Many of you will probably be aware that in Spain there is a terrorist group called "ETA", that wants the Basque country (a bit in the North-West of Spain) to be independant. They are terrorists, no question, and they should be stopped. However, the current president of Spain (Aznar) hates that any of the regions of Spain wants independence, and is tending to brand anyone who wants independence as supporting terrorism. Political parties are being banned if they have members which are on a list of (several hundred) individuals which the state has decided are supporting terrorism. This means that practically any political party that is pro-independance for the Basque country is now banned. I believe this is obviously a real blow for democracy in Spain, and highlights the fact that a few terrorists can reduce the freedoms of a huge number of people if the government reacts in the wrong way.
Just my thoughts.
Re:Why are we always nitpicking?
on
Shuttle Politics
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· Score: 1
Did you really just use the "word" embetterment.
It reminded me of that Simpsons episode here they keep saying "enbiggen".
Re:Why are we always nitpicking?
on
Shuttle Politics
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
But how is it that we have had troops (US gov. employees) all over the world doing the most dangerous things for decades but 7 astronauts are unreasonable losses?
An excellent point. The answer is I guess, some people are more important than others. It's like when a pretty white schoolgirl gets kidnapped, it's frontpage news and the country is in shock. But if the same thing happens to a coloured guy, then nobody gives a damn. Or when you read how successful the war with Iraq was because there were only 200 fatalities, and you realise that they're just counting the Americans.
WTF ? Why is this rated as "funny" ? This is not funny!
Well, it was meant to be. I sometimes write "This is sarcasm" at the end of my posts if I think they will be misinterpreted, but I hoped in this case it was obvious that I was joking.
Although many security details need to be handled carefully, it's a weird enough idea that it might actually work...
Yes, sounds like a great idea! It could be very useful where I live. We've got new neighbours, and I think they might be muslims. They're definately foreign, anyway. I don't have the time to sit at the window all day looking for suspicious activity, so if we put a web cam up it would make it a lot easier. God Bless America!
NO `brit' (btw i find that term offensive) wants anything to do with the EU,
Speak for yourself.
The EU is banning all gameshows which give out over 70,000, i.e Who wants to be a Millionnaire is going to have to change or be banned, THATS HOW stooopid the Europeans are.
As a Brit who regularly travels and does business in other European countries, I find it really sad how a lot of Brits do not have an objective idea about Europe and the EU because they do not access to unbiased information about it. There is a concerted effort by a significant part of the UK press to rubbish the EU, and people such as yourself are easily influenced by them. Stories like the one you quote (and on the front page of The Times two days ago "EU would scap NHS if UK joins the Euro") only appear in the UK. And do you know why? Because they are just rubbish, made up, to influence people like yourself. Sad but true.
Britain is Britain, the political alliance of England, Scotland and Wales, we are our own union, we don't want European trash, and we're not in Europe...
It is funny very anti-European people such as yourself like to make this type of comment with regards to Europe, but seem completely blind to the fact that the UK has given away much of it's independance to the USA over the last half a century or so. The sad fact is that the USA has the UK in an economic vice. You should be more concerned that your Prime Minister has to be a poodle for the USA than any supposed threat to your soverignty from Europe.
Ok. Don't take offence at my post. It was supposed to be funny as well. I realise that English is your second language and it is often difficult to recognise humor in another language.
Blame the pointy haired bosses and marketing types who listen to the wage weenies developing the web sites (not in all cases, but mostly IMO).
Most pixel pushers have no better bid for job security than constantly pushing for bleeding edge "content delivery" mechanisms that only they know.
As much as the techie community dislikes marketeers, it is not true to say that they are stupid and don't know what they are doing. If you think that the Terminator 3 site has been developed by people that don't know what they are doing then you need to question your own judgement.
Marketeers do market research. They do focus groups. They sit members of the general public down in front of web sites and ask "What impression does this site give you of this [product/service/movie whatever]". They listen to them. I can guarantee that the reason the Terminator 3 site is designed like that is because that is the best way to make people go see the movie.
The producers of this site wanted to make an impressive multi-media rich site to make people want to go see their film. The only way to really do that effectively is with Flash. The vast majority of people have the Flash plug-in, and won't really care (or even know) what format the site is in.
Yes, the world would be a better place if multimedia web sites could be practically developed using open tools and open file formats such as SVG. But they can't. So people use Flash. Live with it.
I still don't understand why SVG isn't default in all OSS browsers. You can complain about Flash or you can try to change the status quo. Many people in the OSS community like to complain...
I find it disturbing the number of people that are posting saying things like "but these people break the law, so they deserve what they get".
Come on Americans, what's happened to you recently? Where's your spirit gone? The spirit of justice, fairness, freedom? Is it right that teenagers get sent to jail for "hacking" when the state of IT security is so poor? If your bank left sacks of money outside it's doors, when they got stolen by a couple of kids would you think it was the kids were guilty of a crime, or the bank?
In the old America, the kids would get a stern telling off and the bank manager would be accused of negligence. These days the kids would be looking at a long jail sentence, and the bank would be pressing the government to pass laws waiving them of any responsibility.
How does punishing people who commit crimes reduce our civil liberties?
It depends on what is defined as a crime, and what the punishment is.
Law is all about drawing lines - what is acceptable and what isn't. At what point does a particular act become unacceptable. If, for instance, saying things that were "unamerican" became a crime, then that would clearly be a reduction in our civil liberties.
I am so close to switching over to linux, since the work that I do is mostly java programming and web design.
Well, I did so today! RedHat 9, the downloadable version.
I have to decide wether to keep it or not. The only thing missing for me is the Macromedia Flash application (not the plug-in, that works fine on Linux). I am seriously considering keeping RH as my main desktop, and I'll just boot into Windows when I need to use Flash.
I'm quite happy with it so far and it's fun to be learning a new environment.
1) Change jobs regularly. don't stay in any one company for more than a couple of years.
2) When you start at a new company, standardize! Standarize on whatever bit of technology a sales rep. has recently bedazzled you with. Standardize by insisting, for instance: a) everything has to move onto Lotus Notes b) all databases must be Oracle c) Everything must be Microsoft
Score extra points for really stupid and disruptive standardizations e.g. a) everyone must use MS Outlook. b) nobody can send email attachments. c) all databases should be on MS Access.
Make sure that you replace old systems that have been working successfully for years, in the name of standardization.
Don't listen to your technical staff. They don't understand business issues. And don't listen to your users. They don't understand techy stuff.
Assign huge budgets to standardization. Standardize on something your technical staff don't like.
Leave shortly after your new projects have been rolled out. Make sure you get a bit of press coverage about what a great job you've done (your chosen supplier will help you with this...) Get an even higher paid job elsewhere.
I don't trust Snopes, because often they make out as if they have the authoritive answer when they are just speculating themselves, or using the facts selectively.
For instance, they say that it is false to say that Bush made the comment that "the French don't have a word for entrepreneur" because Alistair Cambell (Tony Blair's "spin doctor") said that he didn't. Of course he would say that. His job is to protect Blair and it would look bad if Blair told someone that. Ari Fleischer would say the same thing, but who would believe him? To say that the story is definately false because of that is just dumb.
If people in the US and the UK value their lives, they will resist the impulse to try to turn Iraq into a colony that is run for corporate profit.
Ahh, call me an old cynic, but isn't that what this war is all about? Or should I take the popular view, that we are doing this to give the Iraqi people "Freedom" because we're such nice people?
You see, rebuilding Iraq is going to be tremendous business. Marvellous. And most of it is going to go to the USA. You see, Iraqi's have the means to pay for rebuilding their country. They've got oil. Not like Africa, or Afghanistan. We don't want to be building them up, giving them democracy, do we? No profit in it.
I wonder if those silly Brits would be so pro war if they knew that they are still repaying the USA for the Second World War. Oh yes, they still owe $346 million dollars - they should have paid off their debt by 2006. And they've been paying since 1945.
Those Iraqi's, they're going to pay. Oh yes. And for a couple or three more generations. And we are going to say "Look at us! We are so moral and good!"
Do what those guys did to Poindexter - collect all available information about this woman, and post it on a web site.
Something similar happened to the Minister in charge of this kind of stuff in the UK. It's a good eye-opener for them, although I would hold back on posting it on a public web site. The Mr Mature option is to send it to them personally and tell them to imagine what it would be like if it got posted publicly...
I don't know why they don't just make up new names for things to get round silly restrictive laws. If there is a law that says government departments cannot pry into cizitens too much, why don't they just create a new department and call it, for instance "Not a Government Department". Then when lawers say "you can't do that" they can say, but it's "Not a Government Department", so your silly laws don't count! Even better, they could move "Not a Government Department" to another country with less restrictive laws.
After all, this is exactly what they've done with Guatemalan Bay and the "Unlawful Combatants".
Slashdot Mirror
Many of you will probably be aware that in Spain there is a terrorist group called "ETA", that wants the Basque country (a bit in the North-West of Spain) to be independant. They are terrorists, no question, and they should be stopped. However, the current president of Spain (Aznar) hates that any of the regions of Spain wants independence, and is tending to brand anyone who wants independence as supporting terrorism. Political parties are being banned if they have members which are on a list of (several hundred) individuals which the state has decided are supporting terrorism. This means that practically any political party that is pro-independance for the Basque country is now banned. I believe this is obviously a real blow for democracy in Spain, and highlights the fact that a few terrorists can reduce the freedoms of a huge number of people if the government reacts in the wrong way.
Just my thoughts.
Did you really just use the "word" embetterment.
It reminded me of that Simpsons episode here they keep saying "enbiggen".
But how is it that we have had troops (US gov. employees) all over the world doing the most dangerous things for decades but 7 astronauts are unreasonable losses?
An excellent point. The answer is I guess, some people are more important than others. It's like when a pretty white schoolgirl gets kidnapped, it's frontpage news and the country is in shock. But if the same thing happens to a coloured guy, then nobody gives a damn. Or when you read how successful the war with Iraq was because there were only 200 fatalities, and you realise that they're just counting the Americans.
WTF ? Why is this rated as "funny" ? This is not funny!
Well, it was meant to be. I sometimes write "This is sarcasm" at the end of my posts if I think they will be misinterpreted, but I hoped in this case it was obvious that I was joking.
Although many security details need to be handled carefully, it's a weird enough idea that it might actually work...
Yes, sounds like a great idea! It could be very useful where I live. We've got new neighbours, and I think they might be muslims. They're definately foreign, anyway. I don't have the time to sit at the window all day looking for suspicious activity, so if we put a web cam up it would make it a lot easier. God Bless America!
Funny how my post gets modded as Flamebait, rather than the ignorant rant that provoked me to post.
NO `brit' (btw i find that term offensive) wants anything to do with the EU,
Speak for yourself.
The EU is banning all gameshows which give out over 70,000, i.e Who wants to be a Millionnaire is going to have to change or be banned, THATS HOW stooopid the Europeans are.
As a Brit who regularly travels and does business in other European countries, I find it really sad how a lot of Brits do not have an objective idea about Europe and the EU because they do not access to unbiased information about it. There is a concerted effort by a significant part of the UK press to rubbish the EU, and people such as yourself are easily influenced by them. Stories like the one you quote (and on the front page of The Times two days ago "EU would scap NHS if UK joins the Euro") only appear in the UK. And do you know why? Because they are just rubbish, made up, to influence people like yourself. Sad but true.
Britain is Britain, the political alliance of England, Scotland and Wales, we are our own union, we don't want European trash, and we're not in Europe...
It is funny very anti-European people such as yourself like to make this type of comment with regards to Europe, but seem completely blind to the fact that the UK has given away much of it's independance to the USA over the last half a century or so. The sad fact is that the USA has the UK in an economic vice. You should be more concerned that your Prime Minister has to be a poodle for the USA than any supposed threat to your soverignty from Europe.
I read it as MONKEYDANCE. Here, I was picturing...well...
Steve Ballamer? Funny, I was reading an interview on News.com with Stevie and the came to Slashdot, and I read it as "MonkeyDance" as well.
Is this a joke? I just get some flashing blobs and nothing happens. Am I missing something?
I am very happy that this is humor.
Ok. Don't take offence at my post. It was supposed to be funny as well. I realise that English is your second language and it is often difficult to recognise humor in another language.
4) some Germans have difficulty recognising humor.
Blame the pointy haired bosses and marketing types who listen to the wage weenies developing the web sites (not in all cases, but mostly IMO).
Most pixel pushers have no better bid for job security than constantly pushing for bleeding edge "content delivery" mechanisms that only they know.
As much as the techie community dislikes marketeers, it is not true to say that they are stupid and don't know what they are doing. If you think that the Terminator 3 site has been developed by people that don't know what they are doing then you need to question your own judgement.
Marketeers do market research. They do focus groups. They sit members of the general public down in front of web sites and ask "What impression does this site give you of this [product/service/movie whatever]". They listen to them. I can guarantee that the reason the Terminator 3 site is designed like that is because that is the best way to make people go see the movie.
Although it's flash only (major sin)
Why is it a "major sin" that it is Flash only?
The producers of this site wanted to make an impressive multi-media rich site to make people want to go see their film. The only way to really do that effectively is with Flash. The vast majority of people have the Flash plug-in, and won't really care (or even know) what format the site is in.
Yes, the world would be a better place if multimedia web sites could be practically developed using open tools and open file formats such as SVG. But they can't. So people use Flash. Live with it.
I still don't understand why SVG isn't default in all OSS browsers. You can complain about Flash or you can try to change the status quo. Many people in the OSS community like to complain...
I find it disturbing the number of people that are posting saying things like "but these people break the law, so they deserve what they get".
Come on Americans, what's happened to you recently? Where's your spirit gone? The spirit of justice, fairness, freedom? Is it right that teenagers get sent to jail for "hacking" when the state of IT security is so poor? If your bank left sacks of money outside it's doors, when they got stolen by a couple of kids would you think it was the kids were guilty of a crime, or the bank?
In the old America, the kids would get a stern telling off and the bank manager would be accused of negligence. These days the kids would be looking at a long jail sentence, and the bank would be pressing the government to pass laws waiving them of any responsibility.
How does punishing people who commit crimes reduce our civil liberties?
It depends on what is defined as a crime, and what the punishment is.
Law is all about drawing lines - what is acceptable and what isn't. At what point does a particular act become unacceptable. If, for instance, saying things that were "unamerican" became a crime, then that would clearly be a reduction in our civil liberties.
I am so close to switching over to linux, since the work that I do is mostly java programming and web design.
Well, I did so today! RedHat 9, the downloadable version.
I have to decide wether to keep it or not. The only thing missing for me is the Macromedia Flash application (not the plug-in, that works fine on Linux). I am seriously considering keeping RH as my main desktop, and I'll just boot into Windows when I need to use Flash.
I'm quite happy with it so far and it's fun to be learning a new environment.
1) Change jobs regularly. don't stay in any one company for more than a couple of years.
2) When you start at a new company, standardize! Standarize on whatever bit of technology a sales rep. has recently bedazzled you with. Standardize by insisting, for instance:
a) everything has to move onto Lotus Notes
b) all databases must be Oracle
c) Everything must be Microsoft
Score extra points for really stupid and disruptive standardizations e.g.
a) everyone must use MS Outlook.
b) nobody can send email attachments.
c) all databases should be on MS Access.
Make sure that you replace old systems that have been working successfully for years, in the name of standardization.
Don't listen to your technical staff. They don't understand business issues. And don't listen to your users. They don't understand techy stuff.
Assign huge budgets to standardization. Standardize on something your technical staff don't like.
Leave shortly after your new projects have been rolled out. Make sure you get a bit of press coverage about what a great job you've done (your chosen supplier will help you with this...) Get an even higher paid job elsewhere.
What, me, cynical?
I don't trust Snopes, because often they make out as if they have the authoritive answer when they are just speculating themselves, or using the facts selectively.
For instance, they say that it is false to say that Bush made the comment that "the French don't have a word for entrepreneur" because Alistair Cambell (Tony Blair's "spin doctor") said that he didn't. Of course he would say that. His job is to protect Blair and it would look bad if Blair told someone that. Ari Fleischer would say the same thing, but who would believe him? To say that the story is definately false because of that is just dumb.
What I'm waiting for is what I believe to be the next step; the one described in, oh, so many sci-fi novels... a personality for my handheld!
What, are you nuts? A personality? What about huge bouncing boobies?
If people in the US and the UK value their lives, they will resist the impulse to try to turn Iraq into a colony that is run for corporate profit.
Ahh, call me an old cynic, but isn't that what this war is all about? Or should I take the popular view, that we are doing this to give the Iraqi people "Freedom" because we're such nice people?
You see, rebuilding Iraq is going to be tremendous business. Marvellous. And most of it is going to go to the USA. You see, Iraqi's have the means to pay for rebuilding their country. They've got oil. Not like Africa, or Afghanistan. We don't want to be building them up, giving them democracy, do we? No profit in it.
I wonder if those silly Brits would be so pro war if they knew that they are still repaying the USA for the Second World War. Oh yes, they still owe $346 million dollars - they should have paid off their debt by 2006. And they've been paying since 1945.
Those Iraqi's, they're going to pay. Oh yes. And for a couple or three more generations. And we are going to say "Look at us! We are so moral and good!"
Do what those guys did to Poindexter - collect all available information about this woman, and post it on a web site.
Something similar happened to the Minister in charge of this kind of stuff in the UK. It's a good eye-opener for them, although I would hold back on posting it on a public web site. The Mr Mature option is to send it to them personally and tell them to imagine what it would be like if it got posted publicly...
I don't know why they don't just make up new names for things to get round silly restrictive laws. If there is a law that says government departments cannot pry into cizitens too much, why don't they just create a new department and call it, for instance "Not a Government Department". Then when lawers say "you can't do that" they can say, but it's "Not a Government Department", so your silly laws don't count! Even better, they could move "Not a Government Department" to another country with less restrictive laws.
After all, this is exactly what they've done with Guatemalan Bay and the "Unlawful Combatants".
1) No whispering
2) No wearing dark glasses and big hats
3) No hiding
There are a metric tonne of great 2D games for the GBA, for a start,
I got a GBA, but I guess I must be getting old. Playing games on a tiny screen with fiddly buttons just doesn't do it for me any more.
The other games sound very interesting though. Thanks.
Does anyone know of some good 2D shoot-em-ups or platform games that have been released within the last few years?
Answering myself...
I thought that Chicken Invaders was great fun, if a little too quick to complete. A simple "shoot-em-up" with great game play.