That kind of accusation is not only baseless and biased, it's not independant. I'm betting with odds that you picked up the definition of 'independant thinker' from your buddies at the coffee shop on castro st. SF. Before you accuse all Boy Scouts of being mindless automotons, why don't you ask your buddies how many of them were IN the scouts as kids, and find out how many of them ARE GAY.
[I'm not proud of that mind you. Not the not having a degree... the being in management].
Honestly, from my position in middle management I can see what a degree offers - managment skills. Not people management, not by a long shot. But the biggest difference you'll seen in someone with a degree vs. one without is that people with degrees [typically] know how to plan for something. Whether it's time managment, project management, filling out that un-goddly paperwork for corporate headquarters or the lawyers, people with degrees know how to manage the paperwork.
Generalizations are never true, but... if you pit 200 random cs-degrees against 200 work and home trained cs-experts in a management setting (each with his/her own team to work with and one project to win), the degrees would win the project 8 times out of 10. My point is, the 'perceptions' of venture capitalists, or the elitism of upper managment isn't as much biased as it is logical.
The value of a degree varies widely, but that degree shows a willingness and dedication to do the paperwork if nothing else. More often than not that degree will also show at least some level of competence because you wouldn't have the degree if you couldn't pass the classes. Non-degreed experts are more like rough gems - hard to find, risky, but worth twice a fortune if you're lucky. Degrees are like cut gems, most are average, but they'll get you out of trouble almost every time.
These lasers require a lot of power. Only if your target lives near a power plant would it be feasable. Plus, they're huge. Plus, they're not that common. If this was used against a person, it wouldn't be hard to figure out who did it (because how many of us have these things in the garage). And finally, bullets will be cheaper for a long time to come. It just isn't a practical way to assasinate someone, and won't be in our life time.
Battlefields are a whole other story. But, since most warfar is becoming guerilla warfare you won't see many large battles where you'd have the good fortune to have a few of these laying around with generators, and nothing big to shoot at (like planes, tanks, etc.). Which is why the Navy is so interested.
Fredrico Pena, former [Mayor, Governer?] of Colorado became Transportation Secretary of the US. How? Two bullets for his res:
Once ran out of money to plow the roads, so he broke out pavement rollers... to "pack it down". Denver shut down for a couple of days while they tried to break up the 3 ft thick ice sheets.
Second bullet: Stapleton International Airport. Need I say more?
Yes, I HAVE worked for UPS! And I'll tell you what happened -
Your boxes were put on the top of a large stack of boxes inside either a trailer or railroad box car, probably at each stop.
Unloaders have to push 45 boxes a minute out of that trailer/box car.
The Unloaders have a little trick you learn early and use often in order to make those boxes flow out of the back of that trailer/box car like water out of a dam.
You reach up about a foot above eye level and start pulling, making sure the whole stack leans with it. Once you reach critical pull you let gravity take over... with a little luck some those boxes will bounce out of the back and onto the rollers for you, the rest you kick into place and push like hell.
Sometimes you can get 60+ boxes a minute that way. Sorry folks, but getting the package to it's destination on time is more important than getting it there in one peice. See "Cast Away" for more.;)
The theory that 'fragile' boxes, or any of your boxes are singled out is more myth than fact, there's just not any time to discriminate!
Ctimes2
Only record movement - it comes standard through a number of security vendors. This can save a lot of space, especially since you don't want to record 12 hours of a stair well nobody is using between quitin' time and business open.
Calm down, y'all (and to the coward- you still need to apply yourself to #5).
Pete, your right, coward you obviously have never been involved with an RFP. They typically take 6 months or more to write in the first place, and go through extensive lawyer review, compliance issues, the bean-counters, and pretty much every other department of a major corporation before the RFP is even available to the bidders.
Anyone who responds to an RFP and wins the bid (if Jabber would be so inclined) is at a significant financial and legal obligation. From the site itself, The Jabber Software Foundation is a not-for-profit membership organization . Responding to the RFP would cost them non-profit status, unless they put all proceeds back into the foundation - thus making the legal risk too dangerous to even entertain for what they'd get out of it. It's not a bad thing, it's just something you don't want to get involved in unless you're a lawyer... because they're the only ones who win when an RFP is involved.
A company wanting to include a product of OSS in their response to an RFP doesn't actually have to have anything to do with the project itself, they just want to use the product. Only if the project maintainers themselves agree to bid on the RFP leveraging the project/product (at personal financial & legal risk) would that even be a possibility. And I doubt very much that many OSS projects are incorporated enough to make any such response to an RFP worth the risk.
An RFP means a company wants you to fulfill a certain set of requirements to win the bid. If a company responding to that RFP wants to include an OSS product in their bid (to save money, development, time, etc.) they do so at their own risk (and save a lot of money).
In your defense, the guy who posed this original question doesn't understand it either - what he's looking for is a company to pay to use jabber in exchange for a certain amount of legally & financially committed support.
To him, I say your better off finding a few good developers to customize jabber to your environment, thereby skipping the RFP, legal dept. and cost of evalutating whether or not the 'company' is meeting it's SLA requirements. It costs you only for the employee(s) which you can fire later if you don't like the result. Or hire a contractor to customize it for you.
Seriously, I don't mean this as a flame, but I work in a large (very large) Corporation, and your arguments aren't well rounded.
Only 3 of these are ligitimate concerns for OSS (1, 3 & 4), and the crux of each argument is still FUD (not trying to coin a phrase either, each argument is either fear, uncertainty or doubt):
1) Requires a higher level of technical expertise to implement.
There are 2 problems with this as an argument against OSS - why would it ever be bad thing to have someone with a higher level of expertise on staff (would you prefer a first year CPA doing your payroll?) & second, that argument is based on the fear that it will be harder to make work. That fear is unfounded unless you have a reason for that fear - to a qualified admin, it's not hard at all. Depending of course on what your doing (see conclusion).
2. Can't always call "tech support" for help.
Without an example, this is vauge and could apply to any organization - Microsoft, Apple, Oracle or Sun can't always help either, it just depends on what you're calling them for. That's why I don't see how this is a ligit concern specific to OSS.
3. Fragmentation can cause confusion about abilities as well as compatibility
Foremost, neither linux, apache or sendmail have shown fragmentation, probably the 3 most widely deployed OSS solutions - as such, 'fragmentation' is an unfounded fear with no logical basis for support. Confusion (aka uncertainty) is caused by not knowing. An experienced admin would check for these potential problems, just as any shop would check before upgrading a MS (or any other) product. The compatibility issues are no different from ANY other software vendor, commercial or otherwise. E.G. Newer MS Word file formats not working in older MS Word applications. That argument against is based on a lack of information on your part, not a reality with the applications themselves. I'm sorry if this is rude, but the heart of your argument is based on not doing your research. Solutions and answers to each [fragmentation, ability of the product, compatiblity] question have been answered many times already, and the answer is invariably "it's not really a problem, you just choose to perceive one". Short answer is - you can work around it every time.
4. With no financial backing there is no gaurntee your apps will be enhanced or even supported in the future
This is textbook fear, uncertainty & doubt, although you're generalizing an entire sub-segment of software development which isn't really fair. Will the product still be there in a year? Can I depend on it? Will anyone work on it? Well, without being more specific no one can answer that question.
Conclusion: From experience, the two most important technological & day to day functions of a large corporation are the websites (internal and external) and email. Without either, your company is blind. Oddly enough, those are the two most famous success stories of the Open Source camp: Sendmail and Apache. Each of those 4 concerns can be addressed as follows - 1) Yes. 2) Commercial support available 3) See number one 4) They're built on internet standards, so unless the internet is no longer supported it shouldn't be a problem. Corporations should most DEFINATELY look at Open Source solutions for those functions (at least) of the business. It's cheaper, more reliable, and relieves the expense of maintaining licences on top of support contracts.
Sorry for the length, and no hard feelings intended.
Share holder logic notwithstanding, using names you know doesn't buy you anything that names you don't know provide. No, you can't sue OSS for problems incurred by the software itself, but you can't sue Oracle, MS or the others either (well, you could try I guess, but you'll just end up losing more money). Of course, share holders typically don't care about the names or technology anyway, they just want to know what you've done to prevent it from happening again.
If companies need the ability to sue to insulate themselves from their share holders, they hire firms like RedHat to offer support.
In addition, in the scenerio above your answer to "why don't you use oracle or microsoft or apple" is simple and one that shareholders would most definately understand: 'because if spent $X millions for licences your stock price would be $X dollars lower, without buying us any technological advantage.'
... Well, gnome looks better than kde. No, it really does. I'm not talking functionality, environment, or anything like that... I'm talking about color, smooth lines, layout, icons (if you use them). It looks better. Two machines, side by side, gnome is 'pretty' while kde is just like everything else. Aqua comes to mind. And gnome made evolution of which there is no real equivilant for kde.
Clinton tried to do just that 2 years ago. Twice. Couldn't find 'em.
It's not "us vs them", it's fight or flight. Since they're killing us in the one place we'd think to run too (our home land), it kind of limits our choices.
And please, 'jingoistic'? Geez, I wonder if you read alternet on a daily basis... Try to form your own opinion next time.
Was from Senator Ralph Becker of Utah. I wrote him to tell him my concerns on a bill I didn't like, he wrote me back and pretty much said "Don't worry your pretty little head about it, we'll take care of it". Yeah. They're listening to someone but I'm pretty sure it's not us.
I can tell you from experience that it will help... A lot. Prior to the gulf war (and for the most part during) the military was pretty low tech (spec ops not-withstanding). We had rifles, kevlar helmets and jackets, packs, binoculars, map and compass (the scariest piece of gear in a butter-bars' hands) etc. Over the past 8 years we've seen more and more starlight scopes, thermal imaging systems, GPS trackers, and even a few of the reconnaissance drones.
In short, instead of staring into the night trying to figure out if that's a pig or a person, and not wanting to give your position away, you look through these tools to find out what it is. You can see cows from over 5 miles away - looking with binoculars even on a bright day, they're hard to spot clearly at that distance. But with thermal sites you can pin point locations for each and every one of them, even if they're obscured by bushes, shade or laying down in grass. In light snow you can see the cool depressions of foot prints, ski trails, etc. The only defense against thermal sites is a radiant barrier (60% or greater purity aluminum blanket) which are hot, usually loud, and not something your average soldier carries.
Basically, face paint doesn't cut it anymore if you body heat is like a light bulb on a dark night.
That kind of comment just pisses me off. So the guy quotes Jesus (and actually mis-quoted by the way) and suddenly he's Fallwell. Pretty much everyone that believes in Jesus also believes in Fallwell then. Or anyone who believes in a God at all is a freak that shouldn't be listened to because eventually he's just going to get around to condeming you to hell. Well, go to hell.
The guy is entitled to his views without your flaming him for it, and equating any belief in God with Falwell is a flame of the highest order. Jackass. Furthermore, it's generally considered the wisdom of the ages (despite the bastardization by Fallwell and friends) and not something an intelligent person would dismiss because of what they see on a late night cable access channel. What's more, the guy wasn't even preaching! He was quoting! I mean, my GOD! What the hell's wrong with you?!
And it's not the recent attack that's causing the layoffs, those were planned well in advance. The airlines were suffering horribly before, lost a fortune with the lost days and re-establishing the correct where-abouts of their planes, and are hemmoraging because of the cancellations.
AMD was doing well until the market took a dive last April. Since then, no one's been buying PC's in mass. It's not really AMD's fault they can't sell enough... people just aren't buying.
It comes down to layoffs or folding the operation together. 15% of the workforce or 100% plus the retirements of the other 85% they might be able to save. Sucks, but it's not nearly as personal as your taking it. (and yes, I've been layed off too).
Jesus didn't say that by the way, that was Timothy (or some other dead guy or God, but it's in the book of Timothy anyway - hey don't look at me like that, I didn't even know there WAS a book of timothy until I looked up the quote...). And the actual quote is the _LOVE_ of money is the root of all evils. Not money itself, just the love of.
Cheer up man, it's not that bad. And if your really a God fearing man - remember that God doesn't throw anything at you that you can't handle. (Not with a gun... that's not included... your not nuts are you?!)
Ctimes2
The Linux community has time and again proven that they are all about giving credit where credit is due. Many are passionate about this fact. I expect (as I'm sure everyone else does) that this is a problem that can be worked out to the satisfaction of all involved. This is a trust Linux has built over the years.
That one set of rules exists - we judge the actions of companies, projects and individuals based on their past actions. So far, the Linux community has done nothing to lead us (including you) to believe this was done on purpose, with the intent of stealing anything from anyone. The Microsoft Corp. does not have that kind of track record.
The kernel with the offending code was released today. It was noticed today. Wait for the response before bundling all your (well founded) anger and firing it at the linux crowds. I mean seriously, give 'em a chance to respond to the problem before condeming them for it. I suspect this was an honest mistake by everyone except the guy who tried to slip it in.
I for one hope they pull the kernel down now and rework it without the offending code, or not put it back up until sorenson is satisfied with the result.
Yes, Ashcroft wants more authority, but not in the knee-jerk manner everyone seems to fear. He wants to able to get a warrant for surveillance. Not a warrent to tap this phone, that phone, etc., just quite simply - a warrent for surveillance of a person or groups. If you're not breaking the law, they're really not going to waste their time watching you - there's plenty of others they need to watch.
The fact is, we've hobbled their ability to do an effective job. We require them to protect this country for our enemies, foreign and domestic, and make thousands of rules that they must follow in order to satisfy the most ridiculous requirements. Then we chastise them for not doing a good job.
What I'm really saying is, they don't need any MORE authority than they have now. They need to have fewer regulations on HOW that authority can be exercised. [I just know people are going to take this wrong...] Please, just let them do their job and deal with the violations of liberties AND LAWS as the situation dictates.
If they catch a guy in his house with 1000 lbs. of cocaine when they were looking for stolen TV's, it doesn't make the guy any less guilty. His 'rights' weren't violated because they stormed his house looking for something else - he just broke a different law than they expected (this is not a hypothetical situation by the way, it happened in Az). And if they storm his house and find him watching Jay Leno, they get to fix whatever they broke on their way in, and owe him an apology. He should understand that they were doing their job, and work with them to find out why the hell they thought he was breaking the law.
Final thoughts Springer style - If you can't trust law enforcement, then you can't have law - let's work on finding out why we don't trust our law enforcement agencies and start weeding out those we don't trust.
Start with this - when a department has a group of officers that engage in the blue wall of silence (ala Rodney King, etc.), fire the whole damn department for breaking the public trust. Obviously some people in the department can't bring themselves to come forward, so the department is closed, everyone is layed off (and forbidden from serving in law enforcement anywhere else, ever), and recruiting for a new department can begin. Yeah, eventually we'll get to Congress, the House, etc., but you've got to start somewhere.:)
Actually it is - we never bombed England. We bombed them on land we felt was ours. The Middle Eastern factions feel no such thing. They feel that we've delivered death to them, and are lashing out [or returning the favor if you want to look at it that way]. That's where it gets complicated (did we provoke them or not).
Quite frankly, it doesn't really matter because this isn't about who's right, and despite our policies in the middle east, they are not trying to free themselves from us.
It's about defending our country and countrymen from those who would do us harm. Yes, we've often been dirty sons-of-bitches to the rest of the world. But we must defend our own in any case if we're ever going to live free.
Last bullet point reads: Linux support offerings purchased via an annual contract with unlimited incidents should permit a minimum of three individuals (named callers) to submit incidents. This would enable the enterprise to cover three eight-hour shifts for a 24x7 shop
Minimum of 3 huh? For 24x7? So I guess they're assuming 7 day weeks then, because three people can cover 24 hours in 8 hour shifts, but unless you're working them 7 days a week you'll have to hire 3 more for the weekend. Sheesh. Sorry, but I've had this argument 2x over the last 2 jobs.
Slashdot Mirror
Go cry me a musical merit badge Nancy!
That kind of accusation is not only baseless and biased, it's not independant. I'm betting with odds that you picked up the definition of 'independant thinker' from your buddies at the coffee shop on castro st. SF. Before you accuse all Boy Scouts of being mindless automotons, why don't you ask your buddies how many of them were IN the scouts as kids, and find out how many of them ARE GAY.
[I'm not proud of that mind you. Not the not having a degree... the being in management].
Honestly, from my position in middle management I can see what a degree offers - managment skills. Not people management, not by a long shot. But the biggest difference you'll seen in someone with a degree vs. one without is that people with degrees [typically] know how to plan for something. Whether it's time managment, project management, filling out that un-goddly paperwork for corporate headquarters or the lawyers, people with degrees know how to manage the paperwork.
Generalizations are never true, but... if you pit 200 random cs-degrees against 200 work and home trained cs-experts in a management setting (each with his/her own team to work with and one project to win), the degrees would win the project 8 times out of 10. My point is, the 'perceptions' of venture capitalists, or the elitism of upper managment isn't as much biased as it is logical.
The value of a degree varies widely, but that degree shows a willingness and dedication to do the paperwork if nothing else. More often than not that degree will also show at least some level of competence because you wouldn't have the degree if you couldn't pass the classes. Non-degreed experts are more like rough gems - hard to find, risky, but worth twice a fortune if you're lucky. Degrees are like cut gems, most are average, but they'll get you out of trouble almost every time.
Ctimes2
These lasers require a lot of power. Only if your target lives near a power plant would it be feasable. Plus, they're huge. Plus, they're not that common. If this was used against a person, it wouldn't be hard to figure out who did it (because how many of us have these things in the garage). And finally, bullets will be cheaper for a long time to come. It just isn't a practical way to assasinate someone, and won't be in our life time.
Battlefields are a whole other story. But, since most warfar is becoming guerilla warfare you won't see many large battles where you'd have the good fortune to have a few of these laying around with generators, and nothing big to shoot at (like planes, tanks, etc.). Which is why the Navy is so interested.
ctimes2
You have to suck. And suck big time. For example:
Fredrico Pena, former [Mayor, Governer?] of Colorado became Transportation Secretary of the US. How? Two bullets for his res:
Once ran out of money to plow the roads, so he broke out pavement rollers... to "pack it down". Denver shut down for a couple of days while they tried to break up the 3 ft thick ice sheets.
Second bullet: Stapleton International Airport. Need I say more?
Ctimes2
I never would have known about this if the Lawyers hadn't tried to play hardball. Damn you meddling kids!
Ctimes2
Yes, I HAVE worked for UPS! And I'll tell you what happened -
;)
Your boxes were put on the top of a large stack of boxes inside either a trailer or railroad box car, probably at each stop.
Unloaders have to push 45 boxes a minute out of that trailer/box car.
The Unloaders have a little trick you learn early and use often in order to make those boxes flow out of the back of that trailer/box car like water out of a dam.
You reach up about a foot above eye level and start pulling, making sure the whole stack leans with it. Once you reach critical pull you let gravity take over... with a little luck some those boxes will bounce out of the back and onto the rollers for you, the rest you kick into place and push like hell.
Sometimes you can get 60+ boxes a minute that way. Sorry folks, but getting the package to it's destination on time is more important than getting it there in one peice. See "Cast Away" for more.
The theory that 'fragile' boxes, or any of your boxes are singled out is more myth than fact, there's just not any time to discriminate!
Ctimes2
What stunning ignorance you have. Thier primary business was hardware.
Management.
;)
Only record movement - it comes standard through a number of security vendors. This can save a lot of space, especially since you don't want to record 12 hours of a stair well nobody is using between quitin' time and business open.
Ctimes2
Calm down, y'all (and to the coward- you still need to apply yourself to #5).
Pete, your right, coward you obviously have never been involved with an RFP. They typically take 6 months or more to write in the first place, and go through extensive lawyer review, compliance issues, the bean-counters, and pretty much every other department of a major corporation before the RFP is even available to the bidders.
Anyone who responds to an RFP and wins the bid (if Jabber would be so inclined) is at a significant financial and legal obligation. From the site itself, The Jabber Software Foundation is a not-for-profit membership organization . Responding to the RFP would cost them non-profit status, unless they put all proceeds back into the foundation - thus making the legal risk too dangerous to even entertain for what they'd get out of it. It's not a bad thing, it's just something you don't want to get involved in unless you're a lawyer... because they're the only ones who win when an RFP is involved.
Ctimes2
A company wanting to include a product of OSS in their response to an RFP doesn't actually have to have anything to do with the project itself, they just want to use the product. Only if the project maintainers themselves agree to bid on the RFP leveraging the project/product (at personal financial & legal risk) would that even be a possibility. And I doubt very much that many OSS projects are incorporated enough to make any such response to an RFP worth the risk.
An RFP means a company wants you to fulfill a certain set of requirements to win the bid. If a company responding to that RFP wants to include an OSS product in their bid (to save money, development, time, etc.) they do so at their own risk (and save a lot of money).
In your defense, the guy who posed this original question doesn't understand it either - what he's looking for is a company to pay to use jabber in exchange for a certain amount of legally & financially committed support.
To him, I say your better off finding a few good developers to customize jabber to your environment, thereby skipping the RFP, legal dept. and cost of evalutating whether or not the 'company' is meeting it's SLA requirements. It costs you only for the employee(s) which you can fire later if you don't like the result. Or hire a contractor to customize it for you.
Ctimes2
Only 3 of these are ligitimate concerns for OSS (1, 3 & 4), and the crux of each argument is still FUD (not trying to coin a phrase either, each argument is either fear, uncertainty or doubt):
1) Requires a higher level of technical expertise to implement.
There are 2 problems with this as an argument against OSS - why would it ever be bad thing to have someone with a higher level of expertise on staff (would you prefer a first year CPA doing your payroll?) & second, that argument is based on the fear that it will be harder to make work. That fear is unfounded unless you have a reason for that fear - to a qualified admin, it's not hard at all. Depending of course on what your doing (see conclusion).
2. Can't always call "tech support" for help.
Without an example, this is vauge and could apply to any organization - Microsoft, Apple, Oracle or Sun can't always help either, it just depends on what you're calling them for. That's why I don't see how this is a ligit concern specific to OSS.
3. Fragmentation can cause confusion about abilities as well as compatibility
Foremost, neither linux, apache or sendmail have shown fragmentation, probably the 3 most widely deployed OSS solutions - as such, 'fragmentation' is an unfounded fear with no logical basis for support. Confusion (aka uncertainty) is caused by not knowing. An experienced admin would check for these potential problems, just as any shop would check before upgrading a MS (or any other) product. The compatibility issues are no different from ANY other software vendor, commercial or otherwise. E.G. Newer MS Word file formats not working in older MS Word applications. That argument against is based on a lack of information on your part, not a reality with the applications themselves. I'm sorry if this is rude, but the heart of your argument is based on not doing your research. Solutions and answers to each [fragmentation, ability of the product, compatiblity] question have been answered many times already, and the answer is invariably "it's not really a problem, you just choose to perceive one". Short answer is - you can work around it every time.
4. With no financial backing there is no gaurntee your apps will be enhanced or even supported in the future
This is textbook fear, uncertainty & doubt, although you're generalizing an entire sub-segment of software development which isn't really fair. Will the product still be there in a year? Can I depend on it? Will anyone work on it? Well, without being more specific no one can answer that question.
Conclusion: From experience, the two most important technological & day to day functions of a large corporation are the websites (internal and external) and email. Without either, your company is blind. Oddly enough, those are the two most famous success stories of the Open Source camp: Sendmail and Apache. Each of those 4 concerns can be addressed as follows - 1) Yes. 2) Commercial support available 3) See number one 4) They're built on internet standards, so unless the internet is no longer supported it shouldn't be a problem. Corporations should most DEFINATELY look at Open Source solutions for those functions (at least) of the business. It's cheaper, more reliable, and relieves the expense of maintaining licences on top of support contracts.
Sorry for the length, and no hard feelings intended.
Ctims2
Share holder logic notwithstanding, using names you know doesn't buy you anything that names you don't know provide. No, you can't sue OSS for problems incurred by the software itself, but you can't sue Oracle, MS or the others either (well, you could try I guess, but you'll just end up losing more money). Of course, share holders typically don't care about the names or technology anyway, they just want to know what you've done to prevent it from happening again.
If companies need the ability to sue to insulate themselves from their share holders, they hire firms like RedHat to offer support.
In addition, in the scenerio above your answer to "why don't you use oracle or microsoft or apple" is simple and one that shareholders would most definately understand: 'because if spent $X millions for licences your stock price would be $X dollars lower, without buying us any technological advantage.'
Ctimes2
... Well, gnome looks better than kde. No, it really does. I'm not talking functionality, environment, or anything like that... I'm talking about color, smooth lines, layout, icons (if you use them). It looks better. Two machines, side by side, gnome is 'pretty' while kde is just like everything else. Aqua comes to mind. And gnome made evolution of which there is no real equivilant for kde.
my 2, like your 2, only make half the price.
Ctimes2
Clinton tried to do just that 2 years ago. Twice. Couldn't find 'em.
It's not "us vs them", it's fight or flight. Since they're killing us in the one place we'd think to run too (our home land), it kind of limits our choices.
And please, 'jingoistic'? Geez, I wonder if you read alternet on a daily basis... Try to form your own opinion next time.
Ctimes2
Was from Senator Ralph Becker of Utah. I wrote him to tell him my concerns on a bill I didn't like, he wrote me back and pretty much said "Don't worry your pretty little head about it, we'll take care of it". Yeah. They're listening to someone but I'm pretty sure it's not us.
Ctimes2
I can tell you from experience that it will help... A lot. Prior to the gulf war (and for the most part during) the military was pretty low tech (spec ops not-withstanding). We had rifles, kevlar helmets and jackets, packs, binoculars, map and compass (the scariest piece of gear in a butter-bars' hands) etc. Over the past 8 years we've seen more and more starlight scopes, thermal imaging systems, GPS trackers, and even a few of the reconnaissance drones.
In short, instead of staring into the night trying to figure out if that's a pig or a person, and not wanting to give your position away, you look through these tools to find out what it is. You can see cows from over 5 miles away - looking with binoculars even on a bright day, they're hard to spot clearly at that distance. But with thermal sites you can pin point locations for each and every one of them, even if they're obscured by bushes, shade or laying down in grass. In light snow you can see the cool depressions of foot prints, ski trails, etc. The only defense against thermal sites is a radiant barrier (60% or greater purity aluminum blanket) which are hot, usually loud, and not something your average soldier carries.
Basically, face paint doesn't cut it anymore if you body heat is like a light bulb on a dark night.
Ctimes2
That kind of comment just pisses me off. So the guy quotes Jesus (and actually mis-quoted by the way) and suddenly he's Fallwell. Pretty much everyone that believes in Jesus also believes in Fallwell then. Or anyone who believes in a God at all is a freak that shouldn't be listened to because eventually he's just going to get around to condeming you to hell. Well, go to hell.
The guy is entitled to his views without your flaming him for it, and equating any belief in God with Falwell is a flame of the highest order. Jackass. Furthermore, it's generally considered the wisdom of the ages (despite the bastardization by Fallwell and friends) and not something an intelligent person would dismiss because of what they see on a late night cable access channel. What's more, the guy wasn't even preaching! He was quoting! I mean, my GOD! What the hell's wrong with you?!
Ctimes2
And it's not the recent attack that's causing the layoffs, those were planned well in advance. The airlines were suffering horribly before, lost a fortune with the lost days and re-establishing the correct where-abouts of their planes, and are hemmoraging because of the cancellations.
AMD was doing well until the market took a dive last April. Since then, no one's been buying PC's in mass. It's not really AMD's fault they can't sell enough... people just aren't buying.
It comes down to layoffs or folding the operation together. 15% of the workforce or 100% plus the retirements of the other 85% they might be able to save. Sucks, but it's not nearly as personal as your taking it. (and yes, I've been layed off too).
Jesus didn't say that by the way, that was Timothy (or some other dead guy or God, but it's in the book of Timothy anyway - hey don't look at me like that, I didn't even know there WAS a book of timothy until I looked up the quote...). And the actual quote is the _LOVE_ of money is the root of all evils. Not money itself, just the love of.
Cheer up man, it's not that bad. And if your really a God fearing man - remember that God doesn't throw anything at you that you can't handle. (Not with a gun... that's not included... your not nuts are you?!)
Ctimes2
I mean, if you guys didn't waste more time playing games, we'd still be able to buy AMD. Bastards.
/joke
Ctimes2
The Linux community has time and again proven that they are all about giving credit where credit is due. Many are passionate about this fact. I expect (as I'm sure everyone else does) that this is a problem that can be worked out to the satisfaction of all involved. This is a trust Linux has built over the years.
That one set of rules exists - we judge the actions of companies, projects and individuals based on their past actions. So far, the Linux community has done nothing to lead us (including you) to believe this was done on purpose, with the intent of stealing anything from anyone. The Microsoft Corp. does not have that kind of track record.
Ctimes2
The kernel with the offending code was released today. It was noticed today. Wait for the response before bundling all your (well founded) anger and firing it at the linux crowds. I mean seriously, give 'em a chance to respond to the problem before condeming them for it. I suspect this was an honest mistake by everyone except the guy who tried to slip it in.
I for one hope they pull the kernel down now and rework it without the offending code, or not put it back up until sorenson is satisfied with the result.
Ctimes2
Yes, Ashcroft wants more authority, but not in the knee-jerk manner everyone seems to fear. He wants to able to get a warrant for surveillance. Not a warrent to tap this phone, that phone, etc., just quite simply - a warrent for surveillance of a person or groups. If you're not breaking the law, they're really not going to waste their time watching you - there's plenty of others they need to watch.
:)
The fact is, we've hobbled their ability to do an effective job. We require them to protect this country for our enemies, foreign and domestic, and make thousands of rules that they must follow in order to satisfy the most ridiculous requirements. Then we chastise them for not doing a good job.
What I'm really saying is, they don't need any MORE authority than they have now. They need to have fewer regulations on HOW that authority can be exercised. [I just know people are going to take this wrong...] Please, just let them do their job and deal with the violations of liberties AND LAWS as the situation dictates.
If they catch a guy in his house with 1000 lbs. of cocaine when they were looking for stolen TV's, it doesn't make the guy any less guilty. His 'rights' weren't violated because they stormed his house looking for something else - he just broke a different law than they expected (this is not a hypothetical situation by the way, it happened in Az). And if they storm his house and find him watching Jay Leno, they get to fix whatever they broke on their way in, and owe him an apology. He should understand that they were doing their job, and work with them to find out why the hell they thought he was breaking the law.
Final thoughts Springer style - If you can't trust law enforcement, then you can't have law - let's work on finding out why we don't trust our law enforcement agencies and start weeding out those we don't trust.
Start with this - when a department has a group of officers that engage in the blue wall of silence (ala Rodney King, etc.), fire the whole damn department for breaking the public trust. Obviously some people in the department can't bring themselves to come forward, so the department is closed, everyone is layed off (and forbidden from serving in law enforcement anywhere else, ever), and recruiting for a new department can begin. Yeah, eventually we'll get to Congress, the House, etc., but you've got to start somewhere.
Ctimes2 - just my 2.
Actually it is - we never bombed England. We bombed them on land we felt was ours. The Middle Eastern factions feel no such thing. They feel that we've delivered death to them, and are lashing out [or returning the favor if you want to look at it that way]. That's where it gets complicated (did we provoke them or not).
Quite frankly, it doesn't really matter because this isn't about who's right, and despite our policies in the middle east, they are not trying to free themselves from us.
It's about defending our country and countrymen from those who would do us harm. Yes, we've often been dirty sons-of-bitches to the rest of the world. But we must defend our own in any case if we're ever going to live free.
Ctimes2
Minimum of 3 huh? For 24x7? So I guess they're assuming 7 day weeks then, because three people can cover 24 hours in 8 hour shifts, but unless you're working them 7 days a week you'll have to hire 3 more for the weekend. Sheesh. Sorry, but I've had this argument 2x over the last 2 jobs.
Ctimes2
Sorry I'm late...