The only thing evil needs to win is for the good to do nothing to stop it.
If I don't speak out about organizations like scientology then I'm doing nothing but help them. I'm sorry, but I'm just too damned responsible to stand by and watch.
There is a direct correlation between substance addiction and religious fervor. A substantial percentage of "true believer" scientologists are those who once had drug problems. From what I've seen this is pretty much in line with other cults. What it comes down to is that religion replaces the drug in these people's lives. If you ask me this is for the best because religion generally doesn't destroy someone's life the way drugs will. The problem is that Scientology is the exception to that rule because it is a predatory organization who will strip its victims of their livelyhood and toss them aside.
Now I don't necessarily believe this, but it seems to me that this could be construed as an attempt by the players within Microsoft to continue to operate as an effective monopoly without being a singular corporate entity.
Creating a web of inter-locking corporations has worked for various other evil organizations such as Scientology, the mafia, DeBeers, etc. Why not Microsoft?
The ties that bind them together would not even have to be in the form of stock. As long as a symbiotic relationship exists among the companies that are spun off, you can expect them to act in such a way as to benefit them all.
As for revolt, I seem to remember a little incident a few years back where chineese student protestors were gunned down in Tianamen(sp?) square.
Mao was no fool when he said that political power came from the barrel of a gun. Any significant attempt at revolt by those without guns (the chineese people) would quickly be put down by those with guns (the chineese government and its thugs).
This is ultimately the agenda behind the efforts by some to disarm the american public. George Washington called fireams "the people's liberty's teeth." To disarm is to disempower. Those without power are always at the mercy of those who have it. The fact that there are factions and groups in this country who fear the idea that free individuals would be empowered and collectively hold more power than the government says a lot about what these groups are about. It says that they have something to fear from free men and women, which is a pretty good indication that they are the enemy of free men and women. They have motives and agendas that are contrary to the wishes and well-being of the public. They know that the only way they'll ever be able to shove their agenda down our throats is if they have all the power and we have none. These types are present within any political party or group you care to mention, although there is a heavy concentration of them on the left. To disarm is to disempower and to disempower is to ultimately disenfranchise. Protect your freedom, it is the only thing more valuable than your life.
I see little reason for me to respect a government whose authority is not derived from the consent and endorsement of the governed. That is not what the chineese government is.
When Apple finally dies. I won't have to put up with idiots trying to tell me that the Mac is better than the PC. Any grounds for such an argument ceased to exist a long time ago. I know, I've owned several macs and I got sick and tired of the performance, instability, and severe lack of software that was available for it.
The truth is that the Mac freaks simply have an emotional attachment to the architecture and/or the company and are trying to justify it with excuses that passed the criteria for being bullshit a long, long time ago. They're like creationist apologists who have been painted into a corner by their own religion and the progress of science. They don't have a leg to stand on, but that doesn't mean they won't still pretend otherwise. But then again no one else cares except while harrassed by one of them. The Macintosh isn't a computer, its a cult. For a cult, the church of the one true computer doesn't have much to offer. Where are the sex orgies? I mean if I was going to stick my head up my ass far enough that I wanted to join a cult, you can be damned sure it would be one where sex orgies with teenaged girls in cheerleader outfits was an everyday event. You mean I'm supposed to worship Steve Jobs? Right........
I personally don't give a rat's ass what computer anyone else uses. I just don't care because it does not affect me. What does affect me are prissy condescending assholes, who know about as much about computers as I do about the social customs of Mongolians, trying to tell ME that a second rate has-been platform is somehow better than a standard PC.
Maybe once Apple has finally bit the dust these cretins will go craw in a hole someplace and leave the rest of us alone. I'll probably have a T-Shirt made that had the apple logo with R.I.P. below it in big black letters.
How come so few of them are getting shot or otherwise removed from the gene pool? Where I come from if someone was acting like that he'd be killed by the very community he was mistreating.
But then again I don't come from a ghetto where any sense of community died a long time ago. I can see how it would be easy for the police to behave that way when there was no solidarity on the part of their victims. Divide and conquer is the name of the game, although in this case the division is a pre-existing condition.
If the police are a problem in some communities then I suggest the people of those communities band together, arm themselves, and when push comes to shove give the police a reason to think twice about terrorizing people. An armed society is a polite society, and I can think of no place more in need of an etiquette lesson than the ghetto. Just imagine how quickly the violent crime rate would fall... How much crime would there be if all of the non-criminals were packing heat? I dare say that the streets of such a community would be some of the safest in the country. Not only would the police mind their manners but the thugs would either be dead or scared shitless of their would-be victims. The only purpose the police would serve would be their usual role as armed historians, writing reports about stuff that happend before they ever got there. The difference is that with the public being armed most of those reports would end with the thugs being arrested or shot dead rather than their victims being killed, raped, robbed, etc.
The only problem with this plan of course is that criminals are opportunists. These thugs would not just sit around in the ghetto. Instead they would move their activities to other places where people were less likely to be armed. Then of course we'd start hearing news stories about thugs attacking middle class (mostly white) neighborhoods. Then of couse the gun control morons would start in blaming the guns the thugs were using. This in turn would fool the weak minded into wanting to take guns away from everyone living in the ghetto. So in the end honest citizens living in the ghetto would be stripped of their ability to protect themselves, leading to a "homecoming" for the thugs, including those carrying badges.
I've yet to read it, but it looks to be very good. The one question I have for you is, where is this guy teaching children? If you mean 18-22 year old college students then I really must object to them being called children. One of the biggest problems I see in this country is how the age at which people are expected, no DEMANDED, to be mature has been creeping ever higher for who knows how long. It makes me sick how college students and 20-somethings are still living in a kind of prolonged adolescence. What kind of culture are we living in that childish behavior and dependency is still accepted from someone who is halfway to 40?
I work at a university and I can count several occassions in the past year when a writer for the school newspaper referred to themself as a "kid" or to his/her peers as "kids." This is wrong. Sadly it is also encouraged. So many parents don't raise children to be adults, they raise them to be children. The fact that most of them actually do manage to grow up anyway is a tribute to just how much the process of maturity is self directed.
Anyway I didn't mean to jump all over you, its just that the idea of college students as children is a sore spot for me. Where I come from childhood ends when you start growing hair in new places, not when you're 25.
The -R and -RAM formats own the consumer video recorder market. The -RAM format has the key advantage of very fast random access time, so fast that you can record and play-back from the same disk simultaneously in real time.
The -R format is currently the most compatible with existing players. Truthfully though, worrying about which format will work with existing and older players is irrelevant. It would be like worrying about CD-R because older players won't work with it. If you need to read the disks, get a player that will do so. I'd be willing to make a bet that withing a year's time there won't be a player sold that won't read both -R and +R and quite a few that will read -RAM (especially from Panasonic).
The only area where there is any room for competition will be in the computer arena, but even then there will be no clear victor for a very long time. With +R drives and media being much more expensive than -R, I think that -R has a bright future here as well.
ECS K7S5A Motherboard (SIS 735 chipset) Duron 950 running at 1050Mhz (Soon to be an XP 2100+) 256mb PC133 SDRAM Windows 2000 SP2 ATI All-in-wonder Radeon 7500 Sound Blaster Audigy OEM 60 Gig 7200 RPM WD IDE hard drive DVD-ROM CD-burner, 24x Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse (very nice!) 32 inch RCA TV being driven off S-video Harmon Kardon A/V reciever with dolby 5.1 speaker setup. Latest ATI drivers and MMC 7.7
This is what I'm able to do with this system as it stands:
Watch DivX movies from CD on my TV instead of a computer monitor. Record TV shows and movies to MPEG-2 format at up to DVD quality. I can then do any damned thing I want to with the files. (Obviously I can copy them accross our lan) Record TV shows and movies in DivX format (only 320x240 till I upgrade the cpu). With 60 gigs of space I can record for three days continuously at this setting and the results are significantly better than VCD format. Needless to say I can record things in MPEG-2 format and re-encode them to DivX for burning to CD using flaskmpeg. Once I get a DVD burner I'll probably just burn them straight to DVD's.
The only downside to this current configuration is that only the video is compressed, the audio is saved in PCM format. Current systems aren't quite fast enought to do real time capture and encoding of audio and video at DVD quality levels. Obviously this will change within a year or so. Whether the software will also change is hard to say but I suspect that it will. I'd love to be able to just record a movie straight to DivX and dump it on a CD.
The software that comes with the AIW features all kinds of tivo-like stuff such as the ability to pause live tv, view TV listings online, and schedule record times. I don't really use these but they are there. You don't have to pay a subscription fee either.
I also play DVD's on this system and the output as good or better than any console DVD player. ATI's DVD software does an excellent job and the S-Video output on the AIW looks absolutely fabulous on my TV. It has no flicker and is sharp and clear. I can sit in front of my coffee table with my cordless keyboard and mouse and websurf. I can also play video games such as Max Payne thanks to the not-too-shabby 3D capabilities of the 7500. It has a wireless remote control as well.
At this point I just need a slightly faster computer and better software and this system would kick the living shit out of anything that a Tivo can do. AT this point it already does do better than what a Tivo is actually meant to do.
How much did this cost me?
Motherboard and current CPU: $99 Fry's special Memory: $45 (I already had it) Case: $59 HD: $89 CD-Burner: $59 DVD-Rom: $40 (I already had it) Floppy: $12 SB-Audigy: $60 ATI AIW: $150 Wireless KB/mouse: $80
Total: $693
I don't know what a Tivo costs these days, but I'll bet you I got more bang for my buck by far.
If only more lawyers would get fired. There are far too many upright-walking cockroaches in that profession. There are good lawyers too of course, just look at the ACLU, but there are also plenty of the worst type of scum known to man.
I guess if you're an amoral sociopath, career choices that match your temperament are few and far between. Your choices are basically car salesman, CEO, or legalistic henchman/mercenary.
I wasn't talking specifically about what HP is currently doing. Rather I was responding to the posters idea about how those who discover exploits should somehow be restrained from disclosing them for a set ammount of time. The only authority capable of enforcing such restraint would be the government, therefore the first amendment does definitely apply to the situation I was talking about.
Everyone is so quick to pipe in that the first amdendment only applies to the government. Well keep your britches on because it isn't that simple.
If you work for a company and part of your job is to keep your mouth shut about something, the fact that the company is requiring this of you as part of a private voluntary relationship (employee/employer) is not a violation of the first amendment. You are free to break off the relationship and save for non-disclosure agreements, in which you voluntarily contract yourself to remain silent, the company has no power to force you to be silent. Even the non-disclosure agreement is one in which it is the authority of the government that is imposing the silence, but one which you have voluntarily agreed to. It is a contract after all. Even servitude (slavery) is legal if it is voluntary.
If however a company is enlisting the help of the government to force someone to remain silent about something then the first amendment does definitely apply. The company is free to encourage the persn to be silent, refuse to have financial dealings with the person and so forth. What they don't have is the legal authority to demand silence.
What the DMCA has done is allow corporations to hijack the concept of copyright to nullify the first amendment in certain situations. It is therefore itself unconstitutional.
Lots of people like to blame big corporations for the DMCA. I don't. I blame congress and ultimately the american people for allowing it to be passed. If most of us were taking responsibility for our country by first and foremost voting, keeping abreast of current events and legislative shenanigans, and voicing our opinions to our elected representatives, things like the DMCA would never have a chance.
Democracy is the fairest of all governments because the people always get what they deserve. The DMCA is no exception.
Trying to dictate when someone is allowed to say something is in violation of the first amendment. If you live in a country where that doesn't apply then I guess it sucks to live there.
The real solution is for the vendors themselves to be more proactive and actually search for bugs and vulnerabilities. This isn't a perfect solution, because there is no such thing. Until such time that software is mathematically perfect there will always be bugs (in other words there will always be bugs). What companies like HP need are teams of programmers and legitimate crackers whose job it is to thrash the code as hard as possible to expose vulnerabilities before the criminal crackers find it. If they're too cheap to do this then fuck them and the horse they rode in on.
If you REALLY want to put an end to crap like the DMCA the very best things you can do are vote and donate money to groups like the EFF and ACLU. Put your money where your mouth is.
I have a hard time really caring what lame brain schemes third world nations and companies invent to give themselves their weekly foot-bullet.
The only area where I have any opinion about countries like India is when it comes to immigration. Tech firms here are exploiting everyone by either bringing foreign workers in on temporary visas as slave labor, or simply exporting the job itself to india where they can pay ten cents on the dollar compared to american wages.
The best solution I see to this is to encourage immigration. I might have more people to compete with, but I won't be competing based upon price so much. I'd rather lose my job to someone living here than lose it to someone living in Rangoon. Besides, just imagine what an influx of talent and intelligence will do for our gene pool?
Yes, but does the SMP actually work well? My understanding having not followed too closely is that SMP is not really working yet. It will detect two CPU's, but only really use one of them. That might have changed recently in which case I'm glad to hear it.
Actually that reminds me of another area where FreeBSD needs improvement, kernel threads. These aren't a make or break feature, but they are nice.
1: My (admittedly limited) understanding of SMP on FreeBSD was that they were having problems finding people to work on it. That they were having to do a rush job on it in order to try and get something marginally workable for 5.0. If SMP is working as well as it did in Linux 2.2 then that would be great.
2: I LOVE kernel pre-emption. On older systems where the kernel can be more or less stuck chewing on something it makes the computer much more responsive. Kernel pre-emption is one of the hallmarks of microkernel architectures (well pre-emption of the userland threads that handle the system calls at least). The nice thing about it is that you don't HAVE to use it.
3: the ext2 filesystem has support for ordered updates just like UFS. It isn't generally used except on servers because of the speed penalty. Ext3 on the other hand uses ordered mode by default. The benefit of jornaling is that your filesystem doesn't get left in and undefined state in the case of a crash. Also when you reboot you don't have to spend who knows how long checking the filesystem. Speed is a secondary concern. I can't make any solid claims about the speed of UFS using soft updates vs. ext3. All I can says that my personal experience with UFS has been that its much, much slower when it comes to creating or destroying files compared to either ext2 in asynchronous mode or ext3. In terms of raw throughput on existing files all I can say is that all three are fast enough that I don't notice any difference between them.
4: It might not be important to you, but I support Unix in the college of engineering at Arizona State and believe me things like Matlab and Maple are a very big deal around here. I know of course that these might very well run on FreeBSD using its ability to emulate Linux (which is a VERY good thing IMHO).
5: It is also commercial software not not cheap. I'm not one of your free software religious zealots, I have zero problems with commercial software. The problem is that if Accelerated X is the only X server with 3d support for FreeBSD, then that tips the scales decidedly in the favor of Linux where such support part of the base system.
6: I know that NetBSD had support for USB back in early '99. I wasn't aware that the support for it under Linux was derived from NetBSD. Even if it was, the comparison here is between Linux and FreeBSD, not NetBSD. I've run NetBSD and I've never been particularly impressed with it. The main problem I see is that there are still people trying to support long dead hardware with it, hardware that NO ONE is going to actually run if they can help it in any way. I got a Quadra 700 for free a year or so ago and decided to try and make it into a real computer. That meant of course putting a real operating system on it. I chose NetBSD and sure enough it would load up and run.....VERY, VERY slowly. The fastest 68k mac ever made wasn't much faster than that Quadra 700 was, meaning that trying to continue to maintain a codebase for the platform line is an utter waste of time. I installed NetBSD for intel shortly thereafter and was less than thrilled by the stability of the system. The kernel didn't crash, but userland stuff I'd compiled from the ports sure did. OpenBSD is much better in that regard, most likely because it doesn't get spread too thin chasing dead hardware. I really like OpenBSD because it is designed to be secure by default, something that other Unix derivatives would do well to emulate. Obviously security is in the hands of the administrator and it is very possible to misconfigure OpenBSD to be insecure. Its just that with it I don't have such a nagging worry that there might be some exploit of some service or another waiting to be discovered by the cracker community. As for SCSI under Linux and FreeBSD I can't really comment one way or the other.
I wasn't really sure how to respond to your post at first. To a large extent I think that for us to debate whether the issues above are real or not is pointless because I'm not out to attack FreeBSD by bringing them up. I WANT FreeBSD to do well, and these are the areas that I think it needs improvement in.
The code base for FreeBSD is VERY mature and the base BSD system itself was created by some of the most brilliant computer scientists who have ever lived, such as Bill Joy. Ever read The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating System? Linux owes as much to BSD as it does to GNU.
Projects like the BSD's are valuable because they provide an alternate view of how to do things from what is available under Linux. If something isn't really being done well in Linux and works better under one of the BSD's, then that provides a valuable contrast so that everyone can see that the problem needs to be fixed. This is a two way street however, which is exactly why I've listed things I thing need to be fixed. By listing them I'm not saying that FreeBSD is "bad," only that there are areas where there is room for improvement.
Right now I've got four systems running Linux (RH-7.3 and 7.2) and one system running FreeBSD 4.6. At times in the past I've run OpenBSD and NetBSD as well.
I can tell you firsthand that in terms of system stability that Linux and FreeBSD are comparable if not indistinguishable. FreeBSD does seem to be more efficient however. The pentium 200 that I have FreeBSD on loads up KDE 3.0 noticably faster than Redhat 7.2 did, and once loaded it is more responsive. On older hardware FreeBSD definitely seems to have an advantage. I consider FreeBSD to be a very fast and well designed operating system. I keep trying to find places where using it instead of Linux would be an advantage.
Not everything about it is all that rosey however. The features and abilities that Linux provides but FreeBSD lacks such as SMP, kernel pre-emption, fast journaling filesystems, certain commerical software packages, 3D acclerated X servers, and generally better device support, make actually using FreeBSD as anything but an interesting toy kind of difficult to justify in many situations.
I worry about FreeBSD. I'd love to see it grow and progress not as a competitor to Linux, but as something of a companion to it. So many people just don't seem to realize that open source isn't about operating systems alone. What Linux and FreeBSD do is provide a foundation, they aren't the whole house. Both provide a powerful and stable platform for running the actual programs that people want to use in the first place. The future of open source development is going to be 90% apps and userland and 10% OS. To have religious and political wars over the OS portion is immature and counterproductive. Linux and FreeBSD aren't genuine competitors from an economic standpoint because it is the applications that both run that make either compelling in the first place.
I want BOTH Linux and FreeBSD to do well, to grow and expand and be the best operating systems anyone has ever seen. I detest the infantile immaturity of those who seek to create division and conflict between FreeBSD and Linux that simply shouldn't be there. I've gotten flames from FreeBSD "advocates" in particular filled with such hatred and obvious zealousness that you'd think they were Mac freaks, all because I described FreeBSD in terms that weren't favorable enough for their religious views. The Linux crowd is full of just as many jackasses, if not more.
Computer enthusiasts are known for generally having high IQ's. Unfortunately our reputation for having low EQ's is equally well earned. There are far too many borderline autistics and asperger's sufferers among us with severely retarded social skills. That is really the only explanation I can come up with when grown men with extensive vocabularies use them to throw a fit on par with that of an eight year old.
Anyway I'm drifting way off from what I wanted to write about. The point that I really want to make is that BOTH Linux and FreeBSD are absolutely fabulous operating systems (save the linux is just a kernel messages for church). The goals and vision behind each are so similar that any ill will between them is manufactured by immature, short sighted assholes. Microsoft is the enemy, not those who prefer another free Unix derivative that runs Mozilla, gnome, kde, etc just as well if not better than what someone else is using.
To me the best way to respond to this kind of bullshit is to mirror the content as far and wide as possible, and advertise the existance of the mirrors. Let the pope put that in his corn cob pipe and smoke it!
About the only thing I watch on TV are movie channels, the history channel, and the Sci-Fi channel. I don't give a rat's ass whether NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, WB, and UPN fill 59 out of every 60 seconds with pure advertising. I don't waste my time watching their crap anyway.
About the only thing that is going to result from this is that the channels that DON'T piss off their viewers are the ones that people are going to watch, even if the actual quality of their programming is inferior. Of course I don't expect television execs to understand this, but then again I really don't care. Television is one of those activities that I spend the least ammount of time doing. If it were to diappear off the face of the earth I don't think I'd miss much.
You're right, the US did not act alone. We had the free French, the free Poles, Canada (which took one of the beaches on D-Day), the Soviet Union, resistance groups in France, Norway, Belgium. Even the Italian Mafia helped us win. Of course we also had Monty to try and help us lose. Alan Turing did more to help us win than Monty ever did. In the end however it wouldn't have ammounted to squat without the U.S. When the U.S. entered the war Britain stood alone against Axis controlled europe. Without American involvement either Germany or Russia would have eventually gained control over all of Europe. Thanks to us Germany was the loser and furthermore Russia was kept at bay for fifty years. Western Europe owes it very political existance to the United States.
I'm not really sure how to respond to your statement that we nuked "millions" of Japaneese. First of all the combined death rate for both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was less than half a million people by 1950. Our immediate kill rate was about half that. We fire bombed Tokyo in March of '45 with conventional explosives and killed over 100,000 people and injured over a million. We did far worse to the Germans during the strategic bombing campaign of Europe. Second of all I can't figure out why you have a problem with us bombing them in the first place. Would you rather we literally did kill millions of Japaneese with bombs and grenades during a land invasion? It is hard to estimate exactly what that death toll would have been if we hadn't used our bombs. Japan had about 2 million troops and ten million civillians who were primed to fight to the death. The founder of Sony said that he was glad we nuked Japan because he and all of his friends were set to be the first line of defense in the upcoming land invasion. Those nukes saved millions of lives.
As for Vietnam, if we'd fought the war to win instead of fighting to play politics we just might have won. Fighting to win means defeating the enemy and dead men are by definition defeated. I'd have made the same statement had the war been with the Russians instead.
I don't particularly care why Osama Bin Laden hates us. He is not in charge of Saudia Arabia. If he doesn't like the fact that we are there then perhaps he should have worked to pursuade his own government to kick us out.
In many ways New York is the center of the world. In just about every enterprise or affair that is of an international nature, New York is a major hub of activity if not the center ring. Its no coincidence that New York is where the UN is. I have been to Manhattan. Its been said that the curse of New Yorkers is that they can quite literally go through their entire lives and never meet anyone who thinks differently than they do. Back when Nixon defeated McGovern in '72 by winning 49 out of the 50 states, people in Manhattan were stunned because, as one movie critic put it, "I don't know anyone who voted for him!" Manhattan is not the United States as a whole however. Most of the country views New York and its cross continent cousin LA with a mixture of amimosity and amusement. We can't figure out whether to hate them or just laught at them.
You really should read The Prince. Its usefullness is in that it teaches one how to best deal with those who cannot be reasoned with. Fear and power are the only language that some people and some cultures understand. Trying to sit down and work out your difference with barbarians is a collossal waste of time. Far better to beat the shit out of them and leave them living in abject horror of you. The truth about America is that we are strongly isolationist. We're not particularly interested or eager to go out and meddle around in the affiars of other countries. The general consensus is that idiots in other places can be as stupid as they want, as long as it doesn't cause problems for us it doesn't matter. We are slow to anger, but once we are enraged we are easily the most deadly of all adversaries. Al Queda and the middle east in general is about to learn the same lesson that the Japaneese learned, we are not soft, we are not cowards, and we will not stop until our enemies are defeated or dead.
I am sorry you're having problems with the INS. You need to understand however that the purpose of the INS is to ensure that yahoo's and other undesirables don't move here. Many european nations have policies of open immigration and from what I understand its becoming a real problem. People come there from the 3rd world and live off welfare created from the socialism that europe is drowning in. We don't want lazy good for nothings here. We want people who are willing and eager to work, people who are talented and will contribute to our gene pool instead of pissing in it. Our immigration policies make it difficult to come here for the simple reason that if someone is willing to apply the effort necessary to overcome that difficulty then they are the kind of person we want here. I personally believe we should do away with our current policy of limiting immigration based on country of origin and instead base it upon ability and and/or educational achievement. We should encourage the best and brightest to move here instead of telling the 101st person from Zimbabwe, who happens to be a Magna Cum Laude honor's graduate, that he or she can't move here till next year because of the 100 that were in line in front of them.
As for the idea that American's are ignorant, we have more college graduates than anywhere else in the world and our universities are the best in the world. Harvard, Yale, MIT, Cal-Tech, Princeton, Brown, Stanford, University of Chicago, these are all in the US. That isn't to say that ALL outstanding universities are here, after all there are places like Oxford and Cambridge. Its just that in no other place is are there so many outstanding universities. Any perception of American's as ignorant is evidence of ignorance itself. Even so, itt's hard not to feel self important when your nation leads the world in just about anything and everything you can think of that ammounts to a hill of beans. Mostly however we feel not so much self-important as confused as to why so much of the rest of the world just doesn't have its act together. War, famine, massive inflation and high unemployment, we don't have those problems here because we have our act together. We're not being drowned by marxist bullshit in the guise of socialism. The United States has been around for a little over two hundred years. We've achieved more in that time than anyone. We are a nation of immigrants, of peoples who came here from every place and chose to work together to build a nation and a future for their childen and their children's children. The fact that we have been so successful should say something to the world.
If it wasn't for America you'd either be speaking Italian, German, Russian, or maybe even Turkish, take your pick. Just imagine what your life would be like if America hadn't been there to stop Mussolini and Hitler? Maybe the Russians would have defeated Germany in the end, but would you be better off if they had? You're free to speak your mind here on this forum in no small part because America was there to defend that freedom 60 years ago. Or what if NATO didn't exist and Greece and Turkey were left to their own devices in dealing with one another? How would you like to have to go to war? Don't complain about America stepping in and telling assholes to behave themselves when your own country was engaging in a war by proxy with Turkey in the balkans, a war we had to put a stop to ourselves because the nations of Europe couldn't seem to get their act together.
As for your statement that you're a non-racist, you could have fooled me. First you complain that America is multi-racial (your neighbour is from india and your wife from Africa), then say there is no such thing as a "pure" American. Unlike Greece, being American doesn't describe a single genetic or even an ethnic background. Being an American means that you live here and are a contributing member of society. You don't even have to be born here. I doubt that anyone where you were from would call me a Greek if I moved there regardless of how long I lived there or how well I spoke the language. I assume that by describing yourself as a non-racist you're implying that I am one. Where you get that idea I just can't figure out. You seem to be able to write english well enough, can you read it as well?
As for your ideas about American history, you really need some schooling. The United States is currently the oldest continuous government in the world. There are older nations to be sure, but none of the governments that were in power in 1788 are still around today in the same form they were then. Our system has not changed. That kind of stability, especially when you consider the unparalleled expansion and growth we've enjoyed, says that we are good at solving our own problems. Youth violence is a figment of the media's imagination. We didn't "invade" Vietnam, we were invited by the south Vietnamese government. We didn't even invade north Vietnam. We did kill over a million NVA and VC troops (too few if you ask me), but we did so in the process of attempting to preserve south Vietnam's soverignty, hardly an invasion. As for our reaons for doing so, they were a bit deeper than a desire to be "macho." Our war in Vietnam was a war by proxy with the Soviet Union, much like the recent conflict in the balkans was a war by proxy between Greece and Turkey. A war which, by the way, we had to step in and put a stop to because the "european community" couldn't seem to do the job itself. I'm not sure what your description of the US as a "bastard nation" is supposed to mean exactly. Bastard means illegitimate, and no government is more legitimate than ours, at least if you subscribe to the ideas of Thomas Jefferson or John Locke.
Just so you know, what we're doing now is not called playing "good cop." We're done doing that because its been made abundantly clear to us that it doesn't work. Trying to make everyone like us and feel all warm and fuzzy about the US is what led to the WTC and pentagon being bombed (a plane loaded with fuel IS a bomb) So instead we're now playing BAD COP. If you want to understand the nature of our current foreign policy, read this book and all will be clear. You might not like the United States, but then you're in no position to act on your dislike beyong harassing tourists. This means that your opinion, like that of europe in general when it comes to the US and what we do internationally, is essentially irrelevant. If you REALLY hate us so much, I suggest that you start a petition to have Greece withdraw from NATO and cease all trade with US based companies. Or you could take the easy way and just move to Cuba. That is what life is like where the US doesn't extend its power.
I wonder how come no one has created a FPS where you go kill terrorists? With the quake source code out under the GPL it should be easy to create one. I've heard that there is some kind of Nazi/KKK racist game out there. That makes me wonder why, if the white trash and inbreds in this country can have their own game where they can act out their dim-witted vendetta against racial and ethnic minorities, why can't there be a game were the rest of us can fantasize about killing terrorists?
I for one would love to exorcise some of the anger I feel about everything that's happened by pumping some lead into some Al Queda knuckle-draggers. I even have a title for the game: "Operation Kill'em all," under which could be the sub-title "Give the enemy a first hand lesson in what a real Jihad looks like."
In truth I'm kind of concerned as to why we haven't heard much from the news lately. Six months ago all you heard was who we were killing in Afghanistan. Is there no one left that needs killing? I doubt it. Oh well, the way I see it if there are more terrorist attacks then that will be fine. Cockroaches are easier to step on when they're where you can see them. Maybe we're just gearing up for an operation to invade Iraq and hang old Saddam from a street light. I personally think that would be a very good thing to do. Even if Saddam himself is not much of a threat, our willingness to use overwhelming force in order to get rid of him will be a very effective demonstration of power to the rest of the world, and more importantly it would instill fear, which is often the most effective weapon of all. We wouldn't be in this mess if it weren't for the fact that the american people voted for Bill Clinton twice in a row. Our war on terrorism is nothing but us having to play catch up after nearly a decade of extremely bad foreign policy. If Clinton had handled the situation in its infancy back in 93, none of this would be necessary. But instead he tried to apply european style pussy politics to a region of the world where force and power are the only languages that are understood. Oh well, like I said, Cockroaches are easier to kill when you can see them. In the long run it might be for the best since we're now killing off the fuckers instead of just trying to contain them. In the long term offensive strategies are almost always better than ones based upon the idea of perpetual defense. Defenses can fail, but that doesn't matter when your enemy is dead and his friends piss their pants in terror at the mere mention of your name. Too bad Clinton didn't have a modern day Machiavelli as a foreign policy adviser.
In any case I think a good game would be one in which you get to kill terrorists, the more graphic and gory the better.
Well I'm sure your typing must be perfect all the time with no errors whatsoever. I'm also sure that at any moment monkeys are going to fly out of my butt.
Slashdot Mirror
The only thing evil needs to win is for the good to do nothing to stop it.
If I don't speak out about organizations like scientology then I'm doing nothing but help them. I'm sorry, but I'm just too damned responsible to stand by and watch.
Lee
There is a direct correlation between substance addiction and religious fervor. A substantial percentage of "true believer" scientologists are those who once had drug problems. From what I've seen this is pretty much in line with other cults. What it comes down to is that religion replaces the drug in these people's lives. If you ask me this is for the best because religion generally doesn't destroy someone's life the way drugs will. The problem is that Scientology is the exception to that rule because it is a predatory organization who will strip its victims of their livelyhood and toss them aside.
Lee
Online Library of books about Scientology. VERY GOOD
Operation Clambake
FACTNet, over 50 megs of information about $cientology
Tell your family, tell your friends. Forewarned is forearmed.
Lee
Now I don't necessarily believe this, but it seems to me that this could be construed as an attempt by the players within Microsoft to continue to operate as an effective monopoly without being a singular corporate entity.
Creating a web of inter-locking corporations has worked for various other evil organizations such as Scientology, the mafia, DeBeers, etc. Why not Microsoft?
The ties that bind them together would not even have to be in the form of stock. As long as a symbiotic relationship exists among the companies that are spun off, you can expect them to act in such a way as to benefit them all.
Lee
So that makes it right?
As for revolt, I seem to remember a little incident a few years back where chineese student protestors were gunned down in Tianamen(sp?) square.
Mao was no fool when he said that political power came from the barrel of a gun. Any significant attempt at revolt by those without guns (the chineese people) would quickly be put down by those with guns (the chineese government and its thugs).
This is ultimately the agenda behind the efforts by some to disarm the american public. George Washington called fireams "the people's liberty's teeth." To disarm is to disempower. Those without power are always at the mercy of those who have it. The fact that there are factions and groups in this country who fear the idea that free individuals would be empowered and collectively hold more power than the government says a lot about what these groups are about. It says that they have something to fear from free men and women, which is a pretty good indication that they are the enemy of free men and women. They have motives and agendas that are contrary to the wishes and well-being of the public. They know that the only way they'll ever be able to shove their agenda down our throats is if they have all the power and we have none. These types are present within any political party or group you care to mention, although there is a heavy concentration of them on the left. To disarm is to disempower and to disempower is to ultimately disenfranchise. Protect your freedom, it is the only thing more valuable than your life.
I see little reason for me to respect a government whose authority is not derived from the consent and endorsement of the governed. That is not what the chineese government is.
When Apple finally dies. I won't have to put up with idiots trying to tell me that the Mac is better than the PC. Any grounds for such an argument ceased to exist a long time ago. I know, I've owned several macs and I got sick and tired of the performance, instability, and severe lack of software that was available for it.
The truth is that the Mac freaks simply have an emotional attachment to the architecture and/or the company and are trying to justify it with excuses that passed the criteria for being bullshit a long, long time ago. They're like creationist apologists who have been painted into a corner by their own religion and the progress of science. They don't have a leg to stand on, but that doesn't mean they won't still pretend otherwise. But then again no one else cares except while harrassed by one of them. The Macintosh isn't a computer, its a cult. For a cult, the church of the one true computer doesn't have much to offer. Where are the sex orgies? I mean if I was going to stick my head up my ass far enough that I wanted to join a cult, you can be damned sure it would be one where sex orgies with teenaged girls in cheerleader outfits was an everyday event. You mean I'm supposed to worship Steve Jobs? Right........
I personally don't give a rat's ass what computer anyone else uses. I just don't care because it does not affect me. What does affect me are prissy condescending assholes, who know about as much about computers as I do about the social customs of Mongolians, trying to tell ME that a second rate has-been platform is somehow better than a standard PC.
Maybe once Apple has finally bit the dust these cretins will go craw in a hole someplace and leave the rest of us alone. I'll probably have a T-Shirt made that had the apple logo with R.I.P. below it in big black letters.
How come so few of them are getting shot or otherwise removed from the gene pool? Where I come from if someone was acting like that he'd be killed by the very community he was mistreating.
But then again I don't come from a ghetto where any sense of community died a long time ago. I can see how it would be easy for the police to behave that way when there was no solidarity on the part of their victims. Divide and conquer is the name of the game, although in this case the division is a pre-existing condition.
If the police are a problem in some communities then I suggest the people of those communities band together, arm themselves, and when push comes to shove give the police a reason to think twice about terrorizing people. An armed society is a polite society, and I can think of no place more in need of an etiquette lesson than the ghetto. Just imagine how quickly the violent crime rate would fall... How much crime would there be if all of the non-criminals were packing heat? I dare say that the streets of such a community would be some of the safest in the country. Not only would the police mind their manners but the thugs would either be dead or scared shitless of their would-be victims. The only purpose the police would serve would be their usual role as armed historians, writing reports about stuff that happend before they ever got there. The difference is that with the public being armed most of those reports would end with the thugs being arrested or shot dead rather than their victims being killed, raped, robbed, etc.
The only problem with this plan of course is that criminals are opportunists. These thugs would not just sit around in the ghetto. Instead they would move their activities to other places where people were less likely to be armed. Then of course we'd start hearing news stories about thugs attacking middle class (mostly white) neighborhoods. Then of couse the gun control morons would start in blaming the guns the thugs were using. This in turn would fool the weak minded into wanting to take guns away from everyone living in the ghetto. So in the end honest citizens living in the ghetto would be stripped of their ability to protect themselves, leading to a "homecoming" for the thugs, including those carrying badges.
America, don't you just love it?
Lee
I've yet to read it, but it looks to be very good. The one question I have for you is, where is this guy teaching children? If you mean 18-22 year old college students then I really must object to them being called children. One of the biggest problems I see in this country is how the age at which people are expected, no DEMANDED, to be mature has been creeping ever higher for who knows how long. It makes me sick how college students and 20-somethings are still living in a kind of prolonged adolescence. What kind of culture are we living in that childish behavior and dependency is still accepted from someone who is halfway to 40?
I work at a university and I can count several occassions in the past year when a writer for the school newspaper referred to themself as a "kid" or to his/her peers as "kids." This is wrong. Sadly it is also encouraged. So many parents don't raise children to be adults, they raise them to be children. The fact that most of them actually do manage to grow up anyway is a tribute to just how much the process of maturity is self directed.
Anyway I didn't mean to jump all over you, its just that the idea of college students as children is a sore spot for me. Where I come from childhood ends when you start growing hair in new places, not when you're 25.
Lee
The -R and -RAM formats own the consumer video recorder market. The -RAM format has the key advantage of very fast random access time, so fast that you can record and play-back from the same disk simultaneously in real time.
The -R format is currently the most compatible with existing players. Truthfully though, worrying about which format will work with existing and older players is irrelevant. It would be like worrying about CD-R because older players won't work with it. If you need to read the disks, get a player that will do so. I'd be willing to make a bet that withing a year's time there won't be a player sold that won't read both -R and +R and quite a few that will read -RAM (especially from Panasonic).
The only area where there is any room for competition will be in the computer arena, but even then there will be no clear victor for a very long time. With +R drives and media being much more expensive than -R, I think that -R has a bright future here as well.
Lee
Can your DVD player work with DivX encoded files?
If it can could you let me know the make and model?
Lee
ECS K7S5A Motherboard (SIS 735 chipset)
Duron 950 running at 1050Mhz (Soon to be an XP 2100+)
256mb PC133 SDRAM
Windows 2000 SP2
ATI All-in-wonder Radeon 7500
Sound Blaster Audigy OEM
60 Gig 7200 RPM WD IDE hard drive
DVD-ROM
CD-burner, 24x
Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse (very nice!)
32 inch RCA TV being driven off S-video
Harmon Kardon A/V reciever with dolby 5.1 speaker setup.
Latest ATI drivers and MMC 7.7
This is what I'm able to do with this system as it stands:
Watch DivX movies from CD on my TV instead of a computer monitor.
Record TV shows and movies to MPEG-2 format at up to DVD quality. I can then do any damned thing I want to with the files. (Obviously I can copy them accross our lan)
Record TV shows and movies in DivX format (only 320x240 till I upgrade the cpu). With 60 gigs of space I can record for three days continuously at this setting and the results are significantly better than VCD format.
Needless to say I can record things in MPEG-2 format and re-encode them to DivX for burning to CD using flaskmpeg.
Once I get a DVD burner I'll probably just burn them straight to DVD's.
The only downside to this current configuration is that only the video is compressed, the audio is saved in PCM format. Current systems aren't quite fast enought to do real time capture and encoding of audio and video at DVD quality levels. Obviously this will change within a year or so. Whether the software will also change is hard to say but I suspect that it will. I'd love to be able to just record a movie straight to DivX and dump it on a CD.
The software that comes with the AIW features all kinds of tivo-like stuff such as the ability to pause live tv, view TV listings online, and schedule record times. I don't really use these but they are there. You don't have to pay a subscription fee either.
I also play DVD's on this system and the output as good or better than any console DVD player. ATI's DVD software does an excellent job and the S-Video output on the AIW looks absolutely fabulous on my TV. It has no flicker and is sharp and clear. I can sit in front of my coffee table with my cordless keyboard and mouse and websurf. I can also play video games such as Max Payne thanks to the not-too-shabby 3D capabilities of the 7500. It has a wireless remote control as well.
At this point I just need a slightly faster computer and better software and this system would kick the living shit out of anything that a Tivo can do. AT this point it already does do better than what a Tivo is actually meant to do.
How much did this cost me?
Motherboard and current CPU: $99 Fry's special
Memory: $45 (I already had it)
Case: $59
HD: $89
CD-Burner: $59
DVD-Rom: $40 (I already had it)
Floppy: $12
SB-Audigy: $60
ATI AIW: $150
Wireless KB/mouse: $80
Total: $693
I don't know what a Tivo costs these days, but I'll bet you I got more bang for my buck by far.
Lee
....has HP fired those lawyers or their firm?
I doubt it.
If only more lawyers would get fired. There are far too many upright-walking cockroaches in that profession. There are good lawyers too of course, just look at the ACLU, but there are also plenty of the worst type of scum known to man.
I guess if you're an amoral sociopath, career choices that match your temperament are few and far between. Your choices are basically car salesman, CEO, or legalistic henchman/mercenary.
Lee
I wasn't talking specifically about what HP is currently doing. Rather I was responding to the posters idea about how those who discover exploits should somehow be restrained from disclosing them for a set ammount of time. The only authority capable of enforcing such restraint would be the government, therefore the first amendment does definitely apply to the situation I was talking about.
Everyone is so quick to pipe in that the first amdendment only applies to the government. Well keep your britches on because it isn't that simple.
If you work for a company and part of your job is to keep your mouth shut about something, the fact that the company is requiring this of you as part of a private voluntary relationship (employee/employer) is not a violation of the first amendment. You are free to break off the relationship and save for non-disclosure agreements, in which you voluntarily contract yourself to remain silent, the company has no power to force you to be silent. Even the non-disclosure agreement is one in which it is the authority of the government that is imposing the silence, but one which you have voluntarily agreed to. It is a contract after all. Even servitude (slavery) is legal if it is voluntary.
If however a company is enlisting the help of the government to force someone to remain silent about something then the first amendment does definitely apply. The company is free to encourage the persn to be silent, refuse to have financial dealings with the person and so forth. What they don't have is the legal authority to demand silence.
What the DMCA has done is allow corporations to hijack the concept of copyright to nullify the first amendment in certain situations. It is therefore itself unconstitutional.
Lots of people like to blame big corporations for the DMCA. I don't. I blame congress and ultimately the american people for allowing it to be passed. If most of us were taking responsibility for our country by first and foremost voting, keeping abreast of current events and legislative shenanigans, and voicing our opinions to our elected representatives, things like the DMCA would never have a chance.
Democracy is the fairest of all governments because the people always get what they deserve. The DMCA is no exception.
Lee
Trying to dictate when someone is allowed to say something is in violation of the first amendment. If you live in a country where that doesn't apply then I guess it sucks to live there.
The real solution is for the vendors themselves to be more proactive and actually search for bugs and vulnerabilities. This isn't a perfect solution, because there is no such thing. Until such time that software is mathematically perfect there will always be bugs (in other words there will always be bugs). What companies like HP need are teams of programmers and legitimate crackers whose job it is to thrash the code as hard as possible to expose vulnerabilities before the criminal crackers find it. If they're too cheap to do this then fuck them and the horse they rode in on.
If you REALLY want to put an end to crap like the DMCA the very best things you can do are vote and donate money to groups like the EFF and ACLU. Put your money where your mouth is.
Lee
I have a hard time really caring what lame brain schemes third world nations and companies invent to give themselves their weekly foot-bullet.
The only area where I have any opinion about countries like India is when it comes to immigration. Tech firms here are exploiting everyone by either bringing foreign workers in on temporary visas as slave labor, or simply exporting the job itself to india where they can pay ten cents on the dollar compared to american wages.
The best solution I see to this is to encourage immigration. I might have more people to compete with, but I won't be competing based upon price so much. I'd rather lose my job to someone living here than lose it to someone living in Rangoon. Besides, just imagine what an influx of talent and intelligence will do for our gene pool?
Lee
Yes, but does the SMP actually work well? My understanding having not followed too closely is that SMP is not really working yet. It will detect two CPU's, but only really use one of them. That might have changed recently in which case I'm glad to hear it.
Actually that reminds me of another area where FreeBSD needs improvement, kernel threads. These aren't a make or break feature, but they are nice.
Lee
1: My (admittedly limited) understanding of SMP on FreeBSD was that they were having problems finding people to work on it. That they were having to do a rush job on it in order to try and get something marginally workable for 5.0. If SMP is working as well as it did in Linux 2.2 then that would be great.
2: I LOVE kernel pre-emption. On older systems where the kernel can be more or less stuck chewing on something it makes the computer much more responsive. Kernel pre-emption is one of the hallmarks of microkernel architectures (well pre-emption of the userland threads that handle the system calls at least). The nice thing about it is that you don't HAVE to use it.
3: the ext2 filesystem has support for ordered updates just like UFS. It isn't generally used except on servers because of the speed penalty. Ext3 on the other hand uses ordered mode by default. The benefit of jornaling is that your filesystem doesn't get left in and undefined state in the case of a crash. Also when you reboot you don't have to spend who knows how long checking the filesystem. Speed is a secondary concern. I can't make any solid claims about the speed of UFS using soft updates vs. ext3. All I can says that my personal experience with UFS has been that its much, much slower when it comes to creating or destroying files compared to either ext2 in asynchronous mode or ext3. In terms of raw throughput on existing files all I can say is that all three are fast enough that I don't notice any difference between them.
4: It might not be important to you, but I support Unix in the college of engineering at Arizona State and believe me things like Matlab and Maple are a very big deal around here. I know of course that these might very well run on FreeBSD using its ability to emulate Linux (which is a VERY good thing IMHO).
5: It is also commercial software not not cheap. I'm not one of your free software religious zealots, I have zero problems with commercial software. The problem is that if Accelerated X is the only X server with 3d support for FreeBSD, then that tips the scales decidedly in the favor of Linux where such support part of the base system.
6: I know that NetBSD had support for USB back in early '99. I wasn't aware that the support for it under Linux was derived from NetBSD. Even if it was, the comparison here is between Linux and FreeBSD, not NetBSD. I've run NetBSD and I've never been particularly impressed with it. The main problem I see is that there are still people trying to support long dead hardware with it, hardware that NO ONE is going to actually run if they can help it in any way. I got a Quadra 700 for free a year or so ago and decided to try and make it into a real computer. That meant of course putting a real operating system on it. I chose NetBSD and sure enough it would load up and run.....VERY, VERY slowly. The fastest 68k mac ever made wasn't much faster than that Quadra 700 was, meaning that trying to continue to maintain a codebase for the platform line is an utter waste of time. I installed NetBSD for intel shortly thereafter and was less than thrilled by the stability of the system. The kernel didn't crash, but userland stuff I'd compiled from the ports sure did. OpenBSD is much better in that regard, most likely because it doesn't get spread too thin chasing dead hardware. I really like OpenBSD because it is designed to be secure by default, something that other Unix derivatives would do well to emulate. Obviously security is in the hands of the administrator and it is very possible to misconfigure OpenBSD to be insecure. Its just that with it I don't have such a nagging worry that there might be some exploit of some service or another waiting to be discovered by the cracker community. As for SCSI under Linux and FreeBSD I can't really comment one way or the other.
I wasn't really sure how to respond to your post at first. To a large extent I think that for us to debate whether the issues above are real or not is pointless because I'm not out to attack FreeBSD by bringing them up. I WANT FreeBSD to do well, and these are the areas that I think it needs improvement in.
The code base for FreeBSD is VERY mature and the base BSD system itself was created by some of the most brilliant computer scientists who have ever lived, such as Bill Joy. Ever read The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating System? Linux owes as much to BSD as it does to GNU.
Projects like the BSD's are valuable because they provide an alternate view of how to do things from what is available under Linux. If something isn't really being done well in Linux and works better under one of the BSD's, then that provides a valuable contrast so that everyone can see that the problem needs to be fixed. This is a two way street however, which is exactly why I've listed things I thing need to be fixed. By listing them I'm not saying that FreeBSD is "bad," only that there are areas where there is room for improvement.
Lee
Right now I've got four systems running Linux (RH-7.3 and 7.2) and one system running FreeBSD 4.6. At times in the past I've run OpenBSD and NetBSD as well.
I can tell you firsthand that in terms of system stability that Linux and FreeBSD are comparable if not indistinguishable. FreeBSD does seem to be more efficient however. The pentium 200 that I have FreeBSD on loads up KDE 3.0 noticably faster than Redhat 7.2 did, and once loaded it is more responsive. On older hardware FreeBSD definitely seems to have an advantage. I consider FreeBSD to be a very fast and well designed operating system. I keep trying to find places where using it instead of Linux would be an advantage.
Not everything about it is all that rosey however. The features and abilities that Linux provides but FreeBSD lacks such as SMP, kernel pre-emption, fast journaling filesystems, certain commerical software packages, 3D acclerated X servers, and generally better device support, make actually using FreeBSD as anything but an interesting toy kind of difficult to justify in many situations.
I worry about FreeBSD. I'd love to see it grow and progress not as a competitor to Linux, but as something of a companion to it. So many people just don't seem to realize that open source isn't about operating systems alone. What Linux and FreeBSD do is provide a foundation, they aren't the whole house. Both provide a powerful and stable platform for running the actual programs that people want to use in the first place. The future of open source development is going to be 90% apps and userland and 10% OS. To have religious and political wars over the OS portion is immature and counterproductive. Linux and FreeBSD aren't genuine competitors from an economic standpoint because it is the applications that both run that make either compelling in the first place.
I want BOTH Linux and FreeBSD to do well, to grow and expand and be the best operating systems anyone has ever seen. I detest the infantile immaturity of those who seek to create division and conflict between FreeBSD and Linux that simply shouldn't be there. I've gotten flames from FreeBSD "advocates" in particular filled with such hatred and obvious zealousness that you'd think they were Mac freaks, all because I described FreeBSD in terms that weren't favorable enough for their religious views. The Linux crowd is full of just as many jackasses, if not more.
Computer enthusiasts are known for generally having high IQ's. Unfortunately our reputation for having low EQ's is equally well earned. There are far too many borderline autistics and asperger's sufferers among us with severely retarded social skills. That is really the only explanation I can come up with when grown men with extensive vocabularies use them to throw a fit on par with that of an eight year old.
Anyway I'm drifting way off from what I wanted to write about. The point that I really want to make is that BOTH Linux and FreeBSD are absolutely fabulous operating systems (save the linux is just a kernel messages for church). The goals and vision behind each are so similar that any ill will between them is manufactured by immature, short sighted assholes. Microsoft is the enemy, not those who prefer another free Unix derivative that runs Mozilla, gnome, kde, etc just as well if not better than what someone else is using.
Lee
To me the best way to respond to this kind of bullshit is to mirror the content as far and wide as possible, and advertise the existance of the mirrors. Let the pope put that in his corn cob pipe and smoke it!
Lee
About the only thing I watch on TV are movie channels, the history channel, and the Sci-Fi channel. I don't give a rat's ass whether NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, WB, and UPN fill 59 out of every 60 seconds with pure advertising. I don't waste my time watching their crap anyway.
About the only thing that is going to result from this is that the channels that DON'T piss off their viewers are the ones that people are going to watch, even if the actual quality of their programming is inferior. Of course I don't expect television execs to understand this, but then again I really don't care. Television is one of those activities that I spend the least ammount of time doing. If it were to diappear off the face of the earth I don't think I'd miss much.
Lee
You're right, the US did not act alone. We had the free French, the free Poles, Canada (which took one of the beaches on D-Day), the Soviet Union, resistance groups in France, Norway, Belgium. Even the Italian Mafia helped us win. Of course we also had Monty to try and help us lose. Alan Turing did more to help us win than Monty ever did. In the end however it wouldn't have ammounted to squat without the U.S. When the U.S. entered the war Britain stood alone against Axis controlled europe. Without American involvement either Germany or Russia would have eventually gained control over all of Europe. Thanks to us Germany was the loser and furthermore Russia was kept at bay for fifty years. Western Europe owes it very political existance to the United States.
I'm not really sure how to respond to your statement that we nuked "millions" of Japaneese. First of all the combined death rate for both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was less than half a million people by 1950. Our immediate kill rate was about half that. We fire bombed Tokyo in March of '45 with conventional explosives and killed over 100,000 people and injured over a million. We did far worse to the Germans during the strategic bombing campaign of Europe. Second of all I can't figure out why you have a problem with us bombing them in the first place. Would you rather we literally did kill millions of Japaneese with bombs and grenades during a land invasion? It is hard to estimate exactly what that death toll would have been if we hadn't used our bombs. Japan had about 2 million troops and ten million civillians who were primed to fight to the death. The founder of Sony said that he was glad we nuked Japan because he and all of his friends were set to be the first line of defense in the upcoming land invasion. Those nukes saved millions of lives.
As for Vietnam, if we'd fought the war to win instead of fighting to play politics we just might have won. Fighting to win means defeating the enemy and dead men are by definition defeated. I'd have made the same statement had the war been with the Russians instead.
I don't particularly care why Osama Bin Laden hates us. He is not in charge of Saudia Arabia. If he doesn't like the fact that we are there then perhaps he should have worked to pursuade his own government to kick us out.
In many ways New York is the center of the world. In just about every enterprise or affair that is of an international nature, New York is a major hub of activity if not the center ring. Its no coincidence that New York is where the UN is. I have been to Manhattan. Its been said that the curse of New Yorkers is that they can quite literally go through their entire lives and never meet anyone who thinks differently than they do. Back when Nixon defeated McGovern in '72 by winning 49 out of the 50 states, people in Manhattan were stunned because, as one movie critic put it, "I don't know anyone who voted for him!" Manhattan is not the United States as a whole however. Most of the country views New York and its cross continent cousin LA with a mixture of amimosity and amusement. We can't figure out whether to hate them or just laught at them.
You really should read The Prince. Its usefullness is in that it teaches one how to best deal with those who cannot be reasoned with. Fear and power are the only language that some people and some cultures understand. Trying to sit down and work out your difference with barbarians is a collossal waste of time. Far better to beat the shit out of them and leave them living in abject horror of you. The truth about America is that we are strongly isolationist. We're not particularly interested or eager to go out and meddle around in the affiars of other countries. The general consensus is that idiots in other places can be as stupid as they want, as long as it doesn't cause problems for us it doesn't matter. We are slow to anger, but once we are enraged we are easily the most deadly of all adversaries. Al Queda and the middle east in general is about to learn the same lesson that the Japaneese learned, we are not soft, we are not cowards, and we will not stop until our enemies are defeated or dead.
I am sorry you're having problems with the INS. You need to understand however that the purpose of the INS is to ensure that yahoo's and other undesirables don't move here. Many european nations have policies of open immigration and from what I understand its becoming a real problem. People come there from the 3rd world and live off welfare created from the socialism that europe is drowning in. We don't want lazy good for nothings here. We want people who are willing and eager to work, people who are talented and will contribute to our gene pool instead of pissing in it. Our immigration policies make it difficult to come here for the simple reason that if someone is willing to apply the effort necessary to overcome that difficulty then they are the kind of person we want here. I personally believe we should do away with our current policy of limiting immigration based on country of origin and instead base it upon ability and and/or educational achievement. We should encourage the best and brightest to move here instead of telling the 101st person from Zimbabwe, who happens to be a Magna Cum Laude honor's graduate, that he or she can't move here till next year because of the 100 that were in line in front of them.
As for the idea that American's are ignorant, we have more college graduates than anywhere else in the world and our universities are the best in the world. Harvard, Yale, MIT, Cal-Tech, Princeton, Brown, Stanford, University of Chicago, these are all in the US. That isn't to say that ALL outstanding universities are here, after all there are places like Oxford and Cambridge. Its just that in no other place is are there so many outstanding universities. Any perception of American's as ignorant is evidence of ignorance itself. Even so, itt's hard not to feel self important when your nation leads the world in just about anything and everything you can think of that ammounts to a hill of beans. Mostly however we feel not so much self-important as confused as to why so much of the rest of the world just doesn't have its act together. War, famine, massive inflation and high unemployment, we don't have those problems here because we have our act together. We're not being drowned by marxist bullshit in the guise of socialism. The United States has been around for a little over two hundred years. We've achieved more in that time than anyone. We are a nation of immigrants, of peoples who came here from every place and chose to work together to build a nation and a future for their childen and their children's children. The fact that we have been so successful should say something to the world.
Lee
If it wasn't for America you'd either be speaking Italian, German, Russian, or maybe even Turkish, take your pick. Just imagine what your life would be like if America hadn't been there to stop Mussolini and Hitler? Maybe the Russians would have defeated Germany in the end, but would you be better off if they had? You're free to speak your mind here on this forum in no small part because America was there to defend that freedom 60 years ago. Or what if NATO didn't exist and Greece and Turkey were left to their own devices in dealing with one another? How would you like to have to go to war? Don't complain about America stepping in and telling assholes to behave themselves when your own country was engaging in a war by proxy with Turkey in the balkans, a war we had to put a stop to ourselves because the nations of Europe couldn't seem to get their act together.
As for your statement that you're a non-racist, you could have fooled me. First you complain that America is multi-racial (your neighbour is from india and your wife from Africa), then say there is no such thing as a "pure" American. Unlike Greece, being American doesn't describe a single genetic or even an ethnic background. Being an American means that you live here and are a contributing member of society. You don't even have to be born here. I doubt that anyone where you were from would call me a Greek if I moved there regardless of how long I lived there or how well I spoke the language. I assume that by describing yourself as a non-racist you're implying that I am one. Where you get that idea I just can't figure out. You seem to be able to write english well enough, can you read it as well?
As for your ideas about American history, you really need some schooling. The United States is currently the oldest continuous government in the world. There are older nations to be sure, but none of the governments that were in power in 1788 are still around today in the same form they were then. Our system has not changed. That kind of stability, especially when you consider the unparalleled expansion and growth we've enjoyed, says that we are good at solving our own problems. Youth violence is a figment of the media's imagination. We didn't "invade" Vietnam, we were invited by the south Vietnamese government. We didn't even invade north Vietnam. We did kill over a million NVA and VC troops (too few if you ask me), but we did so in the process of attempting to preserve south Vietnam's soverignty, hardly an invasion. As for our reaons for doing so, they were a bit deeper than a desire to be "macho." Our war in Vietnam was a war by proxy with the Soviet Union, much like the recent conflict in the balkans was a war by proxy between Greece and Turkey. A war which, by the way, we had to step in and put a stop to because the "european community" couldn't seem to do the job itself. I'm not sure what your description of the US as a "bastard nation" is supposed to mean exactly. Bastard means illegitimate, and no government is more legitimate than ours, at least if you subscribe to the ideas of Thomas Jefferson or John Locke.
Just so you know, what we're doing now is not called playing "good cop." We're done doing that because its been made abundantly clear to us that it doesn't work. Trying to make everyone like us and feel all warm and fuzzy about the US is what led to the WTC and pentagon being bombed (a plane loaded with fuel IS a bomb) So instead we're now playing BAD COP. If you want to understand the nature of our current foreign policy, read this book and all will be clear. You might not like the United States, but then you're in no position to act on your dislike beyong harassing tourists. This means that your opinion, like that of europe in general when it comes to the US and what we do internationally, is essentially irrelevant. If you REALLY hate us so much, I suggest that you start a petition to have Greece withdraw from NATO and cease all trade with US based companies. Or you could take the easy way and just move to Cuba. That is what life is like where the US doesn't extend its power.
I wonder how come no one has created a FPS where you go kill terrorists? With the quake source code out under the GPL it should be easy to create one. I've heard that there is some kind of Nazi/KKK racist game out there. That makes me wonder why, if the white trash and inbreds in this country can have their own game where they can act out their dim-witted vendetta against racial and ethnic minorities, why can't there be a game were the rest of us can fantasize about killing terrorists?
I for one would love to exorcise some of the anger I feel about everything that's happened by pumping some lead into some Al Queda knuckle-draggers. I even have a title for the game: "Operation Kill'em all," under which could be the sub-title "Give the enemy a first hand lesson in what a real Jihad looks like."
In truth I'm kind of concerned as to why we haven't heard much from the news lately. Six months ago all you heard was who we were killing in Afghanistan. Is there no one left that needs killing? I doubt it. Oh well, the way I see it if there are more terrorist attacks then that will be fine. Cockroaches are easier to step on when they're where you can see them. Maybe we're just gearing up for an operation to invade Iraq and hang old Saddam from a street light. I personally think that would be a very good thing to do. Even if Saddam himself is not much of a threat, our willingness to use overwhelming force in order to get rid of him will be a very effective demonstration of power to the rest of the world, and more importantly it would instill fear, which is often the most effective weapon of all. We wouldn't be in this mess if it weren't for the fact that the american people voted for Bill Clinton twice in a row. Our war on terrorism is nothing but us having to play catch up after nearly a decade of extremely bad foreign policy. If Clinton had handled the situation in its infancy back in 93, none of this would be necessary. But instead he tried to apply european style pussy politics to a region of the world where force and power are the only languages that are understood. Oh well, like I said, Cockroaches are easier to kill when you can see them. In the long run it might be for the best since we're now killing off the fuckers instead of just trying to contain them. In the long term offensive strategies are almost always better than ones based upon the idea of perpetual defense. Defenses can fail, but that doesn't matter when your enemy is dead and his friends piss their pants in terror at the mere mention of your name. Too bad Clinton didn't have a modern day Machiavelli as a foreign policy adviser.
In any case I think a good game would be one in which you get to kill terrorists, the more graphic and gory the better.
Lee
You first....
Well I'm sure your typing must be perfect all the time with no errors whatsoever. I'm also sure that at any moment monkeys are going to fly out of my butt.