There is the technology available to avoid spam. Spam blacklists, Bayesian filters, and Challenge-Response systems will handle the vast majority of spam, if not all of it.
As someone who has been a victim of these technologies, I'm not convinced this is the road I'd see us go down. I've had my e-mail blocked just because some other git at my large Canadian ISP has had the temerity to send some spam (even if he was immediately kicked off as soon as this was discovered). As a direct result, my valid e-mail to persons in places like Australia has been affected. If this is your suggestion of a solution, I'm afraid I can't concede that it is a good one.
What is and is not legal in a nation is not an absolute - it is a social dialog between citizens and a decision made on what those citizens as a group wish to allow. For myself, I don't think spam/UCE, junk mail, telephone solicitation, etc. are anything but a waste of my time, my bandwidth, and (in the case of paper variants) trees. I don't see them as a necesary evil. Therefore, I see no issue with banning them. Can one ban them and still have other forms of free expression (if a commercial activity can be considered expression...)? Why of course we can.
I don't want to kill these people. They are (mostly) playing within some sort of legal vacuum or within the law. I'd just change the law and then they'd either quit or get busted.
Whereas in this instance I'm sure you are correct, I have seen programs that have features that.... do a bit more than inteded. We had at one point a need to, under a particular circumstance, erase the contents of a laptop which had been stolen (when it next tried to log-in, which it would automatically do, after having been marked stolen). The programmer, not knowing much about PCMCIA drives and flashcards, went a bit overboard. All we wanted was to erase the data. Our first trial and it took us a couple of days to recover the hardware(!) into a working state once again (he *really* did an number on it). So it is possible to have code exceed your expectations, especially if it is in a partially-understood aspect or area.
But I'm sure that the case in point is no accident!
Damn! If you can't trust piracy advocates, who can you trust? All my illusions are shattered....
All your systems are belong to us!
Now I KNOW that not all P2P users are copying music - but MOST are.
Ignoring the obvious question of how you *know* anything about *most* P2P users....
I thought (not being entirely humorous) that a lot of P2P activity was related to one of the real drivers on the net:.... p0rn.
Has anyone actually come up with meaningful statistical studies of what the relative % of P2P uses were (p0rn, music, video, academic, etc)? If so, I haven't seen them and would be glad to have someone post some links. (Yes, I am in fact a lazy bugger...)
Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but Ethernet has a standard for how many segments you can tack together (5 is it?). So if he added a router at the end of along chain, might that not have exceeded what the spec allows? I seem to recall the IT guys at work bitching out some people on our test team for just willy nilly throwing on extra hubs and exceeding just that limit, leading to network issues.
But perhaps there is another mechanism that explains this?
You said: Even free speach has it's bounds. For example, I believe that I have the right to kick protestors Off my private property. Since my telephone is on my private property I should think that the same rules apply.
I say: Your analogy is weak. You can kick protestors off your property, but in order to do so, they already have to be on it. In the telephone part of the comparison, that's equivalent to hanging up the phone AFTER they've called you. You can do that. You don't have to be polite to these people.
I'm not saying the DNC registry is a bad idea, but I don't think this analogy has much merit.
I would enjoy moving to a country where the politicians have their heads on straight.
The for the sake of all you hold dear, don't move to Canada.
The only reason Mr. Bush's accusedly-authoritarian government isn't deemed second rate to Mr. Chretien's de facto dictatorship is that the USA is much bigger and more noteworthy and we keep our aspirations to quash the voter and free thought at home, and don't export them quite the same way.
The Canadian Prime Minister has been gobbling up powers to make himself more potent for the last several years (or at least, the rate of gobbling has accelerated). Media concentration, underfunding of any kind of watchdogs, using the Courts as an excuse, etc.... and we've never had the underlying strength in our Constitution that the US has to begin with.
Canada is a place for the thoughtless masses. In the USA, you may think you've got a tough choice for who to vote for. Up here, we might as well not bother as the new de-facto King shall cruise into his new appointment sometime in November... or February... or maybe we'll have two leaders (eh? how does that work?) for a few months....
I really hate the feeling the next election is going to be the first one in which I take the 'refused ballot' option to register a protest. I'm used to voting fot the least of the evils, but it is getting so bad that the least is still almost unconscionable....
... about Bell Canada. Nothing like being "the guy" in the local markets. OTOH, Deregulation of Hydro on Ontario has done such a good job....
Half the problem is the whole issue of competition. If I make two companies compete, both will look for every way they can to compete and make money, including abusing their customer base data. And of course, if every company does it, there isn't a choice. Until someone demonstrates that people are willing to pay extra $$$ for NOT selling this info, then their will be a financial (and therefore competitive) advantage to doing so.
But are consumers that smart? They talk a mean game but most of us look for the cheapest rates and live with the side effects. Sad.... but true.
Not sure if I agree with that. Real conflict still generally build up over time. Even for the Iraq situation the US took quite a few months (a year?) to build up its forces surrounding Iraq before it began the offensive.
I'm curious what background you speak from....
I ask because it takes more than having a pile of brasshats in Ottawa at NDHQ to make us ready to deploy a worthwhile force. Failing procurement and training programs ensure that our vehicles are worn out (Sea King, Leopard, Iltis, F-18) and that our troops don't spend enough time training in primary skills. THESE losses alone are enough to say that six months is not enough lead time to deal with the situation (pardon me for being annoyed, but we had MONTHS to wind up for Afghanistan too and we couldn't even get the right camouflage.... so don't expect me to believe we can mass mobilize or even moderately mobilize in any useful way in short order given our current state of affairs).
The constant criticism of the Canadian military, and calls for multi-billion dollar budget increases, might have some of its roots in the arms industry-
Or from anyone who comprehends how hobbled our military now is. Or from anyone who comprehends the role of an active and sufficient military in maintaining foreign policy impact.
An industry that wants to make us believe that we need loads of high tech equipment to sit rotting in warehouses, ready for multi-billion dollar upgrades 5 years down the road.
As opposed to those who think that our guys regularly being killed by bad equipment (specifically of the flying or not really variety) is acceptable? I'm not talking about billions of dollars of stockpiled cruise missiles. I'm talking about subs that don't leak, rescue and military choppers that don't fall out of the sky from metal fatigue, camouflage of the right colour, night vision gear in appropriate volumes, vaccines that aren't tainted for the troops, enough logistics capacity to deploy to trouble spots even one battalion and supporting elements and maintain them there, etcetera etcetera. No wazoo high tech anywehre in sight.
Military equipment comes at a cost to social programs, healthcare, etc, or alternately higher taxes. Our individual soldiers are paid quite well (I was surprized when a friend recently joined to see the pay rates), have fantastic personal equipment and good bases.
Yeah, right. And can't be deployed to a trouble spot without sticking out there thumbs.... and can't stay there long without foreign logistics support... and can't stay there as a force because of a lack of combat soldiers.... and can't keep the subs at sea because they are falling apart... and can't keep the planes and choppers in the air due to fatigue and age of the airframes.....
I think the camouflage issue was more of a political red herring: There isn't an armed forces on the planet, except perhaps the US, that has camo for every possible battlefield situation.
Possibly true.
The Afghan conflict came up just as a prior batch was destroyed and the new batch was on order. It happens.
No, they had plenty of warning they were going. They had yet to procure the batch of desert camo (which arrived AFTER their return more than six months later). They asked the US "Could you provide us with enough camo?". The US said "send us the sizes, we'll ship you what you need in 7-10 days for the same cost or less than what you'd pay for the homegrown stuff". Guess what? We didn't care enough for our soldiers to spend the money. What was the official reason from NDHQ? Morale problems caused by wearing foreign uniforms.
Let me say that again: Morale problems. BS! BS! BS! Every infanteer I've talked to (and it has been quite a few) has said "if it made me harder to see or be seen or maybe be hit, I'd gladly take camo from anyone...".
Personally I think, given the nature of the military, that some of the elite teams showed true military gumption and they quite literally made their own, creating some of the best camo possible.
A further example of your lack of clear thought. They effectively (by using paint) damaged their existing uniforms (in green) if I'm not sorely mistaken. So the net effect is that we're down some green uniforms, which we have to replace anyway, and our troops didn't enjoy the benefit of having real camouflage but had to build their own (PS - all infanteers generally add their own camouflage anyway.... that isn't an *elite* decision....). So our net financial benefit? Nil. And maybe it would have helped keep some of our troops a bit safer if we'd got them desert camouflage a bit earlier.
Our troops coped. That's because they are good. Our troops coped up until the point where our overstretched forces couldn't support them and they needed to rotate home to get a rest. Then they didn't cope and we bailed out. It isn't the troops I blame for that.
The Sea King is indeed an unfortunate reality, but again compared with the acquisition of a fleet of modern subs, missile frigates, and cormorant helicopters,
Which have proven to be problematic too. When did we acquire modern subs? Refit after refit has failed to get them out and operating? Why? The Australians turned them down as broken, used-up and not cost effective. We tried to make due and my prediction is we'll end up paying more and having less operational time than if we bought some new ones.
it's amazing how much attention the Sea King garners.
Gee, when Sea Kings and Gryphons fall out of the sky from metal fatigue, when the other countries come to see us for how to keep overlong serving C-130's in the air with bandaids, when the CF-18s start experiencing serious stress issues due to age, and when our old equipment is KILLING OUR SOLDIERS at an alarming rate, but our PM can go buy himself new jets at the drop of a hat.... no, that doesn't merit ANY attention, does it?
We are a relatively small country, and the simple reality is that our military will always pale aside the US',
We were a smaller country 50 years ago and we had the third or fourth largest military in the world, especially naval.
I'm perfectly fine with that.
Apparently it doesn't disturb you our soldiers are dying because of antiquated equipment. And apparently it doesn't distrub you that at one point we had 5-10K men deployed on NATO/UN missions, and now the number is in the hundreds? Gee, I wonder if the people we were helping but aren't anymore and the trouble spots we are leaving to someone else are just fine with that?
We went into Afghanistan with troops that were perfect for the non-conventional modern warfare (i.e. snipers), did a great job, and got out after the situation had pretty much settled.
Yes assassinations of senior government ministers and continuing gun battles and insurgent actions tell me things have really calmed down. How could I not have seen that?
And speaking of our snipers: Why has our government blocked them getting decorated by the US for doing a good job?
Actually the causative factor for us leaving Afghanistan was probably the death of 4 soldiers by friendly fire: Given that the conflict was pretty much resolved, such a needless loss couldn't be repeated.
You obviously know a pretty freakin slim amount about military operations. Such casualties may have been avoidable in a perfect world. But military operations always entail risk, even in the safest circumstances. And people are human and screw up. But the screw up there may well have been from the poor training our senior officers have in large excercises (was our last Brigade level excercise in 1987?). They don't get a chance to deal with large unit ops enough to be 100% proficient. Oh, and throw in a NG Air unit pushed to make readiness (again, overstressed, this time on the US side because they are doing stuff other folks used to help out with all by themselves now).
God save us from people like you who live in their comfortable little country and don't care much about our soldiers or the people we send them out to help.
With all due respect, and I'm a Canadian and I have served in our nation's armed forces, I think this is past tense. The logic of keeping piles of generals handy to suddenly recruit and train a whack of soldiers is kind of broken, given the nature of modern conflicts.
I *wish* we could actually help out some of the places that really need help right now. But we can't even keep a thousand guys in Afghanistan for a year, let alone buy those guys some appropriate camouflage fatigues in a timely fashion. And don't get me started on the Sea King or its replacements....
For a country with some of the best individual soldiers in the world, we've been treating our military like absolute crap for far too long for it not to show:(
But I guess that's okay as long as our PM gets his new jets.... @@!%%$!!
No, innocent computer game object instances. They are not people (unless the program displays true sentience and self-awareness of which I am highly doubting).
If you can't tell the difference between some crackpot (or terrorist or whatever) with a rifle killing innocent people and some geek blowing up little computer game object instances that have about as much "peopleness" as my car keys, then you are probably one of the people that should not buy these games in the first place - your grip on reality is far too tenuous!
You mustn't have bought the correct expansions! Module S666: The Road To Ruin.... Instead of paying $10, you had to sign a contract for your soul and those of your gaming group. (That's okay, sometimes a DM has to make sacrifices.... errr.... well, maybe in this context that takes on another meaning).;)
(I also played far too many hours of RPGs in the 80s and probably hacked down more kobolds and orcs than could reasonably be installed in any biosphere)
PS - for the humour impaired, the foregoing was a joke!
There is a key distinction between reality and make believe.
In reality, I'm not a knight in shining armour, nor am I the evil gun-toting gangster. But both make for interesting excercises of the mind. Sort of like walking a mile in someone else's shoes, even if that someone never could be in the world as we know it.
Lately, with the way these joyless anti-everything doomsayers keep attacking anything that even vaguely titilates or allows us a peaceful harmless (for most mentally together people...) exploration of our darker natures, one begins to feel that imagination and invention are themselves under attack.
Good Lord save us from those that think they know better than we do about what is good for us....
I don't think I want my e-mail tool running anything (macro, external executable, script, etc). And I don't accept document/data formats that allow embeded macros very comfortably (word docs, etc). Yes, it means sometimes I don't see the neat new thing someone sends me. But generally they can (if it matters) send it as plaintext, html or a simple image format.
Gosh, I wish I had some mod points to burn just now.... that's one of the best (even if it is obvious to most of us) points....
I'm doing some work with an African country right now at work. Half the problem is they don't know what they want - so asking them what they think they want and then trying to build it is a bit of a challenge. We try to nail things down, but they just aren't sure and so you end up with issues of requirements/scope creep. You also end up with differing perspectives and a need to regularly reset expectations. Defining requirements and managing the projects may be a pretty serious challenge for some of the developing countries.
In fact, project management and business analysis skills may be a *key* donation to such an effort. Skilled business analysts, workflow experts, and project management people (esp those familiar with OS projects) would be a real asset to any such plan and should be figured into the mechanism. Correctly setting expectations would be an important part of successful and satisfactory development. This won't be a for-pay effort and it will be a distributed effort. Both invoke certain characteristics and limitations.
I have been looking for just these kinds of local or Int'l IT projects, insofar as I would be permitted by NDA's etc. to participate. I think this would be a worthwhile endeavour for the UN and the Open Source community. And it would leverage some of the powers of some open source OSs which run well on some older hardware, as much of the developing world may not be able to afford the latest 3.4GHz P-4 megasystem.
If this does go anywhere, I hope slashdot will provide ongoing coverage.
We use the common public folders to trigger all sorts of neat things - as a gateway to our PHP-wrapped software library, as a gateway to many intranet document repositories, as a gateway to our IT requesting system, etc.
Outlook with Exchange has a lot of function that most people don't use (since they tend to just use mail and calendar).
For the record, I use Opera and (not liking Opera Mail) Pegasus at home. I really don't _like_ outlook, but every company I've worked at has used it.
The other question one might ask is how much manual dexterity do I need to be able to make the alleged thousands of gestures without them being confusing. On the keyboard, I have some force feedback and I'm pretty good with the backspace key. With zero resistance and an ability to accidentally do mouse-gestures with my keyboarding hands, I can see some accuracy issues.
Frankly, I work often 12 hours a day at a keyboard, and I use a mouse. Since I shifted to a high res optical mouse (small movements required) and since I use all the buttons but don't have a death grip and since I use an old MS-Pro ergo keyboard with a raised bottom end (unlike most keyboards), I've had little or no pain in elbows, wrists, or tendons... unlike the bad old days on the QWERTY/top-elevated keyboards and roll-around mice.
When this new technology matures, and if I feel like re-training, it might be interesting, but I can already do a lot with what I have with little discomfort.
But we should be making it available to kids/etc coming up... they don't have a retraining issue and if it avoids some people headed down the nasty RSI path... that's good.
Early touchpad technologies were capacitive. Some laptops used to have capacitive touchpads on them, which made them crap for police use in places where you actually get a winter and might be wearing gloves. So they developed some sort of resistive keypad which, althought probably not zero force, is close enough to it and you can use it with gloves on.
I use Opera, but I don't use gestures for precisely that very reason - I don't like to train myself into using something I won't have available on all my workspaces.
OTOH, I broke my own rule and wired 2 of the 5 buttons on my mouse to fwd and back and use them to flip through web contexts. And Good Lord do I miss the scrollwheel when I don't have it or an app doesn't support it.
Keyboard shortcuts versus Mouse Gestures... both have their strong points. Good browsers (Opera comes to mind) should support both.
OTOH, throw in slow dial up and it doesn't matter what the hell kind of control you have.... you're surfing is limited by the bps of the link rather than your own twitch rate...:)
Re:Is Intel doing the right thing?
on
Itanium Problems
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· Score: 2
DOH! DOH! DOH! SOOOOOO DOH!
I thought the number looked insane (given current PC draws) but was too fuzzy to figure out exactly what was wrong. (And it is pretty darned obvious...)
Still, a draw of over an amp is a little much. But it will be a long way from killing a 15 Amp breaker, for sure.
I will not post when tired...
I will not post when tired...
etc.:)
My guess is about the same time that we get a PM from some part of the country other than La Belle Provence (well, slightly after that, but definitely not until!)
Slashdot Mirror
There is the technology available to avoid spam. Spam blacklists, Bayesian filters, and Challenge-Response systems will handle the vast majority of spam, if not all of it.
As someone who has been a victim of these technologies, I'm not convinced this is the road I'd see us go down. I've had my e-mail blocked just because some other git at my large Canadian ISP has had the temerity to send some spam (even if he was immediately kicked off as soon as this was discovered). As a direct result, my valid e-mail to persons in places like Australia has been affected. If this is your suggestion of a solution, I'm afraid I can't concede that it is a good one.
What is and is not legal in a nation is not an absolute - it is a social dialog between citizens and a decision made on what those citizens as a group wish to allow. For myself, I don't think spam/UCE, junk mail, telephone solicitation, etc. are anything but a waste of my time, my bandwidth, and (in the case of paper variants) trees. I don't see them as a necesary evil. Therefore, I see no issue with banning them. Can one ban them and still have other forms of free expression (if a commercial activity can be considered expression...)? Why of course we can.
I don't want to kill these people. They are (mostly) playing within some sort of legal vacuum or within the law. I'd just change the law and then they'd either quit or get busted.
Whereas in this instance I'm sure you are correct, I have seen programs that have features that.... do a bit more than inteded. We had at one point a need to, under a particular circumstance, erase the contents of a laptop which had been stolen (when it next tried to log-in, which it would automatically do, after having been marked stolen). The programmer, not knowing much about PCMCIA drives and flashcards, went a bit overboard. All we wanted was to erase the data. Our first trial and it took us a couple of days to recover the hardware(!) into a working state once again (he *really* did an number on it). So it is possible to have code exceed your expectations, especially if it is in a partially-understood aspect or area. But I'm sure that the case in point is no accident! Damn! If you can't trust piracy advocates, who can you trust? All my illusions are shattered.... All your systems are belong to us!
Now I KNOW that not all P2P users are copying music - but MOST are.
.... p0rn.
Has anyone actually come up with meaningful statistical studies of what the relative % of P2P uses were (p0rn, music, video, academic, etc)? If so, I haven't seen them and would be glad to have someone post some links. (Yes, I am in fact a lazy bugger...)
Ignoring the obvious question of how you *know* anything about *most* P2P users....
I thought (not being entirely humorous) that a lot of P2P activity was related to one of the real drivers on the net:
Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but Ethernet has a standard for how many segments you can tack together (5 is it?). So if he added a router at the end of along chain, might that not have exceeded what the spec allows? I seem to recall the IT guys at work bitching out some people on our test team for just willy nilly throwing on extra hubs and exceeding just that limit, leading to network issues. But perhaps there is another mechanism that explains this?
You said: Even free speach has it's bounds. For example, I believe that I have the right to kick protestors Off my private property. Since my telephone is on my private property I should think that the same rules apply. I say: Your analogy is weak. You can kick protestors off your property, but in order to do so, they already have to be on it. In the telephone part of the comparison, that's equivalent to hanging up the phone AFTER they've called you. You can do that. You don't have to be polite to these people. I'm not saying the DNC registry is a bad idea, but I don't think this analogy has much merit.
I would enjoy moving to a country where the politicians have their heads on straight. The for the sake of all you hold dear, don't move to Canada. The only reason Mr. Bush's accusedly-authoritarian government isn't deemed second rate to Mr. Chretien's de facto dictatorship is that the USA is much bigger and more noteworthy and we keep our aspirations to quash the voter and free thought at home, and don't export them quite the same way. The Canadian Prime Minister has been gobbling up powers to make himself more potent for the last several years (or at least, the rate of gobbling has accelerated). Media concentration, underfunding of any kind of watchdogs, using the Courts as an excuse, etc.... and we've never had the underlying strength in our Constitution that the US has to begin with. Canada is a place for the thoughtless masses. In the USA, you may think you've got a tough choice for who to vote for. Up here, we might as well not bother as the new de-facto King shall cruise into his new appointment sometime in November... or February... or maybe we'll have two leaders (eh? how does that work?) for a few months.... I really hate the feeling the next election is going to be the first one in which I take the 'refused ballot' option to register a protest. I'm used to voting fot the least of the evils, but it is getting so bad that the least is still almost unconscionable....
... about Bell Canada. Nothing like being "the guy" in the local markets. OTOH, Deregulation of Hydro on Ontario has done such a good job....
Half the problem is the whole issue of competition. If I make two companies compete, both will look for every way they can to compete and make money, including abusing their customer base data. And of course, if every company does it, there isn't a choice. Until someone demonstrates that people are willing to pay extra $$$ for NOT selling this info, then their will be a financial (and therefore competitive) advantage to doing so.
But are consumers that smart? They talk a mean game but most of us look for the cheapest rates and live with the side effects. Sad.... but true.
Not sure if I agree with that. Real conflict still generally build up over time. Even for the Iraq situation the US took quite a few months (a year?) to build up its forces surrounding Iraq before it began the offensive.
I'm curious what background you speak from....
I ask because it takes more than having a pile of brasshats in Ottawa at NDHQ to make us ready to deploy a worthwhile force. Failing procurement and training programs ensure that our vehicles are worn out (Sea King, Leopard, Iltis, F-18) and that our troops don't spend enough time training in primary skills. THESE losses alone are enough to say that six months is not enough lead time to deal with the situation (pardon me for being annoyed, but we had MONTHS to wind up for Afghanistan too and we couldn't even get the right camouflage.... so don't expect me to believe we can mass mobilize or even moderately mobilize in any useful way in short order given our current state of affairs).
The constant criticism of the Canadian military, and calls for multi-billion dollar budget increases, might have some of its roots in the arms industry-
Or from anyone who comprehends how hobbled our military now is. Or from anyone who comprehends the role of an active and sufficient military in maintaining foreign policy impact.
An industry that wants to make us believe that we need loads of high tech equipment to sit rotting in warehouses, ready for multi-billion dollar upgrades 5 years down the road.
As opposed to those who think that our guys regularly being killed by bad equipment (specifically of the flying or not really variety) is acceptable? I'm not talking about billions of dollars of stockpiled cruise missiles. I'm talking about subs that don't leak, rescue and military choppers that don't fall out of the sky from metal fatigue, camouflage of the right colour, night vision gear in appropriate volumes, vaccines that aren't tainted for the troops, enough logistics capacity to deploy to trouble spots even one battalion and supporting elements and maintain them there, etcetera etcetera. No wazoo high tech anywehre in sight.
Military equipment comes at a cost to social programs, healthcare, etc, or alternately higher taxes. Our individual soldiers are paid quite well (I was surprized when a friend recently joined to see the pay rates), have fantastic personal equipment and good bases.
Yeah, right. And can't be deployed to a trouble spot without sticking out there thumbs.... and can't stay there long without foreign logistics support... and can't stay there as a force because of a lack of combat soldiers.... and can't keep the subs at sea because they are falling apart... and can't keep the planes and choppers in the air due to fatigue and age of the airframes.....
I think the camouflage issue was more of a political red herring: There isn't an armed forces on the planet, except perhaps the US, that has camo for every possible battlefield situation.
Possibly true.
The Afghan conflict came up just as a prior batch was destroyed and the new batch was on order. It happens.
No, they had plenty of warning they were going. They had yet to procure the batch of desert camo (which arrived AFTER their return more than six months later). They asked the US "Could you provide us with enough camo?". The US said "send us the sizes, we'll ship you what you need in 7-10 days for the same cost or less than what you'd pay for the homegrown stuff". Guess what? We didn't care enough for our soldiers to spend the money. What was the official reason from NDHQ? Morale problems caused by wearing foreign uniforms.
Let me say that again: Morale problems. BS! BS! BS! Every infanteer I've talked to (and it has been quite a few) has said "if it made me harder to see or be seen or maybe be hit, I'd gladly take camo from anyone...".
Personally I think, given the nature of the military, that some of the elite teams showed true military gumption and they quite literally made their own, creating some of the best camo possible.
A further example of your lack of clear thought. They effectively (by using paint) damaged their existing uniforms (in green) if I'm not sorely mistaken. So the net effect is that we're down some green uniforms, which we have to replace anyway, and our troops didn't enjoy the benefit of having real camouflage but had to build their own (PS - all infanteers generally add their own camouflage anyway.... that isn't an *elite* decision....). So our net financial benefit? Nil. And maybe it would have helped keep some of our troops a bit safer if we'd got them desert camouflage a bit earlier.
Our troops coped. That's because they are good. Our troops coped up until the point where our overstretched forces couldn't support them and they needed to rotate home to get a rest. Then they didn't cope and we bailed out. It isn't the troops I blame for that.
The Sea King is indeed an unfortunate reality, but again compared with the acquisition of a fleet of modern subs, missile frigates, and cormorant helicopters,
Which have proven to be problematic too. When did we acquire modern subs? Refit after refit has failed to get them out and operating? Why? The Australians turned them down as broken, used-up and not cost effective. We tried to make due and my prediction is we'll end up paying more and having less operational time than if we bought some new ones.
it's amazing how much attention the Sea King garners.
Gee, when Sea Kings and Gryphons fall out of the sky from metal fatigue, when the other countries come to see us for how to keep overlong serving C-130's in the air with bandaids, when the CF-18s start experiencing serious stress issues due to age, and when our old equipment is KILLING OUR SOLDIERS at an alarming rate, but our PM can go buy himself new jets at the drop of a hat.... no, that doesn't merit ANY attention, does it?
We are a relatively small country, and the simple reality is that our military will always pale aside the US',
We were a smaller country 50 years ago and we had the third or fourth largest military in the world, especially naval.
I'm perfectly fine with that.
Apparently it doesn't disturb you our soldiers are dying because of antiquated equipment. And apparently it doesn't distrub you that at one point we had 5-10K men deployed on NATO/UN missions, and now the number is in the hundreds? Gee, I wonder if the people we were helping but aren't anymore and the trouble spots we are leaving to someone else are just fine with that?
We went into Afghanistan with troops that were perfect for the non-conventional modern warfare (i.e. snipers), did a great job, and got out after the situation had pretty much settled.
Yes assassinations of senior government ministers and continuing gun battles and insurgent actions tell me things have really calmed down. How could I not have seen that?
And speaking of our snipers: Why has our government blocked them getting decorated by the US for doing a good job?
Actually the causative factor for us leaving Afghanistan was probably the death of 4 soldiers by friendly fire: Given that the conflict was pretty much resolved, such a needless loss couldn't be repeated.
You obviously know a pretty freakin slim amount about military operations. Such casualties may have been avoidable in a perfect world. But military operations always entail risk, even in the safest circumstances. And people are human and screw up. But the screw up there may well have been from the poor training our senior officers have in large excercises (was our last Brigade level excercise in 1987?). They don't get a chance to deal with large unit ops enough to be 100% proficient. Oh, and throw in a NG Air unit pushed to make readiness (again, overstressed, this time on the US side because they are doing stuff other folks used to help out with all by themselves now).
God save us from people like you who live in their comfortable little country and don't care much about our soldiers or the people we send them out to help.
... so of course I have to intrude... :)
;)
Maybe the reason everyone is looking up vi on google is because it is so *intuitive* and *easy-to-learn*?
Then again, I personally think emacs is a tool of the devil....
http://www.textpad.com - all the editor you'll ever need
With all due respect, and I'm a Canadian and I have served in our nation's armed forces, I think this is past tense. The logic of keeping piles of generals handy to suddenly recruit and train a whack of soldiers is kind of broken, given the nature of modern conflicts.
:(
I *wish* we could actually help out some of the places that really need help right now. But we can't even keep a thousand guys in Afghanistan for a year, let alone buy those guys some appropriate camouflage fatigues in a timely fashion. And don't get me started on the Sea King or its replacements....
For a country with some of the best individual soldiers in the world, we've been treating our military like absolute crap for far too long for it not to show
But I guess that's okay as long as our PM gets his new jets.... @@!%%$!!
No, innocent computer game object instances. They are not people (unless the program displays true sentience and self-awareness of which I am highly doubting).
If you can't tell the difference between some crackpot (or terrorist or whatever) with a rifle killing innocent people and some geek blowing up little computer game object instances that have about as much "peopleness" as my car keys, then you are probably one of the people that should not buy these games in the first place - your grip on reality is far too tenuous!
You mustn't have bought the correct expansions! Module S666: The Road To Ruin.... Instead of paying $10, you had to sign a contract for your soul and those of your gaming group. (That's okay, sometimes a DM has to make sacrifices.... errr.... well, maybe in this context that takes on another meaning). ;)
(I also played far too many hours of RPGs in the 80s and probably hacked down more kobolds and orcs than could reasonably be installed in any biosphere)
PS - for the humour impaired, the foregoing was a joke!
...as:
There is a key distinction between reality and make believe.
In reality, I'm not a knight in shining armour, nor am I the evil gun-toting gangster. But both make for interesting excercises of the mind. Sort of like walking a mile in someone else's shoes, even if that someone never could be in the world as we know it.
Lately, with the way these joyless anti-everything doomsayers keep attacking anything that even vaguely titilates or allows us a peaceful harmless (for most mentally together people...) exploration of our darker natures, one begins to feel that imagination and invention are themselves under attack.
Good Lord save us from those that think they know better than we do about what is good for us....
I don't think I want my e-mail tool running anything (macro, external executable, script, etc). And I don't accept document/data formats that allow embeded macros very comfortably (word docs, etc). Yes, it means sometimes I don't see the neat new thing someone sends me. But generally they can (if it matters) send it as plaintext, html or a simple image format.
Gosh, I wish I had some mod points to burn just now.... that's one of the best (even if it is obvious to most of us) points....
I'm doing some work with an African country right now at work. Half the problem is they don't know what they want - so asking them what they think they want and then trying to build it is a bit of a challenge. We try to nail things down, but they just aren't sure and so you end up with issues of requirements/scope creep. You also end up with differing perspectives and a need to regularly reset expectations. Defining requirements and managing the projects may be a pretty serious challenge for some of the developing countries.
In fact, project management and business analysis skills may be a *key* donation to such an effort. Skilled business analysts, workflow experts, and project management people (esp those familiar with OS projects) would be a real asset to any such plan and should be figured into the mechanism. Correctly setting expectations would be an important part of successful and satisfactory development. This won't be a for-pay effort and it will be a distributed effort. Both invoke certain characteristics and limitations.
I have been looking for just these kinds of local or Int'l IT projects, insofar as I would be permitted by NDA's etc. to participate. I think this would be a worthwhile endeavour for the UN and the Open Source community. And it would leverage some of the powers of some open source OSs which run well on some older hardware, as much of the developing world may not be able to afford the latest 3.4GHz P-4 megasystem.
If this does go anywhere, I hope slashdot will provide ongoing coverage.
We use the common public folders to trigger all sorts of neat things - as a gateway to our PHP-wrapped software library, as a gateway to many intranet document repositories, as a gateway to our IT requesting system, etc.
Outlook with Exchange has a lot of function that most people don't use (since they tend to just use mail and calendar).
For the record, I use Opera and (not liking Opera Mail) Pegasus at home. I really don't _like_ outlook, but every company I've worked at has used it.
If your mail was encrypted, even if it got sent out to someone, they would not be able to decrypt it as they wouldn't have the key to do so.
Another good argument for ubiqutious encryption.
You'd better watch out. A stray movement could trigger a shutdown call or e-mail your currently open multi-media stream to your girlfriend, etc.
The other question one might ask is how much manual dexterity do I need to be able to make the alleged thousands of gestures without them being confusing. On the keyboard, I have some force feedback and I'm pretty good with the backspace key. With zero resistance and an ability to accidentally do mouse-gestures with my keyboarding hands, I can see some accuracy issues.
Frankly, I work often 12 hours a day at a keyboard, and I use a mouse. Since I shifted to a high res optical mouse (small movements required) and since I use all the buttons but don't have a death grip and since I use an old MS-Pro ergo keyboard with a raised bottom end (unlike most keyboards), I've had little or no pain in elbows, wrists, or tendons... unlike the bad old days on the QWERTY/top-elevated keyboards and roll-around mice.
When this new technology matures, and if I feel like re-training, it might be interesting, but I can already do a lot with what I have with little discomfort.
But we should be making it available to kids/etc coming up... they don't have a retraining issue and if it avoids some people headed down the nasty RSI path... that's good.
Minor plug: Living with RSI
FYI:
Early touchpad technologies were capacitive. Some laptops used to have capacitive touchpads on them, which made them crap for police use in places where you actually get a winter and might be wearing gloves. So they developed some sort of resistive keypad which, althought probably not zero force, is close enough to it and you can use it with gloves on.
I use Opera, but I don't use gestures for precisely that very reason - I don't like to train myself into using something I won't have available on all my workspaces.
OTOH, I broke my own rule and wired 2 of the 5 buttons on my mouse to fwd and back and use them to flip through web contexts. And Good Lord do I miss the scrollwheel when I don't have it or an app doesn't support it.
Keyboard shortcuts versus Mouse Gestures... both have their strong points. Good browsers (Opera comes to mind) should support both.
:)
OTOH, throw in slow dial up and it doesn't matter what the hell kind of control you have.... you're surfing is limited by the bps of the link rather than your own twitch rate...
DOH! DOH! DOH! SOOOOOO DOH!
:)
I thought the number looked insane (given current PC draws) but was too fuzzy to figure out exactly what was wrong. (And it is pretty darned obvious...)
Still, a draw of over an amp is a little much. But it will be a long way from killing a 15 Amp breaker, for sure.
I will not post when tired...
I will not post when tired...
etc.
My guess is about the same time that we get a PM from some part of the country other than La Belle Provence (well, slightly after that, but definitely not until!)
I thought they'd all been made extinct by the Tar Pits. :)