agreed, and that's the way I used it last night/this morning, for some research on cubism which led me to a great little site on Czech cubism, and a possible template for my design project.
really this is off-topic. The GP is referring to guns making you safe in a conceptual sense, as in Free. You have all the guns you want but that hasn't stopped any administration from suspending or, in Bush's case, destroying habeas corpus or tapping phones or whatever else illegal bullshit they're doing under the cover of executive privilege. In other words, unless you actually use the guns against the government you're pretty much a paper tiger, and, as another poster said, just another arsehole gun-owning nut-job.
Notes also comes in a Mac OS X variety, which is currently open in another window. It's pretty good. It's a pity they couldn't improve the email interface, even the gmail interface is better... meh, it's corporate software what do I expect?
I've used and programmed Lotus Notes on and off for the past 10 years. It's not that bad for what it does. For a networked environment the database replication was way ahead of it's time, and it still has no real competitor in that field. OK, so the field has moved on; and the interface is shit. Still, admin wise it's pretty good, and IBM has done a lot of good work with Notes.
We've rolled out a wiki in the same breath as running a huge Notes infrastructure. What I don't understand is that, as crap as the Notes interface is, it's still way ahead of any browser for editing documents. Anyway, so the Notes database is the back-end, and the web-browser is the new client. Call it a wiki, and people love it. Call it Notes database and they'll run a mile. I suppose it must say something about the whole thing.
PRISM are talking to congress and K street - a congress who in the past have accepted publishers statements like this at their face value, witness the DMCA. I think the danger here is that prism will get the ear of a friendly congressperson, and whammo, the current situation is legislated up the whazoo, the publishers get to feed at the trough for an eternity, or the end of civilization, whichever is sooner.
On a side issue, it's interesting how the interweb has thrown a harsh light on these assumptions.
As owners, and good American capitalists, they can do what they want with the brand-name. They've already entered into the realm of multiculturalism by celebrating the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Airmen, black airmen who fought during www2.
Actually, you've hit the nail on the head. It is not so much collecting the data and keeping it - as other posters have said, you can't stop it in this day and age. I think the real problem comes when people regard these databases as a substitute for actually going out there and finding out what is actually going on. It's like those people who mistake building massive and intricate UML diagrams for actual code. In addition, these databases become a drain on resources (the many-elves problem of trying to sort massive amounts of data), a target for criminals and politicians, and friction as people try to sort false positives. All this as a substitute for better management and gum-shoeing. After all, 9/11 wasn't a failure of databases, it was a failure of people. Right now, I don't think those people problems have been solved because US agencies would rather stick their heads in a few databases.
Maybe late night, in a bar some-where, some die-hard democrats dream that they could have a "permanent majority." Maybe, maybe. To use those will-o-the-wisp suppositions as the basis for your justification is an admirable act of chutzpah. At least other GOP apologists have the courtesy to base their justifications on "fact" rather than what the opposition might think. Of course, by your next paragraph, it's become an established fact that the Democrats "want" a permanent majority, all without a shred of evidence. Very slim, very slim, particularly as Rove is on record as wanting a permanent GOP majority. A stated policy aim, and he used every tool in the book to try and get his party to that position, yet he failed. Once the congressional elections had come through, he knew he'd failed. His best hope is that he won't be associated with the Iraq war. Or any of the shenanigans on K street. I wouldn't put it past him to have a persil-white CV; he's got plausible deniability built into his DNA. Teflon-coated apparatchik.
Those formats failed because people didn't want that high quality music. The niche market is for high-quality music. Will there be a similar process behind the adoption of HD movies? Who knows. Hollywood has assumed that people want hd movies; well, that's what they want to deliver. I think most people will settle for less.
I always thought Americans - above all people - thought for themselves, did not obey orders blindly. Thinking for yourself can sometimes mean progressing from dislike of the program, to disagreeing with with what you do in a profound manner, to seeing that what you do is injurious to the country, that there is no other way, then any right-minded person should take the path they think is right. The whistle blower looked to his responsibilities with an unfashionable weight.
As you say, Scooter leaked nothing, but he was charged for the cover-up. Scooter was a government official, with duties and responsibilities, and as such, he could not wave-by something as illegal as the Plame incident, which IS treason BTW, something for which no one has been convicted. Scooter Libby was convicted in a court of law, before which he had his five minutes. At that point justice was seen to be done. Bush's pardon was an irresponsible act with no foundation other than pure, corrupt cronyism, the president protecting his own, side-stepping responsibilities.
I think the side-stepping of responsibility has been one of the biggest features of this administration, something most of the administration learnt under Nixon. Not get caught, and if you're caught, use "plausible deniability". As a moral code - and the GOP are quite big on morals so I hear - this sucks. It makes hypocrites of all conservatives who support this administration.
It always comes to this, doesn't it? Avoiding responsibility by pointing at someone else's supposed wrong-doings. You have dirty hands my friend, even by proxy. Be a good christian or republican, if that's what you are. You'll feel better for it in the years to come.
The article reminds of the case of the guy who was the anonymous whistle-blower for Abu Grahib. In a NY times article, he tells how he first felt paranoid about his fellow guards but worse was to come when Rumsfeld congratulated him on the Abu Grahib whistle-blowing in front of a crowded canteen. Even though the whistle-blower received a letter of apology after, I share his disbelief that Rumsfeld - a control-freak and a stickler for detail - was unaware of the consequences of his actions.
The whole tenor of this administration - from Bush downwards - is one of petty and mean-mindedness. It will be good when they go, for they do nothing but poison the American body politic and bring it into dis-repute.
Reasonable force applies to everybody, police included. It's a test for the jury: in the circumstances, do you think that the defendant's reaction was in proportion to the accused's attack? If the test "minimal force" was used, I think you'd see an equal amount of problematic decisions. "Minimal force" requires the defendant to work out what minimal force is, and we would all have differing opinions in the circumstances.
It's not so much the test that is at fault, it's the reasoning that goes on behind it, the cultural conditions that determine whether or not the police get treated in a special way. I give you the Rodney King case in the USA as an example: clearly, the video showed a man being cruelly and unfairly beaten. What wasn't shown was his resistance to arrest prior to the beating; even given this, the bias towards the police's POV was clearly shown in the transcripts of the case. What goes on, too, is the number of medical retirements of officers who have been accused of crimes. Then there's the speicial pleading from the police that goes on.
We all know that Ballmer just wants the label to wave at gubmints and the corporates. "Look, we're "open source" too. We "interoperate" now, so stop suing us," would be the line he's gonna spin next time the EU come-a-calling with their pesky interoperability claims.
Anyone who thinks that they're in it to cosy up to the FOSS crowd is fucking delusional. Or in the pay of Microsoft.
In the UK, the Police can only use "reasonable" force to subdue suspects. I would expect there to be similar legislation or legal precedence in most countries.
people have protested against both ETA and the IRA. Before the current peace, there were long running campaigns against the IRA and the protestant groups by "civilians". Although I wished these people well, as I believe in the ballot box before the armalite (to re-use a phrase), none of them have actually swayed the course of things that much.
If these Americans were my countrymen, I wouldn't give a good god-damn about the Saudis either. Apparently, Bush does, as he withdrew US troops from Saudi Arabia. Bin Ladin 1, Americans 0. That's right, Bush fulfilled one of Bin Ladin's objectives by pulling out of Saudi Arabia.
Under his watch, Bush stopped the searches for Bin Ladin. I watched and listened as sock-puppet republican commentators on Fox say this doesn't matter. This makes me sad, and leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. If I was an American, I'd want to hunt down and kill the Saudi Arabian Bin Ladin, and wouldn't stop until I completed the job.
that MI5 sexed-up report - what a doohickey that was. One dead weapons inspector (suicide) and a disgraced BBC dg later, and we're still none the wiser if the report was either good at source or good at source then worked over by Nr 10's spinmeister.
Don't take it as read that info from either MI5 or Mossad (who have their own axes to grind) is solid. Taken in the round, everything seems to be a pile of poo, with all leads pointing to a whitehouse stitch-up with some help from their friends.
I hope that the internet would be an end-run around the corrupt officials. I'm not saying it's a silver bullet - Africa could do with less of those, not more - but it might allow the people to connect directly to each other for information rather than going through the system. Although the system doesn't like these sorts of deals and treats them as disruption accordingly; it will get beaten with the usual array of whips (from "think of the children" to "piracy") by the local corrupt officials. However, if we allowed our cynicism to over-ride our good intentions, we'd never get anywhere.
I was being sarcastic - how you could I was or not is beyond me - but if I'm to lose every vestige of privacy in the 21st Century, I don't see why corporations should retain theirs.
In blighty, we have Spaghetti Bolognese (or Spag Bol) which bears no relation to Italy but the name of the pasta. Bolognese sause, AFIAK, has nothing to do with Italy. Bolognese sausage is unknown here as well these days.
Slashdot Mirror
agreed, and that's the way I used it last night/this morning, for some research on cubism which led me to a great little site on Czech cubism, and a possible template for my design project.
really this is off-topic. The GP is referring to guns making you safe in a conceptual sense, as in Free. You have all the guns you want but that hasn't stopped any administration from suspending or, in Bush's case, destroying habeas corpus or tapping phones or whatever else illegal bullshit they're doing under the cover of executive privilege. In other words, unless you actually use the guns against the government you're pretty much a paper tiger, and, as another poster said, just another arsehole gun-owning nut-job.
Notes also comes in a Mac OS X variety, which is currently open in another window. It's pretty good. It's a pity they couldn't improve the email interface, even the gmail interface is better ... meh, it's corporate software what do I expect?
I've used and programmed Lotus Notes on and off for the past 10 years. It's not that bad for what it does. For a networked environment the database replication was way ahead of it's time, and it still has no real competitor in that field. OK, so the field has moved on; and the interface is shit. Still, admin wise it's pretty good, and IBM has done a lot of good work with Notes.
We've rolled out a wiki in the same breath as running a huge Notes infrastructure. What I don't understand is that, as crap as the Notes interface is, it's still way ahead of any browser for editing documents. Anyway, so the Notes database is the back-end, and the web-browser is the new client. Call it a wiki, and people love it. Call it Notes database and they'll run a mile. I suppose it must say something about the whole thing.
PRISM are talking to congress and K street - a congress who in the past have accepted publishers statements like this at their face value, witness the DMCA. I think the danger here is that prism will get the ear of a friendly congressperson, and whammo, the current situation is legislated up the whazoo, the publishers get to feed at the trough for an eternity, or the end of civilization, whichever is sooner.
On a side issue, it's interesting how the interweb has thrown a harsh light on these assumptions.
This feels like feeding a troll, but G.I. Joe is a brand name owned by Hasbro.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Joe
As owners, and good American capitalists, they can do what they want with the brand-name. They've already entered into the realm of multiculturalism by celebrating the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Airmen, black airmen who fought during www2.
Actually, you've hit the nail on the head. It is not so much collecting the data and keeping it - as other posters have said, you can't stop it in this day and age. I think the real problem comes when people regard these databases as a substitute for actually going out there and finding out what is actually going on. It's like those people who mistake building massive and intricate UML diagrams for actual code. In addition, these databases become a drain on resources (the many-elves problem of trying to sort massive amounts of data), a target for criminals and politicians, and friction as people try to sort false positives. All this as a substitute for better management and gum-shoeing. After all, 9/11 wasn't a failure of databases, it was a failure of people. Right now, I don't think those people problems have been solved because US agencies would rather stick their heads in a few databases.
Maybe late night, in a bar some-where, some die-hard democrats dream that they could have a "permanent majority." Maybe, maybe. To use those will-o-the-wisp suppositions as the basis for your justification is an admirable act of chutzpah. At least other GOP apologists have the courtesy to base their justifications on "fact" rather than what the opposition might think. Of course, by your next paragraph, it's become an established fact that the Democrats "want" a permanent majority, all without a shred of evidence. Very slim, very slim, particularly as Rove is on record as wanting a permanent GOP majority. A stated policy aim, and he used every tool in the book to try and get his party to that position, yet he failed. Once the congressional elections had come through, he knew he'd failed. His best hope is that he won't be associated with the Iraq war. Or any of the shenanigans on K street. I wouldn't put it past him to have a persil-white CV; he's got plausible deniability built into his DNA. Teflon-coated apparatchik.
Those formats failed because people didn't want that high quality music. The niche market is for high-quality music. Will there be a similar process behind the adoption of HD movies? Who knows. Hollywood has assumed that people want hd movies; well, that's what they want to deliver. I think most people will settle for less.
They learnt their lesson well from the US
I always thought Americans - above all people - thought for themselves, did not obey orders blindly. Thinking for yourself can sometimes mean progressing from dislike of the program, to disagreeing with with what you do in a profound manner, to seeing that what you do is injurious to the country, that there is no other way, then any right-minded person should take the path they think is right. The whistle blower looked to his responsibilities with an unfashionable weight.
As you say, Scooter leaked nothing, but he was charged for the cover-up. Scooter was a government official, with duties and responsibilities, and as such, he could not wave-by something as illegal as the Plame incident, which IS treason BTW, something for which no one has been convicted. Scooter Libby was convicted in a court of law, before which he had his five minutes. At that point justice was seen to be done. Bush's pardon was an irresponsible act with no foundation other than pure, corrupt cronyism, the president protecting his own, side-stepping responsibilities.
I think the side-stepping of responsibility has been one of the biggest features of this administration, something most of the administration learnt under Nixon. Not get caught, and if you're caught, use "plausible deniability". As a moral code - and the GOP are quite big on morals so I hear - this sucks. It makes hypocrites of all conservatives who support this administration.
It always comes to this, doesn't it? Avoiding responsibility by pointing at someone else's supposed wrong-doings. You have dirty hands my friend, even by proxy. Be a good christian or republican, if that's what you are. You'll feel better for it in the years to come.
The article reminds of the case of the guy who was the anonymous whistle-blower for Abu Grahib. In a NY times article, he tells how he first felt paranoid about his fellow guards but worse was to come when Rumsfeld congratulated him on the Abu Grahib whistle-blowing in front of a crowded canteen. Even though the whistle-blower received a letter of apology after, I share his disbelief that Rumsfeld - a control-freak and a stickler for detail - was unaware of the consequences of his actions.
The whole tenor of this administration - from Bush downwards - is one of petty and mean-mindedness. It will be good when they go, for they do nothing but poison the American body politic and bring it into dis-repute.
Reasonable force applies to everybody, police included. It's a test for the jury: in the circumstances, do you think that the defendant's reaction was in proportion to the accused's attack? If the test "minimal force" was used, I think you'd see an equal amount of problematic decisions. "Minimal force" requires the defendant to work out what minimal force is, and we would all have differing opinions in the circumstances.
It's not so much the test that is at fault, it's the reasoning that goes on behind it, the cultural conditions that determine whether or not the police get treated in a special way. I give you the Rodney King case in the USA as an example: clearly, the video showed a man being cruelly and unfairly beaten. What wasn't shown was his resistance to arrest prior to the beating; even given this, the bias towards the police's POV was clearly shown in the transcripts of the case. What goes on, too, is the number of medical retirements of officers who have been accused of crimes. Then there's the speicial pleading from the police that goes on.
We all know that Ballmer just wants the label to wave at gubmints and the corporates. "Look, we're "open source" too. We "interoperate" now, so stop suing us," would be the line he's gonna spin next time the EU come-a-calling with their pesky interoperability claims.
Anyone who thinks that they're in it to cosy up to the FOSS crowd is fucking delusional. Or in the pay of Microsoft.
In the UK, the Police can only use "reasonable" force to subdue suspects. I would expect there to be similar legislation or legal precedence in most countries.
people have protested against both ETA and the IRA. Before the current peace, there were long running campaigns against the IRA and the protestant groups by "civilians". Although I wished these people well, as I believe in the ballot box before the armalite (to re-use a phrase), none of them have actually swayed the course of things that much.
Really, this one's for you
Saudi Arabians killed 3000 Americans.
If these Americans were my countrymen, I wouldn't give a good god-damn about the Saudis either. Apparently, Bush does, as he withdrew US troops from Saudi Arabia. Bin Ladin 1, Americans 0. That's right, Bush fulfilled one of Bin Ladin's objectives by pulling out of Saudi Arabia.
Under his watch, Bush stopped the searches for Bin Ladin. I watched and listened as sock-puppet republican commentators on Fox say this doesn't matter. This makes me sad, and leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. If I was an American, I'd want to hunt down and kill the Saudi Arabian Bin Ladin, and wouldn't stop until I completed the job.
Saudi Arabians killed 3000 Americans.
that MI5 sexed-up report - what a doohickey that was. One dead weapons inspector (suicide) and a disgraced BBC dg later, and we're still none the wiser if the report was either good at source or good at source then worked over by Nr 10's spinmeister.
Don't take it as read that info from either MI5 or Mossad (who have their own axes to grind) is solid. Taken in the round, everything seems to be a pile of poo, with all leads pointing to a whitehouse stitch-up with some help from their friends.
I hope that the internet would be an end-run around the corrupt officials. I'm not saying it's a silver bullet - Africa could do with less of those, not more - but it might allow the people to connect directly to each other for information rather than going through the system. Although the system doesn't like these sorts of deals and treats them as disruption accordingly; it will get beaten with the usual array of whips (from "think of the children" to "piracy") by the local corrupt officials. However, if we allowed our cynicism to over-ride our good intentions, we'd never get anywhere.
I was being sarcastic - how you could I was or not is beyond me - but if I'm to lose every vestige of privacy in the 21st Century, I don't see why corporations should retain theirs.
All those contracts are legit and above board, right? what have you got to hide?
In blighty, we have Spaghetti Bolognese (or Spag Bol) which bears no relation to Italy but the name of the pasta. Bolognese sause, AFIAK, has nothing to do with Italy. Bolognese sausage is unknown here as well these days.
cat food taster