Long Island City was doing just fine before Oligarch Bezos bribed his way to a billion dollar public handout. And it will continue to do just fine once the billionaire welfare leach has been driven out of the City.
Here's a perhaps apocryphal story I heard from an old friend. At the time he was with a consultancy that did work for the City.
About 15 years ago the City of SF felt that their old mainframe-based financial software was showing its age. This was 100% bespoke software, iirc written in COBOL. Lots of lawful-corruption programmed into it, of course. So the City asked Oracle for an estimate on what it would cost to "upgrade" to Oracle Financials.
So Oracle sends in a pair of consultants to examine the old software. After a month they make their report: If the City wants to migrate to Oracle Financials, they are going to need to pay Oracle $10 million. FOR A PROJECT PLAN AND COST ESTIMATE. The actual migration was expected to cost much more.
Needless to say, the City kept their old software.
How accurate is this story? No idea - it came to me third hand. How plausible is it? Very plausible.
"Xi Jinping of China is a great admirer of Han Fei Zi, one of China's legalist philosophers."
Han Fei is not so bad. However it appears from his policies that Emperor Xi is also quite a fan of Shang Yang, who might fairly be called the father of absolutism. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
One problem is that Elasticsearch is insecure by default. It's part of their "open core" monetization strategy. The FOSS core of ES has no security whatsoever - it's wide open to the world. Security functionality is available only as part of the proprietary X-Pack extensions.
AWS managed ES, probably the most widely used flavor of ES, adds very crude IP-based all-or-nothing security. Which IIRC is wide open by default. Unfortunately AWS seems intent on leaching. They charge their users handsomely for hosted ES, but are unwilling to contribute a dime - or any code - back to the Elasticsearch project. So they get zero cooperation from Elastic Co. And AWS ES remains a security nightmare.
It's a shame that Elastic choose to make basic security a monetized feature. And it's a shame that AWS is so enthusiastic about leaching. And finally it's also a shame that the Law in most cases imposes little or no penalty at all on companies who fail to protect all the personally identifiable information they hoard.
You realize that most vaccine-choice advocates are not actually "anti-vax", a term of disparagement coined by Big Pharma PR flacks, don't you? Rather vaccine-choicers are concerned about _unnecessary and excessive_ vaccination. Very few indeed are against vaccination for truly dangerous diseases like polio. However very many people do think it is unwise to get injected with little-understood Pharma products just to avoid potential minor inconveniences like flu or measles.
Dude... the number of forced-vax nazis on this thread who espouse literal-Nazi policies makes it an apt comparison.
And all this violently angry butthurt is over... measles? Measles! I had measles as a kid. Every kid I knew got the measles. It was a _mildly annoying_ ailment. Not in the same ballpark as polio - not even in the same league.
Yet here we are with nazi assholes positively screaming for the iron boot of the state to stomp on anyone who doesn't want to get pumped full of pharma industry products. 'Cuz measles. For real, 'cuz measles?
Here's a theory: maybe the brains of forced-vax nazis were addled by the crazy chemicals in all those unnecessary vaccines they enjoy taking.
Yeah, seriously. Does _anyone_ actually believe this crap? We're living in Soviet America. Of fucking course Cloudflare hands over all of your data to the gubmint. I'd be really really surprised if there were any warrants involved. It's "voluntary" cooperation. (For certain values of "voluntary" that include "do it or we'll destroy your lives".)
Brother, I'm no America hater. I travel a bit, have seen a bit. Some things other countries do well; some things we do better. America is absolutely the least bigoted country out there. American travelers are generally well-behaved - far better than their French, Russian, Chinese, or British counterparts. Amazingly, the First Amendment has not yet been de facto repealed (like Amendments 2, 4, 6, 8 and 9); so we still have freedom of speech and a reasonably free press.
Nevertheless, it's obvious to any damn fool who has been alive long enough, that we have far less freedom than we did 20 years ago. I don't pretend to know exactly what happened in 2001. But clearly our whole way of life and form of government changed - for the worse. It's painful to see my country becoming more and more like the worst aspects of the old Soviet Union. That's the cybernetic totalitarianism I was talking about. So I think the top priority for domestic politics needs to be a sort of "de-Stalinization".
On the foreign policy front, it's time to bring the boys home. No more American soldiers dying in some shithole overseas just so some rich turd can get a little richer. It's not in the best interests of our country to play world policeman. And it's contrary to American values, to our history as a colony that revolted, to maintain an empire.
Realistically, the US can't get our troops out of the Middle East until we can break our dependency on oil. That ought to be a real priority. Until then, we can at least begin to reduce our worldwide military footprint. America _should_ be seen as a beacon of freedom. We should _not_ be seen as imperialists spreading death, destruction, and toxic financialism everywhere we go.
Possibly this particular project, to provide the Army with hololenses, did not stay secret... because the Army publicly announced it.
From Bloomberg last November: "Microsoft Corp. has won a $480 million contract to supply prototypes for augmented reality systems to the Army for use on combat missions and in training, the Army said." https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
My brother - good grief! Can you not see the difference between desiring a different political future, one more in line with traditional American values and freedoms; and being ready to sell out one's country? Are those who admire the policies of Jefferson, Jackson, Roosevelt, or Eisenhower now thought to be the enemy? Must there be one party line?
"Their politics, education, skills, hobbies, banking, network use, reading. University politics, friends, social media use. Friends of friends."
Perhaps the problem is excessive secrecy. According to Wikipedia, at least 1.5 million Americans hold Top Secret clearance.
It seems most unlikely that all 1.5 million meet the standard of Soviet style political reliability you advocate.
The government of a democracy in peacetime - remind me, when was the last time Congress actually declared war? - need not constantly be sneaking around in the shadows. Perhaps that which cannot be done in the light of day ought not be done at all by a peacetime democracy.
There are countless Americans who love our country very much, yet do not politically support the government's policy of military adventure overseas and cybernetic totalitarianism at home. For the sake of secrecy and on the basis of personal political views, you would exclude very many honorable patriots from serving their country. And thereby deprive the nation of the service of very many skilled and capable citizens.
Mugging-industry shills write report saying most people in theory don't want to get mugged, but since most of them have not yet learned Krav Maga and several other martial arts, _clearly_ they don't really mind getting mugged.
Beady eyed small minded gubmint bean counter with foul body odor demands the iron boot of the state stomp on super genius space exploring visionary businessman, for the grave crime of posting a few words on a notoriously unreliable gossip and opinion board without first getting approval for his words from another beady eyed small minded bean counter.
Public debate rages as to whether the beady eyed gubmint bureaucrat was motivated merely by personal resentment of the super genius billionaire's obvious all-around superiority as a human being; or whether shadowy financial parasites and suitcases full of cash also played a role in said travesty.
I suspect a lot of the money pushing the shrill "OMG the sky is falling!!!" climate change trope comes from heavy chemical polluters.
Almost everyone agrees it's a good idea not to throw toxic waste in the river. That kind of sentiment could really cut into corporate profits. Better to get the masses worked up over an inconsequential issue (carbon is very far from the worst pollutant) by feeding them outlandish scare stories.
If gene editing technology in fact becomes sn widespread and accessible as you say, that's going to be a big problem. The one saving grace of nuclear weapons - the reason we're all still alive today - is that they are fiendishly difficult and expensive to manufacture.
Slashdot Mirror
Long Island City was doing just fine before Oligarch Bezos bribed his way to a billion dollar public handout. And it will continue to do just fine once the billionaire welfare leach has been driven out of the City.
Here's a perhaps apocryphal story I heard from an old friend. At the time he was with a consultancy that did work for the City.
About 15 years ago the City of SF felt that their old mainframe-based financial software was showing its age. This was 100% bespoke software, iirc written in COBOL. Lots of lawful-corruption programmed into it, of course. So the City asked Oracle for an estimate on what it would cost to "upgrade" to Oracle Financials.
So Oracle sends in a pair of consultants to examine the old software. After a month they make their report: If the City wants to migrate to Oracle Financials, they are going to need to pay Oracle $10 million. FOR A PROJECT PLAN AND COST ESTIMATE. The actual migration was expected to cost much more.
Needless to say, the City kept their old software.
How accurate is this story? No idea - it came to me third hand. How plausible is it? Very plausible.
"Xi Jinping of China is a great admirer of Han Fei Zi, one of China's legalist philosophers."
Han Fei is not so bad. However it appears from his policies that Emperor Xi is also quite a fan of Shang Yang, who might fairly be called the father of absolutism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
One can perhaps gain some insight from reading Shang's book.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
One problem is that Elasticsearch is insecure by default. It's part of their "open core" monetization strategy. The FOSS core of ES has no security whatsoever - it's wide open to the world. Security functionality is available only as part of the proprietary X-Pack extensions.
AWS managed ES, probably the most widely used flavor of ES, adds very crude IP-based all-or-nothing security. Which IIRC is wide open by default. Unfortunately AWS seems intent on leaching. They charge their users handsomely for hosted ES, but are unwilling to contribute a dime - or any code - back to the Elasticsearch project. So they get zero cooperation from Elastic Co. And AWS ES remains a security nightmare.
It's a shame that Elastic choose to make basic security a monetized feature. And it's a shame that AWS is so enthusiastic about leaching. And finally it's also a shame that the Law in most cases imposes little or no penalty at all on companies who fail to protect all the personally identifiable information they hoard.
Expect more data spillage in the future!
You realize that most vaccine-choice advocates are not actually "anti-vax", a term of disparagement coined by Big Pharma PR flacks, don't you? Rather vaccine-choicers are concerned about _unnecessary and excessive_ vaccination. Very few indeed are against vaccination for truly dangerous diseases like polio. However very many people do think it is unwise to get injected with little-understood Pharma products just to avoid potential minor inconveniences like flu or measles.
Keyword: iatrogenic
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Forced-vax nazis sure do have little regard for freedom of speech.
Forced-vax nazis sure are dismissive of the documented harm of the policies they advocate.
Forced-vax nazis sure do like arguing over strawmen.
Forced-vax nazis sure are arrogantly self-righteous.
+1 Sane
Dude... the number of forced-vax nazis on this thread who espouse literal-Nazi policies makes it an apt comparison.
And all this violently angry butthurt is over... measles? Measles! I had measles as a kid. Every kid I knew got the measles. It was a _mildly annoying_ ailment. Not in the same ballpark as polio - not even in the same league.
Yet here we are with nazi assholes positively screaming for the iron boot of the state to stomp on anyone who doesn't want to get pumped full of pharma industry products. 'Cuz measles. For real, 'cuz measles?
Here's a theory: maybe the brains of forced-vax nazis were addled by the crazy chemicals in all those unnecessary vaccines they enjoy taking.
Yeah, seriously. Does _anyone_ actually believe this crap? We're living in Soviet America. Of fucking course Cloudflare hands over all of your data to the gubmint. I'd be really really surprised if there were any warrants involved. It's "voluntary" cooperation. (For certain values of "voluntary" that include "do it or we'll destroy your lives".)
This is Google we talking about. So there's an obvious big question, now that this service has proven useful: when will they discontinue it?
Brother, I'm no America hater. I travel a bit, have seen a bit. Some things other countries do well; some things we do better. America is absolutely the least bigoted country out there. American travelers are generally well-behaved - far better than their French, Russian, Chinese, or British counterparts. Amazingly, the First Amendment has not yet been de facto repealed (like Amendments 2, 4, 6, 8 and 9); so we still have freedom of speech and a reasonably free press.
Nevertheless, it's obvious to any damn fool who has been alive long enough, that we have far less freedom than we did 20 years ago. I don't pretend to know exactly what happened in 2001. But clearly our whole way of life and form of government changed - for the worse. It's painful to see my country becoming more and more like the worst aspects of the old Soviet Union. That's the cybernetic totalitarianism I was talking about. So I think the top priority for domestic politics needs to be a sort of "de-Stalinization".
On the foreign policy front, it's time to bring the boys home. No more American soldiers dying in some shithole overseas just so some rich turd can get a little richer. It's not in the best interests of our country to play world policeman. And it's contrary to American values, to our history as a colony that revolted, to maintain an empire.
Realistically, the US can't get our troops out of the Middle East until we can break our dependency on oil. That ought to be a real priority. Until then, we can at least begin to reduce our worldwide military footprint. America _should_ be seen as a beacon of freedom. We should _not_ be seen as imperialists spreading death, destruction, and toxic financialism everywhere we go.
Possibly this particular project, to provide the Army with hololenses, did not stay secret... because the Army publicly announced it.
From Bloomberg last November: "Microsoft Corp. has won a $480 million contract to supply prototypes for augmented reality systems to the Army for use on combat missions and in training, the Army said." https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
My brother - good grief! Can you not see the difference between desiring a different political future, one more in line with traditional American values and freedoms; and being ready to sell out one's country? Are those who admire the policies of Jefferson, Jackson, Roosevelt, or Eisenhower now thought to be the enemy? Must there be one party line?
"Their politics, education, skills, hobbies, banking, network use, reading. University politics, friends, social media use.
Friends of friends."
Perhaps the problem is excessive secrecy. According to Wikipedia, at least 1.5 million Americans hold Top Secret clearance.
It seems most unlikely that all 1.5 million meet the standard of Soviet style political reliability you advocate.
The government of a democracy in peacetime - remind me, when was the last time Congress actually declared war? - need not constantly be sneaking around in the shadows. Perhaps that which cannot be done in the light of day ought not be done at all by a peacetime democracy.
There are countless Americans who love our country very much, yet do not politically support the government's policy of military adventure overseas and cybernetic totalitarianism at home. For the sake of secrecy and on the basis of personal political views, you would exclude very many honorable patriots from serving their country. And thereby deprive the nation of the service of very many skilled and capable citizens.
Shhhhhhh.... Don't mention the elephant in the room!
Article summarized:
Mugging-industry shills write report saying most people in theory don't want to get mugged, but since most of them have not yet learned Krav Maga and several other martial arts, _clearly_ they don't really mind getting mugged.
Article Summarized:
Beady eyed small minded gubmint bean counter with foul body odor demands the iron boot of the state stomp on super genius space exploring visionary businessman, for the grave crime of posting a few words on a notoriously unreliable gossip and opinion board without first getting approval for his words from another beady eyed small minded bean counter.
Public debate rages as to whether the beady eyed gubmint bureaucrat was motivated merely by personal resentment of the super genius billionaire's obvious all-around superiority as a human being; or whether shadowy financial parasites and suitcases full of cash also played a role in said travesty.
You should read some history books sometime. The older the better. History is just chock full of conspiracies.
I suspect a lot of the money pushing the shrill "OMG the sky is falling!!!" climate change trope comes from heavy chemical polluters.
Almost everyone agrees it's a good idea not to throw toxic waste in the river. That kind of sentiment could really cut into corporate profits. Better to get the masses worked up over an inconsequential issue (carbon is very far from the worst pollutant) by feeding them outlandish scare stories.
Riiiiiight... Blame consumers for consuming. But don't even think about blaming government for failure to govern.
#hubris
If gene editing technology in fact becomes sn widespread and accessible as you say, that's going to be a big problem. The one saving grace of nuclear weapons - the reason we're all still alive today - is that they are fiendishly difficult and expensive to manufacture.