freely until there is a signature to detect and remove it. Perhaps there will be a virus that targets Macs, but I would bet my bottom dollar that it will pale in comparison to the damage that was caused by Love virus, Melissa, SirCam, CodeRed, and so on.
Trustworthy computing? Bah!
3- Windows is NOT finished. No OS *IS* finished. Windows is CLOSER to finished, and it behaves like a finished product from the user's standpoint. Besides, every time I boot up my G3 I have a new bug fix, security update, or SOMETHING that needs to be updaed in OS X.
Strangely enough, XP tells me that there are new patches / fixes to download almost as often...
3- I can't install any of the Windows 3.x series on my computer, but 95, 98, 2k, and ME would happily install if I needed them to. In fact, my computer is a quad boot, with one of the OSes being Windows 98.
I tolerated 98. When I bought a new PC, I tried to install 98 but the install was more trouble than it was worth. Whenever I switched from the windows CD to a driver CD, the installer always forgot where to find the next file in the directory tree on the windows CD, and I had to find the file for it to jumpstart the install.
4- Heh. How can you say Luna is a copy of Aqua? Luna is an atrocious ugly SOB. And it's hardly a copy of Aqua--there were skins that looked like Aqua and Luna far before either Luna or Aqua existed. I don't deny that MS tried to copy, though. I just deny that it was a good idea. I like the Win98 skin in XP. It's functionally beautiful.
Really? I am used to the interface, but I would never refer to it as a good UI. It could only be considered beautiful when contrasted with the Lotus Notes interface. What moron thought that it would make sense to require users to go to the start bar to turn off their computer!
1- Take a 1.25 Dual G4, put it next to a single processor Athlon 1900+ (which costs a fraction of the price) put Maya, or ElectricImage, or anything that is not a Photoshop filter next to it, and let'er'rip. Sorry, but time-to-render does count as a slightly accurate test of hardware. Yes, Mhz is a myth, particularly when it comes to Pentiums. (heh) But look at the bus speeds, look at the DDR memory that is able to be fully utilized, and look at the video cards. Sure, this is all changing in the near future with Apple getting better, but what they have for sale now is insufficient.
Yet if you run Photoshop on the same two systems, the Athlon gets smoked. I guess the moral of the story is that the Mac will be faster at some things, and slower at others. In that case, the decision as to which is "better" is entirely dependant on what the computer will be used for.
When my parents expressed an interest in a computer for email and surfing. An m$ operating system was totally out of the question, it is not secure and there are too many viruses and trojans that prey on windows. Linux was also not a option, because they are total newbies. A Mac was a perfect fit and they haven't looked back. Perhaps the initial purchase price was a bit higher, but the cost in terms of time for support has been almost nil. I would not be able to say that about windows or Linux.
2- As for "finished", ok. Maybe OS X is finished, in which case it's one hell of a shoddy piece of work. OS 9 was finished, but pretty soon no computer sold by Apple will be able to boot into it. I can still install the older versions of Windows on my machines and boot up without issue if I so please. But WinXP IS a finished product, so why would I bother?
a) I don't know if I could get an older version of windows to install on my new(er) system. There aren't any drivers for most of my peripherals.
b) If Windows XP is "finished", why do I need to keep applying bug fixes and service packs? Could it be that no piece of non-trivial software is ever finished? In that case, I don't see why OS X should be held to a different standard.
It's all about the manner in which things are introduced. I dislike being forced to something that is only partially finished, told that it's finished, and then have it rubbed in my face constantly that it's so perfect, so sleek, so powerful, so next-generation. It's simply not.
I felt the same way when I read those interviews with John Romero when he was promoting Daikatana...
Given that the look and feel of OS X was blatantly copied by XP, someone at m$ must have thought it was sleek, powerful and next-gen.
Just can the hype- hype cries out to be debunked.
I agree 100% with the sentiment, and I appreciate the irony of the situation. You are defending m$ against Apple in a thread which describes how m$ posted a false testimonial about how much better life is with XP compared to the Mac alternative.
Did you know that the PowerPC chips that Apple uses cannot be compared to Intel/AMD chips purely on mHz? As for the higher prices, Apple just does not sell the volumes that Intel does. Apple does not benefit from the same economy of scale.
If anything, it would be more correct to say that Apple is selling better harware at higher prices!
I love the concept of OS X, but it is NOT a finished product.
Meaning what? I am not sure that I accept your claim. But even if you are correct, it would hardly the first time software was ever shipped before it was ready. There is a reason why it is advised to wait for version 3 of any m$ product after all...
Does any one actually read Chinese so they could give us the full story?
I checked the site and found the following statement:
This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
I put it to you that a stateful firewall is equally as effective at securing a network without complicating desired peer-to-peer connectivity.
We are each entitled to our own opinion. However, no matter what Checkpoint claims, I think it that it is generally considered to be true that a proxy firewall is a more secure means to protect a network. The major downside is that proxy firewalls add latency to the end-user experience. You don't have to take my word for it though. Check out what SANS and SecurityFocus have to say on that topic.
At any rate, I would never use Internet-routable addresses on my Internal network. RFC 1918 addresses provide another layer of security, and they just aren't handing out class A addresses anymore. So even with my stateful inspection firewall, I am going to have to do address translation - and I still will not permit hosts outside of my network to initiate connections into my network.
And if you do not desire any peer-to-peer connectivity, then you don't really want the Internet, you want AOL.
What I am saying is that NAT is a terrible thing because it makes peer to peer communication rediculously more cumbersome
I think that is the whole point. I have a private network, and the last thing I want to do is make it easy for hosts on the outside to have unrestricted access to the devices on the inside.
NAT is an anathema to a truly connected Internet, where there is true peer to peer connectivity (this is not about peer to peer filesharing. There's far more you can do peer to peer than that).
Dude, there is no way I would ever allow any device on the Internet to initiate connections into my home network. I run a firewall for a reason, and IPV6 changes nothing in that regard.
I don't think that having more addresses will reduce the number of attacks that bounce of my firewall on a daily basis.
Security might even be more important when we move to IPV6 because there would be potentially more systems out there for the script kiddies to 0wn!
Because once they sell you the product, they have no legal rights to it anymore.
We used to be able to buy software and music, but now we just buy a license to be able to use the software / music.
I wonder how long it will be before someone tries that with durable consumer goods? It is sort of like that with leasing a car - you don't own it, you just have the right to use it for a certain period of time...
Wasn't it Canada (or at least some provinces) that have a law where if you are going to sew someone, the looser of the suit has to pay legal fees of ALL parties. Where if Mr. N would win the suit, the defendants would have to pay for his [substantially smaller] legal fees, and if Mr. N looses, he has to pay legal fees of the defendants.
AFAIK that is true. Another reason why there are not as many lawsuits flying around in Canada is that the courts tend to not give out much in terms of punitive damages. You can sue for actual losses, but you don't see multi-million dollar punitive damages awarded.
Check out the list of scholars who are particpating in the brief. Only a handful are psychologists, and that is the faculty which is perhaps best suited to investigating whether there is any connection between observation of violent behaviour and violent behaviour. A brief read of the bio's of the scholars further indicates that most of these people are stepping well beyond their area of expertise.
I would have thought that a brief to the court would carry more weight if the people lending their name to it had standing in the academic community in that area of research...
But they're not, and that makes all the difference.
I have read some of your other posts on this thread, and I am not sure if your opinion is based on apathy or the head-in-the-sand approach.
I agree that education is part of the solution, but the damage this group has inflicted on people is very real. I know their "religion" is a front for a cheezy pyramid scheme, and I suspect most/.'ers know the same. But for the people who dont post/read/troll here, the message has got to get out somehow.
BTW Beej's Guide to Network Programming was a great help to me back in University. Thanks for putting that together and posting it.
Well, well, well. I hate to break it to you, but there are a lot of "evil" organizations out there--way way too many for you to take on. Even if you eliminited Scientology*, one thousand other organizations will be right there to demand your immediate attention. You can't win.
"When they came for the Communists, I did not speak out, because I was not a Communist.
When they came for the Jews, I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew.
When they came for the Catholics, I did not speak out, because I was not a Catholic.
When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out."
(e.g., Alan Rickman's character, who is assumed to be evil 'cause he's a creep but turns out not to be).
You should probably read the books. Professor Snape definitely hates Harry Potter. I thought that Alan Rickman was an excellent choice to play Snape. His speech on the first day of Potions class was exactly as I imagined, and the director did not meet my expectations often...
Why don't you complain about Norway, or China, or Uzbekistan not caring about genocide in Yugoslavia/Rwanda? Why is America expected to equally mourn every slain person in the world, while other countries are allowed to prefer their own dead?
Perhaps it is because I have overcome tribalism and petty nationalism. I read about the deaths of innocents, and it does not matter what their nationality was. These are innocent people who have died through no fault or cause of their own.
That is what should be mourned.
When looked at from that perspective, it is trivial and inconsequential what passport they carried.
Can't we just take one day to drop the Right vs. Left crap and mourn for the dead?
I am not intending this as a flame, or an insult, or a dis-respectful comment. Others may interpret it otherwise however. As a non-USian, the question I have is: why are the innocent people who were killed in the terrorist attacks of 9/11 any more deserving (or less) of remembrance than the innocent people who have died as the result of other acts of terror - apart from the fact that it hits a lot closer to home?
After WWII, the world was shocked and outraged by the Holocaust, and we said "Never again". I guess we forgot about that vow when:
The Stalinist purges happened in the USSR
The Cultural Revolution happened in China
The genocide in Cambodia happened
The genocide in Rawanda happened Three genocides in the former Yugoslavia happened
(to name but a few examples of the depths that humanity can descend to)
Some people have even suggested that the Allies' firebombing of Dresden and the atomic attacks against Japan should be considered terrorist attacks since the military deliberately targetted Civilians.
Why is this date, this anniversary so significant? I do not wish to minimize the hurt or anguish it caused anyone, but given the scale and severity of other incidents, 9/11 is not the worst act one group of humans have committed against another group of humans.
It would truly be a significant moment if it were the last such tragedy, but given the course of human history, that is unlikely. It was only 50-odd years ago when we said "Never again", and "Lest we forget".
Nor do they deserve to have their rememberance used as a launching point for cheap political attacks.
I am not sure if you are referring to the comments here on/. or tomorrow's speech by GWB in which he will officially begin the countdown to the attack against Iraq
The reason to use CISCO is ultimate durability, stability, service, configurability, speed etc etc.
I don't think that PIX is the king of all firewalls. Sure, the Cisco logo will be sufficient reason for some people to buy them, but I don't think that PIX is the most secure or reputable commercial firewall product out there.
It's political correctness that has led to the a very, very foolish mentality amongst airport security screeners. They don't want to be accused of singling out Arabs for extra scrutiny for 'racial' reasons. For this reason, they will single out anyone -but- Arabs. Grandmothers in wheelchairs. Mothers with bottled breast milk. Even the pilots themselves.
I read about the bottled breast milk incident, and that was truly stupid.
However, the suggestion that Middle-Eastern people can freely stroll through the airports while everyone else is repeatedly stopped at spot-checks tells me that you don't have a clue what you are talking about. I'm guessing that you don't have many friends of Middle-Eastern ancestry who travel much. I recently went on a business trip with a colleague who must look like an "Arab". I was asked a few questions but passed through the checkpoints without much delay. He was stopped at each and every one, and once was escorted to a private room and was asked to remove his suit and trousers as part of a "routine security check".
People of Mid-Eastern descent are the first to be singled out at the airports.
What, you mean there's a correllation between high-crime neighbourhoods and a likelihood of more crime being committed there.
But remember Stats 101: A correlation does not imply causation. Whoever is compiling and maintaining this list seems to have forgotten that part.
However, as far as I'm aware, the list contains those individuals for reasons other than race
Probably the same sort of reasons that minority groups are significantly over-represented in the prison population, compared to the population as a whole...
Haven't we learned yet that the over-the-top-PC brigade do more harm than good?
What sort of harm are these "do-gooders" responsible for? Is it any worse than ending up in a database of potential criminals just because you happen to live in a bad neighbourhood?
Slashdot Mirror
Whatever the intent, it's a moot point. The point is that the workers are helped. The standard of living increases.
/. enjoy.
Spoken like a true imperialist! This is the same sort of argument the colonial empires used to justify their actions in the past. It was a dishonest self-serving justification then and it has not improved with age.
I suppose that given a choice between starvation and feudal subjugation one would choose not to starve. At the same time, it is highly patronizing to claim that the expoited are better off as a result. Sure, they will live a bit longer, but the quality of that life is far from the comfortable middle-class lifestyle most of us here at
And they are free-thinking humans who should be allowed to make thier own decisions without having to worry about all-knowing western do-gooders (or an oppressive government).
You might be right if it was a freely-made, fair choice. Unfortunately, the article indicates that the workers do not have much by way of options. They can choose to starve or choose to work is a sweatshop. The women get a third option - they can choose to become prostitutes.
Are you sure that you read the same article I did?
If you were to remove these so-called "sweatshops", do you really think life would suddenly improve for those working there?
So... we are doing these workers a favour by exploiting them?
Who knew that the multi-nationals are just trying help out! What humanitarians!
I liked the No Logo book. Naomi Klein takes examples of child/slave/appalingly cheap labor for making IBM hard disks (if I remember correctly). She mentions China as one of the top countries for cheap, slave AND child labor.
It is a good book. I learned a great deal and she documents all of her sources with an extensive bibliography. While there are many potential upsides to globalization of manufacturing and trade, we in the first world have really failed the people in the third world. We have relaxed the restrictions on capital, but not raised the bar on things like environmental standards and working conditions. Who would have thought that feudalism was a viable alternative in 2002!
It is a shame that the moderator who decided that my post was flamebait hasn't taken the time to read the book.
It is an interesting read, but a bit incomplete. While the author certainly indicated that the people who make these products are exploited, not a lot of space in the article was devoted to that issue. In Naomi Klein's book No Logo, the author describes the working conditions, and wages the workers endure.
You can also check out the website for more info.
1- Photoshop isn't faster. Certain photoshop filters that have been optomized for the Altivec are faster. There's a difference. Photoshop filters non-optimized for the Altivec are not faster on the G4 than on the Athlon. Most things are not optimized for the Altivec.
I am not familiar with Photoshop, so I can't really comment on that. I do know a lot of people in the lithographic industry, and they all swear by Macs for design and layout.
2- I've never gotten a virus, neither have my parents (who are total morons when it comes to computers) It's called Norton Antivirus, and it's dirt cheap. There will be viruses for the Mac now that it's on BSD and Apple will be pissing people off left and right by touting its security. Trust me on this.
I've never gotten a virus either. But my office recently abandoned Lotus Notes in favour of the obviously inferior outlook. We all run anti-virus software, but we have a lot more viruses to deal with. The thing about anti-virus software is that it is totally reactive. If a trojan is active out in the wild, it can propagate freely until there is a signature to detect and remove it. Perhaps there will be a virus that targets Macs, but I would bet my bottom dollar that it will pale in comparison to the damage that was caused by Love virus, Melissa, SirCam, CodeRed, and so on.
Trustworthy computing? Bah!
3- Windows is NOT finished. No OS *IS* finished. Windows is CLOSER to finished, and it behaves like a finished product from the user's standpoint. Besides, every time I boot up my G3 I have a new bug fix, security update, or SOMETHING that needs to be updaed in OS X.
Strangely enough, XP tells me that there are new patches / fixes to download almost as often...
3- I can't install any of the Windows 3.x series on my computer, but 95, 98, 2k, and ME would happily install if I needed them to. In fact, my computer is a quad boot, with one of the OSes being Windows 98.
I tolerated 98. When I bought a new PC, I tried to install 98 but the install was more trouble than it was worth. Whenever I switched from the windows CD to a driver CD, the installer always forgot where to find the next file in the directory tree on the windows CD, and I had to find the file for it to jumpstart the install.
4- Heh. How can you say Luna is a copy of Aqua? Luna is an atrocious ugly SOB. And it's hardly a copy of Aqua--there were skins that looked like Aqua and Luna far before either Luna or Aqua existed. I don't deny that MS tried to copy, though. I just deny that it was a good idea. I like the Win98 skin in XP. It's functionally beautiful.
Really? I am used to the interface, but I would never refer to it as a good UI. It could only be considered beautiful when contrasted with the Lotus Notes interface. What moron thought that it would make sense to require users to go to the start bar to turn off their computer!
1- Take a 1.25 Dual G4, put it next to a single processor Athlon 1900+ (which costs a fraction of the price) put Maya, or ElectricImage, or anything that is not a Photoshop filter next to it, and let'er'rip. Sorry, but time-to-render does count as a slightly accurate test of hardware. Yes, Mhz is a myth, particularly when it comes to Pentiums. (heh) But look at the bus speeds, look at the DDR memory that is able to be fully utilized, and look at the video cards. Sure, this is all changing in the near future with Apple getting better, but what they have for sale now is insufficient.
Yet if you run Photoshop on the same two systems, the Athlon gets smoked. I guess the moral of the story is that the Mac will be faster at some things, and slower at others. In that case, the decision as to which is "better" is entirely dependant on what the computer will be used for. When my parents expressed an interest in a computer for email and surfing. An m$ operating system was totally out of the question, it is not secure and there are too many viruses and trojans that prey on windows. Linux was also not a option, because they are total newbies. A Mac was a perfect fit and they haven't looked back. Perhaps the initial purchase price was a bit higher, but the cost in terms of time for support has been almost nil. I would not be able to say that about windows or Linux.
2- As for "finished", ok. Maybe OS X is finished, in which case it's one hell of a shoddy piece of work. OS 9 was finished, but pretty soon no computer sold by Apple will be able to boot into it. I can still install the older versions of Windows on my machines and boot up without issue if I so please. But WinXP IS a finished product, so why would I bother?
a) I don't know if I could get an older version of windows to install on my new(er) system. There aren't any drivers for most of my peripherals.
b) If Windows XP is "finished", why do I need to keep applying bug fixes and service packs? Could it be that no piece of non-trivial software is ever finished? In that case, I don't see why OS X should be held to a different standard.
It's all about the manner in which things are introduced. I dislike being forced to something that is only partially finished, told that it's finished, and then have it rubbed in my face constantly that it's so perfect, so sleek, so powerful, so next-generation. It's simply not.
I felt the same way when I read those interviews with John Romero when he was promoting Daikatana...
Given that the look and feel of OS X was blatantly copied by XP, someone at m$ must have thought it was sleek, powerful and next-gen.
Just can the hype- hype cries out to be debunked.
I agree 100% with the sentiment, and I appreciate the irony of the situation. You are defending m$ against Apple in a thread which describes how m$ posted a false testimonial about how much better life is with XP compared to the Mac alternative.
Apple is selling slower hardware at higher prices
Did you know that the PowerPC chips that Apple uses cannot be compared to Intel/AMD chips purely on mHz? As for the higher prices, Apple just does not sell the volumes that Intel does. Apple does not benefit from the same economy of scale.
If anything, it would be more correct to say that Apple is selling better harware at higher prices!
I love the concept of OS X, but it is NOT a finished product.
Meaning what? I am not sure that I accept your claim. But even if you are correct, it would hardly the first time software was ever shipped before it was ready. There is a reason why it is advised to wait for version 3 of any m$ product after all...
I checked the site and found the following statement:
I put it to you that a stateful firewall is equally as effective at securing a network without complicating desired peer-to-peer connectivity.
We are each entitled to our own opinion. However, no matter what Checkpoint claims, I think it that it is generally considered to be true that a proxy firewall is a more secure means to protect a network. The major downside is that proxy firewalls add latency to the end-user experience. You don't have to take my word for it though. Check out what SANS and SecurityFocus have to say on that topic.
At any rate, I would never use Internet-routable addresses on my Internal network. RFC 1918 addresses provide another layer of security, and they just aren't handing out class A addresses anymore. So even with my stateful inspection firewall, I am going to have to do address translation - and I still will not permit hosts outside of my network to initiate connections into my network.
And if you do not desire any peer-to-peer connectivity, then you don't really want the Internet, you want AOL.
Yah, whatever...
What I am saying is that NAT is a terrible thing because it makes peer to peer communication rediculously more cumbersome
I think that is the whole point. I have a private network, and the last thing I want to do is make it easy for hosts on the outside to have unrestricted access to the devices on the inside.
NAT is an anathema to a truly connected Internet, where there is true peer to peer connectivity (this is not about peer to peer filesharing. There's far more you can do peer to peer than that).
Dude, there is no way I would ever allow any device on the Internet to initiate connections into my home network. I run a firewall for a reason, and IPV6 changes nothing in that regard. I don't think that having more addresses will reduce the number of attacks that bounce of my firewall on a daily basis.
Security might even be more important when we move to IPV6 because there would be potentially more systems out there for the script kiddies to 0wn!
Because once they sell you the product, they have no legal rights to it anymore.
We used to be able to buy software and music, but now we just buy a license to be able to use the software / music.
I wonder how long it will be before someone tries that with durable consumer goods? It is sort of like that with leasing a car - you don't own it, you just have the right to use it for a certain period of time...
Wasn't it Canada (or at least some provinces) that have a law where if you are going to sew someone, the looser of the suit has to pay legal fees of ALL parties. Where if Mr. N would win the suit, the defendants would have to pay for his [substantially smaller] legal fees, and if Mr. N looses, he has to pay legal fees of the defendants.
AFAIK that is true. Another reason why there are not as many lawsuits flying around in Canada is that the courts tend to not give out much in terms of punitive damages. You can sue for actual losses, but you don't see multi-million dollar punitive damages awarded.
Check out the list of scholars who are particpating in the brief. Only a handful are psychologists, and that is the faculty which is perhaps best suited to investigating whether there is any connection between observation of violent behaviour and violent behaviour. A brief read of the bio's of the scholars further indicates that most of these people are stepping well beyond their area of expertise.
I would have thought that a brief to the court would carry more weight if the people lending their name to it had standing in the academic community in that area of research...
It brought the net to the masses.
It brought pr0n to the masses!
But they're not, and that makes all the difference.
/.'ers know the same. But for the people who dont post/read/troll here, the message has got to get out somehow.
I have read some of your other posts on this thread, and I am not sure if your opinion is based on apathy or the head-in-the-sand approach.
I agree that education is part of the solution, but the damage this group has inflicted on people is very real. I know their "religion" is a front for a cheezy pyramid scheme, and I suspect most
BTW Beej's Guide to Network Programming was a great help to me back in University. Thanks for putting that together and posting it.
(e.g., Alan Rickman's character, who is assumed to be evil 'cause he's a creep but turns out not to be).
You should probably read the books. Professor Snape definitely hates Harry Potter. I thought that Alan Rickman was an excellent choice to play Snape. His speech on the first day of Potions class was exactly as I imagined, and the director did not meet my expectations often...
It will be released when it's done.
That's what they said about Duke Nuken Forever!
Why don't you complain about Norway, or China, or Uzbekistan not caring about genocide in Yugoslavia/Rwanda? Why is America expected to equally mourn every slain person in the world, while other countries are allowed to prefer their own dead?
Perhaps it is because I have overcome tribalism and petty nationalism. I read about the deaths of innocents, and it does not matter what their nationality was. These are innocent people who have died through no fault or cause of their own. That is what should be mourned.
When looked at from that perspective, it is trivial and inconsequential what passport they carried.
I am not intending this as a flame, or an insult, or a dis-respectful comment. Others may interpret it otherwise however. As a non-USian, the question I have is: why are the innocent people who were killed in the terrorist attacks of 9/11 any more deserving (or less) of remembrance than the innocent people who have died as the result of other acts of terror - apart from the fact that it hits a lot closer to home?
After WWII, the world was shocked and outraged by the Holocaust, and we said "Never again". I guess we forgot about that vow when:
(to name but a few examples of the depths that humanity can descend to)
Some people have even suggested that the Allies' firebombing of Dresden and the atomic attacks against Japan should be considered terrorist attacks since the military deliberately targetted Civilians.
Why is this date, this anniversary so significant? I do not wish to minimize the hurt or anguish it caused anyone, but given the scale and severity of other incidents, 9/11 is not the worst act one group of humans have committed against another group of humans.
It would truly be a significant moment if it were the last such tragedy, but given the course of human history, that is unlikely. It was only 50-odd years ago when we said "Never again", and "Lest we forget".
Nor do they deserve to have their rememberance used as a launching point for cheap political attacks.
I am not sure if you are referring to the comments here on
The reason to use CISCO is ultimate durability, stability, service, configurability, speed etc etc.
I don't think that PIX is the king of all firewalls. Sure, the Cisco logo will be sufficient reason for some people to buy them, but I don't think that PIX is the most secure or reputable commercial firewall product out there.
"An energy that surronds all things".. that sounds like several religous beliefs right there.
Yes, but then George fsck'd it up with that crap about the mitochlorians.
It's political correctness that has led to the a very, very foolish mentality amongst airport security screeners. They don't want to be accused of singling out Arabs for extra scrutiny for 'racial' reasons. For this reason, they will single out anyone -but- Arabs. Grandmothers in wheelchairs. Mothers with bottled breast milk. Even the pilots themselves.
I read about the bottled breast milk incident, and that was truly stupid.
However, the suggestion that Middle-Eastern people can freely stroll through the airports while everyone else is repeatedly stopped at spot-checks tells me that you don't have a clue what you are talking about. I'm guessing that you don't have many friends of Middle-Eastern ancestry who travel much. I recently went on a business trip with a colleague who must look like an "Arab". I was asked a few questions but passed through the checkpoints without much delay. He was stopped at each and every one, and once was escorted to a private room and was asked to remove his suit and trousers as part of a "routine security check".
People of Mid-Eastern descent are the first to be singled out at the airports.
What, you mean there's a correllation between high-crime neighbourhoods and a likelihood of more crime being committed there.
But remember Stats 101: A correlation does not imply causation. Whoever is compiling and maintaining this list seems to have forgotten that part.
However, as far as I'm aware, the list contains those individuals for reasons other than race
Probably the same sort of reasons that minority groups are significantly over-represented in the prison population, compared to the population as a whole...
Haven't we learned yet that the over-the-top-PC brigade do more harm than good?
What sort of harm are these "do-gooders" responsible for? Is it any worse than ending up in a database of potential criminals just because you happen to live in a bad neighbourhood?