Ah! So, you think English is bad? The world is full of homophones, think of French, where words like a, as, a' are pronounced exactly the same, but with different orthography (which is itself almost as bad as English' own). Arabic has a host of dialects, and also Russian is -I heard- quite scary.
However, what is interesting is that Opera is a norwegian company. As a foreigner living in Norway, and speaking Norwegian, I am stunned at how Norwegians plainly refuse to speak proper Norwegian: everybody stick to their dialect, and get pretty upset if you as them prettyPrettyPleaseWithACherryOnTop to speak Norwegian "because you're learning". They'll rather switch to English, vanifying any actual effort to learn the language, and feel pissed at you because you "disrespected their identity". Yes, there are local politicians that are wondering why most immigrants do not learn the language.
Here in Trondheim, where I live, the Linguistics department of NTNU, Trondheim's university, has managed to get an automated speech-recognition-based information service for the local mass transport company, so that elderly people can ring from their mobile phones and ask for when the next bus passes by. Can't find the link, it's possibly experimental, but i think my source is quite reliable. I work at that university myself, though at another institute and faculty.
Therefore, if their program managed to swallow Trondheim's dialect, troendersk, it can digest just about anything. AFAIHH, they used neural networks to program the thingie.
Describing a voting system based on cellulose-derived foil, produced by the processing of arboreal mass, that allows to cast one's vote by imprinting a graphite track on a specific part of the foil.
The said part will be made clearly distinguishable from others by a permanent imprint of organic, chromatically-emitting chemical compounds, which, by using technology covered by previous patents, will convey a stream of information to a biological signal decoder, called eye(tm). While eye(tm)'s come in pairs, this advanced system requires only one, possibly none with minor modifications.
The counting process will be carried out through biological, neural-network-based intelligences, result of a genetic algorithm that has proceeded for exactly 1,048,134,239 years as of April 1, 2004 (Pangea patent no. 00000000000001). A particularity of this process is the ability of computing results maintaining a record of raw data, that is stored in the graphite-marked cellulose foils at all times.
Correction of any problems after the fact is acceptable.
You're right indeed for printer cartridges, but I'll observe other businesses as car sale or real estate can make a correction more difficult if possible at all, while others, such as candybars, are even easier.
but she has a vested interest in saying that espresso is the best of all types to drink.
Why? Because you really have to try hard to find 'long coffee' or caffe' americano here. It's almost impossible.
<patronising>Well of course, it is the best of all types. Except maybe cappuccino.</patronising>
Seriously, in Italy you don't find american "coffee" for the simple reason there is no demand. We call it rather sewer water... nothing personal, just the personal opinion of 58 millions. As for the French girl, I suffered so much from French "coffee" (another sewer outlet) the time I was in Grenoble, that that serves her good:-)))
Also, no other nationality fetishises food to the extent the Italians do.
Dammit, we have mafia, we have politicians (no wait, I said that already), this time of the year we have bad weather too, can you at least indulge in some food vanity?:-)
A lot of people get this impression of capitalism as being TINA (there's no alternative). Capitalism is as good as gravitation, magnetism, chemical kinetics: it is a number of phenomena that obey social or physical laws, and the result can or cannot be good for society (depending also on the definition of what "good" is)
Simple capitalism theory, including the demonstration that perfect competition is the most efficient way to produce goods, rests on three pillars:
All producers are irrelevant in the market
All consumers have perfect knowledge of the market
There is only one market
When some of these assumptions go bananas, so goes efficiency, and that's when your wallet starts aching.
It is maybe worth noting that all requirements are in open contradiction, since you can't have perfect knowledge of a infinite market, nor is everything packed in only one market - e.g. ordering from abroad will cost you an "access fee" in the form of mailing costs, that makes buying a 1% cheaper ice cream in Bucharest unattractive if you live in Miami. This simply means that capitalism is achievable only as an approximation, how good depends on the people who set the rules.
In the case of printer cartridges, 1 goes bananas because every producer is a near-monopolist of his printers; 2 goes bananas because few know that it is possible to hack printers to pay less; and 3 because every printer manufacturer has his cartridge market, sometimes more as their printers are normally not cross-compatible.
So, this is indeed Capitalism 101, but at the distortion of market chapter. What needs to be done is a state-imposed standard on printer cartridges, to reinstate competition and fair pricing. Start bullying your politicians today!
If there's something that makes me nervous is this kind of paternalism mixed with loads of ignorance. This guy has yet to find the first clue to life, and tells everybody else how to live it.
If someone installs your work from disc 3 of some Linux distro, they couldn't care less who you are.
Well I do care. I don't know or could not possibly remember all the names of the programmers that put together my Gentoo box. But dammit I'm grateful, and when I happen to ask them a question I pay them respect, as they have deserved that.
No - in the end you are going to settle for a job that pays for your house, your car and your wife and children.
Jeeeeesus, why has everybody the Recipe for Life in his bloody sleeve? Why can't these idiots realise that other people have other goals?
The whole thing about "free software" is a lie. It's a dream created and made popular by people who have a keen interest in having cheap software so that they can drive down their own cost and profit more or by people who can easily demand it, because they make their money out of speaking at conferences or write books about how nice it is to have free software.
This is it. This is the ultimate insult to thousands of programmers and people that gave so much of their time. This jerk know probably not even what the GPL is and why people use it.
Forget the dream about stuff being free and stop advocating it. It's idiocy. It's bigotry.
But, again, coming to this point, I feel sorry for this poor bastard. He's looking at young Aiden: Aiden is all that he ever wanted to be, but he failed, and he hates him for that.
What an hollow man. Reminds me Scrooge.
Using that phrase is more than a little insensitive. In fact, using it in Germany can get you in about as much trouble as SCO can after this.
As far as I know that is still part of the official anthem. It is common misconception that it means that Germany's superior to everybody, it actually means that German national unity should come before the petty local and personal interests (it was composed back in other times). Alles means everything, everybody is alle.
This of course did not stop the guy with the moustache to shift the meaning in the direction he wanted, which left the song with a certain evil aura.
More than Microsoft, I'm worried about the national government and political majority. They received Bill Gates in the parliament, which is a honour few get (ok, that building has hosted more mafiosi than the worst pub of Palermo, but that's an honour anyway), normally reserved to heads of foreign states, and while the government is right-wing, the mayor of Rome is a prominent leader of the left.
I would guess this will end up being a political issue between right and left. Whatever, just one more reason to get rid of Berlusconi.
I would guess "VENI, VIDI, COMPUTI".
Sorry for the all caps, but Latin is supposed to be written in all caps, lowercase is a middle-age thing. Pronounciation should be something like/wehnee, weedee, kohmpootee/.
This is quite strange to say the least. I mean, this attitude of certain Americans that believe that cops can't even ask ID of someone.
I'm an Italian living in Norway, and I've been to a few places around; here in Europe it's obvious that you're going to provide your ID if you're asked, and the only good reason not to do so is that you have something nasty to hide. How are cops supposed to catch criminals if they can't even check their papers?
In Italy, a prominent mafia boss, Madonia, was caught this way: a policeman asked for his ID, he provided it, and since it was obviously faked the policeman had just to say "Mr. Madonia, please...". They could not simply arrest him straight away since they had no recent pictures of him, and could not be totally sure it was him.
It's quite weird that this paranoia is fount in the country of LAPD and Guantanamo bay, where way more serious violation of rights happened and happen still.
Bin Ladin would be a nobody without a cause or people to follow him if it wasn't for the prestige he got fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. So I guess you say they helped create him.
Not exactly a smart remark. You are missing the fact that he and the mujahedeens were US-supported (not USSR-supported, do we agree on this at least?). It's like saying that you have to thank the Brits for creating George Washington, or King Louis XVI for paving the French revolution, or emperor Nero for rebuilding Rome.
Mighty big of Brezhnev to declare that he wouldn't kill millions of people eh?
Given that the US did not say the same thing, and therefore reserved themselves the right to a first nuclear strike, yes.
You have trouble putting things in perspective, Brezhnev saying that he would not launch a first nuclear strike whatever the circumstances was a very important diplomatic move. While Brezhnev has clearly not been Gandhi, and forced the USSR in a long stagnation that undermined its economics, this specific diplomatic move was clearly reducing the risk of WW3 breaking out.
This is especially important as the first nuclear strike was then considered (and possibly still is) the only way to win a nuclear war.
The war was largely unjustified and resulted from political incompetence of the old farts who ruled USSR by that time.
I have no doubt that it was not like the Return of the King. Reality is fuzzy, and good warriors, well, are just contradiction in terms.
But, if I have to relativise, there's no way dumbass Brezhnev and the other old farts of the Politburo were worse people than bin Laden or those other insane fundamentalists. Bin Laden trashed the WTC, Brezhnev declared that he would not use a first nuclear strike.
One wonders if this is German nature and could happen again or if Hitler was truly that much of a mastermind at brainwashing people. I highly doubt something similar could happen in the United States (or France, or the UK for that matter).
That's were you're wrong. As the other reply stated, many people can easily be brainwashed by authority. What happened in Nazi Germany, in Afghanistan, in Congo, is not a strange movie. It is actual people doing real evil things. Take the fact that it has not happened in your country (I guess) as a bliss.
It seems I did not get my point through. You might as well search for Salvador Allende, Jacobo Arbenz, Muhammad Mossadiq, Patrice Lumumba. I'm not saying that the USSR were good. I am saying that believing that the US are the "good guys" is just as foolish as to believe the USSR was.
Again: propaganda has been on both sides. You think that the USSR was not respecting human rights? You are right. You think that the US have been defending them? You'd better wake up.
Nope. The USSR was fighting against a muslim fundamentalist uprising financed by external powers (read: Ronald Reagan), and was called in by a legitimate government. You may question that Afghanistan's government was fully independent, but again few in western Europe were then. Among the "freedom fighters", a certain Osama bin Laden learnt a lot about guerrilla in that war. The mujaheddin finally won thanks to American Stinger missiles with which they shot down Soviet choppers, and, when they drove out the Soviets, they started a civil war that raged on until a faction, the talebans, came to power and established their perfect muslim state.
Most Americans noticed these guys first when two 767 smashed in the twin towers. I remember a New York store with the sign "Whack Afghanistan" the day after, and could not help thinking "You already did".
Of course the USSR's methods were not especially gentle, and they were responsible for extensive land-mine fields (though there is an american quota, not easily discerned since the US cloned soviet mines to cover their tracks). Civilian casualties were not a major concern, as they were not in Vietnam, and it turned again in a world-domination question. But if I had to pick which was the most evil side, that would not be the USSR, especially considering what mujaheddins and talebans did later, both to Afghani and American civilians.
However, under the socialist government, women had some rights, and society was socially more advanced, and way less religious, than what it is now. Women today 40 years old and over, who experienced those times, are among the most frustrated groups in Afghanistan, resulting in high suicide rates.
The more people I meet from East Europe, the more I am convinced that the two worlds were much more similar than what we westerners were raised to believe. People from former East Germany don't shun their origins as people from Nazi Germany would have (see 79qm DDR, which I am told is a quite precise account of the facts by East Germans). Some are even fond of the old eastern flag. A Czech girl told me that, visiting San Francisco, she was appalled by seeing American girls executing a Spartakiad. They were cheerleaders.
There were abuses of human rights on both fields, sometimes specular in type if not in magnitude; McCarthy in the US, stalinist purges in the USSR (Ok, McCarthy never got to that magnitude); invasion of Czechoslovakia and Hungary there, coups in Greece and Chile here; Vietnam for the US and Afghanistan for the USSR (Ok, the USSR was fighting the good fight and the US not, but their methods did not differ much, and civilians suffered most in both cases).
On the other hand, things went on pretty normally for average people on both sides. It was dangerous being against communism in the USSR as much as it was being a communist in the US, and the likelihood of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to lose their elections was pretty much the same as the American Communist Party's to win them.
This is not to say "everybody's a human-right criminal, blast human rights, they were all good fellas". It is to say that, instead of laughing at propaganda crap in other countries, you should think what propaganda they fed you as truth; that is the most dangerous, as nobody is out there telling you how ludicrous lies you are being exposed to. For instance some may be interested in what was going on in 1984.
One thing is watching Goebbels on the Discovery Channel with a Brit telling you what a jerk he was, another one is being a German, who had been on the brink of starvation before nazism, that has no other information channels than the nazi state's, that stands in a cheering crowd, and who, when Joseph asks, "Wolles Sie den totalen Krieg?", cannot help shouting "Ja!".
These days we have all possible material about encryption available publicly. We have RSA, we have digital signatures, we have freely available software which can create perfectly encrypted material which would give bad headaches to the NSA if they had to crack it, even I can encode anything with gpg.
Yet, a mobile-phone giant does this. Are they just plain stupid, or is this another example of the wonders of social science? I can't help thinking how intelligent an ant nest can be though ants singularly are so stupid, and how an organization with some of the brightest engineers on the planet can act so carelessly.
[...]But because i'm afraid
of flames i won't tell you my name.
Sorry, unless there is somebody real behind this, this link is just FUD.
Another thing: all the defense of Jon Johansen ws based upon the fact that he did not program DeCCS, but only a gui for it. Had he programmed DeCCS, the outcome might have been different.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah! So, you think English is bad? The world is full of homophones, think of French, where words like a, as, a' are pronounced exactly the same, but with different orthography (which is itself almost as bad as English' own). Arabic has a host of dialects, and also Russian is -I heard- quite scary.
However, what is interesting is that Opera is a norwegian company. As a foreigner living in Norway, and speaking Norwegian, I am stunned at how Norwegians plainly refuse to speak proper Norwegian: everybody stick to their dialect, and get pretty upset if you as them prettyPrettyPleaseWithACherryOnTop to speak Norwegian "because you're learning". They'll rather switch to English, vanifying any actual effort to learn the language, and feel pissed at you because you "disrespected their identity". Yes, there are local politicians that are wondering why most immigrants do not learn the language.
Here in Trondheim, where I live, the Linguistics department of NTNU, Trondheim's university, has managed to get an automated speech-recognition-based information service for the local mass transport company, so that elderly people can ring from their mobile phones and ask for when the next bus passes by. Can't find the link, it's possibly experimental, but i think my source is quite reliable. I work at that university myself, though at another institute and faculty.
Therefore, if their program managed to swallow Trondheim's dialect, troendersk, it can digest just about anything. AFAIHH, they used neural networks to program the thingie.
Describing a voting system based on cellulose-derived foil, produced by the processing of arboreal mass, that allows to cast one's vote by imprinting a graphite track on a specific part of the foil.
The said part will be made clearly distinguishable from others by a permanent imprint of organic, chromatically-emitting chemical compounds, which, by using technology covered by previous patents, will convey a stream of information to a biological signal decoder, called eye(tm). While eye(tm)'s come in pairs, this advanced system requires only one, possibly none with minor modifications.
The counting process will be carried out through biological, neural-network-based intelligences, result of a genetic algorithm that has proceeded for exactly 1,048,134,239 years as of April 1, 2004 (Pangea patent no. 00000000000001). A particularity of this process is the ability of computing results maintaining a record of raw data, that is stored in the graphite-marked cellulose foils at all times.
Another assumption that often goes overlooked:
You're right indeed for printer cartridges, but I'll observe other businesses as car sale or real estate can make a correction more difficult if possible at all, while others, such as candybars, are even easier.
but she has a vested interest in saying that espresso is the best of all types to drink.
Why? Because you really have to try hard to find 'long coffee' or caffe' americano here. It's almost impossible.
<patronising>Well of course, it is the best of all types. Except maybe cappuccino.</patronising>
Seriously, in Italy you don't find american "coffee" for the simple reason there is no demand. We call it rather sewer water... nothing personal, just the personal opinion of 58 millions. As for the French girl, I suffered so much from French "coffee" (another sewer outlet) the time I was in Grenoble, that that serves her good :-)))
Also, no other nationality fetishises food to the extent the Italians do.
Dammit, we have mafia, we have politicians (no wait, I said that already), this time of the year we have bad weather too, can you at least indulge in some food vanity? :-)
A lot of people get this impression of capitalism as being TINA (there's no alternative). Capitalism is as good as gravitation, magnetism, chemical kinetics: it is a number of phenomena that obey social or physical laws, and the result can or cannot be good for society (depending also on the definition of what "good" is)
Simple capitalism theory, including the demonstration that perfect competition is the most efficient way to produce goods, rests on three pillars:
When some of these assumptions go bananas, so goes efficiency, and that's when your wallet starts aching.
It is maybe worth noting that all requirements are in open contradiction, since you can't have perfect knowledge of a infinite market, nor is everything packed in only one market - e.g. ordering from abroad will cost you an "access fee" in the form of mailing costs, that makes buying a 1% cheaper ice cream in Bucharest unattractive if you live in Miami. This simply means that capitalism is achievable only as an approximation, how good depends on the people who set the rules.
In the case of printer cartridges, 1 goes bananas because every producer is a near-monopolist of his printers; 2 goes bananas because few know that it is possible to hack printers to pay less; and 3 because every printer manufacturer has his cartridge market, sometimes more as their printers are normally not cross-compatible.
So, this is indeed Capitalism 101, but at the distortion of market chapter. What needs to be done is a state-imposed standard on printer cartridges, to reinstate competition and fair pricing. Start bullying your politicians today!
Here is a translation in... well, something like English.
while(1)
{
std::cout << "...articles articles dupe dupe YOU YOU!!";
}
If there's something that makes me nervous is this kind of paternalism mixed with loads of ignorance. This guy has yet to find the first clue to life, and tells everybody else how to live it.
If someone installs your work from disc 3 of some Linux distro, they couldn't care less who you are.
Well I do care. I don't know or could not possibly remember all the names of the programmers that put together my Gentoo box. But dammit I'm grateful, and when I happen to ask them a question I pay them respect, as they have deserved that.
No - in the end you are going to settle for a job that pays for your house, your car and your wife and children.
Jeeeeesus, why has everybody the Recipe for Life in his bloody sleeve? Why can't these idiots realise that other people have other goals?
The whole thing about "free software" is a lie. It's a dream created and made popular by people who have a keen interest in having cheap software so that they can drive down their own cost and profit more or by people who can easily demand it, because they make their money out of speaking at conferences or write books about how nice it is to have free software.
This is it. This is the ultimate insult to thousands of programmers and people that gave so much of their time. This jerk know probably not even what the GPL is and why people use it.
Forget the dream about stuff being free and stop advocating it. It's idiocy. It's bigotry.
But, again, coming to this point, I feel sorry for this poor bastard. He's looking at young Aiden: Aiden is all that he ever wanted to be, but he failed, and he hates him for that.
What an hollow man. Reminds me Scrooge.
DEUTSCHLAND DEUTSCHLAND Ueber Alles!
Using that phrase is more than a little insensitive. In fact, using it in Germany can get you in about as much trouble as SCO can after this.
As far as I know that is still part of the official anthem. It is common misconception that it means that Germany's superior to everybody, it actually means that German national unity should come before the petty local and personal interests (it was composed back in other times). Alles means everything, everybody is alle.
This of course did not stop the guy with the moustache to shift the meaning in the direction he wanted, which left the song with a certain evil aura.
Some info at this link
Who modded that funny? That's right, sorry. Was deceived by another webpage that reported "computo".
More than Microsoft, I'm worried about the national government and political majority. They received Bill Gates in the parliament, which is a honour few get (ok, that building has hosted more mafiosi than the worst pub of Palermo, but that's an honour anyway), normally reserved to heads of foreign states, and while the government is right-wing, the mayor of Rome is a prominent leader of the left.
I would guess this will end up being a political issue between right and left. Whatever, just one more reason to get rid of Berlusconi.
I would guess "VENI, VIDI, COMPUTI". /wehnee, weedee, kohmpootee/.
Sorry for the all caps, but Latin is supposed to be written in all caps, lowercase is a middle-age thing. Pronounciation should be something like
This is quite strange to say the least. I mean, this attitude of certain Americans that believe that cops can't even ask ID of someone.
I'm an Italian living in Norway, and I've been to a few places around; here in Europe it's obvious that you're going to provide your ID if you're asked, and the only good reason not to do so is that you have something nasty to hide. How are cops supposed to catch criminals if they can't even check their papers?
In Italy, a prominent mafia boss, Madonia, was caught this way: a policeman asked for his ID, he provided it, and since it was obviously faked the policeman had just to say "Mr. Madonia, please...". They could not simply arrest him straight away since they had no recent pictures of him, and could not be totally sure it was him.
It's quite weird that this paranoia is fount in the country of LAPD and Guantanamo bay, where way more serious violation of rights happened and happen still.
Bin Ladin would be a nobody without a cause or people to follow him if it wasn't for the prestige he got fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. So I guess you say they helped create him.
Not exactly a smart remark. You are missing the fact that he and the mujahedeens were US-supported (not USSR-supported, do we agree on this at least?). It's like saying that you have to thank the Brits for creating George Washington, or King Louis XVI for paving the French revolution, or emperor Nero for rebuilding Rome.
Mighty big of Brezhnev to declare that he wouldn't kill millions of people eh?
Given that the US did not say the same thing, and therefore reserved themselves the right to a first nuclear strike, yes.
You have trouble putting things in perspective, Brezhnev saying that he would not launch a first nuclear strike whatever the circumstances was a very important diplomatic move. While Brezhnev has clearly not been Gandhi, and forced the USSR in a long stagnation that undermined its economics, this specific diplomatic move was clearly reducing the risk of WW3 breaking out.
This is especially important as the first nuclear strike was then considered (and possibly still is) the only way to win a nuclear war.
Ehm.
Wine
Is
Not an
Emulator.
It's called a compatibility layer.
Just for the pleasure of being picky and fussy... :-)
The war was largely unjustified and resulted from political incompetence of the old farts who ruled USSR by that time.
I have no doubt that it was not like the Return of the King. Reality is fuzzy, and good warriors, well, are just contradiction in terms.
But, if I have to relativise, there's no way dumbass Brezhnev and the other old farts of the Politburo were worse people than bin Laden or those other insane fundamentalists. Bin Laden trashed the WTC, Brezhnev declared that he would not use a first nuclear strike.
One wonders if this is German nature and could happen again or if Hitler was truly that much of a mastermind at brainwashing people. I highly doubt something similar could happen in the United States (or France, or the UK for that matter).
That's were you're wrong. As the other reply stated, many people can easily be brainwashed by authority. What happened in Nazi Germany, in Afghanistan, in Congo, is not a strange movie. It is actual people doing real evil things. Take the fact that it has not happened in your country (I guess) as a bliss.
It seems I did not get my point through. You might as well search for Salvador Allende, Jacobo Arbenz, Muhammad Mossadiq, Patrice Lumumba. I'm not saying that the USSR were good. I am saying that believing that the US are the "good guys" is just as foolish as to believe the USSR was.
Again: propaganda has been on both sides. You think that the USSR was not respecting human rights? You are right. You think that the US have been defending them? You'd better wake up.
the USSR was fighting the good fight
Eh? Was this a typo?
Nope. The USSR was fighting against a muslim fundamentalist uprising financed by external powers (read: Ronald Reagan), and was called in by a legitimate government. You may question that Afghanistan's government was fully independent, but again few in western Europe were then. Among the "freedom fighters", a certain Osama bin Laden learnt a lot about guerrilla in that war. The mujaheddin finally won thanks to American Stinger missiles with which they shot down Soviet choppers, and, when they drove out the Soviets, they started a civil war that raged on until a faction, the talebans, came to power and established their perfect muslim state.
Most Americans noticed these guys first when two 767 smashed in the twin towers. I remember a New York store with the sign "Whack Afghanistan" the day after, and could not help thinking "You already did".
Of course the USSR's methods were not especially gentle, and they were responsible for extensive land-mine fields (though there is an american quota, not easily discerned since the US cloned soviet mines to cover their tracks). Civilian casualties were not a major concern, as they were not in Vietnam, and it turned again in a world-domination question. But if I had to pick which was the most evil side, that would not be the USSR, especially considering what mujaheddins and talebans did later, both to Afghani and American civilians.
However, under the socialist government, women had some rights, and society was socially more advanced, and way less religious, than what it is now. Women today 40 years old and over, who experienced those times, are among the most frustrated groups in Afghanistan, resulting in high suicide rates.
Sorry, I have no sympathy for Nazi leaders who killed millions of people and lead a great nation to ruin.
Neither do I. I wanted to focus on what the guy in the crowd was induced to think.
The more people I meet from East Europe, the more I am convinced that the two worlds were much more similar than what we westerners were raised to believe.
People from former East Germany don't shun their origins as people from Nazi Germany would have (see 79qm DDR, which I am told is a quite precise account of the facts by East Germans). Some are even fond of the old eastern flag. A Czech girl told me that, visiting San Francisco, she was appalled by seeing American girls executing a Spartakiad. They were cheerleaders.
There were abuses of human rights on both fields, sometimes specular in type if not in magnitude; McCarthy in the US, stalinist purges in the USSR (Ok, McCarthy never got to that magnitude); invasion of Czechoslovakia and Hungary there, coups in Greece and Chile here; Vietnam for the US and Afghanistan for the USSR (Ok, the USSR was fighting the good fight and the US not, but their methods did not differ much, and civilians suffered most in both cases).
On the other hand, things went on pretty normally for average people on both sides. It was dangerous being against communism in the USSR as much as it was being a communist in the US, and the likelihood of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to lose their elections was pretty much the same as the American Communist Party's to win them.
This is not to say "everybody's a human-right criminal, blast human rights, they were all good fellas".
It is to say that, instead of laughing at propaganda crap in other countries, you should think what propaganda they fed you as truth; that is the most dangerous, as nobody is out there telling you how ludicrous lies you are being exposed to. For instance some may be interested in what was going on in 1984.
One thing is watching Goebbels on the Discovery Channel with a Brit telling you what a jerk he was, another one is being a German, who had been on the brink of starvation before nazism, that has no other information channels than the nazi state's, that stands in a cheering crowd, and who, when Joseph asks, "Wolles Sie den totalen Krieg?", cannot help shouting "Ja!".
These days we have all possible material about encryption available publicly. We have RSA, we have digital signatures, we have freely available software which can create perfectly encrypted material which would give bad headaches to the NSA if they had to crack it, even I can encode anything with gpg.
Yet, a mobile-phone giant does this. Are they just plain stupid, or is this another example of the wonders of social science? I can't help thinking how intelligent an ant nest can be though ants singularly are so stupid, and how an organization with some of the brightest engineers on the planet can act so carelessly.
sorry, here
Exactly, from Oekonomi (Economy) and Kriminalitet (Crime). Here's a link to their webpage.
Be this true or not, I don't know, but:
- it has been posted as Anonymous Coward;
- the author of the page states:
Sorry, unless there is somebody real behind this, this link is just FUD.Another thing: all the defense of Jon Johansen ws based upon the fact that he did not program DeCCS, but only a gui for it. Had he programmed DeCCS, the outcome might have been different.