Oh I see... Because in your opinion Microsoft is evil, so you get to decide what they can and cannot do based on arbitrary fuzzy criteria that you can't really build a consistent ruleset for.
*sigh*
I've officially become tired of watching you twist words to defend MS.
It's not his opinion that Microsoft is Evil. The background for his argument is the legal fact that Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop market, which puts restrictions on its behaviour. It cannot actively try to lock out competition in the desktop market, and it cannot try to extend that monopoly to other markets.
Hint: Microsofts exclusion of the JVM was obviously done for technical reasons. i.e. they are deprecating that code because it is no longer actively maintained. It's an optional download now, but with the next release of Windows I can guarantee you there won't be a download at all.
And why would that be? I mean, MS could license a compliant JVM from Sun or someone else that's written one. They could write their own compliant JVM. The operative word there is "compliant;" they cannot write a "Java Virtual Machine" that doesn't run compliant Java code, but instead their own "version" of Java, and still call it Java.
Now, if MS simply left it at that, great, no problem, no Java in Windows by default, download a JVM/JDK or something. However... there's this C# and J# and whatnot business, which looks awfully like an attempt to squeeze Sun's Java out of the programming market.
And that's monopoly extension.
Microsoft can innovate all it wants. It cannot try to actively kill competition using its monopoly power. MS tried to do it before with their noncompliant JVM, and now it looks like they're trying to just kill Java entirely by leveraging its desktop monopoly.
I actually have little problem with MS bundling practices, outside of their attempto to break, or damage the reputation of, competing products, languages, and data formats.
"Assume" makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me"
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You are right in that the advantage of CLR is that it is a level of integration better than COM, which is itself a level of integration better than the flat-DLL/library API function call interfaces that the original poster was happy with.
Actually, I have little idea how any of this stuff goes together at anything above a really rudimentary level. That's why I asked, not because I was "happy" with anything:)
Stupid Question from a Non-Programmer
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Is it possible for someone, who knows what they're talking about, to tell me what the big difference is between COM, COM+, and CLR that makes the latter so "revolutionary"? As far as I can tell, they all allow programs written in different languages to interact with one another.
Consider me clueless, and provide me with clue, please:)
I'm pretty sure Roger's is semi-independent of excite@home too.
To some extent, but not quite as arms-length as I'd prefer under the circumstances. Most Rogers services in Ontario are provided using Ontario-based servers. However, e-mail is still stored and handled by a server in San Francisco. I'm not entirely sure how integrated the on.home.com network is with the rest of @Home's stuff, but I do know that if Excite@Home kills the SF mail server, a lot of people in Ontario will be s-c-r-e-w-e-d.
I'll take the opportunity to mention that if WW III goes all-out, I may head north, quickly, and try to start a small safe community with some friends and other individuals interested in staying alive. If you have access to solar panels, stuff that can be used to convert biomass to energy, building materials, water filtration equipment, etc... just keep this in mind, in case... you know... shit happens.
Actually, my undetstanding is that the Taliban offered bin Laden be tried in a "neutral Muslim nation." For my money, that would have been Pakistan, although you can name nearly any Islamic monarchy, republic, or dictatorship and be close.
I never heard of an offer to try him in Afghanistan itself, although a group of clerics drew up a resolution asking him to leave.
In any event, I'd imagine some kind of capture operation will be launched at some point, if bin Laden hasn't already bolted from the country.
Less bombs, more food will bring the best conclusion to this. Does the U.S. want a democratic government of the Afghan people, or simply a friendly regime (ie, the Northern Alliance)?
In that case, they'll arm the Afghan refugees, instead of the other former mujahideen known as the Northern Alliance. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan has blasted the policies and treatment of both sides; the NA groups are even more corrupt than the Taliban. In fact, it's believed that corruption of the Afghan regime in 95 triggered the rise of the Taliban, in an attempt to "clean up" the country.
Thank you CIA, for helping create this mess, and many others. That $30 billion is money well spent, yep...
We used nuclear and "toxic" (i.e. chemical) weapons? Funny, I never heard about that. We used conventional weapons, which I do not dispute and never did.
Weeeellllll....
How about Kosovo? Or Serbia? Or Iraq?
Depleted-uranium ammunition was used in these three theatres. The long-term effects of radioactive weapons are not entirely known, and there's at least anecdotal evidence that spent ammunition and d-u dust is toxic, causing leukemia and other cancers in those exposed to the stuff. "Gulf War syndrome" may possibly be a result of this.
Vietnam
Agent Orange.
Let's of course not forget Japan.
Nuclear, of course. Although it's difficult to argue with wanting a quick end to the war, I've run across an argument that the first target of the Bomb should have been a definite military target, or a relatively empty area, as opposed to a city of 100 000.
That was neither a nuclear nor chemical weapon we used. It was just a conventional warhead on a cruise missile.
Point taken, but it was still a civilian target... and I'm getting to that.
Furthermore, that's not even a civilian target, it was a part of Al Qaeda, and a place they manufactured chemicals for use in chemical weapons. Furthermore, it was a precision strike, designed to minimize incidental civilian casualties.
Furthermore, that was Clinton's claim, and it didn't pan out. To this day, no concrete proof has come out indicating chemical weapons were even developed at the site. The plant was transferred to a new owner five months before the attack, and the CIA completely missed that. One person was killed, the night watchman; the U.S. is damned lucky they didn't strike during the day. He should never have been killed in the first place, thanks to bad intelligence and Clinton's need to divert everyone's attention away from a stained blue dress. In fact, the Sudanese government asked for an investigation into the American claims; the U.S. blocked it.
Their justification for thinking the Al Shifa plant was a chemical weapons factory? A single soil sample, supposedly taken nine months before the attack, a claim that has been questioned and/or refuted, depending on who you ask.
Now, you shut the fuck up until you get a clue. For starters, try looking for sources of news and information outside of CNN, and don't blindly trust information from a government that has been caught in exaggerations and lies when it serves the purposes of the state, and/or the individuals that make it up.
Colombian organizations produce and manufacture lots of cocaine that has resulted in lots of deaths around the world. I don't use that to legitimize killing civilians in that country either.
I was reading an article recently, but unfortunately I can't find it. It had quite a bit of recent middle east history. It might have been Time or Newsweek, but I don't seem to be able to find it.
If you do, let me know. I'm taking a course on the Cold War next semester, and this might make interesting background research for the obligatory essay.
There was a Communist government in Afghanistan which was happy to cooperate with the Soviet military. The government was popular in Afghanistan (unlike the Taliban),
Weeeellllll.... I dunno if you could call many of the big-C Communist governments "popular," though I was surprised to find out recently that Afghanistan already had a pro-Soviet government by the 1979 invasion. Now that I know this, further research should prove... interesting.
Friggin' empire builders... always saying they're working for their subjects, while finding new and interesting ways to get them - and everyone else - killed.
Hell, I'll just throw my support behind RAWA; they at least seem to give a flying fuck about the rights and well-being of Afghan citizens, as opposed to the CIA/Pakistan-backed occupation force known as the Taliban.
Interesting side note: "Talib" is apparently an Urdu word for "student." The Taliban were students of extremist schools in Pakistan, funded by the CIA through the ISI and Pakistani military. Witness the power of education, and the results of its abuse.
yeah, the world would just suck if the soviets had invaded saudi arabia... why exactly?
This didn't occur to me while mulling over RM101's post, but your post reminded me that a lot of the battling over the Middle East can be summed up in one word: "oil." A Soviet invasion of Saudi Arabia (assuming they made it through Iran and Afghanistan) would give them control over massive oilfields, also assuming they managed to win.
This would either have triggered an all-out, direct U.S.-Soviet conflict, or pushed the U.S. to find alternative sources of fuel and raw materials. In fact, there's an easily-available one that can be grown in the U.S. right now... but it's illegal, thanks to Will Hearst, DuPont, the Mellon Bank, et al.
Back to the Soviets... I'm not a fan of their regime either. I don't like imperialist nations, whether they claim to be socialist or democratic. The true colors of a nation come out in their treatment of smaller populations - and neither the U.S. or the U.S.S.R. did great in that regard during the Cold War. Arguably, the U.S. has tried to rebuild some bridges since... but those darn intelligence and military arms manage to keep futzing things up for everyone, under the guise of "national interests."
More later, once I feel like writing a direct reply to RM101.
You think they'd have messed with 767's if they had nukes? This isn't a game.
You think they'd have done anything at all if the CIA, through Pakistan's ISI, hadn't trained themto be extremists? Like you said, this isn't a game - I just wish states and their "intelligence" arms would realize that next time someone involved with them feels like installing a military junta or training "freedom fighters" to "uphold policy". Nations in both East and West are guilty of this, and until these deadly cloak-and-dagger games of subversion and manipulation stop, there will be more incidents involving "blowback," where innocent civilians - like WTC employees, and women in Afghanistan - get caught in the crossfire of others who should know better.
And you wonder why people trust their governments less and less...
Ask your mom if she cares that she can't copy it to her computer or an MP3 player.
Ironically, I showed my mom how to use MusicMatch Jukebox during one of my summer visits to the humble abode. A few weeks later, she gushed about not having to swap CDs all the time; they could now be kept in the van, or in a safe place, or wherever.
I rather hope she doesn't run into one of these "protected" monsters - that will be one interesting phone call:)
No need to show you why since everybody already caught you in your lie.
I must take issue with the use of the term "lie" here.
The story of the "recycled footage" is still, slowly, circling the globe. It will reach people who haven't heard the retraction yet, who have little reason to trust what CNN tells them in the first place, and who run across this now-urban legend, and latch on to it. They vector it, someone else latches on... and so it goes.
"Lie" implies an intent to deceive. This is, in fact, what the poster, and the original claimaint, said CNN was doing - lying about the source of the footage. By now, we know it is almost certainly legitimate, barring any spectacular discoveries in the near future. Not everyone else knows this, and they will consider this legend a fact until corrected.
Be very careful with language. These are tricky times, and hysteria will only breed more of the same.
2- The reason they were not told is that nobody knew at the time. That footage was made in 1991. Yes people, made in 1991 and shown on all major US news on september 11, 2001.
I'm gonna be shooting this down for *weeks*... and I'm a hard lefty! I should be spreading this... but it's not true.
The person who initially made the claim, Marcio A.V. Carvalho, retracted the claim last Sunday. He was initially told by one of his professors that she recalled very similar footage being run during the Gulf War. He jumped, reported it, then went back to ask if he could have the footage to put online. Turns out, she doesn't have it available, so he can't be sure what we saw was recycled footage.
Search Google Groups for "Marcio Carvalho DENIED"; that should find several posts containing his message, forwarded from a Marxist mailing list. I'm rather glad he related the rest of the story once it appeared he couldn't back up his claims; it's more than most people do.
That this story spread so quickly, I think, says something about the credibility of news media these days, in terms of past transgressions on journalistic integrity. I point thee to ProjectCensored.org's 2000 item about U.S. Army Psychological Operations crew interning at CNN. As well, the words "GM NBC truck test" make for an interesting Google search...
I believe the news is that this is the first confirmed case of a 3D "printer" being used in a production environment for more than just demonstration purposes - kind of a proof that these bad boys can really be put to use. If you know of any earlier cases like this, I'm sure we'd all love to hear about them, being the drooling tech geeks that we are...
Letting the content industry dictate it's terms of use regarding computer equipment not only to flagrantly violate their customer's fair use rights...
I'd be very careful trying to use the concept of "fair use" as it exists in the U.S. outside American borders. I've heard at least one head of a Canadian copyright agency (the CMRRA) tell a class that Canada doesn't recognize "fair use" as it exists in the U.S., but a system called "fair dealing," which he defined as "if the content provider doesn't explicity provide permission, it's infringement." Considering that the jerk saw my DeCSS shirt and automatically assumed I'm a pirate kiddie (his exact words were "so you work for free too, eh?" upon my explanation), I tend to take his words with a grain of salt.
We've also had CRIA goons in before, giving another class a slanted survey that generally made MP3s out to be the devil's work. Naturally, I made a few modifications, based on things I'd observed in reality (artists using MP3s to promote their albums, etc.) One of my friends went even farther, discussing his issues with the survey with one of said goons afterward.
You ever get the feeling you're being led to slaughter, and told it's a good thing?
It would be nice if our elected officials would stop counting their kickbacks, bribes and lobbyist money and start doing their jobs.
What? Be actual representatives of the people in their districts? Stand up for justice? Do the right thing? Not when there's an electoral war chest to build!
And now you begin to understand just how close to death democracy in North America truly is. Money isn't just a unit of trade; it's a measure of power. The more you have, the more powerful you are, the more influence you have over lawmakers (what? citizens? screw 'em; they don't buy me campaign ads and dinners). As for "campaign finance reform," only a complete and total overhaul of how elections are run could even begin to attack the root of the problem with government in the US, Canada, and other Western "democracies"; the position of lawmaker has become one of authority without responsibility, instead of servant with great responsibility.
I wonder if the distance, real and political, between representatives and citizens has become so great as to make accountability meaningless, simply because the politician lives in a completely different world than the people who voted them into their positions. I wonder if politicians would make different decisions if they had to live with their effects on a daily basis, alongside the people who gave them that power and corresponding responsibility, instead of acting like first-graders and covering up their messes with spin and flat-out lies.
The biggest point he's made is the user familiarity. Something difficult to overcome. Something that Linux has been working on to try and grab the Windows population.
I've had some personal experience with newbies either considering Linux, or trying to use a Linux GUI (GNOME, in my case). Specifically, my extremely non-geek girlfriend, who still uses MS Bob at home to write letters, who was blown away by the extra speed that came from adding some RAM to her old, crufty machine.
For about a year, I've been moving her to a Linux-based Ximian GNOME desktop when she visits here. Windows now just exists for playing DVDs. I held her hand through the early stages of figuring out where her programs are, warning her when I broke something (software upgrade addict), and calmly answering questions that are blindingly obvious to me. She has her own desktop, icons and panels for the programs she needs, and even a direct link to her Hotmail account.
One day, about a week after I installed Ximian 1.4, she was stuck here, alone, for a couple hours while I ran out to get something. I'd planned to walk her through the Doorman sequence later, but by the time I came back, she'd walked herself through it. I felt rather proud of her:)
The lesson? Hand-holding early on can overcome a lack of familiarity with an interface. It's much easier to do when dealing with only one person, as opposed to thousands of employees, but good, clear, simple documentation and setting up a clean, obvious desktop/interface/whateva for the poor users can go a long way in alleviating peoples' fears of "breaking" the computer, or not knowing how to fix something.
That's not to say certain geniuses won't still find ways to break stuff and not notice the blindingly obvious, but enough forethought and help can prevent a lot of trouble and backsliding later.
I didn't seem to notice any antialiasing either. Looking through the config files and gdkxft_sysinstall script seems to provide some answers.
During install, gdkxft_sysinstall tries to read Xft's font names using xftcache. Unfortunately, xftcache doesn't seem to exist in X 4.0.x for us poor Dead Hat people. For all I know, it may not be in X 4.0.x at all. It is, however, in X 4.1.0. Therefore, I'm not sure the gdkxft_sysinstall script can build a proper XftConfig file in XFree86 4.0.x. The answer's not as simple as installing 4.1.0 binaries out of RawHide; they're linked to a couple other libraries, which also are linked to other libraries... and it's just a mess.
If anyone can pull it off, I'd like to know. I sure would like to try antialiasing my fonts, since I tend to jack the size way up for visibility reasons. Otherwise, I may just have to upgrade to DeadHat 7.2 or Mandrake's next version. Or, I can build 4.1.0 myself. That may turn out to be the most viable option.
Re:Department of Defense getting in on the fun?
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Um, is it possible that they're not really doing anything malicious?
Of course.
Would you be suprised if Yahoo started indexing your site?
Of course not. I watch web spiders crawl around my pages all the time; hell, I've been watching a crawler from IBM's Alamaden lab over the past couple of days.
The fact that the gubment has decided to buy our products and (heaven-forbid) actually deploy them on the Internet isn't necessarily any more suspicious than if they bought yours and did the same.
Oh, I don't mind that they bought the products and all. However, I'm not the first to notice that the DoD seems to be using Inktomi web spiders to catalogue pro-Sklyarov and digital-copyright info sites. I know the DoD spider hasn't touched anything besides my Sklyarov page and defcon.ppt. Reports from two other people, one of which is in this thread, indicate I'm not just nuts, and perhaps not even paranoid.
If it were the DoJustice doing this, I'd be less surprised, but I'd still report it. I'm really confused as to who in the DoD gives a flying crud about the Sklyarov prosecution and copyright issues.
Would it make sense to file an FOI request, asking for an explanation of their spidering of your server? I would not be so naieve as to expect a comprehensive truthful answer, but it might be interesting to study whatever excuse they give.
Can a Canadian make an FOIA request? If so, I'd love to try.
Actually, there's a couple e-mail addresses I've run across that I may take advantage of, should I get enough material for... further investigation.
Re:Department of Defense getting in on the fun?
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Since I can correlate her hits with actually talking to her on IM I know it's not DoD spooks or anything like that.
Do her hits contain an "Inktomi Search" user agent?
The thing that gets me about this is that it's not an individual visiting the same data, including robots.txt, every day. Unless some people have faked user-agent strings of "Inktomi Search", these aren't humans retrieving defcon.ppt every day. As well, the hits are only to robots.txt, adobe.html, and defcon.ppt! main.css isn't even being retrieved, which it would be if a real person were viewing it - in which case, that person wouldn't be looking at robots.txt or defcon.ppt.
See what I'm getting at? There's more than just an interested individual here. Maybe just a little more, but it's something enough to use (probably expensive, paid for with taxpayer dollars) searching and indexing software to keep tabs on sites about copyright and Sklyarov.
Heh, maybe I should stick in something like "Overthrow the US Government!" and see if I get a visit - a honeypot for law enforcement, as it were:)
Slashdot Mirror
Oh I see... Because in your opinion Microsoft is evil, so you get to decide what they can and cannot do based on arbitrary fuzzy criteria that you can't really build a consistent ruleset for.
*sigh*
I've officially become tired of watching you twist words to defend MS.
It's not his opinion that Microsoft is Evil. The background for his argument is the legal fact that Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop market, which puts restrictions on its behaviour. It cannot actively try to lock out competition in the desktop market, and it cannot try to extend that monopoly to other markets.
Hint: Microsofts exclusion of the JVM was obviously done for technical reasons. i.e. they are deprecating that code because it is no longer actively maintained. It's an optional download now, but with the next release of Windows I can guarantee you there won't be a download at all.
And why would that be? I mean, MS could license a compliant JVM from Sun or someone else that's written one. They could write their own compliant JVM. The operative word there is "compliant;" they cannot write a "Java Virtual Machine" that doesn't run compliant Java code, but instead their own "version" of Java, and still call it Java.
Now, if MS simply left it at that, great, no problem, no Java in Windows by default, download a JVM/JDK or something. However... there's this C# and J# and whatnot business, which looks awfully like an attempt to squeeze Sun's Java out of the programming market.
And that's monopoly extension.
Microsoft can innovate all it wants. It cannot try to actively kill competition using its monopoly power. MS tried to do it before with their noncompliant JVM, and now it looks like they're trying to just kill Java entirely by leveraging its desktop monopoly.
I actually have little problem with MS bundling practices, outside of their attempto to break, or damage the reputation of, competing products, languages, and data formats.
You are right in that the advantage of CLR is that it is a level of integration better than COM, which is itself a level of integration better than the flat-DLL/library API function call interfaces that the original poster was happy with.
Actually, I have little idea how any of this stuff goes together at anything above a really rudimentary level. That's why I asked, not because I was "happy" with anything:)
Is it possible for someone, who knows what they're talking about, to tell me what the big difference is between COM, COM+, and CLR that makes the latter so "revolutionary"? As far as I can tell, they all allow programs written in different languages to interact with one another.
Consider me clueless, and provide me with clue, please:)
I'm pretty sure Roger's is semi-independent of excite@home too.
To some extent, but not quite as arms-length as I'd prefer under the circumstances. Most Rogers services in Ontario are provided using Ontario-based servers. However, e-mail is still stored and handled by a server in San Francisco. I'm not entirely sure how integrated the on.home.com network is with the rest of @Home's stuff, but I do know that if Excite@Home kills the SF mail server, a lot of people in Ontario will be s-c-r-e-w-e-d.
Too late - same stupid shit's probably coming up here too.
I'll take the opportunity to mention that if WW III goes all-out, I may head north, quickly, and try to start a small safe community with some friends and other individuals interested in staying alive. If you have access to solar panels, stuff that can be used to convert biomass to energy, building materials, water filtration equipment, etc... just keep this in mind, in case... you know... shit happens.
Actually, my undetstanding is that the Taliban offered bin Laden be tried in a "neutral Muslim nation." For my money, that would have been Pakistan, although you can name nearly any Islamic monarchy, republic, or dictatorship and be close.
I never heard of an offer to try him in Afghanistan itself, although a group of clerics drew up a resolution asking him to leave.
In any event, I'd imagine some kind of capture operation will be launched at some point, if bin Laden hasn't already bolted from the country.
Less bombs, more food will bring the best conclusion to this. Does the U.S. want a democratic government of the Afghan people, or simply a friendly regime (ie, the Northern Alliance)?
In that case, they'll arm the Afghan refugees, instead of the other former mujahideen known as the Northern Alliance. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan has blasted the policies and treatment of both sides; the NA groups are even more corrupt than the Taliban. In fact, it's believed that corruption of the Afghan regime in 95 triggered the rise of the Taliban, in an attempt to "clean up" the country.
Thank you CIA, for helping create this mess, and many others. That $30 billion is money well spent, yep...
We used nuclear and "toxic" (i.e. chemical) weapons? Funny, I never heard about that. We used conventional weapons, which I do not dispute and never did.
Weeeellllll....
How about Kosovo? Or Serbia? Or Iraq?
Depleted-uranium ammunition was used in these three theatres. The long-term effects of radioactive weapons are not entirely known, and there's at least anecdotal evidence that spent ammunition and d-u dust is toxic, causing leukemia and other cancers in those exposed to the stuff. "Gulf War syndrome" may possibly be a result of this.
Vietnam
Agent Orange.
Let's of course not forget Japan.
Nuclear, of course. Although it's difficult to argue with wanting a quick end to the war, I've run across an argument that the first target of the Bomb should have been a definite military target, or a relatively empty area, as opposed to a city of 100 000.
That was neither a nuclear nor chemical weapon we used. It was just a conventional warhead on a cruise missile.
Point taken, but it was still a civilian target... and I'm getting to that.
Furthermore, that's not even a civilian target, it was a part of Al Qaeda, and a place they manufactured chemicals for use in chemical weapons. Furthermore, it was a precision strike, designed to minimize incidental civilian casualties.
Furthermore, that was Clinton's claim, and it didn't pan out. To this day, no concrete proof has come out indicating chemical weapons were even developed at the site. The plant was transferred to a new owner five months before the attack, and the CIA completely missed that. One person was killed, the night watchman; the U.S. is damned lucky they didn't strike during the day. He should never have been killed in the first place, thanks to bad intelligence and Clinton's need to divert everyone's attention away from a stained blue dress. In fact, the Sudanese government asked for an investigation into the American claims; the U.S. blocked it.
Their justification for thinking the Al Shifa plant was a chemical weapons factory? A single soil sample, supposedly taken nine months before the attack, a claim that has been questioned and/or refuted, depending on who you ask.
Now, you shut the fuck up until you get a clue. For starters, try looking for sources of news and information outside of CNN, and don't blindly trust information from a government that has been caught in exaggerations and lies when it serves the purposes of the state, and/or the individuals that make it up.
2) When was the last time we used them on a civilian target?
Quite possibly, Aug. 20, 1998.
Colombian organizations produce and manufacture lots of cocaine that has resulted in lots of deaths around the world. I don't use that to legitimize killing civilians in that country either.
You don't. Your government doesn't seem to worry about that, though. Hell, they're paying a private contractor to do the dirty work!
I was reading an article recently, but unfortunately I can't find it. It had quite a bit of recent middle east history. It might have been Time or Newsweek, but I don't seem to be able to find it.
If you do, let me know. I'm taking a course on the Cold War next semester, and this might make interesting background research for the obligatory essay.
There was a Communist government in Afghanistan which was happy to cooperate with the Soviet military. The government was popular in Afghanistan (unlike the Taliban),
Weeeellllll.... I dunno if you could call many of the big-C Communist governments "popular," though I was surprised to find out recently that Afghanistan already had a pro-Soviet government by the 1979 invasion. Now that I know this, further research should prove... interesting.
Friggin' empire builders... always saying they're working for their subjects, while finding new and interesting ways to get them - and everyone else - killed.
Hell, I'll just throw my support behind RAWA; they at least seem to give a flying fuck about the rights and well-being of Afghan citizens, as opposed to the CIA/Pakistan-backed occupation force known as the Taliban.
Interesting side note: "Talib" is apparently an Urdu word for "student." The Taliban were students of extremist schools in Pakistan, funded by the CIA through the ISI and Pakistani military. Witness the power of education, and the results of its abuse.
yeah, the world would just suck if the soviets had invaded saudi arabia... why exactly?
This didn't occur to me while mulling over RM101's post, but your post reminded me that a lot of the battling over the Middle East can be summed up in one word: "oil." A Soviet invasion of Saudi Arabia (assuming they made it through Iran and Afghanistan) would give them control over massive oilfields, also assuming they managed to win.
This would either have triggered an all-out, direct U.S.-Soviet conflict, or pushed the U.S. to find alternative sources of fuel and raw materials. In fact, there's an easily-available one that can be grown in the U.S. right now... but it's illegal, thanks to Will Hearst, DuPont, the Mellon Bank, et al.
Back to the Soviets... I'm not a fan of their regime either. I don't like imperialist nations, whether they claim to be socialist or democratic. The true colors of a nation come out in their treatment of smaller populations - and neither the U.S. or the U.S.S.R. did great in that regard during the Cold War. Arguably, the U.S. has tried to rebuild some bridges since... but those darn intelligence and military arms manage to keep futzing things up for everyone, under the guise of "national interests."
More later, once I feel like writing a direct reply to RM101.
You think they'd have messed with 767's if they had nukes? This isn't a game.
You think they'd have done anything at all if the CIA, through Pakistan's ISI, hadn't trained them to be extremists? Like you said, this isn't a game - I just wish states and their "intelligence" arms would realize that next time someone involved with them feels like installing a military junta or training "freedom fighters" to "uphold policy". Nations in both East and West are guilty of this, and until these deadly cloak-and-dagger games of subversion and manipulation stop, there will be more incidents involving "blowback," where innocent civilians - like WTC employees, and women in Afghanistan - get caught in the crossfire of others who should know better.
And you wonder why people trust their governments less and less...
Ask your mom if she cares that she can't copy it to her computer or an MP3 player.
Ironically, I showed my mom how to use MusicMatch Jukebox during one of my summer visits to the humble abode. A few weeks later, she gushed about not having to swap CDs all the time; they could now be kept in the van, or in a safe place, or wherever.
I rather hope she doesn't run into one of these "protected" monsters - that will be one interesting phone call:)
No need to show you why since everybody already caught you in your lie.
I must take issue with the use of the term "lie" here.
The story of the "recycled footage" is still, slowly, circling the globe. It will reach people who haven't heard the retraction yet, who have little reason to trust what CNN tells them in the first place, and who run across this now-urban legend, and latch on to it. They vector it, someone else latches on... and so it goes.
"Lie" implies an intent to deceive. This is, in fact, what the poster, and the original claimaint, said CNN was doing - lying about the source of the footage. By now, we know it is almost certainly legitimate, barring any spectacular discoveries in the near future. Not everyone else knows this, and they will consider this legend a fact until corrected.
Be very careful with language. These are tricky times, and hysteria will only breed more of the same.
2- The reason they were not told is that nobody knew at the time. That footage was made in 1991. Yes people, made in 1991 and shown on all major US news on september 11, 2001.
I'm gonna be shooting this down for *weeks*... and I'm a hard lefty! I should be spreading this... but it's not true.
The person who initially made the claim, Marcio A.V. Carvalho, retracted the claim last Sunday. He was initially told by one of his professors that she recalled very similar footage being run during the Gulf War. He jumped, reported it, then went back to ask if he could have the footage to put online. Turns out, she doesn't have it available, so he can't be sure what we saw was recycled footage.
Search Google Groups for "Marcio Carvalho DENIED"; that should find several posts containing his message, forwarded from a Marxist mailing list. I'm rather glad he related the rest of the story once it appeared he couldn't back up his claims; it's more than most people do.
That this story spread so quickly, I think, says something about the credibility of news media these days, in terms of past transgressions on journalistic integrity. I point thee to ProjectCensored.org's 2000 item about U.S. Army Psychological Operations crew interning at CNN. As well, the words "GM NBC truck test" make for an interesting Google search...
I believe the news is that this is the first confirmed case of a 3D "printer" being used in a production environment for more than just demonstration purposes - kind of a proof that these bad boys can really be put to use. If you know of any earlier cases like this, I'm sure we'd all love to hear about them, being the drooling tech geeks that we are...
Letting the content industry dictate it's terms of use regarding computer equipment not only to flagrantly violate their customer's fair use rights...
I'd be very careful trying to use the concept of "fair use" as it exists in the U.S. outside American borders. I've heard at least one head of a Canadian copyright agency (the CMRRA) tell a class that Canada doesn't recognize "fair use" as it exists in the U.S., but a system called "fair dealing," which he defined as "if the content provider doesn't explicity provide permission, it's infringement." Considering that the jerk saw my DeCSS shirt and automatically assumed I'm a pirate kiddie (his exact words were "so you work for free too, eh?" upon my explanation), I tend to take his words with a grain of salt.
We've also had CRIA goons in before, giving another class a slanted survey that generally made MP3s out to be the devil's work. Naturally, I made a few modifications, based on things I'd observed in reality (artists using MP3s to promote their albums, etc.) One of my friends went even farther, discussing his issues with the survey with one of said goons afterward.
You ever get the feeling you're being led to slaughter, and told it's a good thing?
Aren't our elected officials supposed to at least TRY to protect their electorate from this kind of thing? $200 BILLION is a lot of money!
$1.4 trillion is even more money, and some politicians were involved in aiding and abetting that theft.
It would be nice if our elected officials would stop counting their kickbacks, bribes and lobbyist money and start doing their jobs.
What? Be actual representatives of the people in their districts? Stand up for justice? Do the right thing? Not when there's an electoral war chest to build!
And now you begin to understand just how close to death democracy in North America truly is. Money isn't just a unit of trade; it's a measure of power. The more you have, the more powerful you are, the more influence you have over lawmakers (what? citizens? screw 'em; they don't buy me campaign ads and dinners). As for "campaign finance reform," only a complete and total overhaul of how elections are run could even begin to attack the root of the problem with government in the US, Canada, and other Western "democracies"; the position of lawmaker has become one of authority without responsibility, instead of servant with great responsibility.
I wonder if the distance, real and political, between representatives and citizens has become so great as to make accountability meaningless, simply because the politician lives in a completely different world than the people who voted them into their positions. I wonder if politicians would make different decisions if they had to live with their effects on a daily basis, alongside the people who gave them that power and corresponding responsibility, instead of acting like first-graders and covering up their messes with spin and flat-out lies.
--end rant--
The biggest point he's made is the user familiarity. Something difficult to overcome. Something that Linux has been working on to try and grab the Windows population.
I've had some personal experience with newbies either considering Linux, or trying to use a Linux GUI (GNOME, in my case). Specifically, my extremely non-geek girlfriend, who still uses MS Bob at home to write letters, who was blown away by the extra speed that came from adding some RAM to her old, crufty machine.
For about a year, I've been moving her to a Linux-based Ximian GNOME desktop when she visits here. Windows now just exists for playing DVDs. I held her hand through the early stages of figuring out where her programs are, warning her when I broke something (software upgrade addict), and calmly answering questions that are blindingly obvious to me. She has her own desktop, icons and panels for the programs she needs, and even a direct link to her Hotmail account.
One day, about a week after I installed Ximian 1.4, she was stuck here, alone, for a couple hours while I ran out to get something. I'd planned to walk her through the Doorman sequence later, but by the time I came back, she'd walked herself through it. I felt rather proud of her:)
The lesson? Hand-holding early on can overcome a lack of familiarity with an interface. It's much easier to do when dealing with only one person, as opposed to thousands of employees, but good, clear, simple documentation and setting up a clean, obvious desktop/interface/whateva for the poor users can go a long way in alleviating peoples' fears of "breaking" the computer, or not knowing how to fix something.
That's not to say certain geniuses won't still find ways to break stuff and not notice the blindingly obvious, but enough forethought and help can prevent a lot of trouble and backsliding later.
I didn't seem to notice any antialiasing either. Looking through the config files and gdkxft_sysinstall script seems to provide some answers.
During install, gdkxft_sysinstall tries to read Xft's font names using xftcache. Unfortunately, xftcache doesn't seem to exist in X 4.0.x for us poor Dead Hat people. For all I know, it may not be in X 4.0.x at all. It is, however, in X 4.1.0. Therefore, I'm not sure the gdkxft_sysinstall script can build a proper XftConfig file in XFree86 4.0.x. The answer's not as simple as installing 4.1.0 binaries out of RawHide; they're linked to a couple other libraries, which also are linked to other libraries... and it's just a mess.
If anyone can pull it off, I'd like to know. I sure would like to try antialiasing my fonts, since I tend to jack the size way up for visibility reasons. Otherwise, I may just have to upgrade to DeadHat 7.2 or Mandrake's next version. Or, I can build 4.1.0 myself. That may turn out to be the most viable option.
Um, is it possible that they're not really doing anything malicious?
Of course.
Would you be suprised if Yahoo started indexing your site?
Of course not. I watch web spiders crawl around my pages all the time; hell, I've been watching a crawler from IBM's Alamaden lab over the past couple of days.
The fact that the gubment has decided to buy our products and (heaven-forbid) actually deploy them on the Internet isn't necessarily any more suspicious than if they bought yours and did the same.
Oh, I don't mind that they bought the products and all. However, I'm not the first to notice that the DoD seems to be using Inktomi web spiders to catalogue pro-Sklyarov and digital-copyright info sites. I know the DoD spider hasn't touched anything besides my Sklyarov page and defcon.ppt. Reports from two other people, one of which is in this thread, indicate I'm not just nuts, and perhaps not even paranoid.
If it were the DoJustice doing this, I'd be less surprised, but I'd still report it. I'm really confused as to who in the DoD gives a flying crud about the Sklyarov prosecution and copyright issues.
Would it make sense to file an FOI request, asking for an explanation of their spidering of your server? I would not be so naieve as to expect a comprehensive truthful answer, but it might be interesting to study whatever excuse they give.
Can a Canadian make an FOIA request? If so, I'd love to try.
Actually, there's a couple e-mail addresses I've run across that I may take advantage of, should I get enough material for... further investigation.
Since I can correlate her hits with actually talking to her on IM I know it's not DoD spooks or anything like that.
Do her hits contain an "Inktomi Search" user agent?
The thing that gets me about this is that it's not an individual visiting the same data, including robots.txt, every day. Unless some people have faked user-agent strings of "Inktomi Search", these aren't humans retrieving defcon.ppt every day. As well, the hits are only to robots.txt, adobe.html, and defcon.ppt! main.css isn't even being retrieved, which it would be if a real person were viewing it - in which case, that person wouldn't be looking at robots.txt or defcon.ppt.
See what I'm getting at? There's more than just an interested individual here. Maybe just a little more, but it's something enough to use (probably expensive, paid for with taxpayer dollars) searching and indexing software to keep tabs on sites about copyright and Sklyarov.
Heh, maybe I should stick in something like "Overthrow the US Government!" and see if I get a visit - a honeypot for law enforcement, as it were:)