Unless we're including Stinger missiles and RPGs in our definition of "small arms", the Afghans were certainly not limited to small arms when fighting off the Soviet invasion.
The Digital Millenium Copyright Act was passed under a Democratic president. Please stop trying to pretend either party is terribly interested in giving you all the "fair use rights" you want for copyrighted works.
Certainly true, and it's why I mentioned Civil Affairs training needing to become more of a priority - in a day and age of peace-keeping missions (not to imply Iraqi Freedom was one!), interacting with civilians takes on an extremely important role. Better interactions with civilians means less insurgency.
The simple fact, though, is that the US Army is doing an OK job of putting down the insurgency in Iraq. Are they hitting a home run? No. But it's very difficult to do that against a guerilla force without doing rather nasty things to the civilian populace. A standard military force is obviously easier to pin down and annihilate.
Yeah, the Army is taking casualties. But, compared to most other conflicts (Vietnam comes to mind), the rate has been extremely low, and is probably sustainable without a draft. The thing which is needed most at this point is an exit _strategy_ (not necessarily a specific date) by the political administration. That was one of the big issues with 'nam, and I'd prefer it not repeated for this conflict.
The way I see it, the administration's big task is to NOT abandon the country before it's ready to stand on its own in a relatively democratic fashion. Pulling out now is only going to create yet another radical, violent Islamic theocracy, and that's not really a good plan for the world or the US. That's true whether Kerry or Bush wins the next election - whomever it is needs to see this thing through regardless of the cost.
When it comes to handling policy with regards to Iraq, the most important thing is to not screw up the end game scenario. If we clean this mess up properly, it will do a lot (well, some) to restore the US reputation around the world. I often feel like we shouldn't have gotten involved in Iraq, but now that we are, it's time to do things right.
(And, for the record, I have no idea whether either Kerry or Bush would do that.)
I've never heard of any PocketPC systems that had the OS in ROM.
On a typical PocketPC PDA, the OS is typically stored in flash (which is not ROM, at all). The data, extra apps, and such are then stored in nvram. While this gives very fast load times and won't wear out the flash, you always have the risk of accidentally losing the nvram if your batteries all die. In any case, the system gives the appearance of PPC being in ROM, but it most certainly is not.
(For the record, the original Sharp Zauruses used a similar system to the above, so this is most certainly not just an MS trick.)
iPaqs converted to Linux (and the newer Zaurus 5600) act in a more PC-like system where the flash is your hard drive, and your RAM is, well, just RAM. Slower load times, and it beats on your flash more, but then again, you won't be losing data to a dead battery.
I would _imagine_ (haven't RTFA, so forgive me) that EFI would be implemented on a hard drive or a flash disk instead of in the typical BIOS chips we have today. In fact, it would be pretty cool if motherboards had support for using CF cards for EFI.
Need to run Windows 2010? Slap in the DRM EFI card. Want to run Linux? Put in the non-DRM EFI card or the DRM EFI card, depending on your needs. It could certainly have advantages (trivial EFI upgrades), and give consumers the choices they need.
"We spend to much money developing weapon systems. We don't spend nearly enough developing the troops to actually use them."
Is that some kind of joke? Or are you not living in the US?
The US Air Force spend _2 million dollars_ per pilot training them - and that figure is at least 10 years old, so G-d knows what we spend these days. If that's not a significant investment, I don't know what is.
The US Army also has a pretty damned good training program for fighting wars. Regardless of whether going to Iraq was right or wrong, the US Army annihilated the Iraqi army with startling speed. Good training costs money, ergo, I would be somewhat surprised to hear we cheap out on battlefield training.
IOW, you're right, but the US military is obviously doing a pretty good job of training soldiers in weapon system usage. Maybe we ought to put some money into Civil Affairs training, but that wasn't your thesis as far as I can tell.
It's always amazed me that people aren't more aware of the educational institutions that are directly affiliated with the Department of Defense, too.
As others have pointed out, the CSU is "Christian" in name only.
However, I don't understand why you think that religious parties don't belong in a democracy. People who are serious adherents to a religion tend to feel in a similar way about certain issues (death penalty, abortion come to mind), and thus it makes _sense_ for parties to come together under a religious guise. This does not mean they should be exclusionary, of course, but it's not at all unbelievable that the party would initially form under a religious core.
A religious party does not necessarily mean imposing your religion on everyone else, either. The strict Islamist party won in Turkey, yet Erdrogan hasn't rocked the boat like some people imagined he would. Obviously, in the more liberal European states, the idea of imposing a state religion is even more laughable.
Of course, some/.'ers hate religion in general, so it's not a surprise they would hate religious parties. A matter of opinion, I guess.
I agree, too. One of Evolution's big mistakes was not integrating with SpamAssassin more heavily. I mean, OK, it's pretty stupidly simple to set up right now, but I really would like better integration so I don't have to do _any_ set up.
You know, it's funny, but I'm one of those people who could really go for it.
I don't own a DVD player. I don't own a TiVo. I don't own a PS2 (I'm primarily a PC gamer, but my fiance has gotten into DDR, so the PS2 would be handy). I don't own a DVD-RW, either. The PSX is exactly the kind of home entertainment device we could use once we're married, and for $700, it is not the worst deal in the world, either.
A good quality DVD player runs ~$200. A new PS2 runs ~$150. A TiVo goes for about $350 (for 160gb). $700 for the PSX sounds about on par.
It's not. Not at all. You might get that impression from certain/.'ers, but it has no basis at all in reality.
Copyright is explicitly laid out in the Constitution. Fair use is a _defense_ against copyright infringement issues. It is not really a right in a legal sense.
In fact, fair use is a judgement call (literally, by the judge!) nased on whether certain mitigating factors are being met, and to what degree they are. Compare this to the rather specific laws of actually getting and enforcing a copyright. There's no comparison.
This is not to say I disagree with the idea of fair use rights, but they are nowhere near as legally strong as people make them out to be - similar to your right to privacy, it's something a judge determines rather than a specific set of legal requirements.
I believe that Sun's javac bootstraps itself just like gcc does. That would be your java compiler written in Java.
_Jikes_, OTOH, is written in C++. But that's not really the official Java compiler by a long shot.
Your second requirement is absolutely bizarre. Does this mean you're not taking languages like Lisp, Prolog, Python, and Perl seriously, too? Those are all very nice languages for doing stuff in, but I'm pretty sure id never wrote a 3D engine in them. In fact, I was under the impression that id has never written a 3D engine in C++, either. Should we not take C++ seriously?
IMHO: The measure of a language is not how easy it is to write an arbitrary application in it. It's how easy it is to write something for which the language was designed to do.
You think that's problematic? Wait until they start writing history books. We'll have so many versions of history that even a fiction writer would have trouble keeping them straight.
Is the government subsidizing it at all? I was under the impression that some Asian governments were putting a bit of their tax dollars into the whole broadband thing. Unsure about South Korea's case, but that's why I'm asking:).
Not a bad idea, I think. Infrastructure upgrades are a key to any economy's long term growth.
The issue with regards to me adopting bluetooth has been more about the absurd pricing of said peripherals. The Linksys Bluetooth desktop (and not the fancy-shmancy Nuvo or whatever the hell it's called) runs like a hundred bucks, whereas the plain old wireless one runs for closer to $50. That's not an insubstantial difference.
After a brief glance at Amazon, it also looks like you can't get BT phones unless they're for AT&T or T-Mobile. Considering that GSM coverage here in the USA seems to be kinda spotty compared to, say, TDMA, that's a serious drawback.
The problem with BT right now is that it's an integration technology, yet it's difficult to use an integration technology that doesn't have wide-spread usage.
Finland was typically thought of as a client country to the USSR back in the days of the Cold War, or at least very much in the Soviet sphere of influence. This is not really a reflection on how the Finns felt about the Soviets so much as how easily the Soviets could roll right over Finland in the event of WW3. If the guy next door to you is armed to the teeth and you've got a pocket knife, you better do what he says, regardless of how much you like him.
If you don't like the agreement, go call your parliamentary representative and tell them so. I'm sure they'd be happy to hear your thoughts.
Personally, I would also consider the benefits of getting relatively unfettered access to one of the world's largest markets. I know this is/. where the _only_ thing that matters is IP and copyright stuff, but you take the good with the bad and the bad with the good, you know?
However, it's not my place to tell you your priorities, so go ahead and make your own decision. Just remember to act on them and call your representative either way.
"Who would profit from legalizing software patents, the American or the European software industry?"
IIRC, the EU is putting out _more_ patents than the US now, so that would probably be the EU - if they got good ones. I'm told that not all smart people reside in the US, so I'd guess there's a fair chance that the EU could make out pretty well.
OK, so you asked for it, I did a little Googling: http://www.mwsexual.com/readingroom/art icles/sexua lly-explicit.htm http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/sexinfo/ ?article=activity& refid=026
I don't think I would qualify either of those sources as "religious". The fact that you believe this is earth-shattering indicates to me that you're in purposeful denial about how early sexual experiences can permenantly alter a child's psychology - I mean, geez, just listen to Loveline for a couple nights.
I would disagree. There are real, honest to G-d clinical studies showing that exposure to hard-core porn at an early age will cause problems for children.
Should these children be watching TV unattended? Absolutely not. But, the fact is, some will be - and it's in our societies' best interest to protect them, especially considering the rather minimal infringements to your own freedom.
Uh, you know, some of us use DVDs for backups and CD consolidation. It's not all about illegal IP infringement.
My mom, for instance, put all of her clip-art CDs onto a single DVD. Very handy for searching for a particular piece of art for a newsletter. And I could probably back up my HD onto a couple DVDs rather than the six or so CDs it takes to just get the super-important stuff off.
To be fair, the FCC DID NOT throw Howard Stern off the radio. Indeed, his employers did - in order to avoid being fined by the FCC. This is not an insignificant distinction, and efforts to portray the FCC as censoring Howard Stern's political views are laughable, especially considering he was a rather ardent supporter of the administration beforehand.
The simple fact is, I really believe that most of the American public doesn't mind public decency standards, and in fact, encourages them. They're not offended by the lack of pornography. And, since we're a democracy, and the standards are not curtailing any personal rights (only the rights of corporations!), I'm not sure why all of/. hates them. Go buy cable if you want porn whenever you want - it's entirely legal by the horrible old FCC, you know?
If the FCC ever starts censoring _ideas_, we have problems. But they're not doing that, and people who portray them as doing so are misrepresenting the issue.
Personally, I think our society could do with less sex and violence on TV - it could make us a little more civilized.
Microsoft DOES NOT HAVE A MONOPOLY. How many times will this myth be repeated on/.?
Microsoft does not have a monopoly on the OS because there are SUBSTITUTES to Windows, namely {your favorite Linux distro} and MacOS X. Microsoft _cannot_ act as a monopolist and drive prices into the stratosphere because people would simply move, and products would get ported.
Microsoft is big, and they sometimes act in a monopolistic fashion (which they were convicted for!), but they are not a monopoly. It is far more accurate to say that they act like a monopoly with anti-competitive business actions and policies.
I guess I would set it up in some sort of kiosk mode (does OS X have that? You'd think it would), and just hand the admin password to the guy in charge of the coffee house. Since it's church-run, and you presumably don't want kids to go porn-surfing, maybe some kind of Internet filter, too.
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Unless we're including Stinger missiles and RPGs in our definition of "small arms", the Afghans were certainly not limited to small arms when fighting off the Soviet invasion.
-Erwos
The Digital Millenium Copyright Act was passed under a Democratic president. Please stop trying to pretend either party is terribly interested in giving you all the "fair use rights" you want for copyrighted works.
-Erwos
Certainly true, and it's why I mentioned Civil Affairs training needing to become more of a priority - in a day and age of peace-keeping missions (not to imply Iraqi Freedom was one!), interacting with civilians takes on an extremely important role. Better interactions with civilians means less insurgency.
The simple fact, though, is that the US Army is doing an OK job of putting down the insurgency in Iraq. Are they hitting a home run? No. But it's very difficult to do that against a guerilla force without doing rather nasty things to the civilian populace. A standard military force is obviously easier to pin down and annihilate.
Yeah, the Army is taking casualties. But, compared to most other conflicts (Vietnam comes to mind), the rate has been extremely low, and is probably sustainable without a draft. The thing which is needed most at this point is an exit _strategy_ (not necessarily a specific date) by the political administration. That was one of the big issues with 'nam, and I'd prefer it not repeated for this conflict.
The way I see it, the administration's big task is to NOT abandon the country before it's ready to stand on its own in a relatively democratic fashion. Pulling out now is only going to create yet another radical, violent Islamic theocracy, and that's not really a good plan for the world or the US. That's true whether Kerry or Bush wins the next election - whomever it is needs to see this thing through regardless of the cost.
When it comes to handling policy with regards to Iraq, the most important thing is to not screw up the end game scenario. If we clean this mess up properly, it will do a lot (well, some) to restore the US reputation around the world. I often feel like we shouldn't have gotten involved in Iraq, but now that we are, it's time to do things right.
(And, for the record, I have no idea whether either Kerry or Bush would do that.)
-Erwos
I've never heard of any PocketPC systems that had the OS in ROM.
On a typical PocketPC PDA, the OS is typically stored in flash (which is not ROM, at all). The data, extra apps, and such are then stored in nvram. While this gives very fast load times and won't wear out the flash, you always have the risk of accidentally losing the nvram if your batteries all die. In any case, the system gives the appearance of PPC being in ROM, but it most certainly is not.
(For the record, the original Sharp Zauruses used a similar system to the above, so this is most certainly not just an MS trick.)
iPaqs converted to Linux (and the newer Zaurus 5600) act in a more PC-like system where the flash is your hard drive, and your RAM is, well, just RAM. Slower load times, and it beats on your flash more, but then again, you won't be losing data to a dead battery.
I would _imagine_ (haven't RTFA, so forgive me) that EFI would be implemented on a hard drive or a flash disk instead of in the typical BIOS chips we have today. In fact, it would be pretty cool if motherboards had support for using CF cards for EFI.
Need to run Windows 2010? Slap in the DRM EFI card. Want to run Linux? Put in the non-DRM EFI card or the DRM EFI card, depending on your needs. It could certainly have advantages (trivial EFI upgrades), and give consumers the choices they need.
-Erwos
"We spend to much money developing weapon systems. We don't spend nearly enough developing the troops to actually use them."
Is that some kind of joke? Or are you not living in the US?
The US Air Force spend _2 million dollars_ per pilot training them - and that figure is at least 10 years old, so G-d knows what we spend these days. If that's not a significant investment, I don't know what is.
The US Army also has a pretty damned good training program for fighting wars. Regardless of whether going to Iraq was right or wrong, the US Army annihilated the Iraqi army with startling speed. Good training costs money, ergo, I would be somewhat surprised to hear we cheap out on battlefield training.
IOW, you're right, but the US military is obviously doing a pretty good job of training soldiers in weapon system usage. Maybe we ought to put some money into Civil Affairs training, but that wasn't your thesis as far as I can tell.
It's always amazed me that people aren't more aware of the educational institutions that are directly affiliated with the Department of Defense, too.
-Erwos
As others have pointed out, the CSU is "Christian" in name only.
/.'ers hate religion in general, so it's not a surprise they would hate religious parties. A matter of opinion, I guess.
However, I don't understand why you think that religious parties don't belong in a democracy. People who are serious adherents to a religion tend to feel in a similar way about certain issues (death penalty, abortion come to mind), and thus it makes _sense_ for parties to come together under a religious guise. This does not mean they should be exclusionary, of course, but it's not at all unbelievable that the party would initially form under a religious core.
A religious party does not necessarily mean imposing your religion on everyone else, either. The strict Islamist party won in Turkey, yet Erdrogan hasn't rocked the boat like some people imagined he would. Obviously, in the more liberal European states, the idea of imposing a state religion is even more laughable.
Of course, some
-Erwos
I agree, too. One of Evolution's big mistakes was not integrating with SpamAssassin more heavily. I mean, OK, it's pretty stupidly simple to set up right now, but I really would like better integration so I don't have to do _any_ set up.
Well, maybe next version.
-Erwos
You know, it's funny, but I'm one of those people who could really go for it.
I don't own a DVD player. I don't own a TiVo. I don't own a PS2 (I'm primarily a PC gamer, but my fiance has gotten into DDR, so the PS2 would be handy). I don't own a DVD-RW, either. The PSX is exactly the kind of home entertainment device we could use once we're married, and for $700, it is not the worst deal in the world, either.
A good quality DVD player runs ~$200. A new PS2 runs ~$150. A TiVo goes for about $350 (for 160gb). $700 for the PSX sounds about on par.
-Erwos
It's not. Not at all. You might get that impression from certain /.'ers, but it has no basis at all in reality.
Copyright is explicitly laid out in the Constitution. Fair use is a _defense_ against copyright infringement issues. It is not really a right in a legal sense.
In fact, fair use is a judgement call (literally, by the judge!) nased on whether certain mitigating factors are being met, and to what degree they are. Compare this to the rather specific laws of actually getting and enforcing a copyright. There's no comparison.
This is not to say I disagree with the idea of fair use rights, but they are nowhere near as legally strong as people make them out to be - similar to your right to privacy, it's something a judge determines rather than a specific set of legal requirements.
-Erwos
I believe that Sun's javac bootstraps itself just like gcc does. That would be your java compiler written in Java.
_Jikes_, OTOH, is written in C++. But that's not really the official Java compiler by a long shot.
Your second requirement is absolutely bizarre. Does this mean you're not taking languages like Lisp, Prolog, Python, and Perl seriously, too? Those are all very nice languages for doing stuff in, but I'm pretty sure id never wrote a 3D engine in them. In fact, I was under the impression that id has never written a 3D engine in C++, either. Should we not take C++ seriously?
IMHO: The measure of a language is not how easy it is to write an arbitrary application in it. It's how easy it is to write something for which the language was designed to do.
-Erwos
You think that's problematic? Wait until they start writing history books. We'll have so many versions of history that even a fiction writer would have trouble keeping them straight.
-Erwos
Is the government subsidizing it at all? I was under the impression that some Asian governments were putting a bit of their tax dollars into the whole broadband thing. Unsure about South Korea's case, but that's why I'm asking :).
Not a bad idea, I think. Infrastructure upgrades are a key to any economy's long term growth.
-Erwos
What's the point? If the translator is good enough, you'd never notice a difference anyways. That's pretty much true of PCI-E and SATA, too.
-Erwos
The issue with regards to me adopting bluetooth has been more about the absurd pricing of said peripherals. The Linksys Bluetooth desktop (and not the fancy-shmancy Nuvo or whatever the hell it's called) runs like a hundred bucks, whereas the plain old wireless one runs for closer to $50. That's not an insubstantial difference.
After a brief glance at Amazon, it also looks like you can't get BT phones unless they're for AT&T or T-Mobile. Considering that GSM coverage here in the USA seems to be kinda spotty compared to, say, TDMA, that's a serious drawback.
The problem with BT right now is that it's an integration technology, yet it's difficult to use an integration technology that doesn't have wide-spread usage.
-Erwos
Finland was typically thought of as a client country to the USSR back in the days of the Cold War, or at least very much in the Soviet sphere of influence. This is not really a reflection on how the Finns felt about the Soviets so much as how easily the Soviets could roll right over Finland in the event of WW3. If the guy next door to you is armed to the teeth and you've got a pocket knife, you better do what he says, regardless of how much you like him.
-Erwos
If it's an intelligence gathering vessel, hiding from rader could be a very useful thing.
-Erwos
If you don't like the agreement, go call your parliamentary representative and tell them so. I'm sure they'd be happy to hear your thoughts.
/. where the _only_ thing that matters is IP and copyright stuff, but you take the good with the bad and the bad with the good, you know?
Personally, I would also consider the benefits of getting relatively unfettered access to one of the world's largest markets. I know this is
However, it's not my place to tell you your priorities, so go ahead and make your own decision. Just remember to act on them and call your representative either way.
-Erwos
"Who would profit from legalizing software patents, the American or the European software industry?"
IIRC, the EU is putting out _more_ patents than the US now, so that would probably be the EU - if they got good ones. I'm told that not all smart people reside in the US, so I'd guess there's a fair chance that the EU could make out pretty well.
-Erwos
http://www.louisville.edu/~oahead01/rpaper04.htm
Another good one that I found.
-Erwos
OK, so you asked for it, I did a little Googling:t icles/sexua lly-explicit.htm/ ?article=activity& refid=026
http://www.mwsexual.com/readingroom/ar
http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/sexinfo
I don't think I would qualify either of those sources as "religious". The fact that you believe this is earth-shattering indicates to me that you're in purposeful denial about how early sexual experiences can permenantly alter a child's psychology - I mean, geez, just listen to Loveline for a couple nights.
-Erwos
"People don't need to be protected from content."
I would disagree. There are real, honest to G-d clinical studies showing that exposure to hard-core porn at an early age will cause problems for children.
Should these children be watching TV unattended? Absolutely not. But, the fact is, some will be - and it's in our societies' best interest to protect them, especially considering the rather minimal infringements to your own freedom.
-Erwos
Uh, you know, some of us use DVDs for backups and CD consolidation. It's not all about illegal IP infringement.
My mom, for instance, put all of her clip-art CDs onto a single DVD. Very handy for searching for a particular piece of art for a newsletter. And I could probably back up my HD onto a couple DVDs rather than the six or so CDs it takes to just get the super-important stuff off.
-Erwos
To be fair, the FCC DID NOT throw Howard Stern off the radio. Indeed, his employers did - in order to avoid being fined by the FCC. This is not an insignificant distinction, and efforts to portray the FCC as censoring Howard Stern's political views are laughable, especially considering he was a rather ardent supporter of the administration beforehand.
/. hates them. Go buy cable if you want porn whenever you want - it's entirely legal by the horrible old FCC, you know?
The simple fact is, I really believe that most of the American public doesn't mind public decency standards, and in fact, encourages them. They're not offended by the lack of pornography. And, since we're a democracy, and the standards are not curtailing any personal rights (only the rights of corporations!), I'm not sure why all of
If the FCC ever starts censoring _ideas_, we have problems. But they're not doing that, and people who portray them as doing so are misrepresenting the issue.
Personally, I think our society could do with less sex and violence on TV - it could make us a little more civilized.
-Erwos
Microsoft DOES NOT HAVE A MONOPOLY. How many times will this myth be repeated on /.?
Microsoft does not have a monopoly on the OS because there are SUBSTITUTES to Windows, namely {your favorite Linux distro} and MacOS X. Microsoft _cannot_ act as a monopolist and drive prices into the stratosphere because people would simply move, and products would get ported.
Microsoft is big, and they sometimes act in a monopolistic fashion (which they were convicted for!), but they are not a monopoly. It is far more accurate to say that they act like a monopoly with anti-competitive business actions and policies.
-Erwos
I guess I would set it up in some sort of kiosk mode (does OS X have that? You'd think it would), and just hand the admin password to the guy in charge of the coffee house. Since it's church-run, and you presumably don't want kids to go porn-surfing, maybe some kind of Internet filter, too.
-Erwos