I'm not technically competent to argue the safety risks. I do think the debate is worth engaging, and I definitely think using terms like "stupid hippies" to define those arguing in the opposition helps no one understand the deeper issues. So, your references: the Wikipedia article on plutonium appears to debunk the statement "most toxic sumstances known to man" by comparing plutonium to highly toxic organics like boltulism among others. I assume it's an LD50 comparison.
All isotopes and compounds of plutonium are toxic and radioactive. While plutonium is sometimes described in media reports as "the most toxic substance known to man", there is general agreement among experts in the field that this is incorrect. As of 2003, there has yet to be a single human death officially attributed to plutonium exposure. Naturally-occurring radium is about 200 times more radiotoxic than plutonium, and some organic toxins like botulism toxin are still more toxic. Botulism toxin, in particular, has a lethal dose in the hundreds of pg per kg, far less than the quantity of plutonium that poses a significant cancer risk. In addition, beta and gamma emitters (including the C-14 and K-40 in nearly all food) can cause cancer on casual contact, which alpha emitters cannot.
However, the author(s) note:
However, it must however be noted, that in contrast to naturally occuring radioisotopes such as radium or C-14, Plutonium has been manufactured, concentrated and isolated in large amounts (100s of metric tons) during the cold war for weapons production. These piles (whether in weapons form or otherwise) pose a significant toxicologic risk - not least due to the fact that there is no feasible known way to destroy them (whereas that can be easily done with biological posisons).
And where was this plutonium before it was put in spacecraft?
On the Earth.
There's a huge difference between radioactive ore burried beneath tons of rock and enriched plutonium particles dispersed through the air in an accident. I think you misunderstand the difference between diluted by nature and preexisting therefore safe. --M
And AFAIK the RTGs used in space probes are ETREMELY rugged[...]
OK, facts worth debating on risk management. But do you honestly think calling people concerned about plutonium dispersal "stupid hippies" helps the debate? --M
I feel that it is because we have become completely and hopelessly terrified of danger.
A couple of questions here. I'm sure you're aware that plutonium is highly radioactive and among the most lethal toxic substances known to man. Lets agree that it's bad stuff to let loose in the environment. So the question is one of risk mittigation and management. Are the scientific gains from launching RTG powered probes throughout the solar system worth the risk of plutonium contamination due to a launch disaster? Launch failures occurr pretty regularly, so we know that regular use of RTG technology in space probes will mean environmental contamination at some point. So how bad would one failure be? How about two? Five? Good questions worth debating. Or do you argue that only "stupid hippies" concern themselves with risk management?
Please note that risking the lives of a space capsule full of men, who take on that risk willingly, is quite different from risking civilians without their knowledge or consent. --M
I stick with sendmail out of inertia more than anything else. Frankly, it's about time I explored other MTAs. I understand why the sendmail folks won't implement rcpt flood connection dropping out of respect for the RFCs, but the problem is pretty bad. If the exim folks support this, the sendmail folks are going to have to face the truth and support it soon too. For now, just make do I guess. Good tip BTW, thanks! --M
If you're having serious problems with spammers rumplestiltskinning (rcpt dictionary attacks), sendmail-8.13.x allows you to limit the number of concurrent connections per IP address, limit the number of connections per minute per IP address, and slow down the flow of 'rcpt to:' commends by calling sleep(1); after a threshold number configured in your mc file.
If that's not enough, and it wasn't for me, this one line hack to sendmail posted to the mimedefang list will hang up on the fuckers after hitting your badrcptmax threshold. Totally out of RFC spec, but when did spammers play by the rules? You'll want a script to cull through your mail logs to firewall off or blackhole route IPs which attack you in this manner too, pretty trivial.
Finally, I'd like to sing the praises of milter-spamc combined with the spamassassin daemon. It's written in c, very lightweight, and it offers a configuration option to deny messages tagged as spam durring the smtp transation with a 551 notification (actually, it offers a series of 44x and 55x notifications; see the docs). You can also configure it to accept the message and just tag it with X-Spam headers per normal, but giving the spammers notice that the message was even accepted just makes me happy in so many ways. And don't forget to RBL block the fuckers too. --M
It does by corporate fiat though. When they all got together, they could have decided to use standard computer resolutions for HDTV, but they didn't, instead choosing similar, but incompatible resolutions, thus guaranteeing that most people will continue to buy both computer monitors and TVs, except for the few that will use scan converters, with less than perfect results.
Well the nightmare of various resolution standards: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p/24, blah blah blah was pretty fucking ludicrous. No doubt. But sometimes that a standard exists for everyone to migrate toward is more important than choosing the "technically right" standard from the start. --M
When every TV has to be fitted with HDTV receivers at the expense of the consumer by FEDERAL mandate it IS politically motivated.
NO, HDTV is NOT good for the consumer.
So you're claiming that HDTV is "NOT good for the consumer" because consumers will have to buy a set top box (or migrate to cable) after a certain point within the next few upcoming years? Just how else would you handle a nationwide migration so large as this? The migration to digital requires a cutoff point where everyone who wants to watch broadcast television will need an ATSC receiver (an "HDTV" receiver is meaningless). Broadcasters can't be expected to continue broadcasting in both digital and analogue standards permenently; never mind the waste in bandwidth. So just how else would you recommend the transition be done? Would you prefer an incompatability nightmare between television manufacturers and broadcast studios, with consumers left holding the bag like all those who purchased Betamax recorders? Sometimes the government is exactly the right arbitrator of such standards (regardless if they select the "right" standard).
One last point I wish I had made previously... for all those people who will bitch about TV shows all sucking, so why bother with HDTV... I reply: "Watching the Patriots win the Superbowl and the Sox win the World Series in High Definition made it all worthwhile." HDTV really works with broadcast sports, especially games where following a small ball in a longshot means understanding what just happened. And PBS shows like Nature and Nova in HD really benefit from the additional resolution too. As for whether Alias, Law and Order, CSI, etc are worth the additional money... well, that's debatable. --M
I have only seen HDTV at stores and on display at the state fair (I'm relatively unimpressed). I know one single person that has it and he uses it through DirecTV.
I own two HDTVs, an Hitachi rear projection CRT set and a Sony HS-20 front project or for my living room. Combined with a decent DD 5.1 sound and a home theater really does compete with commercial movie theaters. In Boston every broadcast station is now digital; that's ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, FOX, UPN, and WC. I actually get more HD content from broadcast than DirecTV (I have DirectTV too). HBO and Showtime in HD is pretty damn nice. Widescreen aspect ration is very damn nice! Uhhh... whether HDTV is the greatest consumer invention since sliced bread, I don't know. But... I like it!:)
HDTV is a bunch of tax-funded bullshit that's going to bring down the right to record as you choose. Media conglomorates aren't going to want you to have digitized recordings of high-def format because then you can compete with their DRMd discs.
Uhhh... just so we're clear: HDTV display technology and broadcast standards are different from the political policies being pursued by media conglomerates in their attempt to limit consumer freedom. Right? HDTV deployment does not mandate the consumer limitation by politcial fiat. --M
Toyota plans to become the first in the automobile industry to use the advanced robots in all production processes in the future,
it said without giving the timeframe.
Wow. The assembly line is one thing, but robots giving quotes to reporters too? Now we now humanity is really fucked! --M
I don't understand this. Yeah, it's pretty cool to write a fifteen line P2P app, but just because the concept is simple to implement doesn't mean it's unworthy to ban. Not that I'm arguing for banning P2P apps, I'm just critiquing the logic used here. It's also fairly easy to write a simple virus or trojan. Should law enforcement give up pursuing computer criminals who write viruses and such as a result? Better put: shouldn't the amount of damage to society be the valuation for enacting a ban or chasing criminals, not the ease with which criminals obtain or create their tools of trade? Maybe his original statement was taken out of context or more nuanced than the quoted text... --M
Funny thing - since we got together I've met many people who used to live in the Eastern Bloc - 100% of them (the ones I've met) think that Communism is about the worst thing to ever infect the planet. The scariest thing (at least to some of the posters in this thread) is that most of them now vote Republican.
Yup, I know a bunch of immagrints to the US from Eastern Block states and Russia proper, and you're right: just about all of them hate Communism. And you're also right that many of them tend to vote Republican. I think that while they may oppose the ideological system that brought them so much personal grief, they're still - at heart - statist authoritarians. They want a powerful government and leader to run things, which explains the success of both Putin and Bush pretty well. That both Putin's and Bush's policies focus on centralization of state power in no way hinders their popularity to these folks, primarily because they carefully use polling and focus groups to avoid public relations disasters. So, make sure not to call it "communist" and the population, to busy surviving to care, will put up with most anything. Feh. In this regard, Russians are no smarter or stupider than Americans; all populations of people are too dumb to notice. --M
I've visited the Free Software Foundation offices in Downtown Crossing in Boston. Among the other usual office tchotchkes were pictures of Che Guevara, with all the usual revolutionary slogans. No one there seemed to have any problem with this in the slightest.
That's unfortunate. Back when their office was located at the corner of Mass Ave and Prospect I never noticed posters like that, and I entered there a bunch of times. Also never noticed that sort of communist revolutionary sloganering at MIT Tech Square. Whatever. All I'm saying about that is it's a veryveryBAD(tm) public relations move for knowledge of such posters hanging in their office to get out to the general public. 'nuff said. --M
Re:Religion is exactly the ideological retort to u
on
Gates Nose-Dives at CES
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I slapped the flag on my livejournal with a link to the article. The point of flying it is not to link myself or free software to communism, but to point out the hate-mongering spread by billy G. Most of us have probably already made the comparisons you suggest, or something similar.
Well, first of all, it's your blog. So take what I write in the spirit of friendly advice. Basically, yeah - most of the FS community understands what I'm writing. But don't think for a minute that Gates has the FS/geek movement in mind when he speaks to reporters. His words are to set the tone for columnists and other press, the business community elite, government officials, and finally what little public may be paying attention. He doesn't care what we think, he cares about setting a frame of reference for the press to repeat.
With repetition ion the press comes popular belief, leading finally to general consensus opinion. It doesn't matter how rational or irrational the statement, if a statement is repeated enough the population as a whole will usually accept it as fact. And once so, it is the general population who will look at geeks running this flag and misinterpret it as a stand in solidarity for communism. You could even directly state your opposition to communism and it wouldn't matter, because the image evokes such an emotionally powerful taboo. There is nothing rational about this process, but people (as a population) do react in this manner - particularly when an assertion, factual or not, is linked to an emotionally powerful image. --M
Religion is exactly the ideological retort to use
on
Gates Nose-Dives at CES
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Come on, the deaths caused by Communism were a result of Religious Fervor.
I'm really short on time so I can't fully reply to all of these messages, or even to you. But I'm really not debating the underlying ideologies of communism, capitalism, or even religious expression. I'm talking about a cultural taboo against communism which continues in western cultures today. Look at the success of the Swift Boat Vets red baiting the Kerry campaign as a prime example; McCarthyism continues fifteen years after the fall of the Soviet Union and fifty years after McCarthy's downfall.
If the Free Software movement willingly accepts Gate's frame as being inspired by communist utopian idealism, the debate is over. Gate's will have won by default. If any of those EFFers or Project GNU folks are listening here (right - *cough*) I would recommend framing project GNU and BSD ideals by referencing simple down-to-earth small town values like church bake sales, community volunteer firefighting, and the Salvation Army. These are examples of community cooperation everyone can understand. And when Gates (or his surrogates) compares writing free software to communist destruction of capitalist intellectual property rights, argue back that his argument is like destroying the church bake sale for the profit-rights of local restaurants. That is an frame which skewer his debate talking points.
This is not about communist or capitalist ideology, this is about manipulating public opinion in order to promote - long term - a specific political agenda in Washington. Realize that and all this ideological bullshit smoke disappears like evenscent fog clearing on a sunny day.
"Fly the [boing!boing! USSR/Copyleft] flag with pride comrades!"
NONONONONO!!! I know you're trying to be funny, but I'm not laughing... The last thing free software proponents need is to associate themselves with a failed economic ideology that has resulted in tens of millions of unnecessary deaths worldwide. Free Software has nothing to do with statist communism and everything to do with individual freedom of association and collaboration. When Bill Gates frames the debate between the capitalists on his side and communists on the other, the last thing to do is embrace the presuppositions of his frame! Down that road evokes an ideological wasteland of failure! Do copyleft supporters want to associate themnselves with that? --M
I suggest folks be more careful getting scientific facts from sources which are obviously slanted either way -- left or right -- on the political spectrum, as such sites always have their own agendas to advance.
I don't think/. cited USAToday as a source of scientific fact, either (well, actually, the/. editor forgot to cite anything this time - but I digress). The original Salon article, from a column titled "Ask The Pilot", was - duh - written by a professional airline pilot. The original column debunked the notion of terrorists using lasers to down commercial airline jets. The physicist replied in affirmation to the pilot-author with his own points, in a letter to the editor. I see no assertions of "scientific fact", simply informed opinion offered to an audience. Read, or not, as you see fit.
I read no political bias in either the original article or the letter to the editor. You know, sometimes people offer statements without explicit political or partisan bias. Seriously!
IOW: "It tastes not quite unlike tea!" - Arthur Dent
So, you might need to put it in the bed of a pickup truck with an inverter, but you can easilly pick up a Q-switched pulsed Nd:YAG laser.
Well you do ignore his two other points: that being the necessity to spread the beam at least across the range of the cockpit windows (which would dilute the beam's power), and the necessity for line of sight to the eyes of the pilots (thus requiring special site selection). That you disagree with his statement on the cost and transportability of the equipment doesn't negate his entire argument. --M
Salon published a letter to the editor today regarding their prior story about the potential for lasers being used to blind pilots. In the letter the physicist argues that to use a laser properly for this task would require expensive and large equipment, at least two men, and good site selection. Basically, much cheaper and deadlier weapons are available to the motivated terrorist than lasers. The article and letter in reply are worth a read... --M
What about temporarily stripping out all the markup and giving them plaintext?
Nope. They expect marked up text with indented long quotes, footnotes, italicized titles, blah blah blah - even in drafts. I actually suggested sending drafts in plain text, but it was shot down. I'm more comfortable writing in emacs than Word as I know many more keybindings. They could care less. They want a.doc as an attachment and nothing else. For a while I used to write in emacs and then cut and paste to Word for markup, until I learned enough Word to get by. Now I just write in Word. Like I said, it does the job - if not as elegantly as emacs. At a certain point it's time to give up and hand in what's expected. *shrug* --M
Please, PLEASE, for the love of all that's good in the world, if you write a thesis or book (or even a research paper!), write it in a real semantic markup language like DocBook or LaTeX!
Oh I have no trouble marking up in LaTex. But try getting that accepted for academic review by anyone other than those in math and physics departments. Yeah, it blows. But most writing professors expect drafts by email attached as a.doc, not LaTeX. And I'm not about to convince them otherwise. --M
"Protection against Microsoft pulling MS Office off Macs would actually be betterl served by throwing some developers and money at the OSX port of Openoffice at getting it properly intergrated[...]"
Oh, you won't see me arguing against a native OS X OpenOffice port. In fact, I'm happy to see Apple release their new Office suite too. Competition is good! Though , IMO, document portability between the various OO ports looks like a bigger win than an Apple branded Office suite. Still, I have no complaint about spending a couple hundred bucks on MS Office if it helps me get my work done, either. Free Software may be a social good, but succeeding in work forces certain evils by necessity. From this perspective, the money for MS Office/Mac is well spent. --M
"Powerpoint compatibility is diabolical, because it's[...]"
Maybe so. I only use Word to write papers and basic documents and Excel to maintain a simple spreadsheet for my tax accountant. Haven't seen any compatability problems with either. However, as I noted before, I'm not using the fancy stuff. I just hope MS keeps the product line (and as an ancilliary, fixes your problems too). --M
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not technically competent to argue the safety risks. I do think the debate is worth engaging, and I definitely think using terms like "stupid hippies" to define those arguing in the opposition helps no one understand the deeper issues. So, your references: the Wikipedia article on plutonium appears to debunk the statement "most toxic sumstances known to man" by comparing plutonium to highly toxic organics like boltulism among others. I assume it's an LD50 comparison.
However, the author(s) note:
--M
And where was this plutonium before it was put in spacecraft?
On the Earth.
There's a huge difference between radioactive ore burried beneath tons of rock and enriched plutonium particles dispersed through the air in an accident. I think you misunderstand the difference between diluted by nature and preexisting therefore safe. --M
And AFAIK the RTGs used in space probes are ETREMELY rugged[...]
OK, facts worth debating on risk management. But do you honestly think calling people concerned about plutonium dispersal "stupid hippies" helps the debate? --M
I feel that it is because we have become completely and hopelessly terrified of danger.
A couple of questions here. I'm sure you're aware that plutonium is highly radioactive and among the most lethal toxic substances known to man. Lets agree that it's bad stuff to let loose in the environment. So the question is one of risk mittigation and management. Are the scientific gains from launching RTG powered probes throughout the solar system worth the risk of plutonium contamination due to a launch disaster? Launch failures occurr pretty regularly, so we know that regular use of RTG technology in space probes will mean environmental contamination at some point. So how bad would one failure be? How about two? Five? Good questions worth debating. Or do you argue that only "stupid hippies" concern themselves with risk management?
Please note that risking the lives of a space capsule full of men, who take on that risk willingly, is quite different from risking civilians without their knowledge or consent. --M
I stick with sendmail out of inertia more than anything else. Frankly, it's about time I explored other MTAs. I understand why the sendmail folks won't implement rcpt flood connection dropping out of respect for the RFCs, but the problem is pretty bad. If the exim folks support this, the sendmail folks are going to have to face the truth and support it soon too. For now, just make do I guess. Good tip BTW, thanks! --M
If you're having serious problems with spammers rumplestiltskinning (rcpt dictionary attacks), sendmail-8.13.x allows you to limit the number of concurrent connections per IP address, limit the number of connections per minute per IP address, and slow down the flow of 'rcpt to:' commends by calling sleep(1); after a threshold number configured in your mc file.
a ng/2003-January/012863.html
If that's not enough, and it wasn't for me, this one line hack to sendmail posted to the mimedefang list will hang up on the fuckers after hitting your badrcptmax threshold. Totally out of RFC spec, but when did spammers play by the rules? You'll want a script to cull through your mail logs to firewall off or blackhole route IPs which attack you in this manner too, pretty trivial.
http://lists.roaringpenguin.com/pipermail/mimedef
Finally, I'd like to sing the praises of milter-spamc combined with the spamassassin daemon. It's written in c, very lightweight, and it offers a configuration option to deny messages tagged as spam durring the smtp transation with a 551 notification (actually, it offers a series of 44x and 55x notifications; see the docs). You can also configure it to accept the message and just tag it with X-Spam headers per normal, but giving the spammers notice that the message was even accepted just makes me happy in so many ways. And don't forget to RBL block the fuckers too. --M
It does by corporate fiat though. When they all got together, they could have decided to use standard computer resolutions for HDTV, but they didn't, instead choosing similar, but incompatible resolutions, thus guaranteeing that most people will continue to buy both computer monitors and TVs, except for the few that will use scan converters, with less than perfect results.
Well the nightmare of various resolution standards: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p/24, blah blah blah was pretty fucking ludicrous. No doubt. But sometimes that a standard exists for everyone to migrate toward is more important than choosing the "technically right" standard from the start. --M
When every TV has to be fitted with HDTV receivers at the expense of the consumer by FEDERAL mandate it IS politically motivated.
NO, HDTV is NOT good for the consumer.
So you're claiming that HDTV is "NOT good for the consumer" because consumers will have to buy a set top box (or migrate to cable) after a certain point within the next few upcoming years? Just how else would you handle a nationwide migration so large as this? The migration to digital requires a cutoff point where everyone who wants to watch broadcast television will need an ATSC receiver (an "HDTV" receiver is meaningless). Broadcasters can't be expected to continue broadcasting in both digital and analogue standards permenently; never mind the waste in bandwidth. So just how else would you recommend the transition be done? Would you prefer an incompatability nightmare between television manufacturers and broadcast studios, with consumers left holding the bag like all those who purchased Betamax recorders? Sometimes the government is exactly the right arbitrator of such standards (regardless if they select the "right" standard).
One last point I wish I had made previously... for all those people who will bitch about TV shows all sucking, so why bother with HDTV... I reply: "Watching the Patriots win the Superbowl and the Sox win the World Series in High Definition made it all worthwhile." HDTV really works with broadcast sports, especially games where following a small ball in a longshot means understanding what just happened. And PBS shows like Nature and Nova in HD really benefit from the additional resolution too. As for whether Alias, Law and Order, CSI, etc are worth the additional money... well, that's debatable. --M
I have only seen HDTV at stores and on display at the state fair (I'm relatively unimpressed). I know one single person that has it and he uses it through DirecTV.
:)
I own two HDTVs, an Hitachi rear projection CRT set and a Sony HS-20 front project or for my living room. Combined with a decent DD 5.1 sound and a home theater really does compete with commercial movie theaters. In Boston every broadcast station is now digital; that's ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, FOX, UPN, and WC. I actually get more HD content from broadcast than DirecTV (I have DirectTV too). HBO and Showtime in HD is pretty damn nice. Widescreen aspect ration is very damn nice! Uhhh... whether HDTV is the greatest consumer invention since sliced bread, I don't know. But... I like it!
HDTV is a bunch of tax-funded bullshit that's going to bring down the right to record as you choose. Media conglomorates aren't going to want you to have digitized recordings of high-def format because then you can compete with their DRMd discs.
Uhhh... just so we're clear: HDTV display technology and broadcast standards are different from the political policies being pursued by media conglomerates in their attempt to limit consumer freedom. Right? HDTV deployment does not mandate the consumer limitation by politcial fiat. --M
Wow. The assembly line is one thing, but robots giving quotes to reporters too? Now we now humanity is really fucked! --M
I don't understand this. Yeah, it's pretty cool to write a fifteen line P2P app, but just because the concept is simple to implement doesn't mean it's unworthy to ban. Not that I'm arguing for banning P2P apps, I'm just critiquing the logic used here. It's also fairly easy to write a simple virus or trojan. Should law enforcement give up pursuing computer criminals who write viruses and such as a result? Better put: shouldn't the amount of damage to society be the valuation for enacting a ban or chasing criminals, not the ease with which criminals obtain or create their tools of trade? Maybe his original statement was taken out of context or more nuanced than the quoted text... --M
Funny thing - since we got together I've met many people who used to live in the Eastern Bloc - 100% of them (the ones I've met) think that Communism is about the worst thing to ever infect the planet. The scariest thing (at least to some of the posters in this thread) is that most of them now vote Republican.
Yup, I know a bunch of immagrints to the US from Eastern Block states and Russia proper, and you're right: just about all of them hate Communism. And you're also right that many of them tend to vote Republican. I think that while they may oppose the ideological system that brought them so much personal grief, they're still - at heart - statist authoritarians. They want a powerful government and leader to run things, which explains the success of both Putin and Bush pretty well. That both Putin's and Bush's policies focus on centralization of state power in no way hinders their popularity to these folks, primarily because they carefully use polling and focus groups to avoid public relations disasters. So, make sure not to call it "communist" and the population, to busy surviving to care, will put up with most anything. Feh. In this regard, Russians are no smarter or stupider than Americans; all populations of people are too dumb to notice. --M
The selectable skins, background pics, etc is pretty cool. BTW: did you write that essay? --M
I've visited the Free Software Foundation offices in Downtown Crossing in Boston. Among the other usual office tchotchkes were pictures of Che Guevara, with all the usual revolutionary slogans. No one there seemed to have any problem with this in the slightest.
That's unfortunate. Back when their office was located at the corner of Mass Ave and Prospect I never noticed posters like that, and I entered there a bunch of times. Also never noticed that sort of communist revolutionary sloganering at MIT Tech Square. Whatever. All I'm saying about that is it's a veryveryBAD(tm) public relations move for knowledge of such posters hanging in their office to get out to the general public. 'nuff said. --M
I slapped the flag on my livejournal with a link to the article. The point of flying it is not to link myself or free software to communism, but to point out the hate-mongering spread by billy G. Most of us have probably already made the comparisons you suggest, or something similar.
Well, first of all, it's your blog. So take what I write in the spirit of friendly advice. Basically, yeah - most of the FS community understands what I'm writing. But don't think for a minute that Gates has the FS/geek movement in mind when he speaks to reporters. His words are to set the tone for columnists and other press, the business community elite, government officials, and finally what little public may be paying attention. He doesn't care what we think, he cares about setting a frame of reference for the press to repeat.
With repetition ion the press comes popular belief, leading finally to general consensus opinion. It doesn't matter how rational or irrational the statement, if a statement is repeated enough the population as a whole will usually accept it as fact. And once so, it is the general population who will look at geeks running this flag and misinterpret it as a stand in solidarity for communism. You could even directly state your opposition to communism and it wouldn't matter, because the image evokes such an emotionally powerful taboo. There is nothing rational about this process, but people (as a population) do react in this manner - particularly when an assertion, factual or not, is linked to an emotionally powerful image. --M
Come on, the deaths caused by Communism were a result of Religious Fervor.
I'm really short on time so I can't fully reply to all of these messages, or even to you. But I'm really not debating the underlying ideologies of communism, capitalism, or even religious expression. I'm talking about a cultural taboo against communism which continues in western cultures today. Look at the success of the Swift Boat Vets red baiting the Kerry campaign as a prime example; McCarthyism continues fifteen years after the fall of the Soviet Union and fifty years after McCarthy's downfall.
If the Free Software movement willingly accepts Gate's frame as being inspired by communist utopian idealism, the debate is over. Gate's will have won by default. If any of those EFFers or Project GNU folks are listening here (right - *cough*) I would recommend framing project GNU and BSD ideals by referencing simple down-to-earth small town values like church bake sales, community volunteer firefighting, and the Salvation Army. These are examples of community cooperation everyone can understand. And when Gates (or his surrogates) compares writing free software to communist destruction of capitalist intellectual property rights, argue back that his argument is like destroying the church bake sale for the profit-rights of local restaurants. That is an frame which skewer his debate talking points.
This is not about communist or capitalist ideology, this is about manipulating public opinion in order to promote - long term - a specific political agenda in Washington. Realize that and all this ideological bullshit smoke disappears like evenscent fog clearing on a sunny day.
Cheers,
--Maynard
"Fly the [boing!boing! USSR/Copyleft] flag with pride comrades!"
NONONONONO!!! I know you're trying to be funny, but I'm not laughing... The last thing free software proponents need is to associate themselves with a failed economic ideology that has resulted in tens of millions of unnecessary deaths worldwide. Free Software has nothing to do with statist communism and everything to do with individual freedom of association and collaboration. When Bill Gates frames the debate between the capitalists on his side and communists on the other, the last thing to do is embrace the presuppositions of his frame! Down that road evokes an ideological wasteland of failure! Do copyleft supporters want to associate themnselves with that? --M
I suggest folks be more careful getting scientific facts from sources which are obviously slanted either way -- left or right -- on the political spectrum, as such sites always have their own agendas to advance.
/. cited USAToday as a source of scientific fact, either (well, actually, the /. editor forgot to cite anything this time - but I digress). The original Salon article, from a column titled "Ask The Pilot", was - duh - written by a professional airline pilot. The original column debunked the notion of terrorists using lasers to down commercial airline jets. The physicist replied in affirmation to the pilot-author with his own points, in a letter to the editor. I see no assertions of "scientific fact", simply informed opinion offered to an audience. Read, or not, as you see fit.
I don't think
I read no political bias in either the original article or the letter to the editor. You know, sometimes people offer statements without explicit political or partisan bias. Seriously!
IOW: "It tastes not quite unlike tea!" - Arthur Dent
Cheers,
--Maynard
So, you might need to put it in the bed of a pickup truck with an inverter, but you can easilly pick up a Q-switched pulsed Nd:YAG laser.
Well you do ignore his two other points: that being the necessity to spread the beam at least across the range of the cockpit windows (which would dilute the beam's power), and the necessity for line of sight to the eyes of the pilots (thus requiring special site selection). That you disagree with his statement on the cost and transportability of the equipment doesn't negate his entire argument. --M
Salon published a letter to the editor today regarding their prior story about the potential for lasers being used to blind pilots. In the letter the physicist argues that to use a laser properly for this task would require expensive and large equipment, at least two men, and good site selection. Basically, much cheaper and deadlier weapons are available to the motivated terrorist than lasers. The article and letter in reply are worth a read... --M
Yeah. "Survival of the fittest" is almost a tautology, because "fitness" tends to be defined as "that which increases survival rate".
Tautology: (tô-tl-g)
n. pl. tautologies
1) A rope pulled taught between two poles such that a circus performer with careful balance may walk the rope without falling due to slack.
Antonym: See: dead circus performer. See also: slackers, fitness function, and extinct.
Source: The Evolutionary Biologist's Dictionary of Nonfactual Irrelevancies.
What about temporarily stripping out all the markup and giving them plaintext?
.doc as an attachment and nothing else. For a while I used to write in emacs and then cut and paste to Word for markup, until I learned enough Word to get by. Now I just write in Word. Like I said, it does the job - if not as elegantly as emacs. At a certain point it's time to give up and hand in what's expected. *shrug* --M
Nope. They expect marked up text with indented long quotes, footnotes, italicized titles, blah blah blah - even in drafts. I actually suggested sending drafts in plain text, but it was shot down. I'm more comfortable writing in emacs than Word as I know many more keybindings. They could care less. They want a
Please, PLEASE, for the love of all that's good in the world, if you write a thesis or book (or even a research paper!), write it in a real semantic markup language like DocBook or LaTeX!
.doc, not LaTeX. And I'm not about to convince them otherwise. --M
Oh I have no trouble marking up in LaTex. But try getting that accepted for academic review by anyone other than those in math and physics departments. Yeah, it blows. But most writing professors expect drafts by email attached as a
"Protection against Microsoft pulling MS Office off Macs would actually be betterl served by throwing some developers and money at the OSX port of Openoffice at getting it properly intergrated[...]"
Oh, you won't see me arguing against a native OS X OpenOffice port. In fact, I'm happy to see Apple release their new Office suite too. Competition is good! Though , IMO, document portability between the various OO ports looks like a bigger win than an Apple branded Office suite. Still, I have no complaint about spending a couple hundred bucks on MS Office if it helps me get my work done, either. Free Software may be a social good, but succeeding in work forces certain evils by necessity. From this perspective, the money for MS Office/Mac is well spent. --M
"Powerpoint compatibility is diabolical, because it's[...]"
Maybe so. I only use Word to write papers and basic documents and Excel to maintain a simple spreadsheet for my tax accountant. Haven't seen any compatability problems with either. However, as I noted before, I'm not using the fancy stuff. I just hope MS keeps the product line (and as an ancilliary, fixes your problems too). --M