"Rights" of any sort are an abstraction, a creation of the human mind.
Your rights are given to you by the society you live in and can be taken away from you by that society at will.
Rights are not something you posess.
The individual or group in authority (usually in possession of enough power - commonly use of force, implied or realized) can take "rights" away from you if and when it so deems it to be convienient.
Pieces of paper such as the US Constitution provide protection only as long as those with sufficient power are prepared to tolerate it. Otherwise, it, like any document, is worth only the paper it is written on. Constitutions, like paper money, only have worth because we deem them to, otherwise, it's just paper.
Live in a sterile environment and you weaken your immune system, making you more susceptible to infection, not less.
Having a constant level of "background noise" to deal with keeps your immune system loaded with a good library of antibodies from which it can draw on to fight new infections.
Obviously we need to take care of our basic hygeine, but let's not go overboard. The person most likely using your workstation is you, so the germs on those surfaces most likely originated from you in the first place.
The nastiest bugs in the world (such as necrotising faciitis) are commonly found in the cleanest environments (hospitals) and got that tough because we bred them by weeding out the weaker strains with constant disinfecting of surfaces and lobbing too many antibiotics at simple infections in an effort to get worker units back in the office faster, rather than letting them beat it on their own.
Leave the bugs alone, they're aren't hurting anybody (note: tongue planted firmly in cheek here.)
This reminds of the time I was visiting a dear old friend of mine, a retired catholic priest.
Ol' James looked postively ancient (and was), schooled by Jesuits, spoke fluent Latin, studied at the Vatican and fully conversant with many not-so-common church rituals.
Anyway this day there was a knock on the door and he shuffled over to answer it. He was greeted by some JW's and when he realised who they were, gave a look of fright, grabbed these two big silver candlesticks on the sideboard and made the sign of the cross screaming "Begone ye sons of Satan!" and proceeded to recite the full on exorcisim ritual in Latin.
Never seen people run so fast in all my life.:-)
James closed the door, shuffled back to his seat and said "Works every time..."
If there are so many regulatory tangles and government departments protecting their turf (and covering their asses) just go launch somewhere else.
It doesn't really help that the Dept of Fatherland Security doesn't want to give anybody an excuse to launch anything;-)
Australia has been wanting to build a solid commercial space launch operation for a few years now. The Russians would love for y'all to go launch there.
I'm sure there a a few other countries who wouldn't mind you launching and landing on their turf.
And every ISP I have worked for (it's been a few, since 2.0 had just come out as I recall) has run Debian (and I got hired by the first one as the Windows geek.)
One of the reasons is one of the self-same reason that RedHat created the "server" variant of it's line - it moves more slowly than the mainstream version so you (in the commercial sense) know that it's not going to change tomorrow - it's something you can rely on (not to be different by 9am tomorrow.) IT pros *like* predictability and reliability (one of the reason's all that old mainframe code is still out there.)
I must say the thing that pisses me off the most is people who say the installation is hard - no, it's not. All I have ever done with Debian is just sit there, make some choices and tap the enter key (ok, type the hostname and such too;-)
Many of my (newbie) friends have had the same experience, "I heard it was hard?" Just keep hitting enter. "Wow, that didn't hurt at all."
Where does this idea that it's hard come from? The fact that it's text-based? Well that certainly didn't hinder Microsoft from growing into a giant with things like MS-DOS and Windows 3.x or id Software with all of it's dos-based games, or Novell or any of the *nixes either.
Sure it can be a bitch when something is missed by the installer but so are all of them - and Debian can be a damn sight more interactive during install than some of the graphical routines out there (that want to treat you like a Mac or Windows user and hide the really useful, powerful bits from you.)
So yeah, maybe Debian is a slow, sure, wrinkly old tortise but dammit I need that kinda reliability in my business.
I have long railed against the unchecked proliferation of open source projects - there is far too much duplication of effort in the community.
There are too many projects for what are effectively the same things - there is such such a thing as too much choice.
Last time I looked there was something like 27 different ICQ clients available and that wasn't counting all the clients that support the other IM protocols. There are god knows how many editors, shells and window managers out there.
This sort of thing leads to other serious issues like a plethora of applications that don't present in a consistent and user-friendly manner or that interoperate only by getting the user to jump through hoops. Oh for X-apps that use consistent keybindings no matter what WM you've chosen! (Fat f*cking chance of that happening...)
It would be nice for a change to see projects actually merging rather than forking all the damned time. Even better would be if a few more folk checked that there was a program out there to do the job already rather than to do it themselves, re-inventing the wheel in the process and diluting the pool even more. Especially if there is a pre-existing program that they could conrtribute to or even (in some cases) resurrect.
There are predominantly two reasons why such things aren't standardised:
1. Many countries (and companies) have a "not invented here" mentality - have you seen the profusion of power plugs around the world?! Apparently one of the most protracted (and unresloved) arguments in the EU was whose power jacks to standardise on.
2. If a company makes a proprietary power supply, with a proprietary connector, a weird-ass voltage/current combination and proprietary screws holding the casing together then said company has quite a good earner for replacement parts that you can't get anywhere else.
Example? Today I had to source 40 UK power cables for the shipment of computer equipment that US head office sent me. On top of that another piece of equipment was missing it's power adaptor - which uses guess what??? A proprietary connector! Now I have to wait for head office to order that part (in the USA) and ship it to me (in the UK).
There's nothing like a standard - and this is nothing like one.
Um, in case you hadn't noticed, a vast chunk of the US's and China's GDP depend on each other it probably wouldn't be a good idea to nuke the country that produces most of the electronic components that power your own defense gadgets - not to mention a vast chunk of the global economy and that PC you submitted to Slashdot from.
Not to mention the fact that nuking them would create massive amounts of radioactive dust that is in the same hemisphere as the USA and would eventually poison America (not to mention the rest of the planet).
I hope that you posting was a very tongue-in-cheek troll, otherwise your ignorance of the truly global, interconnected nature of the new world economy is astounding.
Oh and for crying out loud - read the article next time!
Re:Alex should have just waited
on
Half Mast
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Some points to note:
1. Dude, hookers don't count...
2. I quit living my life in a bar when I looked around one day and saw the sagging, tired old men that had been doing that their whole lives and deciding that I for one wasn't going to die a slow death that way.
3. Being athletic doesn't have to mean running around playing with your balls... A footballer might be able to run 100 yards faster than me but I can snap his limbs in a heartbeat, and I'll out-run him over a mile.
4. Again, hookers don't count. Take it from the geek who's screwed his biology teacher, a cheerleader and a 19yo lingerie model (...and who's still kicking himself for leaving her...)
5. Haven't you ever read Nietzsche? God is dead already.
My aplogies to all those who would treat this a troll, but he pushed a button.
Oh for crying out loud!
Are there still moron's out there stuck in the FIFTIES! Communisisim is not any better or worse than Capitalisism. It all depends on the society implementing the system and wether or not they wanted it or it was forced upon them. Communisism could work quite well and quite happliy with a democratic government.
Problem is, every time a people somewhere *chose* a communist or socialist leader, the good ol' US of A interfered and usually sponsored a military coup which led to many people being murdered in the name of "freedom". (Chile's a good example.) The US even helped bring down and Australian Prime Minister and the Aussies are supposed to be your *allies*.
There are plenty of people who suffer under both systems get over yourself you flaming great dork.
The American view of Freedom and Democracy is that it's fine as long as it doesn't get in the way of making a profit and then we'll shit all over you.
If you haven't read it, The Deus Machine is a good read and covers this (as fiction) quite nicely. Alas it's out of print. Try looking for it in you local library.
If you'd ever done business with Intel laddie, you'd know that the Chinese don'r have a monopoly on bad ethics. Come to think of it, the Chinese never had a a company called Enron either...
Yeah the technology is there, I've seen it done with cheque processing for banks in an EDS datacentre.
It's very fast and very accurate (unless your handwriting _really_ sucks - then it just routes the image to a person to read it and key the data manually.
Politicians suck - they've forgotten they are their to _serve_ us, instead they wish to _rule_ us - there's a big difference there people.
Slashdot Mirror
"Human rights are universal..."
Actually they aren't.
"Rights" of any sort are an abstraction, a creation of the human mind.
Your rights are given to you by the society you live in and can be taken away from you by that society at will.
Rights are not something you posess.
The individual or group in authority (usually in possession of enough power - commonly use of force, implied or realized) can take "rights" away from you if and when it so deems it to be convienient.
Pieces of paper such as the US Constitution provide protection only as long as those with sufficient power are prepared to tolerate it. Otherwise, it, like any document, is worth only the paper it is written on. Constitutions, like paper money, only have worth because we deem them to, otherwise, it's just paper.
Live in a sterile environment and you weaken your immune system, making you more susceptible to infection, not less.
Having a constant level of "background noise" to deal with keeps your immune system loaded with a good library of antibodies from which it can draw on to fight new infections.
Obviously we need to take care of our basic hygeine, but let's not go overboard. The person most likely using your workstation is you, so the germs on those surfaces most likely originated from you in the first place.
The nastiest bugs in the world (such as necrotising faciitis) are commonly found in the cleanest environments (hospitals) and got that tough because we bred them by weeding out the weaker strains with constant disinfecting of surfaces and lobbing too many antibiotics at simple infections in an effort to get worker units back in the office faster, rather than letting them beat it on their own.
Leave the bugs alone, they're aren't hurting anybody (note: tongue planted firmly in cheek here.)
The military force this weapon would do the most damage to, is the one developing it.
Almost every other army is technologically behind (and most have zero budget to buy all the shiny new toys) - this hardly makes sense.
"But officer, someone hacked into my brain and took over my thoughts and actions!" When the time comes, that's gonna be a mother of a defense.
This reminds of the time I was visiting a dear old friend of mine, a retired catholic priest.
:-)
Ol' James looked postively ancient (and was), schooled by Jesuits, spoke fluent Latin, studied at the Vatican and fully conversant with many not-so-common church rituals.
Anyway this day there was a knock on the door and he shuffled over to answer it. He was greeted by some JW's and when he realised who they were, gave a look of fright, grabbed these two big silver candlesticks on the sideboard and made the sign of the cross screaming "Begone ye sons of Satan!" and proceeded to recite the full on exorcisim ritual in Latin.
Never seen people run so fast in all my life.
James closed the door, shuffled back to his seat and said "Works every time..."
Avon is one of my role-models, up their with Mr Burns. An A1 kick-ass bastard. :-)
That and Zen, Slave and Orac were pretty damned cool too.
Now if we could just get rid of those tree-hugging, moralizing, shrink-visiting, dickheads who write scripts for the ST universe...
"Smithers! Release the hounds!"
If there are so many regulatory tangles and government departments protecting their turf (and covering their asses) just go launch somewhere else.
;-)
It doesn't really help that the Dept of Fatherland Security doesn't want to give anybody an excuse to launch anything
Australia has been wanting to build a solid commercial space launch operation for a few years now. The Russians would love for y'all to go launch there.
I'm sure there a a few other countries who wouldn't mind you launching and landing on their turf.
And every ISP I have worked for (it's been a few, since 2.0 had just come out as I recall) has run Debian (and I got hired by the first one as the Windows geek.)
;-)
One of the reasons is one of the self-same reason that RedHat created the "server" variant of it's line - it moves more slowly than the mainstream version so you (in the commercial sense) know that it's not going to change tomorrow - it's something you can rely on (not to be different by 9am tomorrow.) IT pros *like* predictability and reliability (one of the reason's all that old mainframe code is still out there.)
I must say the thing that pisses me off the most is people who say the installation is hard - no, it's not. All I have ever done with Debian is just sit there, make some choices and tap the enter key (ok, type the hostname and such too
Many of my (newbie) friends have had the same experience, "I heard it was hard?" Just keep hitting enter. "Wow, that didn't hurt at all."
Where does this idea that it's hard come from? The fact that it's text-based? Well that certainly didn't hinder Microsoft from growing into a giant with things like MS-DOS and Windows 3.x or id Software with all of it's dos-based games, or Novell or any of the *nixes either.
Sure it can be a bitch when something is missed by the installer but so are all of them - and Debian can be a damn sight more interactive during install than some of the graphical routines out there (that want to treat you like a Mac or Windows user and hide the really useful, powerful bits from you.)
So yeah, maybe Debian is a slow, sure, wrinkly old tortise but dammit I need that kinda reliability in my business.
Designer babies, bioweapons, cloning, who cares! Where the hell is the ethics in this!?!
Can you imagine if these plants out-competed the natural verions? My god man! Mass global caffeiene withdrawl!! Total chaos!
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
And in about 7.2 seconds there will be a Hello Kitty face on it too...
Yo Taco! Drink more coffee!
This is getting to be a habit...
I have long railed against the unchecked proliferation of open source projects - there is far too much duplication of effort in the community.
:-)
There are too many projects for what are effectively the same things - there is such such a thing as too much choice.
Last time I looked there was something like 27 different ICQ clients available and that wasn't counting all the clients that support the other IM protocols. There are god knows how many editors, shells and window managers out there.
This sort of thing leads to other serious issues like a plethora of applications that don't present in a consistent and user-friendly manner or that interoperate only by getting the user to jump through hoops. Oh for X-apps that use consistent keybindings no matter what WM you've chosen! (Fat f*cking chance of that happening...)
It would be nice for a change to see projects actually merging rather than forking all the damned time. Even better would be if a few more folk checked that there was a program out there to do the job already rather than to do it themselves, re-inventing the wheel in the process and diluting the pool even more. Especially if there is a pre-existing program that they could conrtribute to or even (in some cases) resurrect.
Of course I could just be crazy...
Technology catching up?
Dude, both Iceland and New Zealand already have geothermal power plants feeding their national grids.
Hasn't the technology caught up already?On a tropical island most lighter-weight fuels evaporate relatively quickly, most everything else can be settled, decanted and filtered.
There are predominantly two reasons why such things aren't standardised:
1. Many countries (and companies) have a "not invented here" mentality - have you seen the profusion of power plugs around the world?!
Apparently one of the most protracted (and unresloved) arguments in the EU was whose power jacks to standardise on.
2. If a company makes a proprietary power supply, with a proprietary connector, a weird-ass voltage/current combination and proprietary screws holding the casing together then said company has quite a good earner for replacement parts that you can't get anywhere else.
Example? Today I had to source 40 UK power cables for the shipment of computer equipment that US head office sent me. On top of that another piece of equipment was missing it's power adaptor - which uses guess what??? A proprietary connector! Now I have to wait for head office to order that part (in the USA) and ship it to me (in the UK).
There's nothing like a standard - and this is nothing like one.
Sigh...Yes I'm sure the Native Americans and Hawaiian peoples appreciate that policy...
Um, in case you hadn't noticed, a vast chunk of the US's and China's GDP depend on each other it probably wouldn't be a good idea to nuke the country that produces most of the electronic components that power your own defense gadgets - not to mention a vast chunk of the global economy and that PC you submitted to Slashdot from.
Not to mention the fact that nuking them would create massive amounts of radioactive dust that is in the same hemisphere as the USA and would eventually poison America (not to mention the rest of the planet).
I hope that you posting was a very tongue-in-cheek troll, otherwise your ignorance of the truly global, interconnected nature of the new world economy is astounding.
Oh and for crying out loud - read the article next time!
1. Dude, hookers don't count...
2. I quit living my life in a bar when I looked around one day and saw the sagging, tired old men that had been doing that their whole lives and deciding that I for one wasn't going to die a slow death that way.
3. Being athletic doesn't have to mean running around playing with your balls...
A footballer might be able to run 100 yards faster than me but I can snap his limbs in a heartbeat, and I'll out-run him over a mile.
4. Again, hookers don't count. Take it from the geek who's screwed his biology teacher, a cheerleader and a 19yo lingerie model (...and who's still kicking himself for leaving her...)
5. Haven't you ever read Nietzsche? God is dead already.
My aplogies to all those who would treat this a troll, but he pushed a button.
Um? Timothy McVeigh? Helloooo! Yay for Non-US citizens.
Well, more specifically Angelina Jolie in "Hackers" is *why*.
Drooooooooolllll
Ok, now back to reality. Sigh....
Oh for crying out loud! Are there still moron's out there stuck in the FIFTIES! Communisisim is not any better or worse than Capitalisism. It all depends on the society implementing the system and wether or not they wanted it or it was forced upon them. Communisism could work quite well and quite happliy with a democratic government. Problem is, every time a people somewhere *chose* a communist or socialist leader, the good ol' US of A interfered and usually sponsored a military coup which led to many people being murdered in the name of "freedom". (Chile's a good example.) The US even helped bring down and Australian Prime Minister and the Aussies are supposed to be your *allies*. There are plenty of people who suffer under both systems get over yourself you flaming great dork. The American view of Freedom and Democracy is that it's fine as long as it doesn't get in the way of making a profit and then we'll shit all over you.
I'd vote for him and I'd have to move to the US and become a citizen to do it!
And I'm not even a MacAddict...
At least the Americans would have a leader with some brains for a change.
If you haven't read it, The Deus Machine is a good read and covers this (as fiction) quite nicely. Alas it's out of print. Try looking for it in you local library.
If you'd ever done business with Intel laddie, you'd know that the Chinese don'r have a monopoly on bad ethics. Come to think of it, the Chinese never had a a company called Enron either...
Yeah the technology is there, I've seen it done with cheque processing for banks in an EDS datacentre. It's very fast and very accurate (unless your handwriting _really_ sucks - then it just routes the image to a person to read it and key the data manually. Politicians suck - they've forgotten they are their to _serve_ us, instead they wish to _rule_ us - there's a big difference there people.