In my extremely jaded way I'll point out that you left out the crucial element; your Natalie Portman must be petrified.
Even nostalgia trolls aint what they used to be.
I still think this new-fangled accounts on/. is a passing fad...
Except there is not redemption from any ethical view point I'll recognise. Saving your own son by murdering another, especially after voicing the hope that said son will join you in a crushing rulership of the galaxy does not redeem for what appears to be a responsibility for millions, if not hundreds of millions murdered at your own hand/orders. Vader got off insanely lightly and the message it sends is twisted beyond belief.
All you say is true but what you're not seeing is that the majority of inland US is really very homogenous. The big cities show diversity (and following your point a liberal bent) but the majority of the smaller cities and towns are from a world perspective amazingly insular). Even in the rural areas of the Netherlands the people wil come into cultural contact with a diverse range of people from many points of the globe, it's a result of being in a smallish country with many close neighbours who travel internationally frequently.
How are they hypocritical? The policy is to not sell uranium to non-NPT countries (abandoned by the Howard-Liberal Government, re-instated by the Rudd-Labor government). China has been a full signatory of the NPT since 1992 and India refuses. India is still applying pressure to the Australian government in an attempt to make them change policy. No hypocrisy though.
Well you can go with Robert Macnamara's (sp) take on it which was that it was pointless as the Vietnamese would never let the Chinese dictate to them having a thousand years of fighting against specifically that. The domino theory was thoroughly debunked. Had Kennedy not been assasinated you would have been out of Viet Nam in 63, he'd already made the order and it was only LBJs hawkishness and simplistic (mis)understanding of the situation (essentially he was from the all commies bad school) that left you embroiled there. It was a tragic and unnessecary farce in the end - and please remember for as much as the US moans about it, things were so much worse for the Vietnamese as a result. And still are!
Ah, Fineous Fingers. I too have the collection mouldering away somewhere, bought in the early '80s. The things I remember most are everyone torturing peasants for directions/info and of course Grond the anti-paladin. But I digress. And yes, Dragonlance was an abortion of 4th rate Tolkien rip-off only exceeded by anything by Raymond Feist.
It's very cool to see a reference to the original Firefox. Bizarrely coincidental that I'm having a very young Clint Eastwood day. Of course far more worrying that I instantly recognised the reference...
I used to work in IT departments so I understand what you're saying and agree with some of it. Only some however, you're using a worst case scenario to justify general use of computers, it seems very inflexible and from my experience unnecessarily so. As a contractor for the last dozen years I've worked in many varied IT environments with wide ranging differences in security policies and their implementation. My experience has seen that there is no real connection between locking things down and data security - staff understanding of issues is far more important. YMMV
You have given one anecdotal story as justification and maybe that matters more in litigation-prone USA, here business efficiency drivers carry far more weight. What you have to balance is the real factors in your risk-analysis, including the real cost of stopping people working using identifiably more efficient manners compared with a perceived threat which could well never eventuate.
There was an article on this very subject a handful of days ago and many of the Network Admin types on Slashdot reverted to control-freak "You shall not pass!" mode. All very admirable in a data/network security kind of way but extremely unhelpful to the people they serve, the users doing the company's/department's business.
The real reason that we get no official support is actually a matter of current policy and tie-in with Microsoft and IBM supply contracts. It would affect our licensing costs so no support. Money is the primary driver as always. As these are coming to an end and, thankfully, some reasonably contemporary thinking has astoundingly been introduced to the policy process, we are informed that standardised IT will be a thing of the past and a far wider range of options will be available.
For my group this is a godsend as the current systems mandated by the IT area were useless and prohibiting us from achieving the results we required. This has hurt us as a business unit and affected even our ability to retain competent staff. The Macs will meet our requirements far better, surprisingly be more cost effective (gouging government supply contract lock-in no more) and we shall be in the same situation as far as IT support goes, do it ourselves as it was beyond the department we have. Interesting times ahead.
Please don't take this as personal criticism, it's just my experience and the path we've chosen after careful review
We're actually going through this currently at work. I work at a large government department which traditionally has locked down the environment very tightly. As we're a multimedia design/web development area outside IT we've been mandated to use Windows PCs up to now but recently we've been trialling a Macbook Pro to see how well it integrates with the standard environment.
It's been a surprisingly trouble free experience, even though the IT department are loath to become involved in an official capacity (though unofficially individuals are interested and have provided invaluable help). All the major applications are supported and with more of the departmental apps being web based and standards based (especially determined by accessibility requirements) looks to become easier over time.
With rumours of moving away from a common environment things could become easier still.
What problems we have encountered have been sorted by brief research on the net and we're currently establishing a business case to transition to Mac Pros in the near future for our business unit.
Except then that the sound is inverted and you can make out all the Satanic messages too easily. This is also why Australia is in a different DVD region to Britain, in the UK Data is written on the bottom and the label sits on the top, while here the obverse is the case.
My guess is you only know people working in the games industry then. Those of us working in predominantly print, web and broadcast are well catered for on the Mac platform and have many years of familiarity with it. As far as 3D goes I find Lightwave a pretty good solution. That said PCs are usable in this environment and some of us have switched to them over the last 5 years. Personally I'm looking at moving back to Mac and taking my department with me now, it's really just waiting on CS3 being released.
Here in Australia we'd probably change that to: Zero's freezing, ten's cold, twenty's cool, thirty's warm, forty's hot. And from personal experience 46-50 is stinking hot.
Actually if you used the same metric (there's that word again) to measure unemployment Europe and the UK would be within a percentage point of each other. In Europe they count the under-employed in the statistics, it's a surprisingly honest system.
Continuing the off-topic, we've used the French pronunciation in Australia too, for my whole life (approaching 40). It could be fascinating to follow the origin of this to find if it has a single centre or multiple geographic locations. Or not...
Though they cannot hear them they can sense their lack. The US army did testing in the late 1980s and 90s that determined that the range of harmonic overtones up to 90+kHz can be sensed though not directly heard by people. A lack of these can lead to sounds 'feeling' artificial. This is one of the reasons why there was a push to 96kHz (40+ kHz effective playback top frequency) when the DVD-A standard was being devised. Personally even nearing 40 I can still hear frequencies in the 20kHz+ range and also at the low end of the range as well with a great degree of sensitivity.
I loved Directory Opus on the Amiga - helped me manage the huge 1Gb drive (at the time) on my A4000. Easily the best workbench replacement. Nice to see you're still tweaking it along, just DL'd the trial.
In Australia all the stations (including ABC and SBS) have multiple SD and at least one HD channel. And my laptop is a television (and a PVR) by dint of the fact it works as one with the simple addition of a A$100 HD capable tuner. Also this does not invalidate the observation that the majority of new sets sold in this country are HD capable and have been for more than the last year.
You've got to be kidding. We've got one of the highest take up rates in the world. I've been watching digital high def TV on my laptop for the last year and don't forget our SD Analogue signal gets turned off in three years time. HDTV has displaced SD sets at any chain store you care to visit and the price has come down to comfortably under A$1000.
Which as the article states makes the PS3 cheaper than a core XBOX 360 and HD-DVD addon which doesn't include a HD. Seems like competitive pricing there.
Sony will have done market research to find the best price (for them) to sell the PS3. Time will tell how good this strategy is...
From the start I'm inclined to believe the article is flawed from a statistical perspecitve. Where they quote the relevant unemployment rates of Germany and France in comparison to the US they do so without mention that the European countries use a measure which would see the US figure at over 12% (They count the underemployed as unemployed, so if you're a coder working a few hours flipping burgers you show up as unemployed).
That said with an aging population health care will continue to be a growing employer at all levels.
Slashdot Mirror
It's the same in Australia - case law here shows EULAs are [not] worth the paper they're [not] written on. Click through here is not a contract.
Doesn't stop both Australian and International companies pretending they are.
Or especially US companies thinking that US consumer laws with their appalling lack of protections apply here. They lose, a lot.
In my extremely jaded way I'll point out that you left out the crucial element; your Natalie Portman must be petrified. Even nostalgia trolls aint what they used to be. I still think this new-fangled accounts on /. is a passing fad...
Except there is not redemption from any ethical view point I'll recognise. Saving your own son by murdering another, especially after voicing the hope that said son will join you in a crushing rulership of the galaxy does not redeem for what appears to be a responsibility for millions, if not hundreds of millions murdered at your own hand/orders. Vader got off insanely lightly and the message it sends is twisted beyond belief.
All you say is true but what you're not seeing is that the majority of inland US is really very homogenous. The big cities show diversity (and following your point a liberal bent) but the majority of the smaller cities and towns are from a world perspective amazingly insular). Even in the rural areas of the Netherlands the people wil come into cultural contact with a diverse range of people from many points of the globe, it's a result of being in a smallish country with many close neighbours who travel internationally frequently.
How are they hypocritical? The policy is to not sell uranium to non-NPT countries (abandoned by the Howard-Liberal Government, re-instated by the Rudd-Labor government). China has been a full signatory of the NPT since 1992 and India refuses. India is still applying pressure to the Australian government in an attempt to make them change policy.
No hypocrisy though.
Well you can go with Robert Macnamara's (sp) take on it which was that it was pointless as the Vietnamese would never let the Chinese dictate to them having a thousand years of fighting against specifically that. The domino theory was thoroughly debunked. Had Kennedy not been assasinated you would have been out of Viet Nam in 63, he'd already made the order and it was only LBJs hawkishness and simplistic (mis)understanding of the situation (essentially he was from the all commies bad school) that left you embroiled there.
It was a tragic and unnessecary farce in the end - and please remember for as much as the US moans about it, things were so much worse for the Vietnamese as a result. And still are!
And as I like to point out to people from tiny little texas, Western Australia (my home state) = 2,645,615 km We win :-)
Ah, Fineous Fingers. I too have the collection mouldering away somewhere, bought in the early '80s. The things I remember most are everyone torturing peasants for directions/info and of course Grond the anti-paladin. But I digress.
;)
And yes, Dragonlance was an abortion of 4th rate Tolkien rip-off only exceeded by anything by Raymond Feist.
Have I alienated enough fantasy readers yet?
First of course there was this; Another World (known as out of this world in the States) which comfortably pre-dates Half-Life. http://www.idlethumbs.net/display.php?id=13
It's very cool to see a reference to the original Firefox. Bizarrely coincidental that I'm having a very young Clint Eastwood day. Of course far more worrying that I instantly recognised the reference...
You have given one anecdotal story as justification and maybe that matters more in litigation-prone USA, here business efficiency drivers carry far more weight. What you have to balance is the real factors in your risk-analysis, including the real cost of stopping people working using identifiably more efficient manners compared with a perceived threat which could well never eventuate.
There was an article on this very subject a handful of days ago and many of the Network Admin types on Slashdot reverted to control-freak "You shall not pass!" mode. All very admirable in a data/network security kind of way but extremely unhelpful to the people they serve, the users doing the company's/department's business.
The real reason that we get no official support is actually a matter of current policy and tie-in with Microsoft and IBM supply contracts. It would affect our licensing costs so no support. Money is the primary driver as always. As these are coming to an end and, thankfully, some reasonably contemporary thinking has astoundingly been introduced to the policy process, we are informed that standardised IT will be a thing of the past and a far wider range of options will be available.
For my group this is a godsend as the current systems mandated by the IT area were useless and prohibiting us from achieving the results we required. This has hurt us as a business unit and affected even our ability to retain competent staff. The Macs will meet our requirements far better, surprisingly be more cost effective (gouging government supply contract lock-in no more) and we shall be in the same situation as far as IT support goes, do it ourselves as it was beyond the department we have. Interesting times ahead.
Please don't take this as personal criticism, it's just my experience and the path we've chosen after careful review
It's been a surprisingly trouble free experience, even though the IT department are loath to become involved in an official capacity (though unofficially individuals are interested and have provided invaluable help). All the major applications are supported and with more of the departmental apps being web based and standards based (especially determined by accessibility requirements) looks to become easier over time.
With rumours of moving away from a common environment things could become easier still.
What problems we have encountered have been sorted by brief research on the net and we're currently establishing a business case to transition to Mac Pros in the near future for our business unit.
Except then that the sound is inverted and you can make out all the Satanic messages too easily.
This is also why Australia is in a different DVD region to Britain, in the UK Data is written on the bottom and the label sits on the top, while here the obverse is the case.
My guess is you only know people working in the games industry then. Those of us working in predominantly print, web and broadcast are well catered for on the Mac platform and have many years of familiarity with it. As far as 3D goes I find Lightwave a pretty good solution. That said PCs are usable in this environment and some of us have switched to them over the last 5 years.
Personally I'm looking at moving back to Mac and taking my department with me now, it's really just waiting on CS3 being released.
The "clicks" nomenclature is also used by other english speaking armed forces. We use it in Australia, as do the Brits, Kiwis etc.
Here in Australia we'd probably change that to: Zero's freezing, ten's cold, twenty's cool, thirty's warm, forty's hot. And from personal experience 46-50 is stinking hot.
Actually if you used the same metric (there's that word again) to measure unemployment Europe and the UK would be within a percentage point of each other. In Europe they count the under-employed in the statistics, it's a surprisingly honest system.
Continuing the off-topic, we've used the French pronunciation in Australia too, for my whole life (approaching 40). It could be fascinating to follow the origin of this to find if it has a single centre or multiple geographic locations. Or not...
Though they cannot hear them they can sense their lack. The US army did testing in the late 1980s and 90s that determined that the range of harmonic overtones up to 90+kHz can be sensed though not directly heard by people. A lack of these can lead to sounds 'feeling' artificial. This is one of the reasons why there was a push to 96kHz (40+ kHz effective playback top frequency) when the DVD-A standard was being devised.
Personally even nearing 40 I can still hear frequencies in the 20kHz+ range and also at the low end of the range as well with a great degree of sensitivity.
I loved Directory Opus on the Amiga - helped me manage the huge 1Gb drive (at the time) on my A4000. Easily the best workbench replacement.
Nice to see you're still tweaking it along, just DL'd the trial.
In Australia all the stations (including ABC and SBS) have multiple SD and at least one HD channel. And my laptop is a television (and a PVR) by dint of the fact it works as one with the simple addition of a A$100 HD capable tuner. Also this does not invalidate the observation that the majority of new sets sold in this country are HD capable and have been for more than the last year.
You've got to be kidding. We've got one of the highest take up rates in the world. I've been watching digital high def TV on my laptop for the last year and don't forget our SD Analogue signal gets turned off in three years time.
HDTV has displaced SD sets at any chain store you care to visit and the price has come down to comfortably under A$1000.
Except that the new price announced is:
PS3... 47,600 yen
Which as the article states makes the PS3 cheaper than a core XBOX 360 and HD-DVD addon which doesn't include a HD. Seems like competitive pricing there.
Sony will have done market research to find the best price (for them) to sell the PS3. Time will tell how good this strategy is...
From the start I'm inclined to believe the article is flawed from a statistical perspecitve. Where they quote the relevant unemployment rates of Germany and France in comparison to the US they do so without mention that the European countries use a measure which would see the US figure at over 12% (They count the underemployed as unemployed, so if you're a coder working a few hours flipping burgers you show up as unemployed).
That said with an aging population health care will continue to be a growing employer at all levels.
True.
It's not a holiday but it is always a Saturday and was decided on when we believed that it would be a half of a normal working day.