How long is it going to take before you admit you're wrong? I would be willing to bet "never", because the usual conservative tact is to hang on like a rabid pit bull to whatever criminal allegation against an ideological opponent has been made. If it should be disproven then "conspiracy" is usually alleged in order to keep it alive.
You've been had. There was no scandal. Be a real man and learn to admit it, even in matters of politics.
Since you probably get your marching orders from "Cock" Hannity, let me fill you in on a little something your right-wing masters haven't wanted you, since it would upset their precious anti-UN apple cart: the source of the information for that "scandal" was Ahmed Chalabi, also known as the Iranian Spy Who Duped The US Into Going To War In Iraq. He swore up and down that there was major graft going on, and was believed by neoconservatives and their buddies at Fox, and that he would produce the evidence "any day now."
Never happened. Know why? Because he's a goddamned liar, but smart enough to fool Feith, Perle, Wolfowitz, and all those other dipshit ideologues at the AEI.
I shouldn't, but I still find it amazing that conservatives can so easily brush off anything that can be labeled "liberal."
Well, probably not, since these lists are pretty left in their bias.
What "bias"? Is that all it takes to satisfy your criticism, labeling something as being biased? What bias do you have a problem with? Justice? Democracy? Liberty? Labor protections?
Anyone who follows the news beyond CNN, would know this and wouldnt be too alarmed by these "censored" stories.
That's funny, I don't think the so-called-liberal CNN gave nearly as much time to any of these issues as they did to the Swift Boat Liars, Kobe Bryant, the Laci Patterson murder, Michael Jackson's legal troubles, or any other banal issue of the day. And each one is far, far more important than those.
You are mistaken in thinking that censorship can only arise from direct government involvement. That may have been true for much of human history, but I no longer believe it is. Censorship mostly comes from politically interested corporate interests; they need little to no encouragement from legislation to suppress certain voices. All under the guise of exercising their own free speech, of course, which most people see as a valid justification.
Maybe that's because our government does many things that are worthy of criticism, possibly even derision, and because of knee-jerk "patriots" who scream bloody murder whenever such criticisms are mentioned we wind up hearing very little about those things.
And it's not like the government doesn't do everything in its considerable power to make sure that those voices are encouraged.
Yes, AOL owns Netscape, but they signed an agreement with MS to use IE. Don't ask me why. I think MS gave them a whole mound of cash, but that's just speculation.
Smart playlists, shared music, the native ability to burn/rip CDs, and iTMS come immediately to mind. Not to mention the fact that Winamp has security holes and is in general far more clunky. WA4 pissed me off; WA5 is better, but iTunes is still far and away the sleeker player. I started using WA with version 2, used 5 for a while, then tried iTunes and dumped WA about 2 weeks later.
I could care less about skinning or plug-ins. IMO when developers brag that their apps are skinnable or support plug-ins it tells me that they probably haven't paid as much attention to the core functionality, and have opened the app up to security vulnerabilities and instability. As a general rule I avoid skinnable apps.
Plus a whole bunch of people in my office (including) use iTunes and share their music; I can listen to their playlist with a single click. I've been able to check out music I hadn't been exposed to before when it is convenient for me.
I've had several discussions with my friends who swear up and down that since this guy was responsible for Populous that he basically invented the real time strategy game. I don't think this is true. I remember playing Utopia on the Intellivision years before I played Populous, and it was definately real time strategy.
Don't get me wrong. I repsect the hell out of Molyneux. The two titles I have played by him - Populous and Black & White - were very enjoyable. I just don't think he invented the RTS genre. Some unknown dude at Mattel did.
"The icons are actually on the right side of the desktop, where they won't be covered up by every window you open!"
Or, to put it a better way, OS/X uses much more of your desktop real estate. You will not be able to easily enjoy having your foreground application in the foreground as you might under Linux or Windows. Icons will clutter the screen irrespective of your foreground app.
Are you trying to imply that the icons in OS X are ALWAYS in the foreground? Cuz if you are, you are stupid. Just wondering.
"'Shut Down' is not under 'Start'"
It's hidden somewhere else. Good luck finding it. Don't think you can right click for it either.
What the hell are you talking about? It's under the Apple menu, which is available 100% of the time, is always in the upper left hand corner of the screen, no matter which application is open. And you can't shut down Windows using right click, so I don't know why you brought that up at all.
You'll basically need to open an application then go through another procedure to maximise it
This is just an outright lie. You can click on the button at the top of your window that has the "+" sign in it.
"I can do anything a Windows user can!"
(Macs have a version of MS Office available for them, however it does not contain the same range of productivity applications that are available to Windows/Office users)
Um... MS Office for Mac contains all the regular MS Office with the exception of Outlook. Instead, MS offers Entourage, which is quite a bit BETTER than Outlook (2000; I haven't used Office XP yet.)
"My Mac never has technical problems!" (This is a fallacy. The Apple Mac is quite capable of generating application errors and crashing, just like any other *nix based system.
The statement "My Mac never has technical problems" contains no fallacies. It a statement of fact and as such is either true or false. I own a Mac, and have never had a hardware issue with it. In my experience, Apple's computers are better constructed and engineered machines than Dells or other mass-manufactured computers.
Expect to wait several months for spare parts. You will not be able to buy parts off the shelf and install them and have them work.
This is simply stupid. Video card slot: AGP 8X Pro. Hard drive: serial ATA. Memory: DDRAM. Peripherals: USB or Firewire. Monitor connector: VGA. Expansion slots: PCI-X. If your CPU goes bad, order it from Apple. They have the highest rated customer support in the world.
And yes, interpreted languages will be slower than compiled ones
This is becoming less true over time, and already is not true in many cases. Modern interpreters can do statistical analysis on running code and make it more efficient over time. Doing this with compiled languages would require an intimate knowledge by the developer of all possible execution paths, something that becomes more time consuming than it is worth.
Moral: Compiled languages are not always faster in the long run.
Not only was it interesting, it was informative. I know you GOP apologists ("But I'm not! I am independent/libertarian!") bum rush to defend your precious god against all charges, but the fact is that the modern GOP is run by thugs and criminals who care for democracy about as much as any other given group of fascists. I could care less if you believe me or the parent poster, because you obviously have Sean Hannity's cock too far up your ass to attempt anything other than mindless rhetoric. I don't want your vote.
Screw you, Republican pig. The GOP is usurping our very democracy and apologists like yourself deserve nothing less than a swift death.
You do not seem to be the kind that will listen to evidence proffered, but nonetheless...
Last time I checked the DEMS used religion as much or more than the GOP. Both sides use religion to get elected and till you can show what they have done, not what they have said, your theory will be just that, a theory.
First off, that is simply not true. Democrats are largely secular, the Republicans are largely not. Ask yourself: Which side actively courts evangelical Christians? Which side has as its platform the establishment of a Christian state? Which side has proposed legislation before the Congress of the United States which would strip the Supreme Court of its power of judicial review? Which side openly -- openly -- colludes with rapture Christians and millenialists and other elements who seek to replace the secular state with a theocratic one? Who owns the Washington Times, considers himself Jesus Christ returned to earth, and which party has he given billions of dollars to? Which side has turned a blind eye to Israeli inflitration into the Department of State?
I have closely studied their actions. I do not claim to know what anyone "truly" thinks, because such a thing is simply not possible. But based upon their actions the Republican party is currently controlled by fascist millenialist theocrats who wish to usurp our secular democracy. The outsiders of the party -- ironically, those speaking this week at the convention -- are powerless and useful only in maintaining legitimacy with the vaunted middle. But make no mistake: the GOP is controlled by Delay, Bush, Ashcroft, Moon, Robertson, and other religious fanatics. They want to destroy America as we know it.
Of course not, and quit trying to nail all Christian politicians to a cross. But Bush, Ashcroft, Delay, Sun Yung Moon, Pat Robertson, and others are all very wealthy, very powerful men who have repeatedly expressed their hostility, both verbally and through policy, towards a secular government. Google for "Christian Reconstructionism", if you care.
I expect you to ignore this and categorize it as just another loony conspiracy theory, but I can assure you it is not. Do you really doubt the idea that there are people out there, powerful, wealthy people, who would like to establish a Christian theocracy in America? And that maybe they would usurp the democratic process to get it? After all, they are doing "God's will."
When the question "Seems like you're fighting a losing battle" was posed the MS guy responded by saying "'s not a switch that can be flipped. Software written by humans will always contain errors. We're fundamentally changing the way things operate, to help to make software more resistant to attacks. We're two and a half years down a much longer road; it's more of a 10-year timeline."
Ok, I can agree with your assesment of that. Point taken.
A) A Microsoft representative said that it will take an estimated 11 years to fully secure Windows
B) Slashdot reports this
What spinning or unfair editing took place here? Your pullquote doesn't seem to show anything unfair. Yes, they are reworking key system components. But that still doesn't change the fact that Windows is so insecure that it will, by their own admission, take over 10 years to fix it. That's pretty important.
For me, a kind of "iTunes for files", including smart queries, would be fairly enough. And it doesn't require a brand new file system and its instability risks...
Here, watch this video. OS X has this in their developer previews right now, and is scheduled to be released to all users in either the first of second quarter of 2005.
"WinFS, I'd be the first to say, is very ambitious. Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things."
Nobody, Mr. Gates? Apple announced this was going to be a key part of OS X Tiger. It is scheduled to be released this coming year, and they have already implemented it in the preview versions of Tiger that they have made available to developers. By all reports it is working just fine, today, right now.
No, because with War-Crimes the punishment for doing the right thing is an immediately administered bullet through the temple.
Its really not much of a choice.
It certainly is for me. If I were given the choice between death and raping an innocent girl/woman, I would proudly choose death. Some things are worse than death, and it would be a far better thing to die proudly than live shamefully. The fear of dying is a justification for some things, but not all things.
But in daily life, much more frequently it is simply a metter of having the courage to disobey authority and deal with much less harsh consequences. It is easy to come up with justifications wherein we absolve ourselves from responsibility; it's far harder to do the right thing in the face of coercive opposition.
It's like the soldier who's ordered to commit war crimes. What do you do? It's in no way you're fault - but you're in a lose - lose situation.
Yes, it sucks, but ultimately you AND your superiors are responsible. It is better to be punished for doing the right thing than to do the wrong thing and be rewarded. Cowardice and fear are no excuse for committing injustices or allowing them to be committed.
No! Thou shalt worship no other gods but iTunes! All other MP3 players shall be banished to the topmost rung of RedMound for your heresy! BACK! BACK, I SAY!
I think I'm going to come up with a stylesheet of my own JUST for it.slashdot and report back later. Dammit all I HATE dealing with stylesheets. I leave that crap up to the visual designers with their precious "Macintosh" computers. But holy Predator on a stick, even I have more style sense than THIS.
Slashdot Mirror
While you debate what is and is not technically censorship, more and more of it is happening on more and more issues of immediate importance to you.
How long is it going to take before you admit you're wrong? I would be willing to bet "never", because the usual conservative tact is to hang on like a rabid pit bull to whatever criminal allegation against an ideological opponent has been made. If it should be disproven then "conspiracy" is usually alleged in order to keep it alive.
You've been had. There was no scandal. Be a real man and learn to admit it, even in matters of politics.
Since you probably get your marching orders from "Cock" Hannity, let me fill you in on a little something your right-wing masters haven't wanted you, since it would upset their precious anti-UN apple cart: the source of the information for that "scandal" was Ahmed Chalabi, also known as the Iranian Spy Who Duped The US Into Going To War In Iraq. He swore up and down that there was major graft going on, and was believed by neoconservatives and their buddies at Fox, and that he would produce the evidence "any day now."
Never happened. Know why? Because he's a goddamned liar, but smart enough to fool Feith, Perle, Wolfowitz, and all those other dipshit ideologues at the AEI.
Well, probably not, since these lists are pretty left in their bias.
What "bias"? Is that all it takes to satisfy your criticism, labeling something as being biased? What bias do you have a problem with? Justice? Democracy? Liberty? Labor protections?
Anyone who follows the news beyond CNN, would know this and wouldnt be too alarmed by these "censored" stories.
That's funny, I don't think the so-called-liberal CNN gave nearly as much time to any of these issues as they did to the Swift Boat Liars, Kobe Bryant, the Laci Patterson murder, Michael Jackson's legal troubles, or any other banal issue of the day. And each one is far, far more important than those.
You are mistaken in thinking that censorship can only arise from direct government involvement. That may have been true for much of human history, but I no longer believe it is. Censorship mostly comes from politically interested corporate interests; they need little to no encouragement from legislation to suppress certain voices. All under the guise of exercising their own free speech, of course, which most people see as a valid justification.
And it's not like the government doesn't do everything in its considerable power to make sure that those voices are encouraged.
Yes, AOL owns Netscape, but they signed an agreement with MS to use IE. Don't ask me why. I think MS gave them a whole mound of cash, but that's just speculation.
Smart playlists, shared music, the native ability to burn/rip CDs, and iTMS come immediately to mind. Not to mention the fact that Winamp has security holes and is in general far more clunky. WA4 pissed me off; WA5 is better, but iTunes is still far and away the sleeker player. I started using WA with version 2, used 5 for a while, then tried iTunes and dumped WA about 2 weeks later.
I could care less about skinning or plug-ins. IMO when developers brag that their apps are skinnable or support plug-ins it tells me that they probably haven't paid as much attention to the core functionality, and have opened the app up to security vulnerabilities and instability. As a general rule I avoid skinnable apps.
Plus a whole bunch of people in my office (including) use iTunes and share their music; I can listen to their playlist with a single click. I've been able to check out music I hadn't been exposed to before when it is convenient for me.
For one thing, I don't understand why the cries about DRM go up with Microsoft yet are strangely muted with Apple.
Simple. Apple doesn't have a history of being complete bitches to both the general public and the open source community.
And oh yeah: Apple writes better software.
I've had several discussions with my friends who swear up and down that since this guy was responsible for Populous that he basically invented the real time strategy game. I don't think this is true. I remember playing Utopia on the Intellivision years before I played Populous, and it was definately real time strategy.
Don't get me wrong. I repsect the hell out of Molyneux. The two titles I have played by him - Populous and Black & White - were very enjoyable. I just don't think he invented the RTS genre. Some unknown dude at Mattel did.
"The icons are actually on the right side of the desktop, where they won't be covered up by every window you open!"
Or, to put it a better way, OS/X uses much more of your desktop real estate. You will not be able to easily enjoy having your foreground application in the foreground as you might under Linux or Windows. Icons will clutter the screen irrespective of your foreground app.
Are you trying to imply that the icons in OS X are ALWAYS in the foreground? Cuz if you are, you are stupid. Just wondering.
"'Shut Down' is not under 'Start'"
It's hidden somewhere else. Good luck finding it. Don't think you can right click for it either.
What the hell are you talking about? It's under the Apple menu, which is available 100% of the time, is always in the upper left hand corner of the screen, no matter which application is open. And you can't shut down Windows using right click, so I don't know why you brought that up at all.
You'll basically need to open an application then go through another procedure to maximise it
This is just an outright lie. You can click on the button at the top of your window that has the "+" sign in it.
"I can do anything a Windows user can!"
(Macs have a version of MS Office available for them, however it does not contain the same range of productivity applications that are available to Windows/Office users)
Um... MS Office for Mac contains all the regular MS Office with the exception of Outlook. Instead, MS offers Entourage, which is quite a bit BETTER than Outlook (2000; I haven't used Office XP yet.)
"My Mac never has technical problems!"
(This is a fallacy. The Apple Mac is quite capable of generating application errors and crashing, just like any other *nix based system.
The statement "My Mac never has technical problems" contains no fallacies. It a statement of fact and as such is either true or false. I own a Mac, and have never had a hardware issue with it. In my experience, Apple's computers are better constructed and engineered machines than Dells or other mass-manufactured computers.
Expect to wait several months for spare parts. You will not be able to buy parts off the shelf and install them and have them work.
This is simply stupid. Video card slot: AGP 8X Pro. Hard drive: serial ATA. Memory: DDRAM. Peripherals: USB or Firewire. Monitor connector: VGA. Expansion slots: PCI-X. If your CPU goes bad, order it from Apple. They have the highest rated customer support in the world.
Crack smokin' crackah.
And yes, interpreted languages will be slower than compiled ones
This is becoming less true over time, and already is not true in many cases. Modern interpreters can do statistical analysis on running code and make it more efficient over time. Doing this with compiled languages would require an intimate knowledge by the developer of all possible execution paths, something that becomes more time consuming than it is worth.
Moral: Compiled languages are not always faster in the long run.
To be fair, he was referring to a story on /. last week about what languages "cool" coders use. I would provide you with a link, but I'm lazy.
Not only was it interesting, it was informative. I know you GOP apologists ("But I'm not! I am independent/libertarian!") bum rush to defend your precious god against all charges, but the fact is that the modern GOP is run by thugs and criminals who care for democracy about as much as any other given group of fascists. I could care less if you believe me or the parent poster, because you obviously have Sean Hannity's cock too far up your ass to attempt anything other than mindless rhetoric. I don't want your vote.
Screw you, Republican pig. The GOP is usurping our very democracy and apologists like yourself deserve nothing less than a swift death.
Last time I checked the DEMS used religion as much or more than the GOP. Both sides use religion to get elected and till you can show what they have done, not what they have said, your theory will be just that, a theory.
First off, that is simply not true. Democrats are largely secular, the Republicans are largely not. Ask yourself: Which side actively courts evangelical Christians? Which side has as its platform the establishment of a Christian state? Which side has proposed legislation before the Congress of the United States which would strip the Supreme Court of its power of judicial review? Which side openly -- openly -- colludes with rapture Christians and millenialists and other elements who seek to replace the secular state with a theocratic one? Who owns the Washington Times, considers himself Jesus Christ returned to earth, and which party has he given billions of dollars to? Which side has turned a blind eye to Israeli inflitration into the Department of State?
I have closely studied their actions. I do not claim to know what anyone "truly" thinks, because such a thing is simply not possible. But based upon their actions the Republican party is currently controlled by fascist millenialist theocrats who wish to usurp our secular democracy. The outsiders of the party -- ironically, those speaking this week at the convention -- are powerless and useful only in maintaining legitimacy with the vaunted middle. But make no mistake: the GOP is controlled by Delay, Bush, Ashcroft, Moon, Robertson, and other religious fanatics. They want to destroy America as we know it.
I expect you to ignore this and categorize it as just another loony conspiracy theory, but I can assure you it is not. Do you really doubt the idea that there are people out there, powerful, wealthy people, who would like to establish a Christian theocracy in America? And that maybe they would usurp the democratic process to get it? After all, they are doing "God's will."
When the question "Seems like you're fighting a losing battle" was posed the MS guy responded by saying "'s not a switch that can be flipped. Software written by humans will always contain errors. We're fundamentally changing the way things operate, to help to make software more resistant to attacks. We're two and a half years down a much longer road; it's more of a 10-year timeline."
Ok, I can agree with your assesment of that. Point taken.
A) A Microsoft representative said that it will take an estimated 11 years to fully secure Windows
B) Slashdot reports this
What spinning or unfair editing took place here? Your pullquote doesn't seem to show anything unfair. Yes, they are reworking key system components. But that still doesn't change the fact that Windows is so insecure that it will, by their own admission, take over 10 years to fix it. That's pretty important.
How did you figure out you were being spoofed?
For me, a kind of "iTunes for files", including smart queries, would be fairly enough. And it doesn't require a brand new file system and its instability risks...
Here, watch this video. OS X has this in their developer previews right now, and is scheduled to be released to all users in either the first of second quarter of 2005.
"WinFS, I'd be the first to say, is very ambitious. Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things."
Nobody, Mr. Gates? Apple announced this was going to be a key part of OS X Tiger. It is scheduled to be released this coming year, and they have already implemented it in the preview versions of Tiger that they have made available to developers. By all reports it is working just fine, today, right now.
So please, lay off the "nobody" stuff, mmmk?
No, because with War-Crimes the punishment for doing the right thing is an immediately administered bullet through the temple.
Its really not much of a choice.
It certainly is for me. If I were given the choice between death and raping an innocent girl/woman, I would proudly choose death. Some things are worse than death, and it would be a far better thing to die proudly than live shamefully. The fear of dying is a justification for some things, but not all things.
But in daily life, much more frequently it is simply a metter of having the courage to disobey authority and deal with much less harsh consequences. It is easy to come up with justifications wherein we absolve ourselves from responsibility; it's far harder to do the right thing in the face of coercive opposition.
It's like the soldier who's ordered to commit war crimes. What do you do? It's in no way you're fault - but you're in a lose - lose situation.
Yes, it sucks, but ultimately you AND your superiors are responsible. It is better to be punished for doing the right thing than to do the wrong thing and be rewarded. Cowardice and fear are no excuse for committing injustices or allowing them to be committed.
Oh, and regarding your sig: al Qaeda endorsed Bush.
Cthulhu n'garn N'gah K'thuun pinkybrain!
I think I'm going to come up with a stylesheet of my own JUST for it.slashdot and report back later. Dammit all I HATE dealing with stylesheets. I leave that crap up to the visual designers with their precious "Macintosh" computers. But holy Predator on a stick, even I have more style sense than THIS.
Oh, and moderators: THIS IS OFFTOPIC.