Also, I don't recall seeing any dramatic announcements od "startling" revelations about mr Trump - surely he isn't as innocent as that? Everyone who has lived, has sinned, as they say; and somebody who has amassed huge wealth despite being rather modestly gifted, must have some dirt hidden away. Why don't we hear about it here on slashdot? Is it because there is an editorial agenda somewhere? Nothing wrong with that, but in the name of honesty, please reveal yourselves for what you are.
If, in fact, a large majority of the public feels like they should have an expectation of privacy on a public street
Isn't it a contradiction in terms, "privacy in a public space"? It is public exactly because it isn't private, I would have thought.
Apart from that, I doubt that a large majority of the public feels that you should have a right to be private everywhere - when you need privacy, you go to a private place, where you can reasonably expect to be private. What many feel unconfortable with is not whether we can be completely invisible wherever we go, but whether we are under constant surveillance by some faceless, potentially hostile entity. I suspect most people are much more uncomfortable about what large corporations do with the data they collect about everybody - they really are faceless and potentially hostile, as well as largely unaccountable. In UK, where the whole landscape sometimes seems to be bristling with cameras (OK, exaggerating a bit), many of them are put up at the request of the local residents. And apparently there are now apps that allows people with smartphones to feed their pictures and videos into the surveillance networks.That should tell us that there are many people - ordinary citizens, not police - who think this is a good idea.
Very similar to what my mother's coworker once said, that cancer is simply nature's failsafe to make sure that eternal life just does not happen. Survive all the other stuff and the cancer WILL get you eventually.
Not necessarily; much research over the recent decade suggests that we die, eventually, of old age, when the body runs out of viable stem cells, because every time they divide, they lose a bit of the telomeres: the bit of DNA at the end of each chromosome, if my memory serves me. When the telomeres are too short, the cells can divide anymore. There was an interesting article a few days ago, about one of the world's oldest women - apparently all of a certain line of cells in her blood could be seen to arise from just two, individual stem cells, where a younger person would have - thousands? Certainly a lot more than two. When we run out of stem cells, we can no longer repair our bodies.
Cancer is seen more in the elderly for that very reason too. Every time cells divide, there is a certain likelyhood that something goes wrong; in a sense we all have cancer all the time. Fortunately our immune system is able to keep up, clearing out the failed cells that don't kill themselves in apoptosis. If the immune system is under too much pressure, whether it is because of lack of nutrition, stress or repeated tissue damage, the risk of cancer increases, so it isn't surprising if consuming too hot food or drinks can contribute to cancer. Every time a tissue is damaged, it is replaced by tissue that is slightly less well supplied with blood, which means that the immune system cannot patrol the tissue as effectively: cancer cells get the chance to survive longer.
Here's the really, REALLY big question.
Do you want to live a life of fun, good food, fun entertainment and hot beverages, then die at 70, or do you want to live a life of measuring everything daily in a state of panic that you might get cancer and then die at 74 - that is, if you don't accidentally walk in front of a bus when you're 40?
Can you only enjoy life by hurting yourself? I used to drink too much and eat loads of unhealthy things; I feel I enjoy life so much more now that I don't touch alcohol or eat foods with too much sugar, salt and fat. And it's not about feeling holier-than-thou, it has much more to do with the fact that I can enjoy doing things I would not have been able to before, like walking for a whole day in nature or working on one of my projects that involve heavy lifting and strenuous work. Getting drunk or high is fun, but only for a short while - it's like pissing youself to keep warm.
Now I admit McDonalds was justly accused for wrong doing in this case. But I don't get the hatetrid of McDonald's as a company.
American burger chains have historically been known for some very bad practices; McDonald was for many years the largest or even the only one in many countries, so they have become the posterboy for what they all used to do. It is true that they have all changed their behaviours somewhat, after consumer pressure and also because people started abandoning them in favour of smaller burger restaurants with significantly better quality food. But I can still remember, not so many years ago, when we used to refer to a BigMac as 'the vegetarian option' because of the obviously high content of soy bean in what should have been beef. So, they may be OK now (I only eat there when I really have no other options), but there are solid, historical reasons why they have a bad reputation. It is just another demonstration of the fact that it is very easy to destroy trust, and it takes very long time to repair it afterwards.
And another thing: the fact that these companies are so very American doesn't help. This may easily be seen simply as anti-Americanism, but it isn't, at least not in the usual sense. What people in America see as cozy, folksy-wolksy quirkyness, too often comes across as jarringly bizarre in Europe, fairly or unfairly. As an example, I came across a web page for some sort of food-fair - the one thing that made almost retch was the "deep fried butter"; and then there are the eating competitions. I try to be open to the suggestion that Americans see these things as fun, but to many in Europe, it does not inspire a lot of trust in the judgement of the people at McDonals, when the assure us that their prodcts are "good food": we have seen what Americans think of as food. And I don't think I am a prude when it comes to food - I have tried things like silk worms, birds nests, sea cucumbers and other regional delicacies (not that I liked them much) but I really couldn't get myself to try deep fried butter.
Now, gnetlemen, there's no need to start playing the race card here. Just because Republicans look different and seem a bit dim, they are still human beings. (- *JOKE* *JOKE *JOKE*)
Nothing to do with the topic, but since we are speaking of Trump, here is another story about why it may not be a good idea to vote for a billionaire celebrity: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...
In the year 2016, where can I, a long time Linux user, get a decent UNIX-like Linux distro?!
Yeah, I can sympathise with that. I don't actually oppose systemd - I know too little to have an informed opinion - but to me a perfect distro would be Debian, with a few changes:
- Make it much more configurable up front by extending the export mode installation. It should be possible to define many of the features, applications, subsystems and defaults you want your system to be installed with, even things like what would be the default login-shell etc. (I always install ksh and get rid of bash). - It should be possible, once the system is installed and has been modified so it works for you, to save an install template, so that when you install another system, it will automatically install it the same way, with the same packages and so on. And templates should be compatible with future versions too.
A word of advice: Spewing out this kind of braindead prejudice only serves to tell the world that you are too stupid or too lazy to actually learn something new and engage in intelligent discussions. It may work in your local boozer, after a few pints, of course.
And yet it remains that Islam is way the most prominent ideology behind this kind of thing.
Islam is just the flavour of the day for terrorists - in the past and in other regions of the world it was any of a number of other excuses for venting your desire for hurting other people around you: Fascism, Communism, Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism - even football, of all things. As the shooting in Orlando demonstrates, terrorism doesn't start with "I am a Muslim, therefore I feel compelled to go and kill indiscriminately" - it is the other way around. You start with the hate, the desire to kill and hurt other people, the wish to hurt yourself, and then you pick up whatever ideology, religion or other "cause" happens to be around and use this as a thin cover to "justify" your actions. In the case of religion, this is doubly absurd - if you really believe in an almighty and all-seeing God, then you must realize that he will see right through your motivations.
And as we can glean through what we hear in the news about the poor fools who go to join Daesh, they are very often people who have already had a long history with crime and violence and multiple run-ins with the police. When they volunteer to blow themselves up or get killed in their futile war in Syria, it is just a kind of suicide - to cowardly to simply take an overdose, that's all. However, that said, we all have a responsibility for the fact that there are people in our societies who grow up so deprived of hope and opportunity that they eventually see terrorism as attractive. We will probably see Daesh being wiped out in the next few years at most, but that will not solve the real problem.
... serious questions about their ability to protect their data and critical information systems.
What a stupid thing to say. It isn't lack of ability - universities, of all places would have the experts or easy access to experts in other places to handle security. It is a question of taking the risk serious enough to spend the time and poney. I suspect many universities, or certainly their management, still don't think they have much worth stealing; after all, ideas and research are traditionally shared openly by the scientific community, and that is the real treasure owned and produced by universities. What they need is a rethink - after all, being able to handle "unimportant stuff" like administrative accounts, staff records etc is important too, at least if you hope to get paid.
The US, yes, I can understand that, but UAE? It is a tiny nation - if you fart and spit at the same time, you risk breaching border security in two places at the same time.
No: idiot. Someone just like you, basically, who hadn't learned enough about tolerance and openmindedness, who thought that "being tough" was the way to solve any problem. Or in other words, somebody who had given up on rational thinking and had access to guns.
Do you know why we can report with five 9's certainty the toothbrush was invented in Arkansas? Anywhere else, it'd would've been called the teethbrush.
Not sure I can see the connection to Daesh here, but to comment on what you are saying: It would be called a toothbrush anywhere; indeed, the singular, "tooth", is what is used in all the languages I know of. I think it is common to use the singular, when you talk about a "mass object" (sorry, don't remember the proper term); hence "water" and "money". You can talk about waters and monies, but then you refer to several specific bodies of water/ sums of money. So, a toothbrush is for brushing "tooth" in general, not for "a tooth" or "several specific teeth".
I think we all know, if we are perfectly honest with ourselves, that when the amount of high-powered firearms that are freely available is higher, then the number of people killed in shootings will be higher as well. Apparently it is something like 30,000 Americans that were shot dead last year, I heard on the radio this morning. I also have the impression that a significant majority of Americans actually want gun ownership to come under serious control, but nothing will happen - again - because of big money. It is a real shame that the American people doesn't have the courage to stand up against those shilling for the weapons manufacturers and their ever more shrill nonsense.
It is perfectly possible to live safe, happy and prosperous lives without having guns - people in Europe do this. And in Europe, just like in the States, it is perfcetly possible for criminals to lay their hands on guns, so in effect, "only the bad guys have guns", yet we still thrive, and we suffer far less gun violence. Europeans don't go around feeling afraid just because they don't carry instant death in their pockets. Americans don't need guns to be safe either; in fact, if you pull out a gun in whatever the situation, you instantly look like a legitimate target - how can that be safer?
You don't need to have access to loads of guns to be able to rise up and overturn a government by force either. Gandhi is just one example of a revolution brought about without resorting to violence; I'm sure people can think of other examples. No government can survive for long if the people are resolutely against it; if the economy and the instutions are falling apart because of constant protests, the government will have nothing to rule over.
The American constition doesn't say that there should be no control of who can have guns or that everybody should have the right to own high-powered, semi-automatic weaponry. And there is no real justification for not keeping tabs on who owns what or carrying out proper background checks even at gun-fairs. If you are a gun-enthusiast or a hunter, you wouldn't be affected - you will probably already have gone through all the background checks and hold a valid licence, and you would pass any further scrutiny without a problem.
And, forgive me for saying so, but any law, including the American constitution, that is open to such massive abuse as "the right to bear arms" is, is just plain wrong and should be changed. The constitution is not a God given truth, it is only a law; the only difference is that a constitution is kind of 'meta-law' - it states the principles on which all other laws should be built. That is why considerable care should be employed when deciding on what goes into it, and that is also why a universal right to be armed to the teeth should not be part of it: it is far too specific, and it was not thought through well enough. And now it is very difficult to get rid of. In short: it was a stupid thing to do.
I suspect I am going to be shouted down for this, but there is also Solaris, which IMO is a very good system as well. Some of the best ideas in unix came from SunOS. I've never really had the chance to work with the BSDs, so I don't know how they compare.
As anyone who has studied the Truth about the World as revealed by Grand Master Terry Pratchett in Good Omens, where He reveals The Truth about the World, will know, the Tibetans have for millennia been digging tunnels all over the world. This is just another Sinister Plot to continue this, no doubt, by the Secret Masters in Shangri La, the very same people who are behind both the evil Chinese government, President Obama and Boris Johnson. It is time for the X-men to step in and rectify matters, one feels.
These are international waters, open to exploration by ALL. This may just be a serious science project, but if it's not just that, the rest of the world needs to do the same. America is not perfect, but I would never, ever, EVER, trust the Chinese government to do ANYTHING for purely altruistic purposes - even for their own people. They get away with too much, already!
Well, welcome to the other side of the fence - I'm glad you could join us. That is what many have been saying about America for many years; now you can see things from the outside. Sorry, I shouldn't gloat, it's just such pleasant feeling, as I'm sure you know.
There is little doubt that this is a serious, scientific project, but no science is purely unpolitical; practising science in any form tends to influence your thinking and make you less tied up in things like national patriotism, religion etc - after all, as a scientist, you have to learn from and cooperate with scientists and other thinkers from all over the world. Also, science has the potential to increase the power of whoever knows the results; how can it not be political? Fortunately, most of science is open and international simply because it has to be - it is almost impossible to advance science, except in a very narrow set of subjects, if you work in isolation. Which is why we perhaps shouldn't fear China and their efforts as much - or America, for that matter: we all need each other. Instead, we should ask to join them, or take the initiative to set up a more international project and invite them in.
See, now America's attempts to keep them restrained in that area will be perceived as anti-science. Very, very clever...
Has that really been taken serious in the last few decades? China knows that they can do whatever they please, as long as they don't endanger the stability of the world order in the short term. It isn't just in the local area they are being clever - where we in the West have traditionally made ourselves somewhat unpopular in the Middle East, Africa anf South America, China are building up a rather better reputation amongst the locals. We can hardly justify criticizing what they do, which it the clever bit, I think; we should have done it ourselves.
Government isn't the problem - financial interests are. Government is, if anything, the solution: a governance that can make sure the playing field is level, that the rules apply in the same way to everybody etc. Looking back to history, we see that powerful people have always grabbed as much as they can for themselves with little to no regard for the vast majority of the population - this has been the case as far back as we have written records. The laws and regulations that protect ordinary people - the mythical 99% - are there because we have fought hard for them and got the government to change the rules in ouor favour. We have seen this happen over and over, every time some new technology opens up opportunities - in the beginning there are no rules, so those that are strong and ruthless enough move in, take over and push out everybody else; and then we get Government in some form to set the rules more in favour of the rest of us.
The industry - whatever industry - has always felt entitled to use any means at all to maximise their own profits; if not for government regulations, we would not have any kind of food labeling, just as an example. The producers have fought bitterly against having to tell what kind of crap they put in food, cosmetics etc - they still try to hide artificial additives behind meaningless gibberish and deceptive labeling. They hate the fact that they can't put anything they please into any product and lie about it to their customers - we would all be drinking milk "enriched" with melamine, were it not for the government. So why do people still keep talking about government as the only evil thing in the world? Government is, by and large, good for the people - yes, it is annoying that we have to pay tax, but come on. I'm not saying we should just roll over and trust them uncritically, but let us at least be intelligent in our criticism.
So, about the internet: it is again the big players, the Googles, Facebooks, etc, that want to manipulate and spy on what goes on there. Everybody on/. knows this - it is discussed regularly, it is commonly agreed that we don't like it. And then people go back to reviling "The Government" - why? No doubt one element in this is that the big players have an interest in obfuscating the issue, so have ways of ensuring that there are large numbers of anti-government muck-spreaders around, but another essential part is the sheer idiocy of the people who frequent forums on the net and never even stop to ask simple, critical questions.
Really? Is this the same sort of demise that happened to the mainframe back in the day, and later to UNIX? I think you are painting an overly black picture here. To most people - certainly in the commercial sector - whether you use systemd or not is a minor issue, as long as the system boots up and works as intended. And this being Linux, I would have thought it possible to simply change the configuration to not use systemd - if it matters enough to get people worked up in a tiff, then they will probably be competent enough to work out how.
As for GNOME, Firefox and PulseAudio - are there no alternatives? I personally use KDE, because I got sick of the direction the GNOME developers had settled on. I'm not fussed about X or Wayland or sound; my requirements are modest, as long as I can see stuff on the screen. To me Linux is a tool - just like I don't need the best, biggest and fastest hammer in the world, I don't need my computers to be anything other than good enough for my purposes.
Linux has entered the same dismal feedback loop that Firefox has entered: the software got worse, which drove away the best users, which allowed the software to get even worse, which drove away mediocre users, which allowed the software to get even worse than that, which drove away the remaining users.
Not sure what you are talking about here - I don't think Linux is in decline. As for Firefox - what is "the best users"? And what does it have to do with the development of Firefox? That Firefox seems to have become worse over the years probably has more to do with the development team making some stupid decisions or commercial pressure. The users don't enter into it, I suspect.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, I don't recall seeing any dramatic announcements od "startling" revelations about mr Trump - surely he isn't as innocent as that? Everyone who has lived, has sinned, as they say; and somebody who has amassed huge wealth despite being rather modestly gifted, must have some dirt hidden away. Why don't we hear about it here on slashdot? Is it because there is an editorial agenda somewhere? Nothing wrong with that, but in the name of honesty, please reveal yourselves for what you are.
Just a followup on my previous posting - I found the article I referred to: https://www.newscientist.com/a...
If, in fact, a large majority of the public feels like they should have an expectation of privacy on a public street
Isn't it a contradiction in terms, "privacy in a public space"? It is public exactly because it isn't private, I would have thought.
Apart from that, I doubt that a large majority of the public feels that you should have a right to be private everywhere - when you need privacy, you go to a private place, where you can reasonably expect to be private. What many feel unconfortable with is not whether we can be completely invisible wherever we go, but whether we are under constant surveillance by some faceless, potentially hostile entity. I suspect most people are much more uncomfortable about what large corporations do with the data they collect about everybody - they really are faceless and potentially hostile, as well as largely unaccountable. In UK, where the whole landscape sometimes seems to be bristling with cameras (OK, exaggerating a bit), many of them are put up at the request of the local residents. And apparently there are now apps that allows people with smartphones to feed their pictures and videos into the surveillance networks.That should tell us that there are many people - ordinary citizens, not police - who think this is a good idea.
Very similar to what my mother's coworker once said, that cancer is simply nature's failsafe to make sure that eternal life just does not happen. Survive all the other stuff and the cancer WILL get you eventually.
Not necessarily; much research over the recent decade suggests that we die, eventually, of old age, when the body runs out of viable stem cells, because every time they divide, they lose a bit of the telomeres: the bit of DNA at the end of each chromosome, if my memory serves me. When the telomeres are too short, the cells can divide anymore. There was an interesting article a few days ago, about one of the world's oldest women - apparently all of a certain line of cells in her blood could be seen to arise from just two, individual stem cells, where a younger person would have - thousands? Certainly a lot more than two. When we run out of stem cells, we can no longer repair our bodies.
Cancer is seen more in the elderly for that very reason too. Every time cells divide, there is a certain likelyhood that something goes wrong; in a sense we all have cancer all the time. Fortunately our immune system is able to keep up, clearing out the failed cells that don't kill themselves in apoptosis. If the immune system is under too much pressure, whether it is because of lack of nutrition, stress or repeated tissue damage, the risk of cancer increases, so it isn't surprising if consuming too hot food or drinks can contribute to cancer. Every time a tissue is damaged, it is replaced by tissue that is slightly less well supplied with blood, which means that the immune system cannot patrol the tissue as effectively: cancer cells get the chance to survive longer.
Here's the really, REALLY big question.
Do you want to live a life of fun, good food, fun entertainment and hot beverages, then die at 70, or do you want to live a life of measuring everything daily in a state of panic that you might get cancer and then die at 74 - that is, if you don't accidentally walk in front of a bus when you're 40?
Can you only enjoy life by hurting yourself? I used to drink too much and eat loads of unhealthy things; I feel I enjoy life so much more now that I don't touch alcohol or eat foods with too much sugar, salt and fat. And it's not about feeling holier-than-thou, it has much more to do with the fact that I can enjoy doing things I would not have been able to before, like walking for a whole day in nature or working on one of my projects that involve heavy lifting and strenuous work. Getting drunk or high is fun, but only for a short while - it's like pissing youself to keep warm.
Now I admit McDonalds was justly accused for wrong doing in this case. But I don't get the hatetrid of McDonald's as a company.
American burger chains have historically been known for some very bad practices; McDonald was for many years the largest or even the only one in many countries, so they have become the posterboy for what they all used to do. It is true that they have all changed their behaviours somewhat, after consumer pressure and also because people started abandoning them in favour of smaller burger restaurants with significantly better quality food. But I can still remember, not so many years ago, when we used to refer to a BigMac as 'the vegetarian option' because of the obviously high content of soy bean in what should have been beef. So, they may be OK now (I only eat there when I really have no other options), but there are solid, historical reasons why they have a bad reputation. It is just another demonstration of the fact that it is very easy to destroy trust, and it takes very long time to repair it afterwards.
And another thing: the fact that these companies are so very American doesn't help. This may easily be seen simply as anti-Americanism, but it isn't, at least not in the usual sense. What people in America see as cozy, folksy-wolksy quirkyness, too often comes across as jarringly bizarre in Europe, fairly or unfairly. As an example, I came across a web page for some sort of food-fair - the one thing that made almost retch was the "deep fried butter"; and then there are the eating competitions. I try to be open to the suggestion that Americans see these things as fun, but to many in Europe, it does not inspire a lot of trust in the judgement of the people at McDonals, when the assure us that their prodcts are "good food": we have seen what Americans think of as food. And I don't think I am a prude when it comes to food - I have tried things like silk worms, birds nests, sea cucumbers and other regional delicacies (not that I liked them much) but I really couldn't get myself to try deep fried butter.
Now, gnetlemen, there's no need to start playing the race card here. Just because Republicans look different and seem a bit dim, they are still human beings. (- *JOKE* *JOKE *JOKE*)
I stand corrected, thereby disproving at least part of your statement.
Not to forget Mrs Williams: https://www.wattpad.com/133416...
Nothing to do with the topic, but since we are speaking of Trump, here is another story about why it may not be a good idea to vote for a billionaire celebrity: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...
In the year 2016, where can I, a long time Linux user, get a decent UNIX-like Linux distro?!
Yeah, I can sympathise with that. I don't actually oppose systemd - I know too little to have an informed opinion - but to me a perfect distro would be Debian, with a few changes:
- Make it much more configurable up front by extending the export mode installation. It should be possible to define many of the features, applications, subsystems and defaults you want your system to be installed with, even things like what would be the default login-shell etc. (I always install ksh and get rid of bash).
- It should be possible, once the system is installed and has been modified so it works for you, to save an install template, so that when you install another system, it will automatically install it the same way, with the same packages and so on. And templates should be compatible with future versions too.
In China everyone has no dignity by default.
A word of advice: Spewing out this kind of braindead prejudice only serves to tell the world that you are too stupid or too lazy to actually learn something new and engage in intelligent discussions. It may work in your local boozer, after a few pints, of course.
Welcome to the IoT; what will people pay for being able to control their heating, freezer, oven etc etc again?
And yet it remains that Islam is way the most prominent ideology behind this kind of thing.
Islam is just the flavour of the day for terrorists - in the past and in other regions of the world it was any of a number of other excuses for venting your desire for hurting other people around you: Fascism, Communism, Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism - even football, of all things. As the shooting in Orlando demonstrates, terrorism doesn't start with "I am a Muslim, therefore I feel compelled to go and kill indiscriminately" - it is the other way around. You start with the hate, the desire to kill and hurt other people, the wish to hurt yourself, and then you pick up whatever ideology, religion or other "cause" happens to be around and use this as a thin cover to "justify" your actions. In the case of religion, this is doubly absurd - if you really believe in an almighty and all-seeing God, then you must realize that he will see right through your motivations.
And as we can glean through what we hear in the news about the poor fools who go to join Daesh, they are very often people who have already had a long history with crime and violence and multiple run-ins with the police. When they volunteer to blow themselves up or get killed in their futile war in Syria, it is just a kind of suicide - to cowardly to simply take an overdose, that's all. However, that said, we all have a responsibility for the fact that there are people in our societies who grow up so deprived of hope and opportunity that they eventually see terrorism as attractive. We will probably see Daesh being wiped out in the next few years at most, but that will not solve the real problem.
Bunch of cowards, spraying graffiti and running
Well, what do you expect from somebody hiding behind anonymity?
... serious questions about their ability to protect their data and critical information systems.
What a stupid thing to say. It isn't lack of ability - universities, of all places would have the experts or easy access to experts in other places to handle security. It is a question of taking the risk serious enough to spend the time and poney. I suspect many universities, or certainly their management, still don't think they have much worth stealing; after all, ideas and research are traditionally shared openly by the scientific community, and that is the real treasure owned and produced by universities. What they need is a rethink - after all, being able to handle "unimportant stuff" like administrative accounts, staff records etc is important too, at least if you hope to get paid.
The US, yes, I can understand that, but UAE? It is a tiny nation - if you fart and spit at the same time, you risk breaching border security in two places at the same time.
Buddhist?
No: idiot. Someone just like you, basically, who hadn't learned enough about tolerance and openmindedness, who thought that "being tough" was the way to solve any problem. Or in other words, somebody who had given up on rational thinking and had access to guns.
Do you know why we can report with five 9's certainty the toothbrush was invented in Arkansas?
Anywhere else, it'd would've been called the teethbrush.
Not sure I can see the connection to Daesh here, but to comment on what you are saying: It would be called a toothbrush anywhere; indeed, the singular, "tooth", is what is used in all the languages I know of. I think it is common to use the singular, when you talk about a "mass object" (sorry, don't remember the proper term); hence "water" and "money". You can talk about waters and monies, but then you refer to several specific bodies of water/ sums of money. So, a toothbrush is for brushing "tooth" in general, not for "a tooth" or "several specific teeth".
I think we all know, if we are perfectly honest with ourselves, that when the amount of high-powered firearms that are freely available is higher, then the number of people killed in shootings will be higher as well. Apparently it is something like 30,000 Americans that were shot dead last year, I heard on the radio this morning. I also have the impression that a significant majority of Americans actually want gun ownership to come under serious control, but nothing will happen - again - because of big money. It is a real shame that the American people doesn't have the courage to stand up against those shilling for the weapons manufacturers and their ever more shrill nonsense.
It is perfectly possible to live safe, happy and prosperous lives without having guns - people in Europe do this. And in Europe, just like in the States, it is perfcetly possible for criminals to lay their hands on guns, so in effect, "only the bad guys have guns", yet we still thrive, and we suffer far less gun violence. Europeans don't go around feeling afraid just because they don't carry instant death in their pockets. Americans don't need guns to be safe either; in fact, if you pull out a gun in whatever the situation, you instantly look like a legitimate target - how can that be safer?
You don't need to have access to loads of guns to be able to rise up and overturn a government by force either. Gandhi is just one example of a revolution brought about without resorting to violence; I'm sure people can think of other examples. No government can survive for long if the people are resolutely against it; if the economy and the instutions are falling apart because of constant protests, the government will have nothing to rule over.
The American constition doesn't say that there should be no control of who can have guns or that everybody should have the right to own high-powered, semi-automatic weaponry. And there is no real justification for not keeping tabs on who owns what or carrying out proper background checks even at gun-fairs. If you are a gun-enthusiast or a hunter, you wouldn't be affected - you will probably already have gone through all the background checks and hold a valid licence, and you would pass any further scrutiny without a problem.
And, forgive me for saying so, but any law, including the American constitution, that is open to such massive abuse as "the right to bear arms" is, is just plain wrong and should be changed. The constitution is not a God given truth, it is only a law; the only difference is that a constitution is kind of 'meta-law' - it states the principles on which all other laws should be built. That is why considerable care should be employed when deciding on what goes into it, and that is also why a universal right to be armed to the teeth should not be part of it: it is far too specific, and it was not thought through well enough. And now it is very difficult to get rid of. In short: it was a stupid thing to do.
I suspect I am going to be shouted down for this, but there is also Solaris, which IMO is a very good system as well. Some of the best ideas in unix came from SunOS. I've never really had the chance to work with the BSDs, so I don't know how they compare.
As anyone who has studied the Truth about the World as revealed by Grand Master Terry Pratchett in Good Omens, where He reveals The Truth about the World, will know, the Tibetans have for millennia been digging tunnels all over the world. This is just another Sinister Plot to continue this, no doubt, by the Secret Masters in Shangri La, the very same people who are behind both the evil Chinese government, President Obama and Boris Johnson. It is time for the X-men to step in and rectify matters, one feels.
These are international waters, open to exploration by ALL. This may just be a serious science project, but if it's not just that, the rest of the world needs to do the same. America is not perfect, but I would never, ever, EVER, trust the Chinese government to do ANYTHING for purely altruistic purposes - even for their own people. They get away with too much, already!
Well, welcome to the other side of the fence - I'm glad you could join us. That is what many have been saying about America for many years; now you can see things from the outside. Sorry, I shouldn't gloat, it's just such pleasant feeling, as I'm sure you know.
There is little doubt that this is a serious, scientific project, but no science is purely unpolitical; practising science in any form tends to influence your thinking and make you less tied up in things like national patriotism, religion etc - after all, as a scientist, you have to learn from and cooperate with scientists and other thinkers from all over the world. Also, science has the potential to increase the power of whoever knows the results; how can it not be political? Fortunately, most of science is open and international simply because it has to be - it is almost impossible to advance science, except in a very narrow set of subjects, if you work in isolation. Which is why we perhaps shouldn't fear China and their efforts as much - or America, for that matter: we all need each other. Instead, we should ask to join them, or take the initiative to set up a more international project and invite them in.
See, now America's attempts to keep them restrained in that area will be perceived as anti-science. Very, very clever...
Has that really been taken serious in the last few decades? China knows that they can do whatever they please, as long as they don't endanger the stability of the world order in the short term. It isn't just in the local area they are being clever - where we in the West have traditionally made ourselves somewhat unpopular in the Middle East, Africa anf South America, China are building up a rather better reputation amongst the locals. We can hardly justify criticizing what they do, which it the clever bit, I think; we should have done it ourselves.
Government isn't the problem - financial interests are. Government is, if anything, the solution: a governance that can make sure the playing field is level, that the rules apply in the same way to everybody etc. Looking back to history, we see that powerful people have always grabbed as much as they can for themselves with little to no regard for the vast majority of the population - this has been the case as far back as we have written records. The laws and regulations that protect ordinary people - the mythical 99% - are there because we have fought hard for them and got the government to change the rules in ouor favour. We have seen this happen over and over, every time some new technology opens up opportunities - in the beginning there are no rules, so those that are strong and ruthless enough move in, take over and push out everybody else; and then we get Government in some form to set the rules more in favour of the rest of us.
The industry - whatever industry - has always felt entitled to use any means at all to maximise their own profits; if not for government regulations, we would not have any kind of food labeling, just as an example. The producers have fought bitterly against having to tell what kind of crap they put in food, cosmetics etc - they still try to hide artificial additives behind meaningless gibberish and deceptive labeling. They hate the fact that they can't put anything they please into any product and lie about it to their customers - we would all be drinking milk "enriched" with melamine, were it not for the government. So why do people still keep talking about government as the only evil thing in the world? Government is, by and large, good for the people - yes, it is annoying that we have to pay tax, but come on. I'm not saying we should just roll over and trust them uncritically, but let us at least be intelligent in our criticism.
So, about the internet: it is again the big players, the Googles, Facebooks, etc, that want to manipulate and spy on what goes on there. Everybody on /. knows this - it is discussed regularly, it is commonly agreed that we don't like it. And then people go back to reviling "The Government" - why? No doubt one element in this is that the big players have an interest in obfuscating the issue, so have ways of ensuring that there are large numbers of anti-government muck-spreaders around, but another essential part is the sheer idiocy of the people who frequent forums on the net and never even stop to ask simple, critical questions.
Really? Is this the same sort of demise that happened to the mainframe back in the day, and later to UNIX? I think you are painting an overly black picture here. To most people - certainly in the commercial sector - whether you use systemd or not is a minor issue, as long as the system boots up and works as intended. And this being Linux, I would have thought it possible to simply change the configuration to not use systemd - if it matters enough to get people worked up in a tiff, then they will probably be competent enough to work out how.
As for GNOME, Firefox and PulseAudio - are there no alternatives? I personally use KDE, because I got sick of the direction the GNOME developers had settled on. I'm not fussed about X or Wayland or sound; my requirements are modest, as long as I can see stuff on the screen. To me Linux is a tool - just like I don't need the best, biggest and fastest hammer in the world, I don't need my computers to be anything other than good enough for my purposes.
Linux has entered the same dismal feedback loop that Firefox has entered: the software got worse, which drove away the best users, which allowed the software to get even worse, which drove away mediocre users, which allowed the software to get even worse than that, which drove away the remaining users.
Not sure what you are talking about here - I don't think Linux is in decline. As for Firefox - what is "the best users"? And what does it have to do with the development of Firefox? That Firefox seems to have become worse over the years probably has more to do with the development team making some stupid decisions or commercial pressure. The users don't enter into it, I suspect.