The surviving bacteria swapped genes from another organism, thus "evolving" to allow them to survive, while the rest of them (quite probably the majority) did not, and died. However, the one(s) that remained, with the resistance, multiplied. Sounds like both to me.
Hopefully about the time everything under the sun becomes resistent to antibiotics we will have microscopic robots running through our blood stream wiping out invaders.
Hmm... looks like the timing on this one is going to be very tight indeed. Good luck to all of us.
Oh.. well, I think the closest you will get to that, if you're running on NT/2K/XP, is to set the priority to "realtime" in the process viewer. That pretty much hands the reins over to your process. That can be bad news though, if the process never blocks, thats the end. Or am I still misunderstanding you.
Some BW figures for SETI@Home, a work-unit is about 340K to download. To upload once completed is really VERY quick, so I doubt its more than a couple of kilobytes. A Pentium 4 1500 might take about 7 or 8 hours to process a work unit. So in practice you might get about 20 work units done a week (assuming you also use the computer for other things). If we assume the BW for up and downloads totals 350K, then you need 7MB per week per computer running S@H. Thats not very much by most people's standards, I don't think.
But it will. Your P2P app will be set to "normal" priority, usually, which means that if it AT ALL has processing to do, the low priority process will actually *essentially* not run at all (it will typically get no more than 1 or 2% of CPU). A higher priority process that has work to do very quickly bumps down the CPU usage of a low priority process to very close to 0. I develop 3D apps, which tend to eagerly take close to 100% of the CPU, and I'm also running Seti@Home.
Its easy to see this happen in process viewer. If our 3D apps are not running, S@H is getting 99% of CPU. If a 3D app is running, it gets 99% of the CPU, and S@H literally gets extremely close to nothing. To give you some idea, my "expected time" to do a work unit drop from about 7 hours to over 300 hours if one of our 3D apps is running the whole time. The CPU time given to a low prio app is almost negligible if something else wants that CPU time.
Your P2P app is probably even better off, because it will have the benefit of the OS responding directly to interrupts from the network card. I'm not sure how it works in practice, or if it works this way, but if the OS is set up to context switch to a higher prio process after processing an interrupt, your P2P app will not even have to wait for the last timeslice of the low prio process to end.
As george carlin used to say all the earth has to do is shake us off like flees
The Earth is just a planet, you know. It doesn't have a will of its own. Its not a living thing. It can't make decisions. It has no desires. It isn't going to magically decide one day to "shake us off like fleas" when its "had enough of us" any more than my own house could throw me out if I threw rubbish everywhere in it. The "ecosystem" does NOT have limitless capabilities to "rebalance itself", because unfortunately it itself is also just subject to the laws of physics. And those laws of physics quite strongly suggest that every living thing on planet Earth CAN be wiped out permanently, for good. "Mother nature" will not come along and save the Earth, because "mother nature" is a fictional concept.
In a millennia or so the ecosystem would cylcle and bring forth a whole plethora of new species
WHY? Why should it? What are your references for this information? Can you prove it, or are you just assuming its true because you've heard people say it so often? Which fundamental system of the planet will ensure that the balance is restored and that new species will be "spewed forth" if we were to trigger a catastrophic irreversible runaway climate change process that destroyed the atmosphere?
Can you prove your statement or is it really just a hopeful guess with nothing whatsoever to back it other than 'well it hasn't happened yet'?
when in fact the more static populations in the west are responsible for far more man-made pollution per capita
This may be true, but other problems have to be considered too. It could be that the Earth would naturally have been capable of "cleaning" the amounts of pollution produced by the more developed nations had it had the full atmosphere-cleaning capability of the rainforests, for example. But within 50 years, these will be gone, and that combined with the pollution & CO2 emissions produced by the developed nations may be catastrophic. So you have to also solve the problem of deforestation.
One of the current problems with the goals of sustainable development seems to be that most people are only capable of looking at one particular problem at a time, e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, overfishing, plankton, global warming, whatever. Each one taken on its own appears to have valid counter-arguments that render it seemingly harmless. But, the real question is, what will be the effects of all these problems COMBINED as each of them starts to peak in the next 20 - 40 years or so? As a species we should be thinking about such things. We can solve these problems, but we have to work at it, and acknowledge that they are problems that should be solved. We have to grow up and stop calling anyone who thinks these things are problems "tree huggers", "bunny huggers" etc. We cannot carry on like we have been, we need a culture change and behaviour change, we need to realise that it WILL inconvenience us to build a system on this planet that allows us to live more than at most another 100 or 200 years.
The Earth will continue on its cycle of renewal long after the last human has passed, or before
Everyone always says this, as if its indisputable fact that somehow doesn't need to be proved, but I'm going to call you on it: PROVE IT. Whats your reference?
Which aspect of the physics of planet Earth ensures that the Earth will always just have a "cycle of renewal"? Which aspect of physics will prevent the "balance" from running away in any particular direction? Is there some "magical force" in the Universe that always rebalances the Earth's climate? "Mother nature"? "Gaia"? (Hint: neither of these exist. These are pseudo-religuous inventions of our culture, self-re-assuring inventions to make us feel better. "Mother nature" is a fictional concept).
All the evidence we have suggests that the Earth is just a pile of rock and lava and various assorted chemicals and other forms of energy. There is no "magical intelligent deity" behind it. When the shit hits the fan, there will be no magical giant hand that reaches down and starts the "cycle of renewal" over. If this planet gets screwed, chances are, its screwed FOR GOOD.
Just because it hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it can't. In fact, we have no evidence at all to suggest that it isn't purely by chance that it hasn't happened yet. Show me the scientific paper that proves, for example, that the greenhouse effect CANNOT runaway on Earth, causing our atmosphere to boil away, like Mars. What magical force prevents it from happening? None whatsoever - to our knowledge, our planet is subject to all the same laws of physics that every other planet is. No exception. If the laws of physics allow it, it can happen.
Your statements are pure conjecture. A made-up fallacy to comfort ourselves. We've all heard these arguments repeated so many times we just assume its true, but I've yet to see any proof of it.
And there is no proof of it, because man does NOT understand the Earth's climate well enough yet. We simply do not know if the Earth can "re-balance" itself. Not one human on the planet can claim to 'know' this, mankind does not have this sort of knowledge. Any such claims are tantamount to religion.
Yes, "Saving the Planet" is a noble cause, but if you want to "preserve the environment", you're ultimately doomed to fail - there is unlikely to be room on this planet for both humans AND an "environment" during the next few hundred years. Rather, we have to be practical about it. We have focus on making life on this planet sustainable FOR US over long periods. We must accept the unfortunate that the natural world will have to be almost entirely destroyed to make room for us. BUT, we need to also accept the fact that we will need to do things like replace (for example) the atmosphere-cleaning "machine" that the rainforests are now, with some suitable large-scale replacement technology. We (humans) are ultimately in control of our own destiny. We CAN determine our future, and our ongoing success, but we have work at it, and we have to start accepting responsibility, not just sit around and wait for "mother nature" to come make everything OK.
Do they sell your info? Most do. They know what, where and when you buy
No, thats paranoid. MOST of the places I've used my CC with, have NOT sold my personal information to anyone. And if they have, they sure haven't given me any reason to suspect that they have - I have only ever received ONE piece of junk (snail) mail that I did not know (for sure, but I have a strong suspicion, and it has nothing to do with my CC) how the company got my info. My main email address I have so far also managed to keep clean of junk (e)mail, just by being careful who I give it to, and creating 'special' email accounts for some places. For example, I use a special email address for Amazon, which has never received anything other than the occasional Amazon newletter.
I mainly use my credit card for (a) ordering books (mostly from Amazon, but also from one South African online bookstore), (b) Paying my website host, and (c) a few miscellaneous retail/food purchases, i.e. restaurants, or occasionally buying clothes.
Whats SPECTRE?
Maybe in the US "Most sell your info", because the law is more corporation-friendly there, but in South Africa it is illegal for a company to sell your personal information without your EXPLICIT, SIGNED (clicking "I agree" does NOT count) and KNOWLEDGABLE consent. That is, they must be able to prove that you reasonably *knew* you were signing over to them the rights to sell your personal info to others. A few places do take chances, because it is usually difficult to find out *who* sold your personal info, but by and large most places are fairly well-behaved around here in this regard. My bank which issued my CC has a strong privacy policy (even though I can say nothing else good about them).
So no, I'm not "just paranoid" about "evil organizations".
The difference here is that, according to this article Eolas might not accept a payout: instead they might exclude IE from using these technologies at all
Its called a "blackmail threat", and the purpose is entirely to add "scare value" to Microsoft in order to drum up the payout that Microsoft will eventually pay to "license" this company's "technologies". The trick is to *really* sound serious about "not allowing Microsoft" to use these technologies - the more Microsoft believes you, the higher you can charge, so at no point can you allow the illusion of the threat to be shattered by providing clues about the real truth.
I mean, think about it, what *reasonable person* would NOT rather just accept a HUGE multi-million $ payout from Microsoft (which will still be peanuts to MS), and never have to work again? You just have to play your cards right.
On the other hand, I don't see what stops the sleazier companies from simply lying about privacy via P3P
This seems to me to be THE major flaw in this idea. The sort of companies who want to gather your personal information and sell it to third parties without your consent are, in most cases, PRECISELY those companies who are are not going to tell they are doing it. If they were at all ethical (*), they wouldn't gather and sell your info to begin with.
(*) Apart from unethical, in many countries other than the US, it is also outright illegal to do so.
Huh? I use my credit card (online and otherwise), AND I also happen to care whether or not corporations are illegally (illegal in my country anyway) selling my personal information to third parties. I don't understand what you're trying to say. That using your credit card is somehow proof that you don't mind your personal information also being sold? I don't see how the two correlate.
Hmm.. OK, that was probably a bit of an unfair statement of mine. Its RedHat 7.3, but with EVERYTHING installed, and although I disabled a few obvious things (like web server and sendmail), it is still loading a fair number of things that it shouldn't be. I've just installed RedHat 8 now.
Yes, time is relative. Windows XP is dog slow at most things, for example (or at least, it FEELS very slow, which is what mainly counts). It boots very quickly though, because they made some effort to optimize the boot process. Linux takes muuuch longer to boot up. Things seem to be very dependent on particular applications, and what the developers bothered to try optimize. Windows Explorer on Windows XP is obviously incredibly slow, and not just slow but stupid and painfully annoying - the tree view, for example, will often just repeatedly flicker and flicker and flicker, redrawing itself the whole time (especially if you're downloading a file to the desktop). WinXP is also very slow just to list the contents of any directory, and just about dies if you have biggish HTML files in a directory, since it starts trying to open them, and also gets ridiculously slow if you have a lot of.URL files in a subdirectory of the current directory. Previous versions of Windows Explorer did not suffer from these problems. XP is molasses. My PIII 666 with Windows 2000 and GeForce2 feels MUCH quicker at just about everything than my P4 1500 with Windows XP and GeForce4 Ti 4600 (both systems have 512 MB RAM). Linux doesn't feel terribly fast either, but some apps are.
I think that because programmers don't bother to optimize anymore, the effects of this are far more than the speed of the CPU. Think about it, 400 MHz is actually DAMN fast hardware, not to mention my 1500 MHz system - the potential is amazing if programmers bothered to optimize anymore.
I'm also keen to know how fast Macs are, since I am considering buying one. I don't really play games, my main activities are C++ development, web page development and internet stuff (web, email).
I don't think this thread is going to produce much in the way of useful answers though. Its probably "faster in some areas and slower in others", like most benchmark-related stuff.
I'll dual-boot windows and linux to get a decent OS between the two of them;).
Well, thats my problem.. two half-decent OSs don't add up to one decent OS:) I know, I've been dual-booting various flavours of both Windows and Linux for at least 6 years now.
I've now started considering buying a Mac next time I buy a computer, because after years of using PCs, it has slowly sunk in that I just don't like PCs. Windows is just horrible, Windows XP makes even a fast computer feel like a 486, and Linux is usually a nuisance to set many things up (getting better though). I don't really play games, and I will still keep my PC around for those few apps I use that need a PC. I would rather spend a bit more if it means I might actually get to enjoy using computers again. PCs suck. And as you say, its a PITA to dual-boot the whole time.
With a Mac, all my current needs from both Windows and Linux would be available at once, without the need to keep booting into the other OS the whole time, so for me I think it makes sense.
They obviously had a means to tell which clients were uncapping their bw. Any rational company would have (a) sent out a warning email, and if the users didn't respond, (b) just terminate their service. The guy running this company most likely just has some "issues" he feels like taking out on someone.
So you're saying the end user should spend half an hour reading a complicated EULA every time they install a piece of software just in case the software producers might be trying to screw them over in some way (like selling their personal information or tracking and selling their browsing habits)?
Have you actually READ any of these EULAs? Most of them are so complex and ambiguously worded over key issues (*), that you need a lawyer just to determine if they are trying to screw you over.
EULA's should be reduced to simple paragraphs that ONLY, and DIRECTLY AND CLEARLY indicate in which ways the software is trying to screw you. All other rights should be set to obvious "default values".
For example, the DEFAULT should be that the software MAY NOT collect personal information about you. ONLY if it does otherwise, then it must inform you, and clearly, that they will be doing so.
Lets face it, everything else in the EULA is just fluff, there is no possible valid purpose for all the fluff for the customer: the ONLY purpose that the fluff can possibly serve is to prevent people from being aware of which ways they are going to get screwed.
A decent EULA need only be as long as, say:
"This software collects personal information about you and sends it back to our servers. We reserve the right to sell this information to third parties. Do you agree?
Of course, if EULAs were so simple, people would see the scummy things in software for what they were. But then, HOW IS THAT A BAD THING??
(*) For example, EULAs often say stuff like "we may change these terms at any time without notifying you", or they say stuff like "we will not sell your personal information, except in cases where we deem necessary".
I wonder if judges read them? If you could catch a few well-chosen judges with some carefully crafted (but legal) EULAs, perhaps the courts would be more likely to take a stance against them.
It couldn't be too obvious or stupid, of course, because that would make it an obviuosly illegitimate EULA (e.g. it can't be something silly like the judge agreeing to be your slave, or something like, because that wouldn't be legal even in a signed contract).
And given that judges are required to have quite "open" lives, the old "we may sell your personal information" probably wouldn't work either, ha ha.
Perhaps something like a "we may bill extra charges on your credit card from time to time" type clause somewhere in the text, say a few paragraphs down. It can't be too obviously hidden, either. The "YES/NO" buttons should also include that usual silly statement about "I have read the EULA and understand and agree to abide by it". Then, a few "extra charges" later (small charges will do), the stupidity of the EULA as a form of contractual agreement may become more obvious to the courts.
If you did manage to catch a judge out like this, the results would probably be best if you got it highly publicised. Most people would probably then agree that EULAs suck.
But I've never seen one go BEEP BEEP BEEP or make anything that sounds like that gravelly noise from the back of your throat
You probably don't work with PCs much then.. PCs will usually go "beep beep beep" if something isn't right when you try boot them (e.g. if the graphics card isn't seated properly, which often happens just from driving a PC around in a car, or taking a PC on a flight). The "gravelly noise" you describe sounds to me like a fan that is going, which happens pretty often with PCs. The OEMs often put in cheap fans to cut a few cents off the cost of the PC. I work at a small software development company (less than 20 people), and even we usually have to replace several PC fans a year.
Although neither of these problems have anything to do with Windows, they ARE general problems with PCs, and in the latter case directly relate to the common practice of building PCs "cheap and shit". I can't comment on the quality of Apple's hardware though, having not worked with any since about 15 years ago.
wxWindows does not have any actual template class in it. They do however have some "pseudo-template" classes, involves macros. But this forms a very tiny part of wxWindows anyway, so it certainly shouldn't scare anyone off.
I recently decided to use wxWindows for a project I'm working on, and I like it a lot. It has a nice, clean design, and even if you don't need cross-platfrom, it hides the pain of having to use Win32.
I like the "native look and feel" feature of wxWindows, but I do think your argument that not having that is "ludicrous", is ludicrous. Your arguments in general are more religion-based (generally "this is just obviously the best for everything" type arguments) than technical-based (usually "different tools are better for different purposes, use the best for the job" type arguments). "far superior" to the Java approach? Please, lets be level-headed here, the different approaches have different pros and cons. We don't live in such a black-and-white world.
On a side note, why does GTK have such a pathetic limit on the number of elements in a list box (2000)? For my application, I need a list box with lots of elements, typically around 20K to 50K elements. There is absolutely no reason why a list box control should not be able to handle this. I've already added over 700,000 elements to the Windows list box and it handles it quickly and with no problems whatsoever.
Something weird happened to that above post, parts of it seem repeated in odd ways:) Slightly over-zealous cut-n-paste of my own post, or something.
Just a question, ever since I moved (from MWeb) to ABSA internet, I seem to get a lot of "document contains no data" error on slashdot. Whats weird is that slashdot is the ONLY web page I have problems with now, everywere else everything works as normal. Do you find you get strange errors from/. from within SA?
Hmm.. first off, sorry for accusing you of being "just another" "country is going to the dogs" whining SAn white person. Most white people I know whine and whine about 'how bad things are' but all they are doing is regurgitating what the people around them are saying without actually having the vaguest bit of facts to back up the statement other than the vague "uh, gee, well, look at the Rand" and "crime is high". But you at least appear to have "done your homework":).
You make some very good points, although I don't completely agree with everything you say.
There have been more recent bombings but they were not apartheit related, so I wanted to avoid referencing them, but you are right, terrorism does still occur. Part of my slight mis-perception on that though comes from the fact that I live in Pretoria, the area more affected by apartheid terrorism, while the Cape is mostly affected by the more recent bombings, which I guess is just further away in my mind.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that all or even most of the nasty things perpetrated by the apartheid government are still being perpetrated, but yes, nasty things are still happening. Re: Army + matric party, yes, our society is quite sick, unfortunately, that such ridiculous things happen. It is sad. And it has for some reason or another become cultural, i.e. people are just behaving like that (e.g. baby rapes etc, which are a tiny minority of cases, sure, but it doesn't make it any less sick that it happens). Blacks blame apartheid for how sick our society has become, while whites often (while blacks are not around, lets admit it) argue, basically, that "blacks are just savages", "thats their culture" etc. I don't know where the truth lies, but I don't buy either argument. I certainly don't buy the white argument, because before Europeans arrived on this continent, the black culture that had been here for hundreds of years was NOT a "sick society", they were a relatively peaceful (apart from regular low-scale tribal territorial/power conflict) agricultural society. Whatever has caused our society to degenerate is something that happened in the last one or two hundred years. Even the sick "initiation practices" that go on now are not representative of what initiation practices were before white people came here. I'm not trying to point blame, just saying that the usual white argument you hear (when blacks aren't around) that "black people are just like that" does not hold water. Whatever it is, there is no excuse for it.
I enjoy the way you compare the economic situation of a country enduring sanctions to one which became the darling of the world. btw inflation is officially at over 15% we could well end up were we were, even though circumstance are vastly different
This is a good point, yes, but one must also keep in mind that even though we are politically the "darling of the world" since 1994, we are not economically, there is a vast difference. In spite of positive sentiment about the "new South Africa", foreign investors still have absolutely no confidence in this country. And we are also now suffering the effects of the brain-drain, and will be for some time. Personally, I think the effects of the brain-drain are far worse than sanctions, but then, I'm not an economist.
Besides that debt can be reduced by selling off the assets eg Eskom, Telkom, Transnet
A very good point.
Our government's Aids policy is a complete joke. I cannot argue with you here. I believe that large-scale education campaigns (in every school, every village, every township etc) is the way to go here. We obviously can't wait for Mbeki to do something. But nobody in our government seems to have the leadership skills to just stand up and implement the things that need to be implemented. One almost gets the impression that they are all just standing around waiting for someone else to do something about it. This is however not something we can really use to compare our current government to the previous government. Who is to say what they would have done if they had been faced with the Aids epidemic. They probably would have had education campaigns for whites, and just spent nothing on the blacks, letting them all infect each other and die off. But that is speculation. I believe the current governments policies have more to do with sheer incompetence than with malice.
Poverty does feed into crime, but I recently decided that a lot of crime has nothing to do with poverty, eg cash in transit heists, knocking offmillions at a time is not about poverty, greed perhaps, but not poverty
It is true that some crime is committed out of greed. This will always be true, it is true even in the richest nations. But I believe that such crime less than 30% of cases. The facts are, statistically, wherever you go in the world, that crime rate and poverty are linked (
Hmm.. first off, sorry for accusing you of being "just another" "country is going to the dogs" whining SAn white person. Most white people I know whine and whine about 'how bad things are' but all they are doing is regurgitating what the people around them are saying without actually having the vaguest bit of facts to back up the statement other than the vague "uh, gee, well, look at the Rand" and "crime is high". But you at least appear to have "done your homework":).
You make some very good points, although I don't completely agree with everything you say.
There have been more recent bombings but they were not apartheit related, so I wanted to avoid referencing them, but you are right, terrorism does still occur. Part of my slight mis-perception on that though comes from the fact that I live in Pretoria, the area more affected by apartheid terrorism, while the Cape is mostly affected by the more recent bombings, which I guess is just further away in my mind.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that all or even most of the nasty things perpetrated by the apartheid government are still being perpetrated, but yes, nasty things are still happening. Re: Army + matric party, yes, our society is quite sick, unfortunately, that such ridiculous things happen. It is sad. And it has for some reason or another become cultural, i.e. people are just behaving like that (e.g. baby rapes etc, which are a tiny minority of cases, sure, but it doesn't make it any less sick that it happens). Blacks blame apartheid for how sick our society has become, while whites often (while blacks are not around, lets admit it) argue, basically, that "blacks are just savages", "thats their culture" etc. I don't know where the truth lies, but I don't buy either argument. I certainly don't buy the white argument, because before Europeans arrived on this continent, the black culture that had been here for hundreds of years was NOT a "sick society", they were a relatively peaceful (apart from regular low-scale tribal territorial/power conflict) agricultural society. Whatever has caused our society to degenerate is something that happened in the last one or two hundred years. Even the sick "initiation practices" that go on now are not representative of what initiation practices were before white people came here. I'm not trying to point blame, just saying that the usual white argument you hear (when blacks aren't around) that "black people are just like that" does not hold water. Whatever it is, there is no excuse for it.
I enjoy the way you compare the economic situation of a country enduring sanctions to one which became the darling of the world. btw inflation is officially at over 15% we could well end up were we were, even though circumstance are vastly different
This is a good point, yes, but one must also keep in mind that even though we are politically the "darling of the world" since 1994, we are not economically, there is a vast difference. In spite of positive sentiment about the "new South Africa", foreign investors still have absolutely no confidence in this country. And we are also now suffering the effects of the brain-drain, and will be for some time. Personally, I think the effects of the brain-drain are far worse than sanctions, but then, I'm not an economist.
Besides that debt can be reduced by selling off the assets eg Eskom, Telkom, Transnet
A very good point.
Our government's Aids policy is a complete joke. I cannot argue with you here. I believe that large-scale education campaigns (in every school, every village, every township etc) is the way to go here. We obviously can't wait for Mbeki to do something. But nobody in our government seems to have the leadership skills to just stand up and implement the things that need to be implemented. One almost gets the impression that they are all just standing around waiting for someone else to do something about it. This is however not something we can really use to compare our current government to the previous government. Who is to say what they would have done if they had been faced with the Aids epidemic. They probably would have had education campaigns for whites, and just spent nothing on the blacks, letting them all infect each other and die off. But that is speculation. I believe the current governments policies have more to do with sheer incompetence than with malice.
Poverty does feed into crime, but I recently decided that a lot of crime has nothing to do with poverty, eg cash in transit heists, knocking offmillions at a time is not about poverty, greed perhaps, but not poverty
It is true that some crime is committed out of greed. This will always be true, it is true even in the richest nations. But I believe that such crime less than 30% of cases. The facts are, statistically, wherever you go in the world, that crime rate and poverty are linked (and statistically, even more so in places where the discrepancy between rich and poor is greater, such as in SA). My personal feeling is that if we (somehow magically) eliminated poverty in SA tomorrow, that within two to three years the crime rate would drop by approximately 70%. The remaining percentage would come down to greed etc, which we cannot get rid of anyway.
There is another point I'd like to make though regarding such "greed crimes", and that is that if the overall crime rate was less (the day-to-day "poverty" crimes that are keeping our police force busy), then the police would also have more time and resources to spend fighting white-collar crime, "greed" crimes etc, and thus the "greed crimes" percentage would also decrease.
live in fear of neither
Of course:) We would all rather live in fear of neither. But neither the problems or the solutions are simple. We need to do a lot of work in this country to solve these problems. But I would rather try help solve them than just leave and go live in a 1st world country. At the most basic levels, we need to tackle widespread poverty, and secondly we need to tackle widespread education (normal book and school type education) quality issues. Like it or not, we do need "transformation", because even 8 years on we are still living in a world where whites dominate the economy and are the "educated elite", and unless we can genuinely transform the country (i.e. actually educate the black people that get affirmative action jobs), the blacks will not generally perceive things to have changed, and if a large enough proportion of the black population starts to feel like "whites still dominate" and that "things haven't changed", then we may end up being Zimbabwe version 2. We need to solve these problems.
How many people are detained in prison awaiting trial, because the cant afford bail, I'm not a betting man but some would put money on it, that it is a heck of a lot more than 10 000. What about them?
Its true, of course, but this cannot really be compared to detaining 10 000 people simply because they might be involved in trying to topple apartheid. Also, the police are probably not actively torturing and beating the detainees, as they did with the Soweto uprising prisoners (at least, nowhere near the same level). Additionally, many of the detained that were tortured and beatn were schoolchildren. It's an entirely different problem, really, and once again it comes down to inadequate resources to cope with the excessive scale of the problem, rather than deliberate malice. The previous government tried to imprison and torture activists, while the current government is trying to do things right, trying to improve the judicial system, to cope with the backlog etc. I remember not too long ago the court employees over here even decided personally to put in many extra hours to try cope with the backlog.
Well I bet the half a million laid off over the last few years don't see themselves as better off, you're going to tell me that they are white
It may be useful to keep in mind that the same thing is happening all over the world. Over a million people have lost their jobs since September 11 in the US alone. The world economy is slowing, or one might rather look at it as, re-adjusting to reality.
The job situation may have deteriorated in SA, but even so, white people are still fussy about the types of jobs they are willing to take. When last did you see a white garbageman? White toilet cleaner? White petrol pump attendant? I haven't seen a single one of any of the above in Pretoria. This particular aspect of white culture in South Africa is unique in the world, as far as I know. In other rich countries like the US, even skilled people like programmers are willing to swallow their pride and flip burgers for a while if necessary. We have developed a "cultural expectation" of not working shitty jobs, and by and large, by utilizing emmigration, we tend to be able to meet that expectation.
Aids deaths, Aids orphans, Zimbabwe.. problems that will really start to hit us during the next ten years, you are right. The next 10 - 15 years could well be the most challenging period ever for the new South Africa. I've made up my mind though to stay here and help.
That's a result of Thabo Mbeki's "quiet diplomacy". SAsupplies Zimbabwe with electricity, SA has loaned them big money, if SA wanted to they could have yanked the leash and Zimbabwe wouldn't have got into such a deep mess
I personally don't think that Mbeki has any power whatsoever over what is happening and what is going to still happen in Zimbabwe. Everyone is blaming Mbeki for not doing anything, everyone is saying "Mbeki should do something". But Mbeki is not in control here, Mugabe is. Mugabe is the one with the agenda, the one pulling the strings, the one making the decisions, and lets face it: he does not care what anyone thinks of it. The fact is, if Mbeki opts for "quiet diplomacy", it will not work (as can be seen, Mugabe ignores it). If Mbeki were to "get tough on Zimbabwe", what do you think would happen? Do you HONESTLY think Mugabe would say "Oh gee I've seen the error of my ways, I'm changing"? No way. Mugabe would just stand up and say "Mbeki is obviously just a porn of the collonial British government, and we're going our own way, with or without SA". Thats a fact. If Mbeki pull the plug on electricity, on economic loans, all that would happen is that Zimbabwe would deteriorate much faster. I mean, think about, if Mugabe really cared about his economy turning to shit, would he still be pursing his current course of action? No. Clearly he doesn't care.
That is my rather hopeless-looking analysis of the Zimbabwe situation. I truly believe that SA does not really have any power here, unless we go USA-style and invade Zimbabwe. Which isn't going to happen, and its probably a bad idea anyway.
You make the point of white people complaining and emigrating problem is that if things get too bad people do emigrate, and the people that can emigrate are exactly the people the country needs to stay, its all the fault of ANC who are only to happy to see this happen, Australia hasplenty of ex- SA's already, New Zealand is bit easier to get into, and Canada just loves the doctors it gets at a bargain rate. As I said they love this situation. SA on the other hand does not love this situation, you say so what when some white business mangets hijacked, complains, nothing gets done, you telhim to emigrate, guess what he will emigrate!
As far as I can tell, most SAns are not emigrating because they were victims of crime. They are emigrating because they are looking for a more comfortable lifestyle in a country which is more "sorted out" and has fewer problems. Emigration appears to have become a cultural thing, driven these days almost entirely out of its own momentum. What I mean by that is, its become the "norm" to emigrate, people now do it simply because its the "norm", without even paying much consideration to why. When you graduate from University, its almost a case of people ask you not if you are going, but where you are going. When people ask me and I tell them I'm staying, they look at me like there is something wrong with me.
Don't get me wrong, I think the brain drain is a huge problem economically. I noticed something interesting, up until now its mostly been whites leaving, and the government has just stood by quietly and let it happen, without saying anything. A new problem is emerging though.. now that Universities are starting to graduate skilled black people, many of those black people are now also emigrating, for pretty much all the same reasons the whites are leaving. And now suddenly, Mboweni stands up the other day going off about how big a problem the brain-drain suddenly is, and how he thinks the government should be working much harder at trying to keep skilled workers here. Shock, horror, black people are leaving too, and suddenly "its a problem":(
One thing that annoys me about the emigrants is that they appear to be the biggest patriots. They seem to be the ones who are saying the loudest how much they love SA. "I love SA, I could just never live there" --- WTF? Thats bull, in my opinion. If you emigrate, its because you think that "somewhere else is nicer", period. They act like refugees or something. If you think "somewhere else is nicer", then don't put up a website saying "I love South Africa, I would like to live there again someday". They leave for selfish reasons. They go provide their (relatively) cheap labour to help already-developed nations develop even further. They leave the rest of us behind to work 10 times harder to try achieve the same levels of economic growth. And then they have the cheek to say that when we've done all the hard work solving the major problems in SA and its starting to become prosperous, then they'll move back and come enjoy the fruits of our labour? I don't like it at all.
Personally, I think most of them with non-temporary visas will never come back. They'll go to NZ, eventually they'll find a nice girl there, get married, have kids there, there kids will have kids there, and they'll basically become genuine New Zealanders. Or Canadians. Or Australians, whatever. I think the "I love South Africa" sentiment will eventually begin to fade. If you live somewhere else long enough, you start to grow roots. And every day you spend there, the roots there grow deeper. The majority of those people are gone from SA, and they are gone permanently. Most of them probably will never even visit here on holiday again, unless its to see family.
I don't like the brain-drain, but how can we stop it? Its become cultural. We've developed an "anywhere but here" mentality that pervades society, it pervades our educational institutions.
The R40billion arms deals have a lot to do with politics, but one big reason for it is to encourage foreign investment. In exchange for money spent in the various European countries, those companies are required not only to spend a certain amount directly on products of SAn companies, but also in various projects for teaching SAn companies various skills. Personally I think the money could be much better spent (e.g. on schools), but the spending motivations are often polical.
eliminated poverty in SA tomorrow, that within two years the crime rate would drop by approximately 70%. The remaining percentage would come down to greed etc, which we cannot get rid of anyway.
There is another point I'd like to make though regarding such "greed crimes", and that is that if the overall crime rate was less (the day-to-day "poverty" crimes that are keeping our police force busy), then the police would also have more time and resources to spend fighting white-collar crime, "greed" crimes etc, and thus the "greed crimes" percentage would also decrease.
live in fear of neither
Of course:) We would all rather live in fear of neither. But neither the problems or the solutions are simple. We need to do a lot of work in this country to solve these problems. But I would rather try help solve them than just leave and go live in a 1st world country. At the most basic levels, we need to tackle widespread poverty, and secondly we need to tackle widespread education (normal book and school type education) quality issues. Like it or not, we do need "transformation", because even 8 years on we are still living in a world where whites dominate the economy and are the "educated elite", and unless we can genuinely transform the country (i.e. actually educate the black people that get affirmative action jobs), the blacks will not generally perceive things to have changed, and if a large enough proportion of the black population starts to feel like "whites still dominate" and that "things haven't changed", then we may end up being Zimbabwe version 2. We need to solve these problems.
How many people are detained in prison awaiting trial, because the cant afford bail, I'm not a betting man but some would put money on it, that it is a heck of a lot more than 10 000. What about them?
Its true, of course, but this cannot really be compared to detaining 10 000 people simply because they might be involved in trying to topple apartheid. Also, the police are probably not actively torturing and beating the detainees, as they did with the Soweto uprising prisoners (at least, nowhere near the same level). Additionally, many of the detained that were tortured and beatn were schoolchildren. It's an entirely different problem, really, and once again it comes down to inadequate resources to cope with the excessive scale of the problem, rather than deliberate malice. The previous government tried to imprison and torture activists, while the current government is trying to do things right, trying to improve the judicial system, to cope with the backlog etc. I remember not too long ago the court employees over here even decided personally to put in many extra hours to try cope with the backlog.
Well I bet the half a million laid off over the last few years don't see themselves as better off, you're going to tell me that they are white
It may be useful to keep in mind that the same thing is happening all over the world. Over a million people have lost their jobs since September 11 in the US alone. The world economy is slowing, or one might rather look at it as, re-adjusting to reality.
The job situation may have deteriorated in SA, but even so, white people are still fussy about the types of jobs they are willing to take. When last did you see a white garbageman? White toilet cleaner? White petrol pump attendant? I haven't seen a single one of any of the above in Pretoria. This particular aspect of white culture in South Africa is unique in the world, as far as I know. In other rich countries like the US, even skilled people like programmers are willing to swallow their pride and flip burgers for a while if necessary. We have developed a "cultural expectation" of not working shitty jobs, and by and large, by utilizing emmigration, we tend to be able to meet that expectation.
Aids deaths, Aids orphans, Zimbabwe.. problems that will really start to hit us during the next ten years, you are right. The next 10 - 15 years could well be the most challenging period ever for the new South Africa. I've made up my mind though to stay here and help.
That's a result of Thabo Mbeki's "quiet diplomacy". SAsupplies Zimbabwe with electricity, SA has loaned them big money, if SA wanted to they could have yanked the leash and Zimbabwe wouldn't have got into such a deep mess
I personally don't think that Mbeki has any power whatsoever over what is happening and what is going to still happen in Zimbabwe. Everyone is blaming Mbeki for not doing anything, everyone is saying "Mbeki should do something". But Mbeki is not in control here, Mugabe is. Mugabe is the one with the agenda, the one pulling the strings, the one making the decisions, and lets face it: he does not care what anyone thinks of it. The fact is, if Mbeki opts for "quiet diplomacy", it will not work (as can be seen, Mugabe ignores it). If Mbeki were to "get tough on Zimbabwe", what do you think would happen? Do you HONESTLY think Mugabe would say "Oh gee I've seen the error of my ways, I'm changing"? No way. Mugabe would just stand up and say "Mbeki is obviously just a porn of the collonial British government, and we're going our own way, with or without SA". Thats a fact. If Mbeki pull the plug on electricity, on economic loans, all that would happen is that Zimbabwe would deteriorate much faster. I mean, think about, if Mugabe really cared about his economy turning to shit, would he still be pursing his current course of action? No. Clearly he doesn't care.
That is my rather hopeless-looking analysis of the Zimbabwe situation. I truly believe that SA does not really have any power here, unless we go USA-style and invade Zimbabwe. Which isn't going to happen, and its probably a bad idea anyway.
You make the point of white people complaining and emigrating problem is that if things get too bad people do emigrate, and the people that can emigrate are exactly the people the country needs to stay, its all the fault of ANC who are only to happy to see this happen, Australia hasplenty of ex- SA's already, New Zealand is bit easier to get into, and Canada just loves the doctors it gets at a bargain rate. As I said they love this situation. SA on the other hand does not love this situation, you say so what when some white business mangets hijacked, complains, nothing gets done, you telhim to emigrate, guess what he will emigrate!
As far as I can tell, most SAns are not emigrating because they were victims of crime. They are emigrating because they are looking for a more comfortable lifestyle in a country which is more "sorted out" and has fewer problems. Emigration appears to have become a cultural thing, driven these days almost entirely out of its own momentum. What I mean by that is, its become the "norm" to emigrate, people now do it simply because its the "norm", without even paying much consideration to why. When you graduate from University, its almost a case of people ask you not if you are going, but where you are going. When people ask me and I tell them I'm staying, they look at me like there is something wrong with me.
Don't get me wrong, I think the brain drain is a huge problem economically. I noticed something interesting, up until now its mostly been whites leaving, and the government has just stood by quietly and let it happen, without saying anything. A new problem is emerging though.. now that Universities are starting to graduate skilled black people, many of those black people are now also emigrating, for pretty much all the same reasons the whites are leaving. And now suddenly, Mboweni stands up the other day going off about how big a problem the brain-drain suddenly is, and how he thinks the government should be working much harder at trying to keep skilled workers here. Shock, horror, black people are leaving too, and suddenly "its a problem":(
One thing that annoys me about the emigrants is that they appear to be the biggest patriots. They seem to be the ones who are saying the loudest how much they love SA. "I love SA, I could just never live there" --- WTF? Thats bull, in my opinion. If you emigrate, its because you think that "somewhere else is nicer", period. They act like refugees or something. If you think "somewhere else is nicer", then don't put up a website saying "I love South Africa, I would like to live there again someday". They leave for selfish reasons. They go provide their (relatively) cheap labour to help already-developed nations develop even further. They leave the rest of us behind to work 10 times harder to try achieve the same levels of economic growth. And then they have the cheek to say that when we've done all the hard work solving the major problems in SA and its starting to become prosperous, then they'll move back and come enjoy the fruits of our labour? I don't like it at all.
Personally, I think most of them with non-temporary visas will never come back. They'll go to NZ, eventually they'll find a nice girl there, get married, have kids there, their kids will have kids there, and they'll basically become genuine New Zealanders. Or Canadians, or Australians, whatever. I think the "I love South Africa" sentiment will eventually begin to fade. If you live somewhere else long enough, you start to grow roots. And every day you spend there, the roots there grow deeper. The majority of those people are gone from SA, and they are gone permanently. Most of them probably will never even visit here on holiday again, unless its to see family.
I don't like the brain-drain, but how can we stop it? Its become cultural. We've developed an "anywhere but here" mentality that pervades society, it pervades our educational institutions.
The R40billion arms deals have a lot to do with politics, but one big reason for it is to encourage foreign investment. In exchange for money spent in the various European countries, those companies are required not only to spend a certain amount directly on products of SAn companies, but also in various projects for teaching SAn companies various skills. Personally I think the money could be much better spent (e.g. on schools), but the spending motivations are often polical. But back to comparing with apartheid, they are in this respect certainly no worse than the previous government, who drained this country dry spending billions and billions on projects like the Rooivalk, the nuclear program etc.
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The surviving bacteria swapped genes from another organism, thus "evolving" to allow them to survive, while the rest of them (quite probably the majority) did not, and died. However, the one(s) that remained, with the resistance, multiplied. Sounds like both to me.
Hopefully about the time everything under the sun becomes resistent to antibiotics we will have microscopic robots running through our blood stream wiping out invaders.
Hmm ... looks like the timing on this one is going to be very tight indeed. Good luck to all of us.
Oh.. well, I think the closest you will get to that, if you're running on NT/2K/XP, is to set the priority to "realtime" in the process viewer. That pretty much hands the reins over to your process. That can be bad news though, if the process never blocks, thats the end. Or am I still misunderstanding you.
Some BW figures for SETI@Home, a work-unit is about 340K to download. To upload once completed is really VERY quick, so I doubt its more than a couple of kilobytes. A Pentium 4 1500 might take about 7 or 8 hours to process a work unit. So in practice you might get about 20 work units done a week (assuming you also use the computer for other things). If we assume the BW for up and downloads totals 350K, then you need 7MB per week per computer running S@H. Thats not very much by most people's standards, I don't think.
But it will. Your P2P app will be set to "normal" priority, usually, which means that if it AT ALL has processing to do, the low priority process will actually *essentially* not run at all (it will typically get no more than 1 or 2% of CPU). A higher priority process that has work to do very quickly bumps down the CPU usage of a low priority process to very close to 0. I develop 3D apps, which tend to eagerly take close to 100% of the CPU, and I'm also running Seti@Home.
Its easy to see this happen in process viewer. If our 3D apps are not running, S@H is getting 99% of CPU. If a 3D app is running, it gets 99% of the CPU, and S@H literally gets extremely close to nothing. To give you some idea, my "expected time" to do a work unit drop from about 7 hours to over 300 hours if one of our 3D apps is running the whole time. The CPU time given to a low prio app is almost negligible if something else wants that CPU time.
Your P2P app is probably even better off, because it will have the benefit of the OS responding directly to interrupts from the network card. I'm not sure how it works in practice, or if it works this way, but if the OS is set up to context switch to a higher prio process after processing an interrupt, your P2P app will not even have to wait for the last timeslice of the low prio process to end.
As george carlin used to say all the earth has to do is shake us off like flees
The Earth is just a planet, you know. It doesn't have a will of its own. Its not a living thing. It can't make decisions. It has no desires. It isn't going to magically decide one day to "shake us off like fleas" when its "had enough of us" any more than my own house could throw me out if I threw rubbish everywhere in it. The "ecosystem" does NOT have limitless capabilities to "rebalance itself", because unfortunately it itself is also just subject to the laws of physics. And those laws of physics quite strongly suggest that every living thing on planet Earth CAN be wiped out permanently, for good. "Mother nature" will not come along and save the Earth, because "mother nature" is a fictional concept.
In a millennia or so the ecosystem would cylcle and bring forth a whole plethora of new species
WHY? Why should it? What are your references for this information? Can you prove it, or are you just assuming its true because you've heard people say it so often? Which fundamental system of the planet will ensure that the balance is restored and that new species will be "spewed forth" if we were to trigger a catastrophic irreversible runaway climate change process that destroyed the atmosphere?
Can you prove your statement or is it really just a hopeful guess with nothing whatsoever to back it other than 'well it hasn't happened yet'?
when in fact the more static populations in the west are responsible for far more man-made pollution per capita
This may be true, but other problems have to be considered too. It could be that the Earth would naturally have been capable of "cleaning" the amounts of pollution produced by the more developed nations had it had the full atmosphere-cleaning capability of the rainforests, for example. But within 50 years, these will be gone, and that combined with the pollution & CO2 emissions produced by the developed nations may be catastrophic. So you have to also solve the problem of deforestation.
One of the current problems with the goals of sustainable development seems to be that most people are only capable of looking at one particular problem at a time, e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, overfishing, plankton, global warming, whatever. Each one taken on its own appears to have valid counter-arguments that render it seemingly harmless. But, the real question is, what will be the effects of all these problems COMBINED as each of them starts to peak in the next 20 - 40 years or so? As a species we should be thinking about such things. We can solve these problems, but we have to work at it, and acknowledge that they are problems that should be solved. We have to grow up and stop calling anyone who thinks these things are problems "tree huggers", "bunny huggers" etc. We cannot carry on like we have been, we need a culture change and behaviour change, we need to realise that it WILL inconvenience us to build a system on this planet that allows us to live more than at most another 100 or 200 years.
This site provides some interesting food for thought: http://smile.jcon.org/sustain/b1/introduction/para dise/ParadiseLost_Part3.html.
The Earth will continue on its cycle of renewal long after the last human has passed, or before
Everyone always says this, as if its indisputable fact that somehow doesn't need to be proved, but I'm going to call you on it: PROVE IT. Whats your reference?
Which aspect of the physics of planet Earth ensures that the Earth will always just have a "cycle of renewal"? Which aspect of physics will prevent the "balance" from running away in any particular direction? Is there some "magical force" in the Universe that always rebalances the Earth's climate? "Mother nature"? "Gaia"? (Hint: neither of these exist. These are pseudo-religuous inventions of our culture, self-re-assuring inventions to make us feel better. "Mother nature" is a fictional concept).
All the evidence we have suggests that the Earth is just a pile of rock and lava and various assorted chemicals and other forms of energy. There is no "magical intelligent deity" behind it. When the shit hits the fan, there will be no magical giant hand that reaches down and starts the "cycle of renewal" over. If this planet gets screwed, chances are, its screwed FOR GOOD.
Just because it hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it can't. In fact, we have no evidence at all to suggest that it isn't purely by chance that it hasn't happened yet. Show me the scientific paper that proves, for example, that the greenhouse effect CANNOT runaway on Earth, causing our atmosphere to boil away, like Mars. What magical force prevents it from happening? None whatsoever - to our knowledge, our planet is subject to all the same laws of physics that every other planet is. No exception. If the laws of physics allow it, it can happen.
Your statements are pure conjecture. A made-up fallacy to comfort ourselves. We've all heard these arguments repeated so many times we just assume its true, but I've yet to see any proof of it.
And there is no proof of it, because man does NOT understand the Earth's climate well enough yet. We simply do not know if the Earth can "re-balance" itself. Not one human on the planet can claim to 'know' this, mankind does not have this sort of knowledge. Any such claims are tantamount to religion.
Yes, "Saving the Planet" is a noble cause, but if you want to "preserve the environment", you're ultimately doomed to fail - there is unlikely to be room on this planet for both humans AND an "environment" during the next few hundred years. Rather, we have to be practical about it. We have focus on making life on this planet sustainable FOR US over long periods. We must accept the unfortunate that the natural world will have to be almost entirely destroyed to make room for us. BUT, we need to also accept the fact that we will need to do things like replace (for example) the atmosphere-cleaning "machine" that the rainforests are now, with some suitable large-scale replacement technology. We (humans) are ultimately in control of our own destiny. We CAN determine our future, and our ongoing success, but we have work at it, and we have to start accepting responsibility, not just sit around and wait for "mother nature" to come make everything OK.
Do they sell your info? Most do. They know what, where and when you buy
No, thats paranoid. MOST of the places I've used my CC with, have NOT sold my personal information to anyone. And if they have, they sure haven't given me any reason to suspect that they have - I have only ever received ONE piece of junk (snail) mail that I did not know (for sure, but I have a strong suspicion, and it has nothing to do with my CC) how the company got my info. My main email address I have so far also managed to keep clean of junk (e)mail, just by being careful who I give it to, and creating 'special' email accounts for some places. For example, I use a special email address for Amazon, which has never received anything other than the occasional Amazon newletter.
I mainly use my credit card for (a) ordering books (mostly from Amazon, but also from one South African online bookstore), (b) Paying my website host, and (c) a few miscellaneous retail/food purchases, i.e. restaurants, or occasionally buying clothes.
Whats SPECTRE?
Maybe in the US "Most sell your info", because the law is more corporation-friendly there, but in South Africa it is illegal for a company to sell your personal information without your EXPLICIT, SIGNED (clicking "I agree" does NOT count) and KNOWLEDGABLE consent. That is, they must be able to prove that you reasonably *knew* you were signing over to them the rights to sell your personal info to others. A few places do take chances, because it is usually difficult to find out *who* sold your personal info, but by and large most places are fairly well-behaved around here in this regard. My bank which issued my CC has a strong privacy policy (even though I can say nothing else good about them).
So no, I'm not "just paranoid" about "evil organizations".
The difference here is that, according to this article Eolas might not accept a payout: instead they might exclude IE from using these technologies at all
Its called a "blackmail threat", and the purpose is entirely to add "scare value" to Microsoft in order to drum up the payout that Microsoft will eventually pay to "license" this company's "technologies". The trick is to *really* sound serious about "not allowing Microsoft" to use these technologies - the more Microsoft believes you, the higher you can charge, so at no point can you allow the illusion of the threat to be shattered by providing clues about the real truth.
I mean, think about it, what *reasonable person* would NOT rather just accept a HUGE multi-million $ payout from Microsoft (which will still be peanuts to MS), and never have to work again? You just have to play your cards right.
On the other hand, I don't see what stops the sleazier companies from simply lying about privacy via P3P
This seems to me to be THE major flaw in this idea. The sort of companies who want to gather your personal information and sell it to third parties without your consent are, in most cases, PRECISELY those companies who are are not going to tell they are doing it. If they were at all ethical (*), they wouldn't gather and sell your info to begin with.
(*) Apart from unethical, in many countries other than the US, it is also outright illegal to do so.
Huh? I use my credit card (online and otherwise), AND I also happen to care whether or not corporations are illegally (illegal in my country anyway) selling my personal information to third parties. I don't understand what you're trying to say. That using your credit card is somehow proof that you don't mind your personal information also being sold? I don't see how the two correlate.
Hmm .. OK, that was probably a bit of an unfair statement of mine. Its RedHat 7.3, but with EVERYTHING installed, and although I disabled a few obvious things (like web server and sendmail), it is still loading a fair number of things that it shouldn't be. I've just installed RedHat 8 now.
I don't recall ever hearing of Gentoo Linux?
Yes, time is relative. Windows XP is dog slow at most things, for example (or at least, it FEELS very slow, which is what mainly counts). It boots very quickly though, because they made some effort to optimize the boot process. Linux takes muuuch longer to boot up. Things seem to be very dependent on particular applications, and what the developers bothered to try optimize. Windows Explorer on Windows XP is obviously incredibly slow, and not just slow but stupid and painfully annoying - the tree view, for example, will often just repeatedly flicker and flicker and flicker, redrawing itself the whole time (especially if you're downloading a file to the desktop). WinXP is also very slow just to list the contents of any directory, and just about dies if you have biggish HTML files in a directory, since it starts trying to open them, and also gets ridiculously slow if you have a lot of .URL files in a subdirectory of the current directory. Previous versions of Windows Explorer did not suffer from these problems. XP is molasses. My PIII 666 with Windows 2000 and GeForce2 feels MUCH quicker at just about everything than my P4 1500 with Windows XP and GeForce4 Ti 4600 (both systems have 512 MB RAM). Linux doesn't feel terribly fast either, but some apps are.
I think that because programmers don't bother to optimize anymore, the effects of this are far more than the speed of the CPU. Think about it, 400 MHz is actually DAMN fast hardware, not to mention my 1500 MHz system - the potential is amazing if programmers bothered to optimize anymore.
I'm also keen to know how fast Macs are, since I am considering buying one. I don't really play games, my main activities are C++ development, web page development and internet stuff (web, email).
I don't think this thread is going to produce much in the way of useful answers though. Its probably "faster in some areas and slower in others", like most benchmark-related stuff.
I'll dual-boot windows and linux to get a decent OS between the two of them ;).
Well, thats my problem .. two half-decent OSs don't add up to one decent OS :) I know, I've been dual-booting various flavours of both Windows and Linux for at least 6 years now.
I've now started considering buying a Mac next time I buy a computer, because after years of using PCs, it has slowly sunk in that I just don't like PCs. Windows is just horrible, Windows XP makes even a fast computer feel like a 486, and Linux is usually a nuisance to set many things up (getting better though). I don't really play games, and I will still keep my PC around for those few apps I use that need a PC. I would rather spend a bit more if it means I might actually get to enjoy using computers again. PCs suck. And as you say, its a PITA to dual-boot the whole time.
With a Mac, all my current needs from both Windows and Linux would be available at once, without the need to keep booting into the other OS the whole time, so for me I think it makes sense.
They obviously had a means to tell which clients were uncapping their bw. Any rational company would have (a) sent out a warning email, and if the users didn't respond, (b) just terminate their service. The guy running this company most likely just has some "issues" he feels like taking out on someone.
Only on slashdot:
"There ARE computers, computer professionals, and internet access in Africa"
+5 informative
When they did it it was an original, innovative idea. Microsoft's gaudy re-run is simply so much tasteless, derivative kitch.
You just described pretty much any MS product ever made.
So you're saying the end user should spend half an hour reading a complicated EULA every time they install a piece of software just in case the software producers might be trying to screw them over in some way (like selling their personal information or tracking and selling their browsing habits)?
Have you actually READ any of these EULAs? Most of them are so complex and ambiguously worded over key issues (*), that you need a lawyer just to determine if they are trying to screw you over.
EULA's should be reduced to simple paragraphs that ONLY, and DIRECTLY AND CLEARLY indicate in which ways the software is trying to screw you. All other rights should be set to obvious "default values".
For example, the DEFAULT should be that the software MAY NOT collect personal information about you. ONLY if it does otherwise, then it must inform you, and clearly, that they will be doing so.
Lets face it, everything else in the EULA is just fluff, there is no possible valid purpose for all the fluff for the customer: the ONLY purpose that the fluff can possibly serve is to prevent people from being aware of which ways they are going to get screwed.
A decent EULA need only be as long as, say:
"This software collects personal information about you and sends it back to our servers. We reserve the right to sell this information to third parties. Do you agree?
Of course, if EULAs were so simple, people would see the scummy things in software for what they were. But then, HOW IS THAT A BAD THING??
(*) For example, EULAs often say stuff like "we may change these terms at any time without notifying you", or they say stuff like "we will not sell your personal information, except in cases where we deem necessary".
I wonder if judges read them? If you could catch a few well-chosen judges with some carefully crafted (but legal) EULAs, perhaps the courts would be more likely to take a stance against them.
It couldn't be too obvious or stupid, of course, because that would make it an obviuosly illegitimate EULA (e.g. it can't be something silly like the judge agreeing to be your slave, or something like, because that wouldn't be legal even in a signed contract).
And given that judges are required to have quite "open" lives, the old "we may sell your personal information" probably wouldn't work either, ha ha.
Perhaps something like a "we may bill extra charges on your credit card from time to time" type clause somewhere in the text, say a few paragraphs down. It can't be too obviously hidden, either. The "YES/NO" buttons should also include that usual silly statement about "I have read the EULA and understand and agree to abide by it". Then, a few "extra charges" later (small charges will do), the stupidity of the EULA as a form of contractual agreement may become more obvious to the courts.
If you did manage to catch a judge out like this, the results would probably be best if you got it highly publicised. Most people would probably then agree that EULAs suck.
But I've never seen one go BEEP BEEP BEEP or make anything that sounds like that gravelly noise from the back of your throat
You probably don't work with PCs much then .. PCs will usually go "beep beep beep" if something isn't right when you try boot them (e.g. if the graphics card isn't seated properly, which often happens just from driving a PC around in a car, or taking a PC on a flight). The "gravelly noise" you describe sounds to me like a fan that is going, which happens pretty often with PCs. The OEMs often put in cheap fans to cut a few cents off the cost of the PC. I work at a small software development company (less than 20 people), and even we usually have to replace several PC fans a year.
Although neither of these problems have anything to do with Windows, they ARE general problems with PCs, and in the latter case directly relate to the common practice of building PCs "cheap and shit". I can't comment on the quality of Apple's hardware though, having not worked with any since about 15 years ago.
wxWindows does not have any actual template class in it. They do however have some "pseudo-template" classes, involves macros. But this forms a very tiny part of wxWindows anyway, so it certainly shouldn't scare anyone off.
I recently decided to use wxWindows for a project I'm working on, and I like it a lot. It has a nice, clean design, and even if you don't need cross-platfrom, it hides the pain of having to use Win32.
I like the "native look and feel" feature of wxWindows, but I do think your argument that not having that is "ludicrous", is ludicrous. Your arguments in general are more religion-based (generally "this is just obviously the best for everything" type arguments) than technical-based (usually "different tools are better for different purposes, use the best for the job" type arguments). "far superior" to the Java approach? Please, lets be level-headed here, the different approaches have different pros and cons. We don't live in such a black-and-white world.
On a side note, why does GTK have such a pathetic limit on the number of elements in a list box (2000)? For my application, I need a list box with lots of elements, typically around 20K to 50K elements. There is absolutely no reason why a list box control should not be able to handle this. I've already added over 700,000 elements to the Windows list box and it handles it quickly and with no problems whatsoever.
Something weird happened to that above post, parts of it seem repeated in odd ways :) Slightly over-zealous cut-n-paste of my own post, or something.
Just a question, ever since I moved (from MWeb) to ABSA internet, I seem to get a lot of "document contains no data" error on slashdot. Whats weird is that slashdot is the ONLY web page I have problems with now, everywere else everything works as normal. Do you find you get strange errors from /. from within SA?
Hmm.. first off, sorry for accusing you of being "just another" "country is going to the dogs" whining SAn white person. Most white people I know whine and whine about 'how bad things are' but all they are doing is regurgitating what the people around them are saying without actually having the vaguest bit of facts to back up the statement other than the vague "uh, gee, well, look at the Rand" and "crime is high". But you at least appear to have "done your homework" :).
You make some very good points, although I don't completely agree with everything you say.
There have been more recent bombings but they were not apartheit related, so I wanted to avoid referencing them, but you are right, terrorism does still occur. Part of my slight mis-perception on that though comes from the fact that I live in Pretoria, the area more affected by apartheid terrorism, while the Cape is mostly affected by the more recent bombings, which I guess is just further away in my mind.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that all or even most of the nasty things perpetrated by the apartheid government are still being perpetrated, but yes, nasty things are still happening. Re: Army + matric party, yes, our society is quite sick, unfortunately, that such ridiculous things happen. It is sad. And it has for some reason or another become cultural, i.e. people are just behaving like that (e.g. baby rapes etc, which are a tiny minority of cases, sure, but it doesn't make it any less sick that it happens). Blacks blame apartheid for how sick our society has become, while whites often (while blacks are not around, lets admit it) argue, basically, that "blacks are just savages", "thats their culture" etc. I don't know where the truth lies, but I don't buy either argument. I certainly don't buy the white argument, because before Europeans arrived on this continent, the black culture that had been here for hundreds of years was NOT a "sick society", they were a relatively peaceful (apart from regular low-scale tribal territorial/power conflict) agricultural society. Whatever has caused our society to degenerate is something that happened in the last one or two hundred years. Even the sick "initiation practices" that go on now are not representative of what initiation practices were before white people came here. I'm not trying to point blame, just saying that the usual white argument you hear (when blacks aren't around) that "black people are just like that" does not hold water. Whatever it is, there is no excuse for it.
I enjoy the way you compare the economic situation of a country enduring sanctions to one which became the darling of the world. btw inflation is officially at over 15% we could well end up were we were, even though circumstance are vastly different
This is a good point, yes, but one must also keep in mind that even though we are politically the "darling of the world" since 1994, we are not economically, there is a vast difference. In spite of positive sentiment about the "new South Africa", foreign investors still have absolutely no confidence in this country. And we are also now suffering the effects of the brain-drain, and will be for some time. Personally, I think the effects of the brain-drain are far worse than sanctions, but then, I'm not an economist.
Besides that debt can be reduced by selling off the assets eg Eskom, Telkom, Transnet
A very good point.
Our government's Aids policy is a complete joke. I cannot argue with you here. I believe that large-scale education campaigns (in every school, every village, every township etc) is the way to go here. We obviously can't wait for Mbeki to do something. But nobody in our government seems to have the leadership skills to just stand up and implement the things that need to be implemented. One almost gets the impression that they are all just standing around waiting for someone else to do something about it. This is however not something we can really use to compare our current government to the previous government. Who is to say what they would have done if they had been faced with the Aids epidemic. They probably would have had education campaigns for whites, and just spent nothing on the blacks, letting them all infect each other and die off. But that is speculation. I believe the current governments policies have more to do with sheer incompetence than with malice.
Poverty does feed into crime, but I recently decided that a lot of crime has nothing to do with poverty, eg cash in transit heists, knocking offmillions at a time is not about poverty, greed perhaps, but not poverty
It is true that some crime is committed out of greed. This will always be true, it is true even in the richest nations. But I believe that such crime less than 30% of cases. The facts are, statistically, wherever you go in the world, that crime rate and poverty are linked (
Hmm.. first off, sorry for accusing you of being "just another" "country is going to the dogs" whining SAn white person. Most white people I know whine and whine about 'how bad things are' but all they are doing is regurgitating what the people around them are saying without actually having the vaguest bit of facts to back up the statement other than the vague "uh, gee, well, look at the Rand" and "crime is high". But you at least appear to have "done your homework" :).
You make some very good points, although I don't completely agree with everything you say.
There have been more recent bombings but they were not apartheit related, so I wanted to avoid referencing them, but you are right, terrorism does still occur. Part of my slight mis-perception on that though comes from the fact that I live in Pretoria, the area more affected by apartheid terrorism, while the Cape is mostly affected by the more recent bombings, which I guess is just further away in my mind.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that all or even most of the nasty things perpetrated by the apartheid government are still being perpetrated, but yes, nasty things are still happening. Re: Army + matric party, yes, our society is quite sick, unfortunately, that such ridiculous things happen. It is sad. And it has for some reason or another become cultural, i.e. people are just behaving like that (e.g. baby rapes etc, which are a tiny minority of cases, sure, but it doesn't make it any less sick that it happens). Blacks blame apartheid for how sick our society has become, while whites often (while blacks are not around, lets admit it) argue, basically, that "blacks are just savages", "thats their culture" etc. I don't know where the truth lies, but I don't buy either argument. I certainly don't buy the white argument, because before Europeans arrived on this continent, the black culture that had been here for hundreds of years was NOT a "sick society", they were a relatively peaceful (apart from regular low-scale tribal territorial/power conflict) agricultural society. Whatever has caused our society to degenerate is something that happened in the last one or two hundred years. Even the sick "initiation practices" that go on now are not representative of what initiation practices were before white people came here. I'm not trying to point blame, just saying that the usual white argument you hear (when blacks aren't around) that "black people are just like that" does not hold water. Whatever it is, there is no excuse for it.
I enjoy the way you compare the economic situation of a country enduring sanctions to one which became the darling of the world. btw inflation is officially at over 15% we could well end up were we were, even though circumstance are vastly different
This is a good point, yes, but one must also keep in mind that even though we are politically the "darling of the world" since 1994, we are not economically, there is a vast difference. In spite of positive sentiment about the "new South Africa", foreign investors still have absolutely no confidence in this country. And we are also now suffering the effects of the brain-drain, and will be for some time. Personally, I think the effects of the brain-drain are far worse than sanctions, but then, I'm not an economist.
Besides that debt can be reduced by selling off the assets eg Eskom, Telkom, Transnet
A very good point.
Our government's Aids policy is a complete joke. I cannot argue with you here. I believe that large-scale education campaigns (in every school, every village, every township etc) is the way to go here. We obviously can't wait for Mbeki to do something. But nobody in our government seems to have the leadership skills to just stand up and implement the things that need to be implemented. One almost gets the impression that they are all just standing around waiting for someone else to do something about it. This is however not something we can really use to compare our current government to the previous government. Who is to say what they would have done if they had been faced with the Aids epidemic. They probably would have had education campaigns for whites, and just spent nothing on the blacks, letting them all infect each other and die off. But that is speculation. I believe the current governments policies have more to do with sheer incompetence than with malice.
Poverty does feed into crime, but I recently decided that a lot of crime has nothing to do with poverty, eg cash in transit heists, knocking offmillions at a time is not about poverty, greed perhaps, but not poverty
It is true that some crime is committed out of greed. This will always be true, it is true even in the richest nations. But I believe that such crime less than 30% of cases. The facts are, statistically, wherever you go in the world, that crime rate and poverty are linked (and statistically, even more so in places where the discrepancy between rich and poor is greater, such as in SA). My personal feeling is that if we (somehow magically) eliminated poverty in SA tomorrow, that within two to three years the crime rate would drop by approximately 70%. The remaining percentage would come down to greed etc, which we cannot get rid of anyway.
There is another point I'd like to make though regarding such "greed crimes", and that is that if the overall crime rate was less (the day-to-day "poverty" crimes that are keeping our police force busy), then the police would also have more time and resources to spend fighting white-collar crime, "greed" crimes etc, and thus the "greed crimes" percentage would also decrease.
live in fear of neither
Of course :) We would all rather live in fear of neither. But neither the problems or the solutions are simple. We need to do a lot of work in this country to solve these problems. But I would rather try help solve them than just leave and go live in a 1st world country. At the most basic levels, we need to tackle widespread poverty, and secondly we need to tackle widespread education (normal book and school type education) quality issues. Like it or not, we do need "transformation", because even 8 years on we are still living in a world where whites dominate the economy and are the "educated elite", and unless we can genuinely transform the country (i.e. actually educate the black people that get affirmative action jobs), the blacks will not generally perceive things to have changed, and if a large enough proportion of the black population starts to feel like "whites still dominate" and that "things haven't changed", then we may end up being Zimbabwe version 2. We need to solve these problems.
How many people are detained in prison awaiting trial, because the cant afford bail, I'm not a betting man but some would put money on it, that it is a heck of a lot more than 10 000. What about them?
Its true, of course, but this cannot really be compared to detaining 10 000 people simply because they might be involved in trying to topple apartheid. Also, the police are probably not actively torturing and beating the detainees, as they did with the Soweto uprising prisoners (at least, nowhere near the same level). Additionally, many of the detained that were tortured and beatn were schoolchildren. It's an entirely different problem, really, and once again it comes down to inadequate resources to cope with the excessive scale of the problem, rather than deliberate malice. The previous government tried to imprison and torture activists, while the current government is trying to do things right, trying to improve the judicial system, to cope with the backlog etc. I remember not too long ago the court employees over here even decided personally to put in many extra hours to try cope with the backlog.
Well I bet the half a million laid off over the last few years don't see themselves as better off, you're going to tell me that they are white
It may be useful to keep in mind that the same thing is happening all over the world. Over a million people have lost their jobs since September 11 in the US alone. The world economy is slowing, or one might rather look at it as, re-adjusting to reality.
The job situation may have deteriorated in SA, but even so, white people are still fussy about the types of jobs they are willing to take. When last did you see a white garbageman? White toilet cleaner? White petrol pump attendant? I haven't seen a single one of any of the above in Pretoria. This particular aspect of white culture in South Africa is unique in the world, as far as I know. In other rich countries like the US, even skilled people like programmers are willing to swallow their pride and flip burgers for a while if necessary. We have developed a "cultural expectation" of not working shitty jobs, and by and large, by utilizing emmigration, we tend to be able to meet that expectation.
Aids deaths, Aids orphans, Zimbabwe .. problems that will really start to hit us during the next ten years, you are right. The next 10 - 15 years could well be the most challenging period ever for the new South Africa. I've made up my mind though to stay here and help.
That's a result of Thabo Mbeki's "quiet diplomacy". SAsupplies Zimbabwe with electricity, SA has loaned them big money, if SA wanted to they could have yanked the leash and Zimbabwe wouldn't have got into such a deep mess
I personally don't think that Mbeki has any power whatsoever over what is happening and what is going to still happen in Zimbabwe. Everyone is blaming Mbeki for not doing anything, everyone is saying "Mbeki should do something". But Mbeki is not in control here, Mugabe is. Mugabe is the one with the agenda, the one pulling the strings, the one making the decisions, and lets face it: he does not care what anyone thinks of it. The fact is, if Mbeki opts for "quiet diplomacy", it will not work (as can be seen, Mugabe ignores it). If Mbeki were to "get tough on Zimbabwe", what do you think would happen? Do you HONESTLY think Mugabe would say "Oh gee I've seen the error of my ways, I'm changing"? No way. Mugabe would just stand up and say "Mbeki is obviously just a porn of the collonial British government, and we're going our own way, with or without SA". Thats a fact. If Mbeki pull the plug on electricity, on economic loans, all that would happen is that Zimbabwe would deteriorate much faster. I mean, think about, if Mugabe really cared about his economy turning to shit, would he still be pursing his current course of action? No. Clearly he doesn't care.
That is my rather hopeless-looking analysis of the Zimbabwe situation. I truly believe that SA does not really have any power here, unless we go USA-style and invade Zimbabwe. Which isn't going to happen, and its probably a bad idea anyway.
You make the point of white people complaining and emigrating problem is that if things get too bad people do emigrate, and the people that can emigrate are exactly the people the country needs to stay, its all the fault of ANC who are only to happy to see this happen, Australia hasplenty of ex- SA's already, New Zealand is bit easier to get into, and Canada just loves the doctors it gets at a bargain rate. As I said they love this situation. SA on the other hand does not love this situation, you say so what when some white business mangets hijacked, complains, nothing gets done, you telhim to emigrate, guess what he will emigrate!
As far as I can tell, most SAns are not emigrating because they were victims of crime. They are emigrating because they are looking for a more comfortable lifestyle in a country which is more "sorted out" and has fewer problems. Emigration appears to have become a cultural thing, driven these days almost entirely out of its own momentum. What I mean by that is, its become the "norm" to emigrate, people now do it simply because its the "norm", without even paying much consideration to why. When you graduate from University, its almost a case of people ask you not if you are going, but where you are going. When people ask me and I tell them I'm staying, they look at me like there is something wrong with me.
Don't get me wrong, I think the brain drain is a huge problem economically. I noticed something interesting, up until now its mostly been whites leaving, and the government has just stood by quietly and let it happen, without saying anything. A new problem is emerging though .. now that Universities are starting to graduate skilled black people, many of those black people are now also emigrating, for pretty much all the same reasons the whites are leaving. And now suddenly, Mboweni stands up the other day going off about how big a problem the brain-drain suddenly is, and how he thinks the government should be working much harder at trying to keep skilled workers here. Shock, horror, black people are leaving too, and suddenly "its a problem" :(
One thing that annoys me about the emigrants is that they appear to be the biggest patriots. They seem to be the ones who are saying the loudest how much they love SA. "I love SA, I could just never live there" --- WTF? Thats bull, in my opinion. If you emigrate, its because you think that "somewhere else is nicer", period. They act like refugees or something. If you think "somewhere else is nicer", then don't put up a website saying "I love South Africa, I would like to live there again someday". They leave for selfish reasons. They go provide their (relatively) cheap labour to help already-developed nations develop even further. They leave the rest of us behind to work 10 times harder to try achieve the same levels of economic growth. And then they have the cheek to say that when we've done all the hard work solving the major problems in SA and its starting to become prosperous, then they'll move back and come enjoy the fruits of our labour? I don't like it at all.
Personally, I think most of them with non-temporary visas will never come back. They'll go to NZ, eventually they'll find a nice girl there, get married, have kids there, there kids will have kids there, and they'll basically become genuine New Zealanders. Or Canadians. Or Australians, whatever. I think the "I love South Africa" sentiment will eventually begin to fade. If you live somewhere else long enough, you start to grow roots. And every day you spend there, the roots there grow deeper. The majority of those people are gone from SA, and they are gone permanently. Most of them probably will never even visit here on holiday again, unless its to see family.
I don't like the brain-drain, but how can we stop it? Its become cultural. We've developed an "anywhere but here" mentality that pervades society, it pervades our educational institutions.
The R40billion arms deals have a lot to do with politics, but one big reason for it is to encourage foreign investment. In exchange for money spent in the various European countries, those companies are required not only to spend a certain amount directly on products of SAn companies, but also in various projects for teaching SAn companies various skills. Personally I think the money could be much better spent (e.g. on schools), but the spending motivations are often polical. eliminated poverty in SA tomorrow, that within two years the crime rate would drop by approximately 70%. The remaining percentage would come down to greed etc, which we cannot get rid of anyway.
There is another point I'd like to make though regarding such "greed crimes", and that is that if the overall crime rate was less (the day-to-day "poverty" crimes that are keeping our police force busy), then the police would also have more time and resources to spend fighting white-collar crime, "greed" crimes etc, and thus the "greed crimes" percentage would also decrease.
live in fear of neither
Of course :) We would all rather live in fear of neither. But neither the problems or the solutions are simple. We need to do a lot of work in this country to solve these problems. But I would rather try help solve them than just leave and go live in a 1st world country. At the most basic levels, we need to tackle widespread poverty, and secondly we need to tackle widespread education (normal book and school type education) quality issues. Like it or not, we do need "transformation", because even 8 years on we are still living in a world where whites dominate the economy and are the "educated elite", and unless we can genuinely transform the country (i.e. actually educate the black people that get affirmative action jobs), the blacks will not generally perceive things to have changed, and if a large enough proportion of the black population starts to feel like "whites still dominate" and that "things haven't changed", then we may end up being Zimbabwe version 2. We need to solve these problems.
How many people are detained in prison awaiting trial, because the cant afford bail, I'm not a betting man but some would put money on it, that it is a heck of a lot more than 10 000. What about them?
Its true, of course, but this cannot really be compared to detaining 10 000 people simply because they might be involved in trying to topple apartheid. Also, the police are probably not actively torturing and beating the detainees, as they did with the Soweto uprising prisoners (at least, nowhere near the same level). Additionally, many of the detained that were tortured and beatn were schoolchildren. It's an entirely different problem, really, and once again it comes down to inadequate resources to cope with the excessive scale of the problem, rather than deliberate malice. The previous government tried to imprison and torture activists, while the current government is trying to do things right, trying to improve the judicial system, to cope with the backlog etc. I remember not too long ago the court employees over here even decided personally to put in many extra hours to try cope with the backlog.
Well I bet the half a million laid off over the last few years don't see themselves as better off, you're going to tell me that they are white
It may be useful to keep in mind that the same thing is happening all over the world. Over a million people have lost their jobs since September 11 in the US alone. The world economy is slowing, or one might rather look at it as, re-adjusting to reality.
The job situation may have deteriorated in SA, but even so, white people are still fussy about the types of jobs they are willing to take. When last did you see a white garbageman? White toilet cleaner? White petrol pump attendant? I haven't seen a single one of any of the above in Pretoria. This particular aspect of white culture in South Africa is unique in the world, as far as I know. In other rich countries like the US, even skilled people like programmers are willing to swallow their pride and flip burgers for a while if necessary. We have developed a "cultural expectation" of not working shitty jobs, and by and large, by utilizing emmigration, we tend to be able to meet that expectation.
Aids deaths, Aids orphans, Zimbabwe .. problems that will really start to hit us during the next ten years, you are right. The next 10 - 15 years could well be the most challenging period ever for the new South Africa. I've made up my mind though to stay here and help.
That's a result of Thabo Mbeki's "quiet diplomacy". SAsupplies Zimbabwe with electricity, SA has loaned them big money, if SA wanted to they could have yanked the leash and Zimbabwe wouldn't have got into such a deep mess
I personally don't think that Mbeki has any power whatsoever over what is happening and what is going to still happen in Zimbabwe. Everyone is blaming Mbeki for not doing anything, everyone is saying "Mbeki should do something". But Mbeki is not in control here, Mugabe is. Mugabe is the one with the agenda, the one pulling the strings, the one making the decisions, and lets face it: he does not care what anyone thinks of it. The fact is, if Mbeki opts for "quiet diplomacy", it will not work (as can be seen, Mugabe ignores it). If Mbeki were to "get tough on Zimbabwe", what do you think would happen? Do you HONESTLY think Mugabe would say "Oh gee I've seen the error of my ways, I'm changing"? No way. Mugabe would just stand up and say "Mbeki is obviously just a porn of the collonial British government, and we're going our own way, with or without SA". Thats a fact. If Mbeki pull the plug on electricity, on economic loans, all that would happen is that Zimbabwe would deteriorate much faster. I mean, think about, if Mugabe really cared about his economy turning to shit, would he still be pursing his current course of action? No. Clearly he doesn't care.
That is my rather hopeless-looking analysis of the Zimbabwe situation. I truly believe that SA does not really have any power here, unless we go USA-style and invade Zimbabwe. Which isn't going to happen, and its probably a bad idea anyway.
You make the point of white people complaining and emigrating problem is that if things get too bad people do emigrate, and the people that can emigrate are exactly the people the country needs to stay, its all the fault of ANC who are only to happy to see this happen, Australia hasplenty of ex- SA's already, New Zealand is bit easier to get into, and Canada just loves the doctors it gets at a bargain rate. As I said they love this situation. SA on the other hand does not love this situation, you say so what when some white business mangets hijacked, complains, nothing gets done, you telhim to emigrate, guess what he will emigrate!
As far as I can tell, most SAns are not emigrating because they were victims of crime. They are emigrating because they are looking for a more comfortable lifestyle in a country which is more "sorted out" and has fewer problems. Emigration appears to have become a cultural thing, driven these days almost entirely out of its own momentum. What I mean by that is, its become the "norm" to emigrate, people now do it simply because its the "norm", without even paying much consideration to why. When you graduate from University, its almost a case of people ask you not if you are going, but where you are going. When people ask me and I tell them I'm staying, they look at me like there is something wrong with me.
Don't get me wrong, I think the brain drain is a huge problem economically. I noticed something interesting, up until now its mostly been whites leaving, and the government has just stood by quietly and let it happen, without saying anything. A new problem is emerging though .. now that Universities are starting to graduate skilled black people, many of those black people are now also emigrating, for pretty much all the same reasons the whites are leaving. And now suddenly, Mboweni stands up the other day going off about how big a problem the brain-drain suddenly is, and how he thinks the government should be working much harder at trying to keep skilled workers here. Shock, horror, black people are leaving too, and suddenly "its a problem" :(
One thing that annoys me about the emigrants is that they appear to be the biggest patriots. They seem to be the ones who are saying the loudest how much they love SA. "I love SA, I could just never live there" --- WTF? Thats bull, in my opinion. If you emigrate, its because you think that "somewhere else is nicer", period. They act like refugees or something. If you think "somewhere else is nicer", then don't put up a website saying "I love South Africa, I would like to live there again someday". They leave for selfish reasons. They go provide their (relatively) cheap labour to help already-developed nations develop even further. They leave the rest of us behind to work 10 times harder to try achieve the same levels of economic growth. And then they have the cheek to say that when we've done all the hard work solving the major problems in SA and its starting to become prosperous, then they'll move back and come enjoy the fruits of our labour? I don't like it at all.
Personally, I think most of them with non-temporary visas will never come back. They'll go to NZ, eventually they'll find a nice girl there, get married, have kids there, their kids will have kids there, and they'll basically become genuine New Zealanders. Or Canadians, or Australians, whatever. I think the "I love South Africa" sentiment will eventually begin to fade. If you live somewhere else long enough, you start to grow roots. And every day you spend there, the roots there grow deeper. The majority of those people are gone from SA, and they are gone permanently. Most of them probably will never even visit here on holiday again, unless its to see family.
I don't like the brain-drain, but how can we stop it? Its become cultural. We've developed an "anywhere but here" mentality that pervades society, it pervades our educational institutions.
The R40billion arms deals have a lot to do with politics, but one big reason for it is to encourage foreign investment. In exchange for money spent in the various European countries, those companies are required not only to spend a certain amount directly on products of SAn companies, but also in various projects for teaching SAn companies various skills. Personally I think the money could be much better spent (e.g. on schools), but the spending motivations are often polical. But back to comparing with apartheid, they are in this respect certainly no worse than the previous government, who drained this country dry spending billions and billions on projects like the Rooivalk, the nuclear program etc.