> Do you realize how much tax revenue would be lost if they banned violent video games?!
Not so fast. Be thankful... that they didn't realize how much money would be diverted from the computer industry to the movie industry if they had banned violent video games!
> How about Warren Buffet and Bill Gates Senior? They both think they, as some of the richest men in the world, should be paying *more* taxes, not less. This is in order to better help society, and to not create a new aristocracy (by passing all their money onto their children.)
Then why have they not written checks payable to "Bureau of the Public Debt" to reflect the difference between the taxes they are paying, and the taxes they think they should be paying? It's a free country, after all - there's even a line on the tax forms for it.
Or did you mean that Warren Buffet and Bill Gates Sr. think I should also be paying more taxes?
> Publicly question them and risk having your phone tapped...
That's why omnipresent surveillance is such a great force for advancing the cause of equality. For example, if we tap everybody's phones, the unreliable elements of society need no longer feel as though they've been singled out for their political views!
> It's supposed to punish criminals when they break the law, but what it really does is turn the law against regular people who are not doing anything unethical/immoral and it turns them into criminals.
Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against - then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now, that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."
- Ayn Rand, from Atlas Shrugged
> I do truly believe the politicians that voted this law into existence just didn't understand the harm they were doing, I don't think they did it in bad spirit, they just didn't understand that the potential abuse of this law was greater (and it is) that the value of that which they are trying to protect.
You underestimate your leaders at your peril, Citizen.
> In terms of the sanctity of individual rights, majority rule seems like it would most certainly be a bug... though I guess you're speaking from the perspective of the entrenched power (just for kicks, or???)
A little of both. It's fun from the "kicks" perspective, but from the "???" perspective, theirs is the only perspective that actually matters. It's their world: we are permitted to live in it at their pleasure. On a practical level, that means you can do damn near anything as long as you either generate positive net revenue (the middle class of net tax-payers) or dependence (the lower class of net tax-consumers).
In contrast to either the Colonial model (13 colonies, late 18th century) or the Stalinist model (mid-20th), we're even granted free reign to gab about them on Slashdot because the system's been structured so that such gabbing can never threaten their interests. That's a win-win situation in my books.
> If you mean right-wing collectivism, I agree.
<evil>The object of the game is to get your subjects to the point that they can't tell the difference. When that's happened, you get bragging rights at the next international summit, and the other leaders have to buy you a round.</evil>
> > Popular democracy helps to entrench political power > > probably you typoed and meant "responsible democracy?"
D'oh. Yes, thanks for catching it.
I brainfarted because I was simultaneously thinking of populism (specifically, the current brand of campaigning masquerading as populism) as a mechanism for entrenching power in the context of responsible democracy.
By way of example, look at campaigns for the "Republicans/fundies/abortion" or "Democrats/blacks/poverty" voting blocs. When you have 90% of a bloc locked up, you preach (populist) fire and brimstone, get the votes, and in your role as (responsible) leader, can safely ignore them until the next election, because fundies can't vote for what they see as "the baby killing party", just like blacks can't vote for what they see as "the rich white guy party".
> > As part of that educated middle class, popular democracy is a (pardon the pun:) great leap forward as far as I'm concerned. > > But where does a burgeoning middle class get its numbers? From a shrinking lower class, a hyper-taxed rich class, both?
What's "burgeoning" about the middle class? They're a potential threat -- the long-term goal is to shrink it, not expand it. (Another benefit of restricting education to the descendants of the upper class.:)
> what about the tyranny of the majority? Maybe state/local rights could enjoy a resurgence and lead to a successfully pluralistic, confederate system
Well, that's the tricky bit. A tyranny of the majority is a feature, not a bug, except that you have to keep the people sufficiently homogenized to pull it off without splitting the country up and reducing the amount of power you have.
From the perspective of a federal government, a resurgence of state/local rights is a worst case scenario and would have to be prevented by force.
To use the US as the example, if the populations of Mormon Utah and Hippy California aren't sufficiently similar, you cease to be able to rule both.
The old-school method of keeping the Utahns and Californians in line is the Stalin method: "Well, suppose we just starve the Ukraine..."
The new-school method is much nicer. In the past 50 years, technology has come far enough that standards of living for even the lower classes are pretty damn good across the board (clean water, TV, air conditioning, and enough food so that obesity, rather than starvation, is the primary hazard) that it's pretty easy to keep the masses fat 'n' happy. Fat and happy people are either apolitical and accept the rule of whoever happens to be in power at the moment (the best), or can be trained to vote predictably (which is just as good).
In such a society, responible leaders can (and should) be somewhat responive in order to keep both CA and UT feeling good about their respective regions, just so long as everybody at the State and Local levels knows where the limits are. Berkeley can pass all the local medicinal pot laws it wants to, and East Bufftuck, Utah can keep the blue laws on the books, for instance -- just as long the Feds are never expected by State authorities to take any of 'em seriously.
Which ain't exactly democracy, but since democracy's no longer strictly necessary (nor in the interests of those who must make the decision), it's a damn sight better than the alternative.
Buzzword for the day: "Managed democracy". Only the Russians could come up with a buzzword like that:)
> Having studied political science, I'm interested in knowing what evidence you have to support your assertion that a popular democracy is better than a responsible democracy, either in terms of a) the educated middle class, or b) the nation as a whole.
Neither of those groups of people are relevant.
You're forgetting c) those with political power.
Popular democracy helps to entrench political power, and it's capable of doing so without all the bad PR and general ickiness that comes with more traditional forms of social control.
The opinions of the masses are irrelevant; they'll take what they're given, and can be manipulated to believe what they need to believe in order to ensure stability.
The educated middle class is the dangerous segment of a population, but the lessons of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation have been well learned by modern leaders. Observe how aggressively the intelligentsia is targeted for extermination under traditional forms of social control such as those practised by Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.
As part of that educated middle class, popular democracy is a (pardon the pun:) great leap forward as far as I'm concerned.
> > possible solutions: reduce opportunities for education, indoctrinate some and subjugate the rest, amend the system...
Amend the system by reducing opportunities for education. Reduce education itself into indoctrination, and you won't have to subjugate the rest nearly as harshly as you might otherwise have to. It's vastly more pleasant to those you rule, and more importantly, if you're in charge, you're much less likely to have a popular revolt (the masses are too complacent) or a palace coup (because your power base benefits from political stability more than it does from any particular party being in power) on your hands.
> I'd be much more worried about the non-hacker, well funded, professional genetic researcher.
Speaking of which, does anyone remember the rumored biowarfare projects from South Africa during the apartheid years? The genome hadn't been mapped at the time, and they didn't have the technology to go that far, but if the apartheid system had survived until today, I wonder how far they'd have gotten.
(For anyone who doesn't remember the rumors: Yes, the project was the obvious one.)
> Well, because of Moore's law, these systems [medical grade solenoid valves and pumps] will eventually be cheap enough. It's just a matter of time.
Moore's law doesn't apply to every technology. Compare the cost of a unit of performance (kilobyte, megahertz, MFLOP) with the cost of the chip fab used to build the chips that implement the performance.
It's been 35 years -- and I still doubt very much that I could afford to build 1-kilobit DRAMs on 3mm dies cut from homegrown 50mm silicon wafers "from scratch".
Biotech will likely be subject to similar limitations: You're not manipulating information, you're manipulating atoms. The cost of manipulating atoms isn't subject to Moore's Law.
> IE defaults to 'automatic logon only in Intranet zone'. The other options are 'anonymous logon', 'automatic logon with current user name and password', and 'prompt for user name and password'. I can't think of any reason people would change this from the default.
Serious question: From the perspective of an occasional Windows user and frequent UNIX user, what does "logon" possibly mean in this context? ("Duh, I'm already logged on, how the hell else could I run this web browser?") Is "automatic logon" some sort of IE/Exchange/BackOffice thing for people whose CIO drank the Billygates kool-aid?
Rant: "Why change from the default? " I was thinking the opposite -- another checkbox saying "Don't 'log me in', don't fucking broadcast whatever these 'credentials' are, don't do me any favors anywhere, under any circumstances, just... don't" because there are so many cross-domain exploits that even if I was in a shop that used an internal application that uses whatever the hell these 'credentials' are, odds are that I'm still going to regret it because I'm not a PHB who wants to to trade security for user-obsequiousness convenience."
Sorry for the rant -- I just beat on a new XP box for the first time in a long time and am still annoyed. My rule of thumb for IE still has to be "If you can't figure out what the feature's used for, assume it's a kludge that got bolted on at the last minute to protect the monopoly or trade security for convenience, and therefore, the only people who have a use for it are the all-Microsoft shops and worm writers."
I don't mind seeing MS put things into the product to protect the monopoly / extend functionality in all-Microsoft environments. Just let me know what they are so I can know that I can turn them off and stop worrying about 'em. I mean, other than worm authors, did anybody ever use RPC/DCOM? If yes, who and why?
> "So I went back to the store for the fifth time -- I still didn't have enough limes! Who would have thought that you needed more than one to make a batch of margaritas? > > "On the way back, I accidentally ran over the bag of limes with my car, but figured it probably wouldn't matter. A little gravel never hurt anything, after all. > > "I finally got back to my house, dumped all the limes in the blender, hit on -- nothing happened! I eventually figured out you have to plug it in, or something like that."
Turns out the power was out from the storms we've had lately. I'd forgotten about that in all the excitement over dumping the limes in the blender.
So I went to Home Depot and got a portable generator, plugged it into the mains without isolating anything, and *BAM*, nearly killed the lineman fixing the downed wire three houses down the street.
I offered him a gravelly margarita for his trouble. He seemed annoyed at me. Strange.
> Knocks parts off the motherboard, wasn't grounded, refused to measure fan sizes before buying them. And I am still only halfway through the article.
The meta-bug: Failure to isolate problems one at a time.
If he'd simply concentrated on what was wrong (bad fan on heatsink), he never would have purchased the new heatsink. He would never have purchased a new case to fit the new heatsink. He would never have had to remove the motherboard and fuck it up by knocking parts off in his failed attempt to put it into the new case. He would never have needed a new motherboard, and he never did need a new case.
> Can be summed up in one sentence:
Feckin' eejits shouldn't mess around inside the computer!
You have a gift for understatement. Describing this guy as a "feckin' eejit" is akin to describing Valles Marineris as a "ditch".
Constructive advice: The difference between feckin' eejits and the clued is that the clued try to solve one problem at a time. CPU running insanely-hotter than normal? Solve that problem - and only that problem. After you've solved that problem, then you can think about getting better solutions like a quieter heatsink/fan, a snazzier case, or a new motherboard. Solving one problem at a time means that the "solution" to the first problem doesn't necessarily have to fix anything -- it could be that you wanted to upgrade the old box anyways, so just power off the damn thing and buy your new box.
> Remember what happened when Gorbachev legalized information flow in the old Soviet Union? The largest empire in human history evaporated like a bad dream.
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
> as someone who is very pro-life I find this excellent. Stem cell research does not need to require the death of a child. There are plenty of other sources of stem cells that can be used. When someone is pushing for aborted children to be used for harvesting stem cells, they have an agenda. Stem cells can also come from a number of other sources, such as baby teeth, amniotic fluid, and a number of other places.
Alert: Monitoring equipment for broodmare CX29-B reports increase in uterine activity. Retract amniotic extraction needles, rotate mare to upright position, open gate to amniotic funnel for expulsion. Dentaxtractorbots notified and drills spun up.
> The United Nations is aiming to bring a "modern day epidemic" of junk e-mail under control
within the next two years by standardizing legislation around the world to make it easier to prosecute spammers, a leading expert said Tuesday.
...and the initial makeup of the UNCOS (U.N. Commission On Spam) are the ambassadors from the Independent Federation of Cyberpromo (S. Wallace), the People's Republic of Optinrealbig (S. Richter), the Neoconfederacy of Telodigm (A. Ralsky), the Principality of Ratsmouth, South Florida (E. Marin) and the Democratic Republic of Horse-Fuckers from Yellowsun (You Don't Wanna Know).
> To the best of my recollection, Kerry didn't answer the question "Mac or PC?" at a debate among the democratic contenders
That's because when I was writing my position paper before the debate (on a Mac), it went Beep Beep Beep, and my advisors told me FreeBSD was dying. I got so mad at my PC that I threw a medal at it. It was a very nice medal. Switch to that penguin thingy!
...umm, we used BeOS when I was in Vietnam? I'm John Kerry and I approve of MS-DOS X!
> > His understanding had been no more real than the things he was seeing in the chamber. > > That's really the entire point.
Who knows what "real" is, when your conscious perceptions of reality can be so profoundly altered by taking a few milligrams (or in this case, micrograms) of some chemical compound?
Reality is what your instruments measure, and what your friends' instruments measure when they try to measure whatever it was that you were measuring. To put it more
poetically:
"Reality is what refuses to go away when I stop believing in it" - Phillip. K. Dick
> Drugs whack you upside the head with the philosophical truth that "reality," as we commonly define it, doesn't really exist in any relevant way. It is only psychological reality which matters.
Anyone who claims that "only psychological reality matters" has never tried to dribble a[n American] football.
> Are you trying to suggest that web sites should not be allowed to contain scripts? Or that
sandboxing code with different levels of trust is not a useful ability?
Yes to the former. No to the latter -- but with the caveat that the thing that should be sandboxing code is the operating system, not the web browser.
A web browser is not an operating system. It has no business doing anything other than turning HTML into boobies.
> Microsoft's problem is that their API's are a mess and security checks aren't always performed or performed correctly.
Remote execution of untrusted code is bad. Tools that enable untrusted code to run in an unsandboxable environment are bad. Tools that enable untrusted code to run in an unsandboxable environment, but that assume the sandbox's integrity is intact, are unforgivable.
Given this -- and it's not like it was a big secret, even at Microsoft -- was it, or was it not, Really. Fucking. Stupid to base the operating system's patch delivery mechanism (windowsupdate.microsoft.com), all locally-stored online help (.chm), email client (outleak), web browser (IE), on a set of assumptions that its developers knew to be patently false at design time, let alone implementation time?
Answer: "We don't care how fucking stupid it is, we got scared into thinking Netscape might do the same sort of stupid thing on Solaris using Java applets on thin clients to talk to an Oracle database, which would have jeopardized our desktop monopoly. It's been six years since the market rejected that paradigm, but have no fear, we're still designing the same stupid into Longhorn."
> I find the booth girls actively repulsive, not due to how they look, but how obviously false they are. I value honesty over pleasantries, and truth over superficial beauty.
> >No, I'm not gay. In fact, I'm rather solidly hetero. However, I'm not going to set myself up for disappointment by investing any amount of emotion or biological impulse in someone who so obviously merely tolerates my existance.
The most fun coverage I ever saw of E3 was some TV show for gamers. The news crew started approaching random booth babes and asked them how they felt about nonexistent events like the "Sony/Nintendo merger". Hilarity ensued.
To which I can only add: "Go thou, fellow geeks, and do likewise in 2005".
> Don't talk about Star Trek, Slashdot, Linux, or quote Monty Python. [Women] don't have the slightest interest in any of those topics
Then what's the point of dating them? Teh boobies am teh r0x0r, but that's what the intarweb is for.
Seriously. I, too, haven't had human contact beyond a business handshake in living memory. And y'know what? I'm just fine with that. Human contact is overrated. I enjoy the omnipresent booth-babe eye candy as much as the next geek, and can I appreciate and respect my female co-workers as fellow techies. No need to cop a feel in either case.
/would hit it with Sayah from Project Entropia 'till the server broke.
//but would much prefer to have a few beers and talk about MMORPG design philosophy.
Slashdot Mirror
Not so fast. Be thankful... that they didn't realize how much money would be diverted from the computer industry to the movie industry if they had banned violent video games!
Then why have they not written checks payable to "Bureau of the Public Debt" to reflect the difference between the taxes they are paying, and the taxes they think they should be paying? It's a free country, after all - there's even a line on the tax forms for it.
Or did you mean that Warren Buffet and Bill Gates Sr. think I should also be paying more taxes?
Hint: That's not the same thing.
Well, at least now we know why you're tagged for search :)
That's why omnipresent surveillance is such a great force for advancing the cause of equality. For example, if we tap everybody's phones, the unreliable elements of society need no longer feel as though they've been singled out for their political views!
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
When the only tool you have is a shotgun, every problem looks for the nearest exit.
But when the only tool you have is an axe, every problem looks like hours of gleeful, giddy, glorious fun!
> I do truly believe the politicians that voted this law into existence just didn't understand the harm they were doing, I don't think they did it in bad spirit, they just didn't understand that the potential abuse of this law was greater (and it is) that the value of that which they are trying to protect.
You underestimate your leaders at your peril, Citizen.
A little of both. It's fun from the "kicks" perspective, but from the "???" perspective, theirs is the only perspective that actually matters. It's their world: we are permitted to live in it at their pleasure. On a practical level, that means you can do damn near anything as long as you either generate positive net revenue (the middle class of net tax-payers) or dependence (the lower class of net tax-consumers).
In contrast to either the Colonial model (13 colonies, late 18th century) or the Stalinist model (mid-20th), we're even granted free reign to gab about them on Slashdot because the system's been structured so that such gabbing can never threaten their interests. That's a win-win situation in my books.
> If you mean right-wing collectivism, I agree.
<evil>The object of the game is to get your subjects to the point that they can't tell the difference. When that's happened, you get bragging rights at the next international summit, and the other leaders have to buy you a round.</evil>
>
> probably you typoed and meant "responsible democracy?"
D'oh. Yes, thanks for catching it.
I brainfarted because I was simultaneously thinking of populism (specifically, the current brand of campaigning masquerading as populism) as a mechanism for entrenching power in the context of responsible democracy.
By way of example, look at campaigns for the "Republicans/fundies/abortion" or "Democrats/blacks/poverty" voting blocs. When you have 90% of a bloc locked up, you preach (populist) fire and brimstone, get the votes, and in your role as (responsible) leader, can safely ignore them until the next election, because fundies can't vote for what they see as "the baby killing party", just like blacks can't vote for what they see as "the rich white guy party".
> > As part of that educated middle class, popular democracy is a (pardon the pun :) great leap forward as far as I'm concerned.
>
> But where does a burgeoning middle class get its numbers? From a shrinking lower class, a hyper-taxed rich class, both?
What's "burgeoning" about the middle class? They're a potential threat -- the long-term goal is to shrink it, not expand it. (Another benefit of restricting education to the descendants of the upper class. :)
> what about the tyranny of the majority? Maybe state/local rights could enjoy a resurgence and lead to a successfully pluralistic, confederate system
Well, that's the tricky bit. A tyranny of the majority is a feature, not a bug, except that you have to keep the people sufficiently homogenized to pull it off without splitting the country up and reducing the amount of power you have. From the perspective of a federal government, a resurgence of state/local rights is a worst case scenario and would have to be prevented by force.
To use the US as the example, if the populations of Mormon Utah and Hippy California aren't sufficiently similar, you cease to be able to rule both.
The old-school method of keeping the Utahns and Californians in line is the Stalin method: "Well, suppose we just starve the Ukraine..."
The new-school method is much nicer. In the past 50 years, technology has come far enough that standards of living for even the lower classes are pretty damn good across the board (clean water, TV, air conditioning, and enough food so that obesity, rather than starvation, is the primary hazard) that it's pretty easy to keep the masses fat 'n' happy. Fat and happy people are either apolitical and accept the rule of whoever happens to be in power at the moment (the best), or can be trained to vote predictably (which is just as good).
In such a society, responible leaders can (and should) be somewhat responive in order to keep both CA and UT feeling good about their respective regions, just so long as everybody at the State and Local levels knows where the limits are. Berkeley can pass all the local medicinal pot laws it wants to, and East Bufftuck, Utah can keep the blue laws on the books, for instance -- just as long the Feds are never expected by State authorities to take any of 'em seriously.
Which ain't exactly democracy, but since democracy's no longer strictly necessary (nor in the interests of those who must make the decision), it's a damn sight better than the alternative.
Buzzword for the day: "Managed democracy". Only the Russians could come up with a buzzword like that :)
"What good is a newsgroup, alt.mister-anderson, if you are unable to convince administrators to carry it?"
- agentsmith in alt.config
Neither of those groups of people are relevant. You're forgetting c) those with political power.
Popular democracy helps to entrench political power, and it's capable of doing so without all the bad PR and general ickiness that comes with more traditional forms of social control.
The opinions of the masses are irrelevant; they'll take what they're given, and can be manipulated to believe what they need to believe in order to ensure stability.
The educated middle class is the dangerous segment of a population, but the lessons of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation have been well learned by modern leaders. Observe how aggressively the intelligentsia is targeted for extermination under traditional forms of social control such as those practised by Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.
As part of that educated middle class, popular democracy is a (pardon the pun :) great leap forward as far as I'm concerned.
> > possible solutions: reduce opportunities for education, indoctrinate some and subjugate the rest, amend the system...
Amend the system by reducing opportunities for education. Reduce education itself into indoctrination, and you won't have to subjugate the rest nearly as harshly as you might otherwise have to. It's vastly more pleasant to those you rule, and more importantly, if you're in charge, you're much less likely to have a popular revolt (the masses are too complacent) or a palace coup (because your power base benefits from political stability more than it does from any particular party being in power) on your hands.
Speaking of which, does anyone remember the rumored biowarfare projects from South Africa during the apartheid years? The genome hadn't been mapped at the time, and they didn't have the technology to go that far, but if the apartheid system had survived until today, I wonder how far they'd have gotten.
(For anyone who doesn't remember the rumors: Yes, the project was the obvious one.)
Naw, give the guy five cocks. And tell him Darl's pants fit like a glove.
Moore's law doesn't apply to every technology. Compare the cost of a unit of performance (kilobyte, megahertz, MFLOP) with the cost of the chip fab used to build the chips that implement the performance.
It's been 35 years -- and I still doubt very much that I could afford to build 1-kilobit DRAMs on 3mm dies cut from homegrown 50mm silicon wafers "from scratch".
Biotech will likely be subject to similar limitations: You're not manipulating information, you're manipulating atoms. The cost of manipulating atoms isn't subject to Moore's Law.
Serious question: From the perspective of an occasional Windows user and frequent UNIX user, what does "logon" possibly mean in this context? ("Duh, I'm already logged on, how the hell else could I run this web browser?") Is "automatic logon" some sort of IE/Exchange/BackOffice thing for people whose CIO drank the Billygates kool-aid?
Rant: "Why change from the default? " I was thinking the opposite -- another checkbox saying "Don't 'log me in', don't fucking broadcast whatever these 'credentials' are, don't do me any favors anywhere, under any circumstances, just... don't" because there are so many cross-domain exploits that even if I was in a shop that used an internal application that uses whatever the hell these 'credentials' are, odds are that I'm still going to regret it because I'm not a PHB who wants to to trade security for user-obsequiousness convenience."
Sorry for the rant -- I just beat on a new XP box for the first time in a long time and am still annoyed. My rule of thumb for IE still has to be "If you can't figure out what the feature's used for, assume it's a kludge that got bolted on at the last minute to protect the monopoly or trade security for convenience, and therefore, the only people who have a use for it are the all-Microsoft shops and worm writers."
I don't mind seeing MS put things into the product to protect the monopoly / extend functionality in all-Microsoft environments. Just let me know what they are so I can know that I can turn them off and stop worrying about 'em. I mean, other than worm authors, did anybody ever use RPC/DCOM? If yes, who and why?
>
> "On the way back, I accidentally ran over the bag of limes with my car, but figured it probably wouldn't matter. A little gravel never hurt anything, after all.
>
> "I finally got back to my house, dumped all the limes in the blender, hit on -- nothing happened! I eventually figured out you have to plug it in, or something like that."
Turns out the power was out from the storms we've had lately. I'd forgotten about that in all the excitement over dumping the limes in the blender.
So I went to Home Depot and got a portable generator, plugged it into the mains without isolating anything, and *BAM*, nearly killed the lineman fixing the downed wire three houses down the street.
I offered him a gravelly margarita for his trouble. He seemed annoyed at me. Strange.
The meta-bug: Failure to isolate problems one at a time.
If he'd simply concentrated on what was wrong (bad fan on heatsink), he never would have purchased the new heatsink. He would never have purchased a new case to fit the new heatsink. He would never have had to remove the motherboard and fuck it up by knocking parts off in his failed attempt to put it into the new case. He would never have needed a new motherboard, and he never did need a new case.
> Can be summed up in one sentence: Feckin' eejits shouldn't mess around inside the computer!
You have a gift for understatement. Describing this guy as a "feckin' eejit" is akin to describing Valles Marineris as a "ditch".
Constructive advice: The difference between feckin' eejits and the clued is that the clued try to solve one problem at a time. CPU running insanely-hotter than normal? Solve that problem - and only that problem. After you've solved that problem, then you can think about getting better solutions like a quieter heatsink/fan, a snazzier case, or a new motherboard. Solving one problem at a time means that the "solution" to the first problem doesn't necessarily have to fix anything -- it could be that you wanted to upgrade the old box anyways, so just power off the damn thing and buy your new box.
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
> Now we have Google. What's coming next?
To remember is to never let it happen again.
Alert: Monitoring equipment for broodmare CX29-B reports increase in uterine activity. Retract amniotic extraction needles, rotate mare to upright position, open gate to amniotic funnel for expulsion. Dentaxtractorbots notified and drills spun up.
Because hey, he's pro-life. :)
That's because when I was writing my position paper before the debate (on a Mac), it went Beep Beep Beep, and my advisors told me FreeBSD was dying. I got so mad at my PC that I threw a medal at it. It was a very nice medal. Switch to that penguin thingy!
>
> That's really the entire point. Who knows what "real" is, when your conscious perceptions of reality can be so profoundly altered by taking a few milligrams (or in this case, micrograms) of some chemical compound?
Reality is what your instruments measure, and what your friends' instruments measure when they try to measure whatever it was that you were measuring. To put it more poetically:
"Reality is what refuses to go away when I stop believing in it"
- Phillip. K. Dick
> Drugs whack you upside the head with the philosophical truth that "reality," as we commonly define it, doesn't really exist in any relevant way. It is only psychological reality which matters.
Anyone who claims that "only psychological reality matters" has never tried to dribble a[n American] football.
Yes to the former. No to the latter -- but with the caveat that the thing that should be sandboxing code is the operating system, not the web browser.
A web browser is not an operating system. It has no business doing anything other than turning HTML into boobies.
> Microsoft's problem is that their API's are a mess and security checks aren't always performed or performed correctly.
Remote execution of untrusted code is bad. Tools that enable untrusted code to run in an unsandboxable environment are bad. Tools that enable untrusted code to run in an unsandboxable environment, but that assume the sandbox's integrity is intact, are unforgivable.
Given this -- and it's not like it was a big secret, even at Microsoft -- was it, or was it not, Really. Fucking. Stupid to base the operating system's patch delivery mechanism (windowsupdate.microsoft.com), all locally-stored online help (.chm), email client (outleak), web browser (IE), on a set of assumptions that its developers knew to be patently false at design time, let alone implementation time?
Answer: "We don't care how fucking stupid it is, we got scared into thinking Netscape might do the same sort of stupid thing on Solaris using Java applets on thin clients to talk to an Oracle database, which would have jeopardized our desktop monopoly. It's been six years since the market rejected that paradigm, but have no fear, we're still designing the same stupid into Longhorn."
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>No, I'm not gay. In fact, I'm rather solidly hetero. However, I'm not going to set myself up for disappointment by investing any amount of emotion or biological impulse in someone who so obviously merely tolerates my existance.
The most fun coverage I ever saw of E3 was some TV show for gamers. The news crew started approaching random booth babes and asked them how they felt about nonexistent events like the "Sony/Nintendo merger". Hilarity ensued.
To which I can only add: "Go thou, fellow geeks, and do likewise in 2005".
Then what's the point of dating them? Teh boobies am teh r0x0r, but that's what the intarweb is for.
Seriously. I, too, haven't had human contact beyond a business handshake in living memory. And y'know what? I'm just fine with that. Human contact is overrated. I enjoy the omnipresent booth-babe eye candy as much as the next geek, and can I appreciate and respect my female co-workers as fellow techies. No need to cop a feel in either case.
My bad. Forgot to monosyllablize the heap big clue; there's no one-syllable word for "local internet zone", so...
"I.E. made of code. I.E. code run on your box. Since I.E. code run on your box, all zone known to I.E. are "SELF"!"