Call it what you want, XP has definitely blue screened on me a few times. In fact I went back to win2k because I found it better than XP. I was running it on 700mhz machine with 1/2Gig RAM. Of course I dual boot with Debian and I'm Debian far more often...
In all this talk about ethics and dual use and whatnot, the whole point about the military funding private weapons manufacturers is shot to hell. Just skipping over the whole ethical arguments about the terrorism of western governments and their militaries, there is a whole other can of worms. The american government is pouring billions upon billions of dollars into the hands of private industry for research and production. That's taxpayer money that goes directly into the hands of private corporations and is never seen again. Yeah, the US gets some more weapons out of it; but really... the US is already beyond the military capacity of virtually all the developed countries put together. And yet billions are still spent on constant renewal of military equipment. But new high tech missiles and sattelites aren't going to stop a guy with a box cutter determined to take out an airplane. The massive misappropriation of funding has been going on for centuries really (well 200 years I suppose). There has always been massive government support for private industry at the expense of common citizens.
I must have gotten that damn message 20 times. Was there any reason behind the 'snafu' that caused people to get the message so often? Incidentally, my other hotmail account didn't even get the message once.
a) Stem hemorrhaging of cash from China to Redmond, Wash. b) Stem hemorrhaging of information via spyware.
I think you're much more correct with a) than with b). This is the same reason that China has developed its own processor. China wants to cut economic ties as much as possible to the US, particularly in the economic sector. This move, of turning to Red Flag Linux, was expected for a while now. But as China follows this path, the US may lash out economically. Or maybe the US will just start a new opium war. It will be interesting to see the US reaction as China tries to free itself from US influence. The really big question is how will China free itself from US oil protectorates (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Indonesia, Nigeria, etc.)? Maybe alternative fuels...
Deregulation does have a share (and I'd say a major share) of the responsibility. When the systems are deregulated, the standards for service are shot to hell. There are innumerable examples of this but California is the perfect one.
Once deregulation of power, transit, water, or whatever, happens then all the big corporations go and have a field day. The reason there is poor infrastructure is it's cheaper to build with crap components and poor design. Take away all the safety precautions and increase your stock dividends. This is why Niagara Mohawk failed.
There's an informative article about the backstory here.
As nice as this sounds, it's not really appropriate right now. Public funded institutions generally serve a use for the community as a whole. But in North America, there are still many, many people that don't own computers. Considering there are some 40 million people living in poverty in the US alone, I think there are better things that funding could be put towards instead of open source software projects. That's not to say this is a bad idea; but there are much higher priorities that need to be addressed. Besides, right now the volunteers are doing a pretty kick ass job.
I don't think "knowing someone cares about their grades" is going to be a big factor in affecting whether students drop out or not. From the people that I've met in this situation, they either don't understand the benefits of a quality education, or they just don't care about how important it is. There are still others that both know and care, but may have a lot of other problems in life to deal with. The first two groups can only be helped by convincing them how an education can help them later on in life. But the latter group is the one that this system might help if a person can be identified and they can get help with whatever other problems might be holding them back in school. The only problem I have is, why the hell does it track immigration status? What does that have to do with the quality of their education; apart from language barriers, but even that has nothing to do with immigration status.
Odds on the US pissing off and alienating every other country in the world even more than it already has? Place your bets^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Start trading now!
what do you think hackers and geeks as individuals can do to be useful, and as a related question, how do you think the hacker community can best respond to the threats of the DMCA, EUCD, copy protected CDs, Palladium, and other digital rights issues?
You don't need to ask Bruce this question. The answer is pretty obvious. Read! Make yourself informed on the issue by reading from as many sources as possible. Don't just stick to the usual geek resources because they will give you a very narrow view. About IP in particular there is a wealth of information available from non-geek sources. To effectively fight for/against something, you should first try to understand it.
I know I said it like five times but here we go again. You used depeleted uranium armament. That's a war crime. You deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure. That's a war crime.
Jeez! You were defending Clinton just a week ago for doing that very same thing. Clinton administration was bombing Iraq since the end of the first Gulf War under the pretext of the no-fly zone (which btw, has no basis in international law). Oh but he "inherited" the policy, so it's not a war crime for him.
the UN resolution passed because we twisted the arms of many countries. Check your facts.
Yeah, just like the US prevented the UN from acting in Indonesia until the massacres in East Timor were in full swing for some time. And just like the US prevented prevented water and sanitation equipment from being repaired under the sanctions regime after specifically targetting that infrastructure in the first Gulf War. But I suppose the UN isn't a "reliable source" is it? What a freaking tard...
Software is becoming a comodity just like textiles, or manufactured goods. So it's easy to just outsource it, even if it's of lesser quality. Paying American workers to make jeans is way more than you'll ever have to pay some poor cambodian kid, even if they're both working just to get food. This isn't a very hard concept to understand. IT is being outsourced because it's the easy way to both cut costs and keep people here under control. The ease with which jobs can be transfered now makes it simple for bosses to say "work longer for less money because you're lucky to be working at all". We've come to expect less and be happy just getting by. Over the past decade average salaries have been dropping but cost of living has not. And workers in North America put in way more hours than say those in Europe. Because not only do we get threatened with losing jobs, but they actually are being lost to workers in cheap labour economies. And no matter how many pay cuts you're willing to accept, making enough to get by still puts you at a much higher salary than what can be paid to workers in developing countries. This has been happening for a long time (centuries really if you look at the East India Company) with manual labour. We're only noticing it now because it's affecting white collar workers too.
This is bang on and the term for it is "Wage Slavery". Workers rights have been going through these cycles in the US for a while. It was only in the 1930s or so that people in the US got labour rights. Even into the early 1900s American workers were being killed if they even thought about unionizing. These same pressure tactics are used today. Not violence, but simply the threat of mass lay-offs. Don't ask for benefits, don't ask to work regular hours, don't ask for reasonable wages. If you do we'll move to Mexico (thanks to good ol' NAFTA), or even better just move to some other cheap labour country.
This is just FUD. This isn't going to happen because it would have happened already. It doesn't take super computer robots to make burgers and shakes. As far as interaction goes, that sounds like an argument but I doubt MickyDee's cares about that very much. The real kicker here will be cost. A robot costs a hell of a lot to make or buy. And robots will constantly be sucking energy and could require repairs and servicing. Robots work tirelessly, yes. But if something goes wrong, they are very expensive to replace. Unlike spotty-faced teenagers who can be hired and fired on a whim. This is the same reason IT jobs are being outsourced to India and other cheap labour economies. Corporations care about bottom lines.
The UD is utopian crap which shouldn't really enter into any discussion of politics in the United States.
The former US ambassador to the UN, Jeane Kirkpatrick, agrees with you. She described articles of the UD as "a letter to Santa Claus". Incidentally, the US did not accept the Declrations on the Right to Development, or the Rights of the Child. The US and Somalia were the only countries not to accept the Declaration on the Rights of the Child (Somalia lacking a real government and being run by warlords). I guess they are also considered "utopian crap".
There is pretty much a concensus that the consolidation of corporate media, and the corporatization of media in general goes against Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
When all media is controlled by large corporations, it really precludes any involvement of the general populace.
I doubt it. MIT is actually pretty corporate. There's an immense amount of weapons research going on there; and I don't need to tell you that the funding doesn't come from student tuition.
Going out to find news that has _your_ slant does not make this news any less unbiased. Think about that. You need _diversity_, not a single source that you like because they echo your own line.
Very insightful and true.
The government of the United States was elected by the people. If you have a problem with the government, you have a problem with the Americans, since they put it in power. The government is acting under _their_ authority. And, notably, polls show most citizens support the actions of the government so far.
Total BS. The only 'problem' I have with Americans is they are ignorant of their governments real policies and thus they are not able to protest against them, since they have no real idea what they are. But this ignorance is not entirely their fault given the useless media organizations they have; it takes real effort to find information on some of these policies. How many Americans knew their government assassinated Allende 30 years ago? How many approved? How many Americans knew their government was selling weapons to Iran to support the terrorism of the contras? How many approved? How many Americans knew their government gave the Baath regime the biological weapons it used in its terror attacks on the people of Iraq? How many approved?
It's just like those idiots in France who can't put together "rising anti-Zionism" leading to "rising (and violent!) anti-Semitism": you don't have one without the other.
Right, because you can'tcriticizeIsraelwithoutbeingan anti-semite? Sorry friend, criticizing Israeli policy does not make you an anti-semite. As I've said before, the most vociferous opponents of Israeli policy are Jewish. And it's really because they are Jewish and they want to promote human rights. If there is racism and violence against Jews, then that is a seperate, and terrible, problem that must be dealt with. Racism, all racism, is awful.
Re:on second thought, pass the lead gloves please.
on
United Nuclear
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Yes it is. The radiation from DU bombs from the first invasion of Iraq, more than a decade ago, has caused massive problems for the people of Iraq. They had no equipment to clean it up (because of the sanctions) and the cancer rate in Iraq rose 70% after Desert Storm. The problem with DU is that it vapourizes on impact and the dust goes off into the environment. It goes off and gets into everything. And the effects of DU on the people it hits are pretty atrocious; they call them "crispy critters" (a pretty terrible euphimism if you ask me). Now the US has gone and dumped a whole lot more DU on the country. And all those reports saying DU has 'no harmful effects' were admittedly done by the US military.
So then don't join the army. This is a database of military personnel. Well I would suggest this anyway. Average soldiers may not realize, but the people running the US military (and militaries of a lot of other countries) aren't the most moral people in the world. I doubt that they would have many qualms about abusing any information they have about their soldiers.
DVD burners standard within the next year? That sounds a little too auspicious to me. The usefulness for backing up information is obvious, but is there any real software that allows you to make copies DVDs and maintain the quality? (I'm just asking out of curiosity... not for any illegal reasons)
This is exactly the kind of app I was looking for just last week. But I found KWord which seems to fit nicely. KWord is mostly like MS Publisher, but it seems to be pretty buggy and crashes every now and then. But in terms of functionality, it has most of the stuff I need. Though I'll give Scribus a whirl, but aren't there any publishing programs that use GTK? I have Gnome2.2 and right now KWord is the only reason I have KDElibs on my computer.
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Call it what you want, XP has definitely blue screened on me a few times. In fact I went back to win2k because I found it better than XP. I was running it on 700mhz machine with 1/2Gig RAM.
Of course I dual boot with Debian and I'm Debian far more often...
In all this talk about ethics and dual use and whatnot, the whole point about the military funding private weapons manufacturers is shot to hell. Just skipping over the whole ethical arguments about the terrorism of western governments and their militaries, there is a whole other can of worms.
The american government is pouring billions upon billions of dollars into the hands of private industry for research and production. That's taxpayer money that goes directly into the hands of private corporations and is never seen again.
Yeah, the US gets some more weapons out of it; but really... the US is already beyond the military capacity of virtually all the developed countries put together. And yet billions are still spent on constant renewal of military equipment. But new high tech missiles and sattelites aren't going to stop a guy with a box cutter determined to take out an airplane.
The massive misappropriation of funding has been going on for centuries really (well 200 years I suppose). There has always been massive government support for private industry at the expense of common citizens.
I must have gotten that damn message 20 times. Was there any reason behind the 'snafu' that caused people to get the message so often?
Incidentally, my other hotmail account didn't even get the message once.
a) Stem hemorrhaging of cash from China to Redmond, Wash.
b) Stem hemorrhaging of information via spyware.
I think you're much more correct with a) than with b). This is the same reason that China has developed its own processor. China wants to cut economic ties as much as possible to the US, particularly in the economic sector. This move, of turning to Red Flag Linux, was expected for a while now.
But as China follows this path, the US may lash out economically. Or maybe the US will just start a new opium war. It will be interesting to see the US reaction as China tries to free itself from US influence. The really big question is how will China free itself from US oil protectorates (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Indonesia, Nigeria, etc.)? Maybe alternative fuels...
Deregulation does have a share (and I'd say a major share) of the responsibility. When the systems are deregulated, the standards for service are shot to hell. There are innumerable examples of this but California is the perfect one.
Once deregulation of power, transit, water, or whatever, happens then all the big corporations go and have a field day. The reason there is poor infrastructure is it's cheaper to build with crap components and poor design. Take away all the safety precautions and increase your stock dividends. This is why Niagara Mohawk failed.
There's an informative article about the backstory here.
As nice as this sounds, it's not really appropriate right now. Public funded institutions generally serve a use for the community as a whole. But in North America, there are still many, many people that don't own computers. Considering there are some 40 million people living in poverty in the US alone, I think there are better things that funding could be put towards instead of open source software projects.
That's not to say this is a bad idea; but there are much higher priorities that need to be addressed. Besides, right now the volunteers are doing a pretty kick ass job.
I don't think "knowing someone cares about their grades" is going to be a big factor in affecting whether students drop out or not.
From the people that I've met in this situation, they either don't understand the benefits of a quality education, or they just don't care about how important it is. There are still others that both know and care, but may have a lot of other problems in life to deal with.
The first two groups can only be helped by convincing them how an education can help them later on in life. But the latter group is the one that this system might help if a person can be identified and they can get help with whatever other problems might be holding them back in school.
The only problem I have is, why the hell does it track immigration status? What does that have to do with the quality of their education; apart from language barriers, but even that has nothing to do with immigration status.
Odds on the US pissing off and alienating every other country in the world even more than it already has?
Place your bets^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
Start trading now!
what do you think hackers and geeks as individuals can do to be useful, and as a related question, how do you think the hacker community can best respond to the threats of the DMCA, EUCD, copy protected CDs, Palladium, and other digital rights issues?
You don't need to ask Bruce this question. The answer is pretty obvious. Read! Make yourself informed on the issue by reading from as many sources as possible. Don't just stick to the usual geek resources because they will give you a very narrow view. About IP in particular there is a wealth of information available from non-geek sources.
To effectively fight for/against something, you should first try to understand it.
I know I said it like five times but here we go again. You used depeleted uranium armament. That's a war crime. You deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure. That's a war crime.
Jeez! You were defending Clinton just a week ago for doing that very same thing. Clinton administration was bombing Iraq since the end of the first Gulf War under the pretext of the no-fly zone (which btw, has no basis in international law). Oh but he "inherited" the policy, so it's not a war crime for him.
the UN resolution passed because we twisted the arms of many countries. Check your facts.
Yeah, just like the US prevented the UN from acting in Indonesia until the massacres in East Timor were in full swing for some time.
And just like the US prevented prevented water and sanitation equipment from being repaired under the sanctions regime after specifically targetting that infrastructure in the first Gulf War.
But I suppose the UN isn't a "reliable source" is it?
What a freaking tard...
Software is becoming a comodity just like textiles, or manufactured goods. So it's easy to just outsource it, even if it's of lesser quality. Paying American workers to make jeans is way more than you'll ever have to pay some poor cambodian kid, even if they're both working just to get food.
This isn't a very hard concept to understand. IT is being outsourced because it's the easy way to both cut costs and keep people here under control.
The ease with which jobs can be transfered now makes it simple for bosses to say "work longer for less money because you're lucky to be working at all". We've come to expect less and be happy just getting by.
Over the past decade average salaries have been dropping but cost of living has not. And workers in North America put in way more hours than say those in Europe. Because not only do we get threatened with losing jobs, but they actually are being lost to workers in cheap labour economies.
And no matter how many pay cuts you're willing to accept, making enough to get by still puts you at a much higher salary than what can be paid to workers in developing countries.
This has been happening for a long time (centuries really if you look at the East India Company) with manual labour. We're only noticing it now because it's affecting white collar workers too.
This is bang on and the term for it is "Wage Slavery".
Workers rights have been going through these cycles in the US for a while. It was only in the 1930s or so that people in the US got labour rights. Even into the early 1900s American workers were being killed if they even thought about unionizing.
These same pressure tactics are used today. Not violence, but simply the threat of mass lay-offs. Don't ask for benefits, don't ask to work regular hours, don't ask for reasonable wages. If you do we'll move to Mexico (thanks to good ol' NAFTA), or even better just move to some other cheap labour country.
This is just FUD. This isn't going to happen because it would have happened already. It doesn't take super computer robots to make burgers and shakes. As far as interaction goes, that sounds like an argument but I doubt MickyDee's cares about that very much.
The real kicker here will be cost. A robot costs a hell of a lot to make or buy. And robots will constantly be sucking energy and could require repairs and servicing. Robots work tirelessly, yes. But if something goes wrong, they are very expensive to replace. Unlike spotty-faced teenagers who can be hired and fired on a whim.
This is the same reason IT jobs are being outsourced to India and other cheap labour economies. Corporations care about bottom lines.
The UD is utopian crap which shouldn't really enter into any discussion of politics in the United States.
The former US ambassador to the UN, Jeane Kirkpatrick, agrees with you. She described articles of the UD as "a letter to Santa Claus".
Incidentally, the US did not accept the Declrations on the Right to Development, or the Rights of the Child.
The US and Somalia were the only countries not to accept the Declaration on the Rights of the Child (Somalia lacking a real government and being run by warlords). I guess they are also considered "utopian crap".
on media bias: it's not the whole truth, but it's probably the best thing written on the subject.
If you want a real analysis on bias of Western (read American) media, read Manufacturing Consent.
When all media is controlled by large corporations, it really precludes any involvement of the general populace.
I doubt it. MIT is actually pretty corporate. There's an immense amount of weapons research going on there; and I don't need to tell you that the funding doesn't come from student tuition.
Going out to find news that has _your_ slant does not make this news any less unbiased. Think about that. You need _diversity_, not a single source that you like because they echo your own line.
Very insightful and true.
The government of the United States was elected by the people. If you have a problem with the government, you have a problem with the Americans, since they put it in power. The government is acting under _their_ authority. And, notably, polls show most citizens support the actions of the government so far.
Total BS. The only 'problem' I have with Americans is they are ignorant of their governments real policies and thus they are not able to protest against them, since they have no real idea what they are. But this ignorance is not entirely their fault given the useless media organizations they have; it takes real effort to find information on some of these policies.
How many Americans knew their government assassinated Allende 30 years ago? How many approved?
How many Americans knew their government was selling weapons to Iran to support the terrorism of the contras? How many approved?
How many Americans knew their government gave the Baath regime the biological weapons it used in its terror attacks on the people of Iraq? How many approved?
It's just like those idiots in France who can't put together "rising anti-Zionism" leading to "rising (and violent!) anti-Semitism": you don't have one without the other.
Right, because you can't criticize Israel without being an anti-semite? Sorry friend, criticizing Israeli policy does not make you an anti-semite. As I've said before, the most vociferous opponents of Israeli policy are Jewish. And it's really because they are Jewish and they want to promote human rights.
If there is racism and violence against Jews, then that is a seperate, and terrible, problem that must be dealt with. Racism, all racism, is awful.
Yes it is. The radiation from DU bombs from the first invasion of Iraq, more than a decade ago, has caused massive problems for the people of Iraq. They had no equipment to clean it up (because of the sanctions) and the cancer rate in Iraq rose 70% after Desert Storm.
The problem with DU is that it vapourizes on impact and the dust goes off into the environment. It goes off and gets into everything. And the effects of DU on the people it hits are pretty atrocious; they call them "crispy critters" (a pretty terrible euphimism if you ask me).
Now the US has gone and dumped a whole lot more DU on the country. And all those reports saying DU has 'no harmful effects' were admittedly done by the US military.
So then don't join the army. This is a database of military personnel.
Well I would suggest this anyway. Average soldiers may not realize, but the people running the US military (and militaries of a lot of other countries) aren't the most moral people in the world. I doubt that they would have many qualms about abusing any information they have about their soldiers.
DVD burners standard within the next year? That sounds a little too auspicious to me.
The usefulness for backing up information is obvious, but is there any real software that allows you to make copies DVDs and maintain the quality? (I'm just asking out of curiosity... not for any illegal reasons)
Scribus is available in stable, testing, and unstable. According to the Debian site stable and testing have 0.6 and unstable has 0.9.
This is exactly the kind of app I was looking for just last week. But I found KWord which seems to fit nicely. KWord is mostly like MS Publisher, but it seems to be pretty buggy and crashes every now and then. But in terms of functionality, it has most of the stuff I need.
Though I'll give Scribus a whirl, but aren't there any publishing programs that use GTK? I have Gnome2.2 and right now KWord is the only reason I have KDElibs on my computer.
Naturally as an adicted Slashdot reader i will find a place to live by submiting an "Ask Slashdot " Story and browsing at score 5.
For best results submit it here.