Re:Learned Professionals?
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 0, Insightful
It's just you.
If someone knows more then they are less likely to get overtime. Of course the reason why is that they get paid more in the first place. I don't know about you, but I'd rather get paid more per hour and not work any overtime than get paid less and work 10 hours a day just to get the same paycheck in the end.
Lee
Liberalism != (Communism || Socialism)
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Please don't insult genuine liberals by confusing us with the socialists and communists who lie by calling themselves liberals.
Socialists and communists are liberals the same way that script kiddies and crackers are hackers. In other words they're not. In both cases the terms have been misused to such a great extent that the original meaning has been largely forgotten.
If you want to understand genuine liberalism, read John Locke, Adam Smith, or basically anything written by the founding fathers of the US. If you want to understand the bullshit that people call liberalism today, read the Communist Manifesto.
Be sure to keep a bucket nearby when you do to catch your vomit. Also lock up any guns you might have so that you can resist the urge to go out and start shooting the bastards.
"A Pentium 4 will be slower at chess than a Pentium 3 of an equivalent clock speed."
That is because a P4 is slower than a P3 in every way when measured clock for clock. The P4 was designed to run at very high clock rates for the simple reason that your average person is too stupid to understand that there is more to performance than clock cycles. Its per-clock performance is abysmal. P4's with "hyperthreading" do perform better, but only because intel found a way to leverage the processor's extremely long pipeline (20 stages) into a benefit rather than a detriment.
Now I'm not saying that the P4 is an awful chip, throw enough clock cycles at one and it will perform. All I'm saying is that if they could get a P3 or especially an Athlon to scale up to 3.06 Ghz, either chip would hand the P4 its ass.
Lee
ADHD is a problem for the people who DON'T have it
on
Working with ADHD?
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· Score: 1
ADHD is a real condition, and one that I myself have. Calling it a disorder however is not accurate. It is not a disorder for someone to have strengths in some areas and weaknesses in another. That is just human nature.
Most of the people who actually have a problem because of it are usually dealing with problems caused by other people, not by ADHD itself. You can add me into that catagory. When I was growing up I had to deal with my parents and doctors and later the schools telling me that there was something wrong with me. Try telling a sixth grader that he has brain damage and see how he responds. Luckily for me drugs like Ritalin had some particularly nasty side effects and were abandoned very early on. I was able to go through school drug-free instead of doped up.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and in a normal classroom environment ADHD types tend to squeak loudest of all. All because we're uncomfortable with sitting and doing nothing, or sitting and doing something that doesn't benefit us intellectually. Don't expect me to sit and study something I already know just because everyone else is so stupid that you have to base their grades on busywork instead of mastery of the material. Obviously there are times when you must sit down and trudge through something that isn't fun, or interesting. The point is that basing an educational system off of doing that day in and day out is a disservice to everyone. It is the reason why I call schoolteachers glorified babysitters. What else do you call someone who is paid tens of thousands a year to watch other people's kids all day? Now that is not to say that some learning does not take place or that there aren't truly good teachers out there. All I'm saying is that the way that schools are structured tends to encourage babysitting and discourage actual education. Lets just say that I've got unresolved issues where my grade and high school education is concerned.
ADHD is something that must be dealt with, and putting someone on drugs isn't dealing with it. You deal with it by finding strategies to maximize on the strengths and gifts that ADHD bestows and avoid or minimize the impact of the corresponding weaknesses. The more someone with ADHD can master self-discipline, the less these weaknesses are going to affect them.
Also ADHD is not some new thing that spontaneously arose with the advent of its classification. Rather it is something that has existed in humanity for countless generations. If it wasn't something that was an advantage in some way, it would have been bred out of the gene pool. The fact that it exists and is so prevalent strongly suggests that it is simply a normal genetic variation, like having red hair vs. having brown hair. The same is true of dyslexia. It too tends to bestow heightened abilities in some areas while simultaneously hindering someone in other ways.
Everyone is familiar with the stereotype of the person who has good verbal reasoning skills but doesn't do so well with mathematics. As far as I know, no one has classified them as having MDD, or Math Deficit Disorder. The flip side to that are people like my grandfather who is so good at math that it's spooky but for whom writing anything is an ordeal. No one has catagorized him as having VSDD or Verbal Skills Deficit Disorder. The reason why is that these differences are not seen as being abnormal. Then of course there are people like me who have a near equal level of ability in both mathematics/logic and verbal areas. No one tells me that I'm abnormal because I'm good with both numbers AND words.
The truth is that ADHD is a condition that creates problems for the people who DON'T have it. Those of us who do, don't have a problem. We've lived all our lives with it and are aware of where our strenghs and weaknesses are, just like everyone else. Our problems begin when we're introduced into environments that don't play upon our strengths and instead highlight our weaknesses. If the normal school environment played up
That kind of reasoning does apply to terrorists, unfortunately for them they don't have the military capability we do. The only thing they have to offer to their cause are their lives, of which we're more than happy to deprive them, improving the quality of the world's gene pool one idiot at at time.
War isn't about right or wrong, its about win or lose. Anyone who tells you different is lying to you. War is never a good thing, but it is sometimes necessary.
I also don't see how we lied about our reasons. We wanted Saddam out because he was a threat, we got him out. We also wanted a secure base of power in the middle east, we have that now. Compared to that oil is not terribly valuable. Like I said before, if we wanted the oil we would have taken it 12 years ago. This wasn't about oil, it was about power and security, the power to intimidate other nations around the world so that they don't threaten the security of our citizens. How has the world become a worse place when countries that once sponsored terrorism are shitting in their pants and North Korea is begging to talk?
As for the hostility against the US, it is irrelevant. Europe is irrelevant, China is impotent, and the rest of the world might was well not even be there. Not that we don't appreciate goodwill from Japan, Australia, Britain, Poland, etc. Its just that in the final analysis none of it matters because the US has all the chips. The other people at the table are token players. Those who aren't at the table simply don't exist in a political sense. The whole UN is nothing but a bunch of also-rans terrified that their facade of relevance has been yanked away. Europe is such a non-player that it tries to pretend that the game doesn't even exist anymore. Well that illusion is due to the US creating a bubble in which western Europe has existed since the end of WW-II. Europe could pretend that power and realpolitic didn't matter anymore bacause we were the ones protecting them against the Soviets. I sometimes wonder why we bothered. Western europe certainly doesn't seem to be very thankful that we spent untold billions protecting them from the evil empire. How many europeans are alive today becuase they didn't get shipped off to a death camp in Siberia? If you ever want to see the true face of the Soviet Union, read the Gulag Archipelago sometime. Then come complain about the US foreign policy that protected millions for Europeans from that fate, or worse. Because of us, Europe could pretend that impotent diplomacy, press releases comdeming what they didn't have the muscle to put a stop to (the balkins), and hand-wringing were what got things done. Well guess what, in the real world things like bombs, and bullets are what make things happen. Raw, brutal force is the only thing that dumb animals like these ragheads understand. There is no diplomacy with people who hate you because you won't join them in the 14th century. Now that the US has meted out a good dose of force, things should quiet down. If they don't well then we've got plenty more in our can of whoop-ass ready for dispensing. The world has been given notice that doing things that threaten our security is going to get you wacked. If you sponsor terrorists or give them sanctuary then we're going to roll tanks into your country and level it, and there isn't a single thing that anyone anywhere can do about it. Be nice to us and we can be your very best friend. Piss us off and we'll be your judge, jury and executioner.
As for needing to justify this war all I can say is that victories don't require justifications, only failures do. If we'd lost then the US would have something to justify, as it is we don't.
Actually it is the Treasury that prints money. The Justice department is in charge of maintaining the criminal threat that keeps them in the business of going after criminals. When criminals are in short supply ordinary citizens are persecuted instead.
Just for its oil? If we wanted to take its oil we would have conquered it 12 years ago and called it a day. Personally I think we should have but then I'm an Evil Republican.
The reasons we invaded Iraq are:
1) To teach the ragheads in neighboring countries that fucking with us is not an option. That we can and will come and kick your ass if you piss us off and there isn't a damned thing the UN can do about it.
2) To establish a permanent base of power within the middle east to keep an eye on countries like Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia and be able to whack them at a moments notice.
3) So the Palestinians will have someplace they can go once Israel pulls its head out of its ass and deports them all.
4) Yes, for oil, but not in the way you're saying. Why buy oil from the Saudi's who sponsor terrorists when we can buy it from the Iraqi's who are our allies? If we do end up TAKING the oil then I'm not going to be happy, nor will I be happy if we don't pay a fair price for it. After all, if we do that then what kind of a friend to the Iraqi's are we?
While the current administration is not saintly (Ashcroft needs to be canned), if the best criticism that you can come up with is that we conquered another nation for its resources then maybe you don't have much to complain about.
Are we talking 7 year olds or teenagers here? Calling someone who is old enough to drive a car a child is like calling Grandma Moses middle aged, or calling a 30-something like myself an adolescent.
As much as I hate spammers, I hate the "save the children" crown even more.
Not all of the systems you listed are even capable of being on a network, unless of course one accepts an RS-232 connection between two systems as a "network."
You certainly could not get them to ALL talk on the SAME heterogenous network if for no other reason than that many of them lack a TCP/IP stack, or has one been developed for the TI99 and the 6502 based Apples?
Also how much rent are you paying for the missle silo you store them in anyway?
The per-clock performance on an Athlon is much better than what you'll get from a P4 based Xeon, and that is just on integer. When it comes to floating-point performance a lower clocked Athlon will meet or beat the performance of a higher-clocked P4.
Right now the only SMP chipset for the Athlons is the 761, which is several years old and lacks dual-channel capability. It also requires the use of registered ECC memory. If the Athlon's had an SMP chipset comparable to the NForce2 or Intel's 775 then it would be a very different story.
Right now the going rate on pricewatch for an Athlon 3000 is only $10 more than a 2.4 Ghz Xeon, and it would spank that Xeon on floating point which is exactly what is important for a supercomputer.
I hope that the clustering technology they're using makes good use of SMP systems because if it doesn't then they may very well have misspent their money.
This stuff reminds me of the tree in the woods falling with no one there to hear it business.
I'll care when native compilers become the norm
on
Preview of Java 1.5
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
Interpreters are great for scripting languages. For languages that are intended for general purpose use and especially for situations where performance/efficiency is important they're just a BAD idea.
Java can walk on water and I'm still not going to use it to develop anything I expect anyone to use. Give me a native optimizing compiler and I just might reconsider.
Needless to say.NET is something I don't forsee myself having anything to do with.
I think that the way to handle spam is to sue the spammers. If a few thousand people took a spammer to small claims court he or she would be out of business. The maximum judgement in small claims court is $5000. The spammers simply don't have the resources to fight thousands of such lawsuits and even a few such judgements against them would open the floodgates to more such lawsuits which would be their undoing. Legistlation against spam is not the answer, direct public retribution is.
The russian people themselves are responsible for the state of their own affairs. But if you really do need a bad guy, how about the left-wing totalitarian pricks who squashed the nation under the boot of communism for 70 years?
The previous post was paid for by CRAP, Citizens Rallying Against Privacy, a non-profit organization dedicated to disabusing the plebes of the strange notion that they have rights.
Every country that has taken the left-wing path has wound up somewhere between Stalinism and mediocrity. Communism leads to a police state and socialism leads to France. America on the other hand can trace its path to greatness back to the liberal ideals upon which it was founded and which have guided its course ever since. Ideals such as individual rights that aren't subject to the whim of the state, government that is limited in its scope and powers and responsive to the will of the people, separation of CHURCH and state, equality before the law, free enterprise and the preservation of economic opportunity. These are what true liberalism is about, not the Marxist lies that the left tries to call liberalism. Your left-wing neo-bolsheviks are no more true liberals than a cracker/script-kiddie is a genuine hacker.
You say that people in the future will be more sensible and liberal. I certainly hope you're right. A left-wing police state complete with commissars and gulags is one particularly frigtening alternative that I'd rather die a thousand deaths than see come to pass.
Stallman is a genius at creating bad blood and alienating those who would otherwise be his staunchest allies. His ability to annoy is staggering. I guess he must think he is getting his point accross when he gets his audience to dislike him. For him to be going around bitching about the fact that people aren't willing to say "GNU/Linux" is childish. I'm no psychologist, but it doesn't take one to see that there is something not quite kosher when someone is so needful of constant recognition and/or attention. Why else would he care what people call it? It would be one thing if he more or less wished to himself that another name was used, but to go around and berate people about it is just plain irrational if for no other reason than because it hurts his public image and makes others resent him. If he wants recognition there are far more pleasant and effective ways to get it, and if he can't get it using those methods he isn't going to get it period. The man has his priorities a little out of wack it seems. He goes to meet the developers of a Unix desktop that has helped move Unix back onto the main stage again and he makes a big deal out of what name they're using to describe a particular Unix variant? Its fucking irrelevant, least to everyone but him and his disciples. I'm sure he also berated them again about their use of Qt before it was put under the GPL. I'm sure most people remember him asking the KDE developers for an apology when Qt was GPL'd. You'd think he'd be happy, or at least pretend to be for the sake of community, but no he has to take on last stab at them. If I were the KDE guys I wouldn't give him the time of day until he apologized himself. Not for his opinions but for his behavior. At the very least I'd want to see some change in his behavior before I dealt with him. The KDE guys have nothing to gain from Stallman's approval. They need his support about as much as the US needs the support of the UN.
I really do think that a lot of his behavior stems from the fact that there are other people in the free software world that are at least as influential and respected as he is. People who know how to play politics and at least have some grasp of how to influence others. People aren't only listening to him anymore. He doesn't like this and the only thing he can think of to do about it is to be annoying and make a federal case out of things that don't matter. It is true that if someone rants and bitches and is basically no fun to be around that people are going to pay attention to them. But that doesn't mean anyone is listening to anything they're saying. The only reason he's able to get away with this behavior is because of who he is. If he were some no-name hacker (!cracker) no one would listen to him and in fact he'd quickly have his own personal anti-fan club.
Stallman says that he is an Asperger's case and based upon his behavior I believe him. Why else would a 50 year old man have none of the political and social skills that the rest of us master by the time we're 13? What he needs is a press secretary or a PR person to work with him and help him learn (or fake) the social and political skills he needs to leverage the respect and appreciation that even the annoyed like me still feel towards him. If he ever wants to truly be the leader he dreams of being he needs to learn how to lead, and alienating the people you're trying to recruit to follow you isn't how it's done. Someone should send him a copy of Dale Carnagie's "How to win Friends and Influence People."
The problem with this show is that it's being used as a platform for left-wing propaganda. It's the worst example of this since the Alien Nation series on Fox a decade back. I've only watched a handful of episodes and each time I was left with the feeling that the story and characters were little more than a gimmick to get people to watch what was otherwise a one-hour presentation on left-wing ideology.
The only way this show can be "fixed" is to get rid of whoever is writing that kind of crap and replace them with real writers.
The problem is that actual true Marxism CANNOT be practiced on anything other than a microscopic scale because it is fundamentally incompatible with human nature. Marxism is bullshit. It doesn't even work on paper, let alone in practice. Any and all attempts to implement a Marxist system have led directly to totalitarianism. The only way of destroying the concept of private property and getting people to work for free is through force and violence. The result is not a Marxist utopia but a Stalinist hell. Make no mistake, there are among us right now people who would, if given free reign, do any number of horrific and terrible things to others around them for no other reason than because they can. The wolf is always at the door. These are the types that come to power when individual rights are destroyed and the power of the state is unchecked. Remember that the next time the left-wingers start in with their little song and dance.
Lee
This sounds like a story out of Scientology
on
Krawtchouk's Mind
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· Score: 2, Informative
To anyone familiar with Scientology, and especially its RPF, this story sounds eerily familiar.
The secret Library of scientology: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library /
My political, ideological, and religious beliefs when it come to computers are technology are this. I don't really have any and view with deep suspicion and general contempt anyone who does. People who get religious or extremely political about computers should get a life.
I have opinions and conclusions that are technical in nature and are derived from technical issues. Licensing is not a technical issue, whether it be the licensing on software or the licensing on the documentation that accompanies it. My take on it is that it should be whatever the creator of the software or documentation wants it to be. What people who have not worked to create the code or docs think is about as relevant as the UN. In other words, anyone not willing to roll up their sleeves and hack the code or the docs can sit down and shut up about who gets to use it under what conditions.
If the licensing on something makes it onerous to use, I won't use it. The same thing goes for documentation. I won't sit and bitch about it, or declare jihad on the infidels who dare to challenge the the gospel truth of the GPL, BSD, etc. because I quite simply DON'T GIVE A DAMN.
If it is a technical issue, I'm all ears. If it is a political issue I don't want to hear about it because if experience has taught me anything its that people who are overly political are generally full of shit regardless of the slant their politics take. Admittedly that makes me full of shit myself, but not when it comes to computers.
The problem with laserdiscs was that they were HUGE in comparison to CD/DVD and the defect rate on them at time of manufacture was quite high. I remember seeing laserdiscs in the store for close to a hundred bucks when the same movie on VHS was only a fraction of that.
If laserdiscs had been more affordable they probably would have been quite successful.
As long as I've got a normal CD player then I've got a way to "rip" cd tracks. All I'll have to do is plug the tape out from my receiver into the line-level input of my sound card and "rip" the CD track to a wav file. The people at these radio stations should be able to do something equivalent. When CD's first started being used in radio 15+ years ago, the people at the station generally copied them over to the high-fidelity analog tapes they used for broadcast at the time. I don't know what they're using nowadays, but I'd tend to believe that the engineers there could transfer the CD tracks into the needed format in their sleep regardless of anything the RIAA does to the CD.
I do hope that the RIAA understands that the games they are playing aren't going to get them anything. Anyone who WANTS to pirate music is going to do so. This business with mucking with the format of the CD only irritates their customers. I sincerely believe that the whole idea was thought up by some suits who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. Anyone with a clue wouldn't even bother with such an approach.
While this is a little off topic, I'd just like to point out that Steve Jobs saw all that stuff at PARC because his people took him there to see it. They'd already seen it all, in fact some of them came to Apple from PARC. The reason for the effort? Because in order to get Steve Jobs to go along with a good idea it is necessary to make him think he came up with it himself.
Slashdot Mirror
It's just you.
If someone knows more then they are less likely to get overtime. Of course the reason why is that they get paid more in the first place. I don't know about you, but I'd rather get paid more per hour and not work any overtime than get paid less and work 10 hours a day just to get the same paycheck in the end.
Lee
Please don't insult genuine liberals by confusing us with the socialists and communists who lie by calling themselves liberals.
Socialists and communists are liberals the same way that script kiddies and crackers are hackers. In other words they're not. In both cases the terms have been misused to such a great extent that the original meaning has been largely forgotten.
If you want to understand genuine liberalism, read John Locke, Adam Smith, or basically anything written by the founding fathers of the US. If you want to understand the bullshit that people call liberalism today, read the Communist Manifesto.
Be sure to keep a bucket nearby when you do to catch your vomit. Also lock up any guns you might have so that you can resist the urge to go out and start shooting the bastards.
Lee
"A Pentium 4 will be slower at chess than a Pentium 3 of an equivalent clock speed."
That is because a P4 is slower than a P3 in every way when measured clock for clock. The P4 was designed to run at very high clock rates for the simple reason that your average person is too stupid to understand that there is more to performance than clock cycles. Its per-clock performance is abysmal. P4's with "hyperthreading" do perform better, but only because intel found a way to leverage the processor's extremely long pipeline (20 stages) into a benefit rather than a detriment.
Now I'm not saying that the P4 is an awful chip, throw enough clock cycles at one and it will perform. All I'm saying is that if they could get a P3 or especially an Athlon to scale up to 3.06 Ghz, either chip would hand the P4 its ass.
Lee
ADHD is a real condition, and one that I myself have. Calling it a disorder however is not accurate. It is not a disorder for someone to have strengths in some areas and weaknesses in another. That is just human nature.
Most of the people who actually have a problem because of it are usually dealing with problems caused by other people, not by ADHD itself. You can add me into that catagory. When I was growing up I had to deal with my parents and doctors and later the schools telling me that there was something wrong with me. Try telling a sixth grader that he has brain damage and see how he responds. Luckily for me drugs like Ritalin had some particularly nasty side effects and were abandoned very early on. I was able to go through school drug-free instead of doped up.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and in a normal classroom environment ADHD types tend to squeak loudest of all. All because we're uncomfortable with sitting and doing nothing, or sitting and doing something that doesn't benefit us intellectually. Don't expect me to sit and study something I already know just because everyone else is so stupid that you have to base their grades on busywork instead of mastery of the material. Obviously there are times when you must sit down and trudge through something that isn't fun, or interesting. The point is that basing an educational system off of doing that day in and day out is a disservice to everyone. It is the reason why I call schoolteachers glorified babysitters. What else do you call someone who is paid tens of thousands a year to watch other people's kids all day? Now that is not to say that some learning does not take place or that there aren't truly good teachers out there. All I'm saying is that the way that schools are structured tends to encourage babysitting and discourage actual education. Lets just say that I've got unresolved issues where my grade and high school education is concerned.
ADHD is something that must be dealt with, and putting someone on drugs isn't dealing with it. You deal with it by finding strategies to maximize on the strengths and gifts that ADHD bestows and avoid or minimize the impact of the corresponding weaknesses. The more someone with ADHD can master self-discipline, the less these weaknesses are going to affect them.
Also ADHD is not some new thing that spontaneously arose with the advent of its classification. Rather it is something that has existed in humanity for countless generations. If it wasn't something that was an advantage in some way, it would have been bred out of the gene pool. The fact that it exists and is so prevalent strongly suggests that it is simply a normal genetic variation, like having red hair vs. having brown hair. The same is true of dyslexia. It too tends to bestow heightened abilities in some areas while simultaneously hindering someone in other ways.
Everyone is familiar with the stereotype of the person who has good verbal reasoning skills but doesn't do so well with mathematics. As far as I know, no one has classified them as having MDD, or Math Deficit Disorder. The flip side to that are people like my grandfather who is so good at math that it's spooky but for whom writing anything is an ordeal. No one has catagorized him as having VSDD or Verbal Skills Deficit Disorder. The reason why is that these differences are not seen as being abnormal. Then of course there are people like me who have a near equal level of ability in both mathematics/logic and verbal areas. No one tells me that I'm abnormal because I'm good with both numbers AND words.
The truth is that ADHD is a condition that creates problems for the people who DON'T have it. Those of us who do, don't have a problem. We've lived all our lives with it and are aware of where our strenghs and weaknesses are, just like everyone else. Our problems begin when we're introduced into environments that don't play upon our strengths and instead highlight our weaknesses. If the normal school environment played up
That kind of reasoning does apply to terrorists, unfortunately for them they don't have the military capability we do. The only thing they have to offer to their cause are their lives, of which we're more than happy to deprive them, improving the quality of the world's gene pool one idiot at at time.
War isn't about right or wrong, its about win or lose. Anyone who tells you different is lying to you. War is never a good thing, but it is sometimes necessary.
I also don't see how we lied about our reasons. We wanted Saddam out because he was a threat, we got him out. We also wanted a secure base of power in the middle east, we have that now. Compared to that oil is not terribly valuable. Like I said before, if we wanted the oil we would have taken it 12 years ago. This wasn't about oil, it was about power and security, the power to intimidate other nations around the world so that they don't threaten the security of our citizens. How has the world become a worse place when countries that once sponsored terrorism are shitting in their pants and North Korea is begging to talk?
As for the hostility against the US, it is irrelevant. Europe is irrelevant, China is impotent, and the rest of the world might was well not even be there. Not that we don't appreciate goodwill from Japan, Australia, Britain, Poland, etc. Its just that in the final analysis none of it matters because the US has all the chips. The other people at the table are token players. Those who aren't at the table simply don't exist in a political sense. The whole UN is nothing but a bunch of also-rans terrified that their facade of relevance has been yanked away. Europe is such a non-player that it tries to pretend that the game doesn't even exist anymore. Well that illusion is due to the US creating a bubble in which western Europe has existed since the end of WW-II. Europe could pretend that power and realpolitic didn't matter anymore bacause we were the ones protecting them against the Soviets. I sometimes wonder why we bothered. Western europe certainly doesn't seem to be very thankful that we spent untold billions protecting them from the evil empire. How many europeans are alive today becuase they didn't get shipped off to a death camp in Siberia? If you ever want to see the true face of the Soviet Union, read the Gulag Archipelago sometime. Then come complain about the US foreign policy that protected millions for Europeans from that fate, or worse. Because of us, Europe could pretend that impotent diplomacy, press releases comdeming what they didn't have the muscle to put a stop to (the balkins), and hand-wringing were what got things done. Well guess what, in the real world things like bombs, and bullets are what make things happen. Raw, brutal force is the only thing that dumb animals like these ragheads understand. There is no diplomacy with people who hate you because you won't join them in the 14th century. Now that the US has meted out a good dose of force, things should quiet down. If they don't well then we've got plenty more in our can of whoop-ass ready for dispensing. The world has been given notice that doing things that threaten our security is going to get you wacked. If you sponsor terrorists or give them sanctuary then we're going to roll tanks into your country and level it, and there isn't a single thing that anyone anywhere can do about it. Be nice to us and we can be your very best friend. Piss us off and we'll be your judge, jury and executioner.
As for needing to justify this war all I can say is that victories don't require justifications, only failures do. If we'd lost then the US would have something to justify, as it is we don't.
Lee
Actually it is the Treasury that prints money. The Justice department is in charge of maintaining the criminal threat that keeps them in the business of going after criminals. When criminals are in short supply ordinary citizens are persecuted instead.
Just for its oil? If we wanted to take its oil we would have conquered it 12 years ago and called it a day. Personally I think we should have but then I'm an Evil Republican.
The reasons we invaded Iraq are:
1) To teach the ragheads in neighboring countries that fucking with us is not an option. That we can and will come and kick your ass if you piss us off and there isn't a damned thing the UN can do about it.
2) To establish a permanent base of power within the middle east to keep an eye on countries like Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia and be able to whack them at a moments notice.
3) So the Palestinians will have someplace they can go once Israel pulls its head out of its ass and deports them all.
4) Yes, for oil, but not in the way you're saying. Why buy oil from the Saudi's who sponsor terrorists when we can buy it from the Iraqi's who are our allies? If we do end up TAKING the oil then I'm not going to be happy, nor will I be happy if we don't pay a fair price for it. After all, if we do that then what kind of a friend to the Iraqi's are we?
While the current administration is not saintly (Ashcroft needs to be canned), if the best criticism that you can come up with is that we conquered another nation for its resources then maybe you don't have much to complain about.
Lee
Are we talking 7 year olds or teenagers here? Calling someone who is old enough to drive a car a child is like calling Grandma Moses middle aged, or calling a 30-something like myself an adolescent.
As much as I hate spammers, I hate the "save the children" crown even more.
Lee
Was there a merger between SCO and the Ron-Bots that no one told me about?
On your NETWORK or your power grid?
Not all of the systems you listed are even capable of being on a network, unless of course one accepts an RS-232 connection between two systems as a "network."
You certainly could not get them to ALL talk on the SAME heterogenous network if for no other reason than that many of them lack a TCP/IP stack, or has one been developed for the TI99 and the 6502 based Apples?
Also how much rent are you paying for the missle silo you store them in anyway?
It really is too bad they can't use Athlons.
The per-clock performance on an Athlon is much better than what you'll get from a P4 based Xeon, and that is just on integer. When it comes to floating-point performance a lower clocked Athlon will meet or beat the performance of a higher-clocked P4.
Right now the only SMP chipset for the Athlons is the 761, which is several years old and lacks dual-channel capability. It also requires the use of registered ECC memory. If the Athlon's had an SMP chipset comparable to the NForce2 or Intel's 775 then it would be a very different story.
Right now the going rate on pricewatch for an Athlon 3000 is only $10 more than a 2.4 Ghz Xeon, and it would spank that Xeon on floating point which is exactly what is important for a supercomputer.
I hope that the clustering technology they're using makes good use of SMP systems because if it doesn't then they may very well have misspent their money.
Lee
...to smell it, is it still BULLSHIT?
This stuff reminds me of the tree in the woods falling with no one there to hear it business.
Interpreters are great for scripting languages. For languages that are intended for general purpose use and especially for situations where performance/efficiency is important they're just a BAD idea.
.NET is something I don't forsee myself having anything to do with.
Java can walk on water and I'm still not going to use it to develop anything I expect anyone to use. Give me a native optimizing compiler and I just might reconsider.
Needless to say
I think that the way to handle spam is to sue the spammers. If a few thousand people took a spammer to small claims court he or she would be out of business. The maximum judgement in small claims court is $5000. The spammers simply don't have the resources to fight thousands of such lawsuits and even a few such judgements against them would open the floodgates to more such lawsuits which would be their undoing. Legistlation against spam is not the answer, direct public retribution is.
Lee
The russian people themselves are responsible for the state of their own affairs. But if you really do need a bad guy, how about the left-wing totalitarian pricks who squashed the nation under the boot of communism for 70 years?
Lee
The previous post was paid for by CRAP, Citizens Rallying Against Privacy, a non-profit organization dedicated to disabusing the plebes of the strange notion that they have rights.
Every country that has taken the left-wing path has wound up somewhere between Stalinism and mediocrity. Communism leads to a police state and socialism leads to France. America on the other hand can trace its path to greatness back to the liberal ideals upon which it was founded and which have guided its course ever since. Ideals such as individual rights that aren't subject to the whim of the state, government that is limited in its scope and powers and responsive to the will of the people, separation of CHURCH and state, equality before the law, free enterprise and the preservation of economic opportunity. These are what true liberalism is about, not the Marxist lies that the left tries to call liberalism. Your left-wing neo-bolsheviks are no more true liberals than a cracker/script-kiddie is a genuine hacker.
You say that people in the future will be more sensible and liberal. I certainly hope you're right. A left-wing police state complete with commissars and gulags is one particularly frigtening alternative that I'd rather die a thousand deaths than see come to pass.
Stallman is a genius at creating bad blood and alienating those who would otherwise be his staunchest allies. His ability to annoy is staggering. I guess he must think he is getting his point accross when he gets his audience to dislike him. For him to be going around bitching about the fact that people aren't willing to say "GNU/Linux" is childish. I'm no psychologist, but it doesn't take one to see that there is something not quite kosher when someone is so needful of constant recognition and/or attention. Why else would he care what people call it? It would be one thing if he more or less wished to himself that another name was used, but to go around and berate people about it is just plain irrational if for no other reason than because it hurts his public image and makes others resent him. If he wants recognition there are far more pleasant and effective ways to get it, and if he can't get it using those methods he isn't going to get it period. The man has his priorities a little out of wack it seems. He goes to meet the developers of a Unix desktop that has helped move Unix back onto the main stage again and he makes a big deal out of what name they're using to describe a particular Unix variant? Its fucking irrelevant, least to everyone but him and his disciples. I'm sure he also berated them again about their use of Qt before it was put under the GPL. I'm sure most people remember him asking the KDE developers for an apology when Qt was GPL'd. You'd think he'd be happy, or at least pretend to be for the sake of community, but no he has to take on last stab at them. If I were the KDE guys I wouldn't give him the time of day until he apologized himself. Not for his opinions but for his behavior. At the very least I'd want to see some change in his behavior before I dealt with him. The KDE guys have nothing to gain from Stallman's approval. They need his support about as much as the US needs the support of the UN.
I really do think that a lot of his behavior stems from the fact that there are other people in the free software world that are at least as influential and respected as he is. People who know how to play politics and at least have some grasp of how to influence others. People aren't only listening to him anymore. He doesn't like this and the only thing he can think of to do about it is to be annoying and make a federal case out of things that don't matter. It is true that if someone rants and bitches and is basically no fun to be around that people are going to pay attention to them. But that doesn't mean anyone is listening to anything they're saying. The only reason he's able to get away with this behavior is because of who he is. If he were some no-name hacker (!cracker) no one would listen to him and in fact he'd quickly have his own personal anti-fan club.
Stallman says that he is an Asperger's case and based upon his behavior I believe him. Why else would a 50 year old man have none of the political and social skills that the rest of us master by the time we're 13? What he needs is a press secretary or a PR person to work with him and help him learn (or fake) the social and political skills he needs to leverage the respect and appreciation that even the annoyed like me still feel towards him. If he ever wants to truly be the leader he dreams of being he needs to learn how to lead, and alienating the people you're trying to recruit to follow you isn't how it's done. Someone should send him a copy of Dale Carnagie's "How to win Friends and Influence People."
Lee
The problem with this show is that it's being used as a platform for left-wing propaganda. It's the worst example of this since the Alien Nation series on Fox a decade back. I've only watched a handful of episodes and each time I was left with the feeling that the story and characters were little more than a gimmick to get people to watch what was otherwise a one-hour presentation on left-wing ideology.
The only way this show can be "fixed" is to get rid of whoever is writing that kind of crap and replace them with real writers.
Lee
The problem is that actual true Marxism CANNOT be practiced on anything other than a microscopic scale because it is fundamentally incompatible with human nature. Marxism is bullshit. It doesn't even work on paper, let alone in practice. Any and all attempts to implement a Marxist system have led directly to totalitarianism. The only way of destroying the concept of private property and getting people to work for free is through force and violence. The result is not a Marxist utopia but a Stalinist hell. Make no mistake, there are among us right now people who would, if given free reign, do any number of horrific and terrible things to others around them for no other reason than because they can. The wolf is always at the door. These are the types that come to power when individual rights are destroyed and the power of the state is unchecked. Remember that the next time the left-wingers start in with their little song and dance.
Lee
To anyone familiar with Scientology, and especially its RPF, this story sounds eerily familiar.
y /
The secret Library of scientology:
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Librar
Operation Clambake:
http://www.xenu.net
(I'm still waiting for my goldenrod)
My political, ideological, and religious beliefs when it come to computers are technology are this. I don't really have any and view with deep suspicion and general contempt anyone who does. People who get religious or extremely political about computers should get a life.
I have opinions and conclusions that are technical in nature and are derived from technical issues. Licensing is not a technical issue, whether it be the licensing on software or the licensing on the documentation that accompanies it. My take on it is that it should be whatever the creator of the software or documentation wants it to be. What people who have not worked to create the code or docs think is about as relevant as the UN. In other words, anyone not willing to roll up their sleeves and hack the code or the docs can sit down and shut up about who gets to use it under what conditions.
If the licensing on something makes it onerous to use, I won't use it. The same thing goes for documentation. I won't sit and bitch about it, or declare jihad on the infidels who dare to challenge the the gospel truth of the GPL, BSD, etc. because I quite simply DON'T GIVE A DAMN.
If it is a technical issue, I'm all ears. If it is a political issue I don't want to hear about it because if experience has taught me anything its that people who are overly political are generally full of shit regardless of the slant their politics take. Admittedly that makes me full of shit myself, but not when it comes to computers.
Lee
The problem with laserdiscs was that they were HUGE in comparison to CD/DVD and the defect rate on them at time of manufacture was quite high. I remember seeing laserdiscs in the store for close to a hundred bucks when the same movie on VHS was only a fraction of that.
If laserdiscs had been more affordable they probably would have been quite successful.
Lee
As long as I've got a normal CD player then I've got a way to "rip" cd tracks. All I'll have to do is plug the tape out from my receiver into the line-level input of my sound card and "rip" the CD track to a wav file. The people at these radio stations should be able to do something equivalent. When CD's first started being used in radio 15+ years ago, the people at the station generally copied them over to the high-fidelity analog tapes they used for broadcast at the time. I don't know what they're using nowadays, but I'd tend to believe that the engineers there could transfer the CD tracks into the needed format in their sleep regardless of anything the RIAA does to the CD.
I do hope that the RIAA understands that the games they are playing aren't going to get them anything. Anyone who WANTS to pirate music is going to do so. This business with mucking with the format of the CD only irritates their customers. I sincerely believe that the whole idea was thought up by some suits who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. Anyone with a clue wouldn't even bother with such an approach.
Lee
While this is a little off topic, I'd just like to point out that Steve Jobs saw all that stuff at PARC because his people took him there to see it. They'd already seen it all, in fact some of them came to Apple from PARC. The reason for the effort? Because in order to get Steve Jobs to go along with a good idea it is necessary to make him think he came up with it himself.
Lee