That's why I advise friends and family to invest in a dog or two and a gun for defending their home, not a security system that can usually be defeated by a serious criminal.
The security companies themselves (no surprise there) actively perpetuate the myth in their laughably stupid advertisements, where some corporate office jockey actor puts on jeans and hooded sweatshirt and pretends to be a criminal breaking into the house while the poor housewife dials 911 and the criminal runs away as soon as the alarm sounds. Of course, the police always show up right away to take a report in the ad. Anyone who has lived in Los Angeles knows that is crap. The police might show up in time to rope off the area and pick up your body as part of another murder case that will never be solved. The police are not responsible for defending individual citizens, unless they have a prior comittment through witness protection or some such arrangement. They are responsible for protecting the public and society at large, but that doesn't include responding with top priority to your home security system alarm and they are not liable in any way for failing to defend you personally from violent crimes. The gun control people should try living for a year in one of those east Los Angeles neighborhoods and then see if they still hold to their views that no private citizen needs to own a gun.
There isn't a whole lot of arable land in China, especially compared to the number of people, and they are polluting vast tracks of their country with lead, dioxins, and other toxic industrial by-products while at the same time the deserts are enchroaching from the east on what little farm land there actually is. The Chinese are going to be importing increasing amounts of food in the decades ahead, especially in light of gloabl warming, just to keep all of those mouths fed.
The United States has been pushing the Chinese government to do just that for years now. In fact, that was why Clinton opened up trade relations with China in the first place, as a carrot to encourage monetary and social policy changes (which has failed completely btw). Good luck convincing the thugs in charge of the Chinese Politburo to give up their fat profits made on the backs of their pool of slave labour. Whenever foreigners criticise them they respond with something like, "you must learn to respect our ways" and if one of their own citizens criticises them then they are thrown in prison and forgotten (indefinite detention, its not just a GITMO thing).
This would also encourage them to check working conditions before signing a contract with a manufacturer.
Even if they wanted to inspect the working conditions they probably wouldn't be able to. Chinese factory managers have been known to keep two (2) sets of books, one real and the other fake one for the inpsectors, give employees false pay stubs showing higher than actual wages (again for the inpsectors) and coach them on how to answer inspector questions (i.e. you will be fired and bad things will happen to your family if you deviate from these answers), and generally cheat or do whatever it takes to "beat" the inpsection. You have to understand the Chinese mentality here. They believe that they are superior to the West in every way and that lying or cheating (and especially lying to or cheating foreigners) to get ahead is no big deal. Life is cheap in China.
I find that getting a chance to speak on the conference call or at the shareholders' meeting AND actually to be listened to (they rarely give the smallholders who might each get 3 minutes during the general comment period any attention) is basically impossible for an individual shareholder at a large company. Unless you personally own 5% or more of the outstanding shares you are like the small business guy asking the bankers for a loan in those Capital One ads (you know where the small business owner is like an gnat shouting at giants). The only other way is to really make a lot of calls and try to organize a group of small holders to vote as block (and have them elect you to speak for the group at the shareholders' meeting). That last option is very difficult to do. For example, when the Roy Disney (who owned at least 5% of the outstanding shares at the time personally) organized a coalition to oust Michael Eisner as chairman of the board, he was still only able to muster ~43% of the votes against Eisner and even then it was technically not enough for him to lose the election. However, he eventually resigned anyway due to the unprecedented vote of no confidence by so many shareholders. Roy Disney had to work long and hard and make lots of calls to get that coalition together prior to the meeting which was probably like having a full time job for a couple of months prior.
This is a complete and total breech of the copyright agreement with the people of any given nation that respects copyright under law.
Perhpas now you understand why some people, even reasonable people, realizing the power of the political forces and money arrayed against them, have taken to guerilla warfare tactics ala the Rebellion vs the Evil Empire because that is the only way that they can realistically fight back. Personally, I just refuse to buy OR use their games or content. My time is too valuable to spend on 99% of their junk anway. I don't need them to get by and I need them even less during an economic recession when resources are scarce and cash is king. Richard Stallman was right about these media companies, DRM, and their book readers (ala the Amazon Kindle Swindle). Vote with your dollars and buy nothing of what EA, Sony, and the MAFIAA produce AND don't pirate them either. Show them what comes of greedy, sociopathic, and unacceptable behavior.
In fact, it is precisely because so many people expect the government to provide them with so many non-protection things, of which the 800 billion dollar "stimulus bill" is just the latest example, that our taxes are so high. If all government had to do was pay for the military, courts, and police to "protect us" then taxes would be much lower and government would be much smaller. So when you say, "stop acting like society owes you something" isn't that a bit like the pot calling the kettle black?
If anything, the idea of adding tolls is really no different than a gas tax- it taxes usage.
It is not the gas taxes or toll roads that bother me, if anything they keep more idiots off the roads (which is a good thing), but I am always and everywhere opposed to a tax increase because government wastes the revenue and I already pay more than my "fair share", especially on dividends which are taxed twice, once as corporate income tax and then again as personal income tax. Did you know that the top 25% or income earners in this country already pay 85% of the taxes? Eventually a tipping point will be reached, as indeed it already has been here in California, where most voters think, "hell, why not vote for this spending bond or politician who promises more goodies, I'm not paying for it"?
No way in hell should we be paying for something twice.
You mean like both income and sales taxes in the same state? If you are looking for fairness in taxation in this country then you are likely to be disappointed. Once the government gets used to the revenue from a tax that tax never goes down and never goes away and when even more revenue is needed then new taxes come along to provide it, never mind fairness. The number one rule to remember is this: governments will alwaysdouble dip on taxes if they think that they can get away with it.
The people over at toastytech have a GUI timeline with screenshots of various OS desktops from different years; including one of the Amiga 1000, a computer which was available in 1985 for the rather princely sum of $1,595 dollars, running a "user interface that has multiple workspaces".
For most people it isn't about free as in beer, but rather, as Richard Stallman might say free as in freedom (although for the record he has stated that he will not own DVDs that have DRM which so far is very few published DVDs, "Freedom Downtime" from 2600 Magazine is about the only one that I can think of right now although there probably are a handful of other mainly obscure titles). If I purchase a movie then I expect to be able to make backup copies, format shift, watch on any device of my choosing in private or in the company of friends, skipping to any point on the DVD at any time (i.e. no "prohibited" operations, mandatory commercial previews, FBI warnings, and other assorted bullshit), lending the movie to my friends, as I would a book or CD, and generally enjoying my purchase in any way that I wish short of public performance or distribution. For example, I don't expect to have the right to project the movie on a screen in a public park as some people have been known to do where I live. Apparantely, that is too much to ask which is a major reason why I haven't bought any DVDs for about a year now (I have rediscovered reading, outdoor activites, and other forms of entertainment that do not involve the MAFIAA) nor have I downloaded pirated copies. I have a very low opinion of Hollywood in general and most of their movies, especially their more recent works, in particular. In fact, most of my current DVD collection consists of documentaries on various subjects, a very few hollywood films (generally in the Science Fiction and Fantasy genre, LOTR trilogy for example), and some anime (I am a fan of GITSAC and Miyazaki). I probably fit some typical Slashdot profile I suppose, but I just expect to have control over my own property and if I pay for something then it is my property damnit and all of that shrink-click-wrap license agreement bull can kiss my ass as far as I am concerned. The only reason we have crap such as "license agreement" is because of lawyers and lawsuits and consumers who are too meek to grow a pair, stand up, and demand their property rights. As long as people let companies like the MAFIAA members get away with this kind of crap then they will keep claiming ever more "rights" for themselves until somebody pushes back and tells them "no". Of course, Hollywood always donates heavily to the Democratic party and the MAFIAA has placed their goons in the Department of Justice, courtesy of the Obama Administration, so don't expect any "change that you can believe in" anytime soon on copyright or DMCA reform. Obama had better watch those MAFIAA goons he put in charge at the Department of Justice, they are a potentially massive PR liability just waiting to boil over with the young internet savy voters who pounded the pavement on the campaign trail and kept the blogs and tweets going to put him in office. Talk about slapping your supporters in the face...sheesh.
My cat is not feral, although she was stray for a while after her last owner abandoned here and before I took her in, and she catches at least one bird per week and the occaisonal small rodent or two AND she eats them. She generally catches smaller birds and mice (she is a smaller female cat after all), but every once in a while she will bag a really big rat (she only eats part of it in those cases). I still have to feed her of course, but I haven't had any rats in my home since I got her so it seems to be working out well.
it was clearly the duty of the operators of the Iridium satellite to take action
What a bunch of bull. How about blaming the Russians for junking up lots of useful orbital real estate with their cosmos junk boxes, many of which are non-functional and became that way very soon after reaching orbit. Not to mention all of the radio active coolant leaked into LEO by their RORSAT radar spy satellites. They even left highly radioactive nuclear reactor cores in "parking orbits" (all of which will still re-enter the atmosphere over the next several hundred years or so). Seriously, if anyone is responsible for junking up the space around earth then it is the Russians. I blame them.
I find this rather ironic considering that up until May of 2008 it was illegal to own a personal computer in Cuba and even now, almost a year later, the prices remain out of reach for ordinary Cubans. This excerpt from a CNet article at the subject really sums it up nicely:
"don't expect to start surfing Cubans' blogs about what it's like to collect a state monthly salary of about $20 anytime soon; most of these PCs will not be allowed connections to the Internet, according to the report. Only trusted officials and state journalists are allowed access to the Web."
What good does it do to have the opportunity to purchase a PC that costs a several times your annual salary and has no Internet access? The only Internet access available to most Cubans will probably be through government controlled public Internet cafes which require ID, have round the clock surveillance, and heavily filtered access at high (although perhaps barely affordable) prices on public PCs. If the failure of socialism ever needed an example then Cuba would be it. I would rather take my chances with expensive health care (thank you very much Michael Moore) then live in ass backwards country like that.
IMHO, things began to go off the rails when the dollar and other fiat currencies around the world lost their connection to gold. The special interests, large and politically well connected businesses, and the welfare socialists ALL hate gold, because gold limits their ability to confiscate the wealth of others through inflation and puts the brakes on excessive government spending (where newly created money tends to go to the politically well connected first who get to spend it before the resulting inflation kicks in). The connection between private wealth and political power was actually enhanced by elimination of gold as money (courts will generally refuse to enforce contracts that specify payment in gold or other precious metals) to the detriment of all since the ability to create, maintain, and even to confiscate (which is the true evil) wealth from others is closely tied to the government and thus provides tremendous incentives to lobby, bribe, and otherwise meddle with the "government of the people, by the people, for the people". Does this answer your question?
Some OSS is secure, some aren't. Same for closed source.
Yes, but TFA points out that Microsoft ISVs are trying to make a case that closed source is inherently MORE secure simply because the source is closed and nobody can "study it for the purpose of finding vulnerabilities" when in fact the experimental evidence (i.e. exploits in the wild and security incidents) overwhelming supports the conclusion that open source software is at the very least no worse than closed source software and is very often found to be more secure, even when other variables such as number and type of installations are controlled for, by almost any non-biased reckoning of the available real world data.
You really owe it to yourself to give Fallout 3 a try, especially if you are a fan of the series. I got hooked as a CS major in college and although I have little time now for serious games, I made time for Fallout 3 and let me say that I was not disappointed. It is obvious while playing the game that the team at Bethesda are real fans who played the original games, groked the Fallout universe, and really wanted to do justice to the first two games and the Fallout name after the series had been tarnished and sold down the river by Interplay with embarrasing console money makers and cheap third party "tactics" spin-offs. The result was really marvellous and the few minor flaws remaining can very easily be fixed in the patches to come. I was especially impressed that Bethsoft had the courage to preserve the over-the-top violence (ala Bloody Mess), drug use, and dark humor that had always been a staple of the series (even though they compromised a bit on Med-x == morphine, and some minor usage animations); no mean feat these days when games receive the sort of intense public scrutiny that comics once received. I am really looking forward to a revamped Fallout series with fan contributed side quest add-ons and more content in the future (there is talk about a sequel where the level cap is raised to 30 and the player takes a cross country trip to the ruins of Pittsburgh). Just talking about it makes we want to pick up my A3-21 plasma rifle and blast some super mutants into piles of goo.
Werewolves, vampires, zombies, and similar creatures of the night were forbidden.
For example, from the wiki article on the Comics Code Authority:
Marvel skirted the zombie restriction in the mid-1970s by calling the apparently deceased, mind-controlled followers of various Haitian super-villains "zuvembies". This practice carried over to Marvel's super-hero line. In the Avengers comic, when the reanimated super-hero Wonder Man returned from the dead, he was also referred to as a "zuvembie".
That is good advice. It is WORSE than you think and THEY are out to get you. Extra points for rigging your apartment to burn down at the flick of a switch ala Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory. Seriously though, why should we trust the government? They have given us no good reasons to trust them. It is better and safer to treat the authorities as potential adversaries rather than trusted friends.
And yet in other countries, as TFA also points out, it is competition and NOT regulation which has delivered high speeds at low prices or 13 cents in Japan and 33 cents in France as opposed to $3 in the United States per million bits/second. We have seen our ranking slip to 15th in the world for broadband quality and penetration with regulation, why not give competition a chance? If there was lots of competition for your Internet connection dollars would you select an ISP that didn't respect Net Neutrality? Perhaps there is a way to get what most Slashdotters want (i.e. Net Neutrality) without having the government force it down everyone's collective throats with more regulation.
Google and MS's searching systems essentially don't go beyond searches.
They also don't represent the end all of what they might become in their present versions. They will probably improve with time and add more and better features as time and circumstances permit.
They don't do much for the organization of files.
If you have a way to index files for searches (ala search engine queries) and you can go right to any hits then why does this matter? Some people will organize their directory structure well and some will not. The organization of the files on the disk and searchability are really two different things.
I can only see the Progress Reports for one or the other at a time.
Why not run your search rooted at the parent of Project A and Project B and then sort the results by path so that the Project A progress reports appear grouped before the Project B progress reports?
Alternatively, I might also want to know which files involved various people in the company. Again, if I make them sub folders, then I can put them either under each project folder, where I lose my other categorizations, or under those categorizations, where I again segregate them.
That is a bit more of problem without metadata I will grant you, but would not Microsoft Search or Google Desktop Search index the text in those files and be able to find them in a query for "bob progress reports" or some such?
It simply makes more sense in my eyes to associate user-definable meta-data attributes that can be assigned to the files.
That could probably be done and added to the filesystem if it is not already a feature (doesn't NTFS for example already allow this with Active Directory?). However, we were originally talking about querying the filesystem ala SQL queries and the problem with that is that SQL has a very strict set of rules for data organization in order to enable the powerful queries; rules which may not be desirable or even feasible restrictions in a system designed to store large files. In fact, one of the things that SQL implementations have historically done poorly is storage of large non-queryable blobs of binary data.
Also, if you have ever worked with B-Trees on raw storage or looked at the source code of database engines then you will know that there are performance and other considerations if completely arbitrary attribute and file header sizes must be accomodated (as would be the case with arbitrary metadata). This would add further complexity to the file system implementation, possibly requiring paging or other memory mapping techniques to be used within the file system structure itself and slowing down performance even more (not sure, haven't tried to implement something like this, just going on intuition based upon previous similar work that I have done). You don't get something for nothing as they say.
Meta-data based systems needn't be overly complex.
That is true, but getting the right amount of complexity without too much getting in the way of running a simple file system will be the real tricky balance.
It's simply a different way to look at things than the traditional directory structure.
There has already been much experimentation with alternative methods of data storage, especially in the earlier days of computing, and the heirarchical directory structure has out lasted all challengers. For example, does anyone remember PICK OS? Database file systems have been tried before and found wanting. How will this time be different?
Given enough development time, will will almost certainly work it's way into mainstream use.
It has already had decades to work its way into the mainstream. The PICK system, fo
but that still doesn't have the fidelity that I want (which is essentially just the ability to search for files via something akin to a db query rather than simply drill down a directory tree or search just on the name).
Functionality which is already well provided by the Google desktop search application and now Microsoft Windows Search on top of the basic file system. This proves that it is already possible for an application service running locally on top of a file system, and probably using a file in the file system for its own database, to provide database like queries on files and their contents. These types of indexing applications could probably be generalized to include support for SQL syntax (or something similar) and arbitrary meta-data. All of these features are an extension of the underlying file system rather than an integral part of it which really is a superior design (think of how Firefox and Thunderbird and countless other applications provide plug-in functionality rather than absorbing all possible features directly into the main application trunk). Database like indexing of the file system (which is bound to be different for different users with different needs) is NOT basic enough to be contained in the kernel along with the OS file system implementation(s). Good software design, which is MOST critical in the OS and it's kernel, builds functionality into carefully packaged layers, each one providing the most abstract and minimal possible service, which are then combined in combination to deliver various concrete services to the applications and users. If you want to take a dive into the subject then I recommend looking at Design Patterns and taking a look at the Gang of Four book of the same name.
Slashdot Mirror
That's why I advise friends and family to invest in a dog or two and a gun for defending their home, not a security system that can usually be defeated by a serious criminal.
The security companies themselves (no surprise there) actively perpetuate the myth in their laughably stupid advertisements, where some corporate office jockey actor puts on jeans and hooded sweatshirt and pretends to be a criminal breaking into the house while the poor housewife dials 911 and the criminal runs away as soon as the alarm sounds. Of course, the police always show up right away to take a report in the ad. Anyone who has lived in Los Angeles knows that is crap. The police might show up in time to rope off the area and pick up your body as part of another murder case that will never be solved. The police are not responsible for defending individual citizens, unless they have a prior comittment through witness protection or some such arrangement. They are responsible for protecting the public and society at large, but that doesn't include responding with top priority to your home security system alarm and they are not liable in any way for failing to defend you personally from violent crimes. The gun control people should try living for a year in one of those east Los Angeles neighborhoods and then see if they still hold to their views that no private citizen needs to own a gun.
There isn't a whole lot of arable land in China, especially compared to the number of people, and they are polluting vast tracks of their country with lead, dioxins, and other toxic industrial by-products while at the same time the deserts are enchroaching from the east on what little farm land there actually is. The Chinese are going to be importing increasing amounts of food in the decades ahead, especially in light of gloabl warming, just to keep all of those mouths fed.
Stop rigging the currency to be export-pushing.
The United States has been pushing the Chinese government to do just that for years now. In fact, that was why Clinton opened up trade relations with China in the first place, as a carrot to encourage monetary and social policy changes (which has failed completely btw). Good luck convincing the thugs in charge of the Chinese Politburo to give up their fat profits made on the backs of their pool of slave labour. Whenever foreigners criticise them they respond with something like, "you must learn to respect our ways" and if one of their own citizens criticises them then they are thrown in prison and forgotten (indefinite detention, its not just a GITMO thing).
This would also encourage them to check working conditions before signing a contract with a manufacturer.
Even if they wanted to inspect the working conditions they probably wouldn't be able to. Chinese factory managers have been known to keep two (2) sets of books, one real and the other fake one for the inpsectors, give employees false pay stubs showing higher than actual wages (again for the inpsectors) and coach them on how to answer inspector questions (i.e. you will be fired and bad things will happen to your family if you deviate from these answers), and generally cheat or do whatever it takes to "beat" the inpsection. You have to understand the Chinese mentality here. They believe that they are superior to the West in every way and that lying or cheating (and especially lying to or cheating foreigners) to get ahead is no big deal. Life is cheap in China.
I find that getting a chance to speak on the conference call or at the shareholders' meeting AND actually to be listened to (they rarely give the smallholders who might each get 3 minutes during the general comment period any attention) is basically impossible for an individual shareholder at a large company. Unless you personally own 5% or more of the outstanding shares you are like the small business guy asking the bankers for a loan in those Capital One ads (you know where the small business owner is like an gnat shouting at giants). The only other way is to really make a lot of calls and try to organize a group of small holders to vote as block (and have them elect you to speak for the group at the shareholders' meeting). That last option is very difficult to do. For example, when the Roy Disney (who owned at least 5% of the outstanding shares at the time personally) organized a coalition to oust Michael Eisner as chairman of the board, he was still only able to muster ~43% of the votes against Eisner and even then it was technically not enough for him to lose the election. However, he eventually resigned anyway due to the unprecedented vote of no confidence by so many shareholders. Roy Disney had to work long and hard and make lots of calls to get that coalition together prior to the meeting which was probably like having a full time job for a couple of months prior.
This is a complete and total breech of the copyright agreement with the people of any given nation that respects copyright under law.
Perhpas now you understand why some people, even reasonable people, realizing the power of the political forces and money arrayed against them, have taken to guerilla warfare tactics ala the Rebellion vs the Evil Empire because that is the only way that they can realistically fight back. Personally, I just refuse to buy OR use their games or content. My time is too valuable to spend on 99% of their junk anway. I don't need them to get by and I need them even less during an economic recession when resources are scarce and cash is king. Richard Stallman was right about these media companies, DRM, and their book readers (ala the Amazon Kindle Swindle). Vote with your dollars and buy nothing of what EA, Sony, and the MAFIAA produce AND don't pirate them either. Show them what comes of greedy, sociopathic, and unacceptable behavior.
Stop acting like society owes you something
In fact, it is precisely because so many people expect the government to provide them with so many non-protection things, of which the 800 billion dollar "stimulus bill" is just the latest example, that our taxes are so high. If all government had to do was pay for the military, courts, and police to "protect us" then taxes would be much lower and government would be much smaller. So when you say, "stop acting like society owes you something" isn't that a bit like the pot calling the kettle black?
If anything, the idea of adding tolls is really no different than a gas tax- it taxes usage.
It is not the gas taxes or toll roads that bother me, if anything they keep more idiots off the roads (which is a good thing), but I am always and everywhere opposed to a tax increase because government wastes the revenue and I already pay more than my "fair share", especially on dividends which are taxed twice, once as corporate income tax and then again as personal income tax. Did you know that the top 25% or income earners in this country already pay 85% of the taxes? Eventually a tipping point will be reached, as indeed it already has been here in California, where most voters think, "hell, why not vote for this spending bond or politician who promises more goodies, I'm not paying for it"?
No way in hell should we be paying for something twice.
You mean like both income and sales taxes in the same state? If you are looking for fairness in taxation in this country then you are likely to be disappointed. Once the government gets used to the revenue from a tax that tax never goes down and never goes away and when even more revenue is needed then new taxes come along to provide it, never mind fairness. The number one rule to remember is this: governments will always double dip on taxes if they think that they can get away with it.
The people over at toastytech have a GUI timeline with screenshots of various OS desktops from different years; including one of the Amiga 1000, a computer which was available in 1985 for the rather princely sum of $1,595 dollars, running a "user interface that has multiple workspaces".
For most people it isn't about free as in beer, but rather, as Richard Stallman might say free as in freedom (although for the record he has stated that he will not own DVDs that have DRM which so far is very few published DVDs, "Freedom Downtime" from 2600 Magazine is about the only one that I can think of right now although there probably are a handful of other mainly obscure titles). If I purchase a movie then I expect to be able to make backup copies, format shift, watch on any device of my choosing in private or in the company of friends, skipping to any point on the DVD at any time (i.e. no "prohibited" operations, mandatory commercial previews, FBI warnings, and other assorted bullshit), lending the movie to my friends, as I would a book or CD, and generally enjoying my purchase in any way that I wish short of public performance or distribution. For example, I don't expect to have the right to project the movie on a screen in a public park as some people have been known to do where I live. Apparantely, that is too much to ask which is a major reason why I haven't bought any DVDs for about a year now (I have rediscovered reading, outdoor activites, and other forms of entertainment that do not involve the MAFIAA) nor have I downloaded pirated copies. I have a very low opinion of Hollywood in general and most of their movies, especially their more recent works, in particular. In fact, most of my current DVD collection consists of documentaries on various subjects, a very few hollywood films (generally in the Science Fiction and Fantasy genre, LOTR trilogy for example), and some anime (I am a fan of GITSAC and Miyazaki). I probably fit some typical Slashdot profile I suppose, but I just expect to have control over my own property and if I pay for something then it is my property damnit and all of that shrink-click-wrap license agreement bull can kiss my ass as far as I am concerned. The only reason we have crap such as "license agreement" is because of lawyers and lawsuits and consumers who are too meek to grow a pair, stand up, and demand their property rights. As long as people let companies like the MAFIAA members get away with this kind of crap then they will keep claiming ever more "rights" for themselves until somebody pushes back and tells them "no". Of course, Hollywood always donates heavily to the Democratic party and the MAFIAA has placed their goons in the Department of Justice, courtesy of the Obama Administration, so don't expect any "change that you can believe in" anytime soon on copyright or DMCA reform. Obama had better watch those MAFIAA goons he put in charge at the Department of Justice, they are a potentially massive PR liability just waiting to boil over with the young internet savy voters who pounded the pavement on the campaign trail and kept the blogs and tweets going to put him in office. Talk about slapping your supporters in the face...sheesh.
A hunting cats needs to be feral
My cat is not feral, although she was stray for a while after her last owner abandoned here and before I took her in, and she catches at least one bird per week and the occaisonal small rodent or two AND she eats them. She generally catches smaller birds and mice (she is a smaller female cat after all), but every once in a while she will bag a really big rat (she only eats part of it in those cases). I still have to feed her of course, but I haven't had any rats in my home since I got her so it seems to be working out well.
it was clearly the duty of the operators of the Iridium satellite to take action
What a bunch of bull. How about blaming the Russians for junking up lots of useful orbital real estate with their cosmos junk boxes, many of which are non-functional and became that way very soon after reaching orbit. Not to mention all of the radio active coolant leaked into LEO by their RORSAT radar spy satellites. They even left highly radioactive nuclear reactor cores in "parking orbits" (all of which will still re-enter the atmosphere over the next several hundred years or so). Seriously, if anyone is responsible for junking up the space around earth then it is the Russians. I blame them.
I find this rather ironic considering that up until May of 2008 it was illegal to own a personal computer in Cuba and even now, almost a year later, the prices remain out of reach for ordinary Cubans. This excerpt from a CNet article at the subject really sums it up nicely:
"don't expect to start surfing Cubans' blogs about what it's like to collect a state monthly salary of about $20 anytime soon; most of these PCs will not be allowed connections to the Internet, according to the report. Only trusted officials and state journalists are allowed access to the Web."
What good does it do to have the opportunity to purchase a PC that costs a several times your annual salary and has no Internet access? The only Internet access available to most Cubans will probably be through government controlled public Internet cafes which require ID, have round the clock surveillance, and heavily filtered access at high (although perhaps barely affordable) prices on public PCs. If the failure of socialism ever needed an example then Cuba would be it. I would rather take my chances with expensive health care (thank you very much Michael Moore) then live in ass backwards country like that.
Now, what can brown do for you?
Flush on the first try?
IMHO, things began to go off the rails when the dollar and other fiat currencies around the world lost their connection to gold. The special interests, large and politically well connected businesses, and the welfare socialists ALL hate gold, because gold limits their ability to confiscate the wealth of others through inflation and puts the brakes on excessive government spending (where newly created money tends to go to the politically well connected first who get to spend it before the resulting inflation kicks in). The connection between private wealth and political power was actually enhanced by elimination of gold as money (courts will generally refuse to enforce contracts that specify payment in gold or other precious metals) to the detriment of all since the ability to create, maintain, and even to confiscate (which is the true evil) wealth from others is closely tied to the government and thus provides tremendous incentives to lobby, bribe, and otherwise meddle with the "government of the people, by the people, for the people". Does this answer your question?
Some OSS is secure, some aren't. Same for closed source.
Yes, but TFA points out that Microsoft ISVs are trying to make a case that closed source is inherently MORE secure simply because the source is closed and nobody can "study it for the purpose of finding vulnerabilities" when in fact the experimental evidence (i.e. exploits in the wild and security incidents) overwhelming supports the conclusion that open source software is at the very least no worse than closed source software and is very often found to be more secure, even when other variables such as number and type of installations are controlled for, by almost any non-biased reckoning of the available real world data.
Fallout 3 (which I haven't played, admittedly)
You really owe it to yourself to give Fallout 3 a try, especially if you are a fan of the series. I got hooked as a CS major in college and although I have little time now for serious games, I made time for Fallout 3 and let me say that I was not disappointed. It is obvious while playing the game that the team at Bethesda are real fans who played the original games, groked the Fallout universe, and really wanted to do justice to the first two games and the Fallout name after the series had been tarnished and sold down the river by Interplay with embarrasing console money makers and cheap third party "tactics" spin-offs. The result was really marvellous and the few minor flaws remaining can very easily be fixed in the patches to come. I was especially impressed that Bethsoft had the courage to preserve the over-the-top violence (ala Bloody Mess), drug use, and dark humor that had always been a staple of the series (even though they compromised a bit on Med-x == morphine, and some minor usage animations); no mean feat these days when games receive the sort of intense public scrutiny that comics once received. I am really looking forward to a revamped Fallout series with fan contributed side quest add-ons and more content in the future (there is talk about a sequel where the level cap is raised to 30 and the player takes a cross country trip to the ruins of Pittsburgh). Just talking about it makes we want to pick up my A3-21 plasma rifle and blast some super mutants into piles of goo.
Werewolves, vampires, zombies, and similar creatures of the night were forbidden.
For example, from the wiki article on the Comics Code Authority:
Marvel skirted the zombie restriction in the mid-1970s by calling the apparently deceased, mind-controlled followers of various Haitian super-villains "zuvembies". This practice carried over to Marvel's super-hero line. In the Avengers comic, when the reanimated super-hero Wonder Man returned from the dead, he was also referred to as a "zuvembie".
This must be how the RIAA labels find such great talent and create such quality music.
That is good advice. It is WORSE than you think and THEY are out to get you. Extra points for rigging your apartment to burn down at the flick of a switch ala Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory. Seriously though, why should we trust the government? They have given us no good reasons to trust them. It is better and safer to treat the authorities as potential adversaries rather than trusted friends.
And yet in other countries, as TFA also points out, it is competition and NOT regulation which has delivered high speeds at low prices or 13 cents in Japan and 33 cents in France as opposed to $3 in the United States per million bits/second. We have seen our ranking slip to 15th in the world for broadband quality and penetration with regulation, why not give competition a chance? If there was lots of competition for your Internet connection dollars would you select an ISP that didn't respect Net Neutrality? Perhaps there is a way to get what most Slashdotters want (i.e. Net Neutrality) without having the government force it down everyone's collective throats with more regulation.
Google and MS's searching systems essentially don't go beyond searches.
They also don't represent the end all of what they might become in their present versions. They will probably improve with time and add more and better features as time and circumstances permit.
They don't do much for the organization of files.
If you have a way to index files for searches (ala search engine queries) and you can go right to any hits then why does this matter? Some people will organize their directory structure well and some will not. The organization of the files on the disk and searchability are really two different things.
I can only see the Progress Reports for one or the other at a time.
Why not run your search rooted at the parent of Project A and Project B and then sort the results by path so that the Project A progress reports appear grouped before the Project B progress reports?
Alternatively, I might also want to know which files involved various people in the company. Again, if I make them sub folders, then I can put them either under each project folder, where I lose my other categorizations, or under those categorizations, where I again segregate them.
That is a bit more of problem without metadata I will grant you, but would not Microsoft Search or Google Desktop Search index the text in those files and be able to find them in a query for "bob progress reports" or some such?
It simply makes more sense in my eyes to associate user-definable meta-data attributes that can be assigned to the files.
That could probably be done and added to the filesystem if it is not already a feature (doesn't NTFS for example already allow this with Active Directory?). However, we were originally talking about querying the filesystem ala SQL queries and the problem with that is that SQL has a very strict set of rules for data organization in order to enable the powerful queries; rules which may not be desirable or even feasible restrictions in a system designed to store large files. In fact, one of the things that SQL implementations have historically done poorly is storage of large non-queryable blobs of binary data.
Also, if you have ever worked with B-Trees on raw storage or looked at the source code of database engines then you will know that there are performance and other considerations if completely arbitrary attribute and file header sizes must be accomodated (as would be the case with arbitrary metadata). This would add further complexity to the file system implementation, possibly requiring paging or other memory mapping techniques to be used within the file system structure itself and slowing down performance even more (not sure, haven't tried to implement something like this, just going on intuition based upon previous similar work that I have done). You don't get something for nothing as they say.
Meta-data based systems needn't be overly complex.
That is true, but getting the right amount of complexity without too much getting in the way of running a simple file system will be the real tricky balance.
It's simply a different way to look at things than the traditional directory structure.
There has already been much experimentation with alternative methods of data storage, especially in the earlier days of computing, and the heirarchical directory structure has out lasted all challengers. For example, does anyone remember PICK OS? Database file systems have been tried before and found wanting. How will this time be different?
Given enough development time, will will almost certainly work it's way into mainstream use.
It has already had decades to work its way into the mainstream. The PICK system, fo
Would you want to be the commander of that unit?
airman 1: Is my helmet on straight?
airman 2: When do we get those female robots the recruiters promised us?
airman 3: Where are the Doritos and Red Bull? These MREs really suck...
but that still doesn't have the fidelity that I want (which is essentially just the ability to search for files via something akin to a db query rather than simply drill down a directory tree or search just on the name).
Functionality which is already well provided by the Google desktop search application and now Microsoft Windows Search on top of the basic file system. This proves that it is already possible for an application service running locally on top of a file system, and probably using a file in the file system for its own database, to provide database like queries on files and their contents. These types of indexing applications could probably be generalized to include support for SQL syntax (or something similar) and arbitrary meta-data. All of these features are an extension of the underlying file system rather than an integral part of it which really is a superior design (think of how Firefox and Thunderbird and countless other applications provide plug-in functionality rather than absorbing all possible features directly into the main application trunk). Database like indexing of the file system (which is bound to be different for different users with different needs) is NOT basic enough to be contained in the kernel along with the OS file system implementation(s). Good software design, which is MOST critical in the OS and it's kernel, builds functionality into carefully packaged layers, each one providing the most abstract and minimal possible service, which are then combined in combination to deliver various concrete services to the applications and users. If you want to take a dive into the subject then I recommend looking at Design Patterns and taking a look at the Gang of Four book of the same name.
That data is f****ing valuable and its mine, I'm not just going to give it away for free...