I think boosting education is your best bet. But you have to be very patient, and wait at least 20 years. (Until the educated can start to gain power, and it becomes the mindset of the people.) Remember, that the Taliban massively destroyed schools and schoolbooks. (Educated people are much harder to fall for them.)
Millitary and diplomacy (why restrict to one of them?) can help, if they can keep thinks quiet, so people will be able to pursuit other careers than fighting. But Afghanistan is so big and so complex, that this is nearly impossible. But only nearly. So it really depends on how you execute the task.
(Oh, I hope my English is understandable. It is my third language of four.)
Being predictable to your teammates/backup under all circumstances is an essential part of performing a life and death job - whether performing undersea construction or policing the 'projects.'
Which, in reality, never works, because then they are too stupid to predict their teammates anyway.:P
Well, my uncle is the head of the union of Afghanis in Germany. And according to him, it went like this:
There was an evil dictator king, that ruled Afghanistan. Then the Taliban removed him, which brought much joy to most Afghanis. The Taliban then became just as evil. But mostly only to non-believers. Which is not such a big problem in Afghanistan. They are very religious anyway. The USA then removed the Taliban, and put the king back in place. People hate him, and this is not going to change.
So now, instead of only punishing you for not being religious enough, now you can be punished for anything again.
The problem is, that Afghanistan, and Iraq, are clan hierarchies. They all belong to a clan. People there have a hierarchy of trust. You can't create a democracy there. Because they will vote for their clan leaders anyway.
So what you get is a parliament of all the clan leaders and the now hated king, bashing their heads over the same shit, that they fought each other over for the last centuries. It changes nothing. If it does, then it only makes things worse.
If you want to imagine how Afghanistan works, think of the people and organizational structures of the USA, Russia, France, and some other countries, in one single country. Merged all over the place. They often do not like each other. But you can't separate them by splitting the land. They live right next to each other, and they will not move.
The only thing you can do is give them education and to actually have the free time to learn stuff. Because only this this gives them the ability to resolve their differences, which they do not have now! (After generations of war, they only know hate and war.) And it removes extremist religious movement like the Taliban too. But with the USA, this will not happen. Because the USA -- please do not take offense here -- can't even resolve the religious and educational problems in their own country.
Oh, and my father was a mujaheddin and son of a city leader btw. If you saw Rambo 3, you saw what his life looked like. Including the bullet-proof Russian helicopters and Stinger rocket launchers.
is it illegal in Germany to have any kind of adult site that doesn't have age verification?
Yes. As perverse as it sounds. It is. But you can go to the kiosk, and buy porn anyway.
I know this, because I worked at a large internet portal with a porn section. We had to close it down, back then. It was initiated by some fundamentalist mothers organization. It is called PostIdent, and it works like this: You have to go to the post office, with your ID card, to prove that you are 18, and to sign the contract to get a PostIdent ID. Of course nobody goes to the post office so say that he wants to watch porn on the internet.
In Germany, is is law, that porn sites have to lock their sites with PostIdent.
Of course it is major bullshit, because you can simply host your site in another country, or go to another site if you search for it.
I guess that's one additional reason, why they want to have blacklists.
I wonder, if those politicans never fapped to porn magazines when they were 13. With the mothers, it is clear. They had no need for porn, because they could get sex anytime and anywhere anyway, as soon as boys in their age started to want it.
Exactly. Why do people always think, that death is the worst punishment? Do they have no fantasy?:P If you're dead, you do not care about anything at all. If you are alive on the other hand...
I assemble my own circuits. From uninsulated wires of differing rustiness. And trash found on the streets. By twisting them together with my bare hands, sweat and blood.
... because in such languages, multicore-usage is already included from the very beginning. In Haskell, you have to explicitly state, that you do not want something to be spread to more than one core.
With the included total type safety and lazy evaluating, I call that a winner.:)
At least, if you do not want to program hardware directly.
That's why I am very happy to completely steer around C/C++. I never liked its messy syntax anyway. ^^ I used Pascal, Java, and now Haskell. And in 20 years of experience, I never have seen such an impressive beast of a compiler as the GHC (Glasgow Haskell Compiler).
Sure, you can fuck up things in Haskell too. But you have fuck up explicitely. By doing something very stupid. Not by not doing tons of checks right and left. I also found the tradeoff of slowness for stability in Java, a good thing. But Haskell simply gets to the core of the problem, instead of fixing something that is bad at it's core.
But I must say, that for operating systems, drivers, and the like, there is no alternative to C and a bit of assembler. Not for speed reasons (as this is a thing of optimization, and you can use assember anyway), but because C was made for such low-level things.
(I am a high-level (of abstraction) programmer, so naturally, this is my POV. I do not consider any level of abstaction better. I think it depends on the level your code is meant to run at.)
Care to explain to a land rat, how this is even possible?
As far as I know, they always know exactly what their distance to the surroundings are, don't they? So did they ignore the displays? Are there proximity warnings that go off? Were they ignored?
Did they not know, that a large ship was above them? Really? Or did they know, but not watch the distance?
I don't get it... Sorry... In my mind, I always have this picture of a really drunk crew, with an even more drunk captain. And as far as I know, military people (at least in Germany and Poland) drink in every free minute. ^^
Ok, the average noob might not have the interest to become a power user. I usually use all features I can use, if they make sense.
But I am also a phone application developer, so I kinda can come up with my useful stuff for the included functions.
The most useful stuff in my eyes were... That you have a real application platform. That you have a camera that removes the need for a separate small camera (because not everybody needs a real DSLR). That you have GPS. (Pretty useful if you can put markers with notes on your map.) And that you have realy broadband, with the whole internet.
Of course, most of this becomes useless, if you don't have a actual keyboard. Like on the iPhone. ^^ (And: No, that non-tactile joke they call the "screen keyboard", does not even count as a bad parody of a keyboard.)
Considering the countries actively censoring or monitoring I'm aware of are: [...], Germany, [...].
Care to enlighten us on that one. Because I live in Germany, and follow such stuff very closely.
There was our Nazi-douchebag Schäuble together with some Bavarian politicians (Bavaria is our Texas), trying to put this into place. But he got beaten down after constantly coming up with even worse stuff.
So, because I saw others wondering why their country was included, I demand some source for this, other than your ass. ^^
Well. It's the war of the idiots. I will most likely get modded into digital hell, but:
Guess what. the iPhone is a piece of crap. And so is every Windows Mobile phone. Compare them to any current-gen Japanese phone, and they don't stand a chance. The iPod is a piece of crap. And so is the Zune. Compare them to most other devices in that price range, and they don't stand much of a chance. (Ok, I give credit for the clickwheel.) Apple is scamming their idiot customers. And so is Microsoft. Apple feeds on the massive strength of their name. Microsoft usually feeds on their monopolistic dominance. In both cases, non-informed customers are crucial for success.
I don't think that on that low level, it matters which one is TEH BESTESTEST!!!11(lim (x->0) (sin x) / x)
I also do not not expect them to behave differently. Looking at their success, this seems to be a very successful method of doing business. And after all, this is what companies are about, aren't they? Because even if it is evil... When they win, it does not matter.
Luckily, I'm so far away from even thinking about those companies and their products, in my Linux safe-house, that I can write this whole post with a smile about all the senseless flaming and fanboyism over nothing. Also, don't take my post too serious.:)
That's exactly what I was thinking about for years.
I mean, create a really good virus, and add a constantly learning 3rd generation (spiking) neural net to it. Add some code to allow the net adapt to the resources available (CPU, RAM, user's usage [survival instinct?]), and a p2p mechanism. Make it modular, so parts can be replaced by better ones (all the static parts). And let it grow, until some mutations do not need any static modules anymore. (Which hopefully happens all by itself, if the net is powerful enough.) Help it a bit (like a child, teach it, let it learn *your* right and wrong.)
And then... well... find a good bunker to hide. ^^
Since a pin is only 4 characters it's trivial to remember.
That's the problem. 4 NUMBERS. Come on. That is i total failure in today's society.
2. Many transactions don't use the pin - the local supermarket auto checkout doesn't require a pin, only the card. Also all the cities car parks are the same.
Try that in Germany. They will laugh at you. And maybe call the cops. Nearly every business has PIN-input terminals. And those who don't, require the usual signature. Which you can later appeal against. They than have to show you the receipt with the same signature as on your debit card or id card.
3. When you're paying for something how do you know they aren't skimming the card (90% of shops still take the card off you an scan it through the till, even though apparently they're not supposed to any more) and storing the pin in a computer under the till
Good point. But by law, they are required, to use class 3 pin entry devices. Those devices use a secure, highly encrypted, connection (eg via modem), right to the bank. Because of this, they have their own display, to show the amount you are about to pay, and their own keys to input the PIN and payment OK. Of course, it would be your job, to check, if that device actually is a class 3 one. (Usually, you can't simply modify them. They are built in a way, that this is (in theory) impossible.)
I guess this is where the last problem still lies. And where in reality, there was not a single case that I ever heard of, of someone using a fake reader.
IMO the pin should be a string of beetween 10 and 20 digits. Much harder to for someone to shoulder surf. All transactions should require the pin, otherwise the transaction isn't valid.
I don't think digits alone are enough. Something more complex is needed. But something that nobody can take from you (like someone would take a fingerprint or eye). So a code in some more efficient form than entering 10 special characters into a full-sized keyboard, at the checkout.;)
Please explain -- which was my first point -- how anyone can use a debit card without also having my PIN (or signature and appearance)?
At least is Germany, this is impossible. You have to tell someone your PIN and get your card stolen, and not instantly call the card locking phone number [that is printed on every ATM here], for this to happen. Which is so stupid, that you -- in my eyes -- would deserve to lose a ton of money. ^^
The real reason we're told not to use debit cards in the UK is because banks can make less off of them as there's always the hope they'll get people to spend beyond their means and then try and rack in the interest. It's certainly not for consumer protection.
Yeah. That's the main reason, why I will never ever in my life touch any credit card, or bank account with credit, ever again. Also I do not put my money in saving accounts or something similar. Because they only give that money to some fund manager. But they take most of the money first. I think I can do that without giving them most of the money for doing nothing. ^^
Wait. A debit card is useless without the PIN code, isn't it? Sure, you sometimes can calculate the code. But normally...? Of course, if you let them get your PIN, that was your failure. In that case, I would not give you a cent, if I were a bank.
As such a bank, I would only pay, if I had not fulfilled the contract, by using bad security systems, or not fixing security holes.
Slashdot Mirror
I think boosting education is your best bet. But you have to be very patient, and wait at least 20 years. (Until the educated can start to gain power, and it becomes the mindset of the people.)
Remember, that the Taliban massively destroyed schools and schoolbooks. (Educated people are much harder to fall for them.)
Millitary and diplomacy (why restrict to one of them?) can help, if they can keep thinks quiet, so people will be able to pursuit other careers than fighting. But Afghanistan is so big and so complex, that this is nearly impossible. But only nearly. So it really depends on how you execute the task.
(Oh, I hope my English is understandable. It is my third language of four.)
Being predictable to your teammates/backup under all circumstances is an essential part of performing a life and death job - whether performing undersea construction or policing the 'projects.'
Which, in reality, never works, because then they are too stupid to predict their teammates anyway. :P
Speak for yourself. I like my pussy shaven. But as someone who never licks his girlfriend's pussy, you would not know why that is, would you?
Well, my uncle is the head of the union of Afghanis in Germany. And according to him, it went like this:
There was an evil dictator king, that ruled Afghanistan.
Then the Taliban removed him, which brought much joy to most Afghanis.
The Taliban then became just as evil. But mostly only to non-believers. Which is not such a big problem in Afghanistan. They are very religious anyway.
The USA then removed the Taliban, and put the king back in place. People hate him, and this is not going to change.
So now, instead of only punishing you for not being religious enough, now you can be punished for anything again.
The problem is, that Afghanistan, and Iraq, are clan hierarchies. They all belong to a clan. People there have a hierarchy of trust.
You can't create a democracy there. Because they will vote for their clan leaders anyway.
So what you get is a parliament of all the clan leaders and the now hated king, bashing their heads over the same shit, that they fought each other over for the last centuries.
It changes nothing. If it does, then it only makes things worse.
If you want to imagine how Afghanistan works, think of the people and organizational structures of the USA, Russia, France, and some other countries, in one single country. Merged all over the place. They often do not like each other. But you can't separate them by splitting the land. They live right next to each other, and they will not move.
The only thing you can do is give them education and to actually have the free time to learn stuff. Because only this this gives them the ability to resolve their differences, which they do not have now! (After generations of war, they only know hate and war.) And it removes extremist religious movement like the Taliban too.
But with the USA, this will not happen. Because the USA -- please do not take offense here -- can't even resolve the religious and educational problems in their own country.
Oh, and my father was a mujaheddin and son of a city leader btw. If you saw Rambo 3, you saw what his life looked like. Including the bullet-proof Russian helicopters and Stinger rocket launchers.
is it illegal in Germany to have any kind of adult site that doesn't have age verification?
Yes. As perverse as it sounds. It is. But you can go to the kiosk, and buy porn anyway.
I know this, because I worked at a large internet portal with a porn section. We had to close it down, back then.
It was initiated by some fundamentalist mothers organization.
It is called PostIdent, and it works like this: You have to go to the post office, with your ID card, to prove that you are 18, and to sign the contract to get a PostIdent ID.
Of course nobody goes to the post office so say that he wants to watch porn on the internet.
In Germany, is is law, that porn sites have to lock their sites with PostIdent.
Of course it is major bullshit, because you can simply host your site in another country, or go to another site if you search for it.
I guess that's one additional reason, why they want to have blacklists.
I wonder, if those politicans never fapped to porn magazines when they were 13.
With the mothers, it is clear. They had no need for porn, because they could get sex anytime and anywhere anyway, as soon as boys in their age started to want it.
So the source of all this is pure ignorance.
They definitely are.
They also got access to dangerous chemical weapons.
Exactly. Why do people always think, that death is the worst punishment? :P
Do they have no fantasy?
If you're dead, you do not care about anything at all.
If you are alive on the other hand...
Well, luckily we aren't 4chan... yet.
Parent posts worked hard on making Slashdot 4chan. So they deserve the -1.
How about having an adjustable food intake instead?
You know. One that goes below 40 pounds a day. :P
You use a OS???
I assemble my own circuits. From uninsulated wires of differing rustiness. And trash found on the streets.
By twisting them together with my bare hands, sweat and blood.
Integrated circuits. Bah.
-- Tetsuo
Well, if it eliminates "Sarah Palin"s... I say that's a good deal! ^^
... because in such languages, multicore-usage is already included from the very beginning.
In Haskell, you have to explicitly state, that you do not want something to be spread to more than one core.
With the included total type safety and lazy evaluating, I call that a winner. :)
At least, if you do not want to program hardware directly.
That's why I am very happy to completely steer around C/C++. I never liked its messy syntax anyway. ^^
I used Pascal, Java, and now Haskell. And in 20 years of experience, I never have seen such an impressive beast of a compiler as the GHC (Glasgow Haskell Compiler).
Sure, you can fuck up things in Haskell too. But you have fuck up explicitely. By doing something very stupid. Not by not doing tons of checks right and left.
I also found the tradeoff of slowness for stability in Java, a good thing. But Haskell simply gets to the core of the problem, instead of fixing something that is bad at it's core.
But I must say, that for operating systems, drivers, and the like, there is no alternative to C and a bit of assembler. Not for speed reasons (as this is a thing of optimization, and you can use assember anyway), but because C was made for such low-level things.
(I am a high-level (of abstraction) programmer, so naturally, this is my POV. I do not consider any level of abstaction better. I think it depends on the level your code is meant to run at.)
Care to explain to a land rat, how this is even possible?
As far as I know, they always know exactly what their distance to the surroundings are, don't they? So did they ignore the displays? Are there proximity warnings that go off? Were they ignored?
Did they not know, that a large ship was above them? Really?
Or did they know, but not watch the distance?
I don't get it... Sorry...
In my mind, I always have this picture of a really drunk crew, with an even more drunk captain. And as far as I know, military people (at least in Germany and Poland) drink in every free minute. ^^
I'd love to be shown how wrong I am. :)
Ok, the average noob might not have the interest to become a power user. I usually use all features I can use, if they make sense.
But I am also a phone application developer, so I kinda can come up with my useful stuff for the included functions.
The most useful stuff in my eyes were... That you have a real application platform. That you have a camera that removes the need for a separate small camera (because not everybody needs a real DSLR). That you have GPS. (Pretty useful if you can put markers with notes on your map.) And that you have realy broadband, with the whole internet.
Of course, most of this becomes useless, if you don't have a actual keyboard. Like on the iPhone. ^^
(And: No, that non-tactile joke they call the "screen keyboard", does not even count as a bad parody of a keyboard.)
Considering the countries actively censoring or monitoring I'm aware of are: [...], Germany, [...].
Care to enlighten us on that one. Because I live in Germany, and follow such stuff very closely.
There was our Nazi-douchebag Schäuble together with some Bavarian politicians (Bavaria is our Texas), trying to put this into place. But he got beaten down after constantly coming up with even worse stuff.
So, because I saw others wondering why their country was included, I demand some source for this, other than your ass. ^^
Well. It's the war of the idiots. I will most likely get modded into digital hell, but:
Guess what. the iPhone is a piece of crap. And so is every Windows Mobile phone. Compare them to any current-gen Japanese phone, and they don't stand a chance.
The iPod is a piece of crap. And so is the Zune. Compare them to most other devices in that price range, and they don't stand much of a chance. (Ok, I give credit for the clickwheel.)
Apple is scamming their idiot customers. And so is Microsoft. Apple feeds on the massive strength of their name. Microsoft usually feeds on their monopolistic dominance. In both cases, non-informed customers are crucial for success.
I don't think that on that low level, it matters which one is TEH BESTESTEST!!!11(lim (x->0) (sin x) / x)
I also do not not expect them to behave differently. Looking at their success, this seems to be a very successful method of doing business. And after all, this is what companies are about, aren't they? Because even if it is evil... When they win, it does not matter.
Luckily, I'm so far away from even thinking about those companies and their products, in my Linux safe-house, that I can write this whole post with a smile about all the senseless flaming and fanboyism over nothing. Also, don't take my post too serious. :)
That's exactly what I was thinking about for years.
I mean, create a really good virus, and add a constantly learning 3rd generation (spiking) neural net to it. Add some code to allow the net adapt to the resources available (CPU, RAM, user's usage [survival instinct?]), and a p2p mechanism. Make it modular, so parts can be replaced by better ones (all the static parts). And let it grow, until some mutations do not need any static modules anymore. (Which hopefully happens all by itself, if the net is powerful enough.) Help it a bit (like a child, teach it, let it learn *your* right and wrong.)
And then... well... find a good bunker to hide. ^^
Why did you post as AC? Your point did perfectly hit the problem. Mod parent up. Despite him being an AC.
How about ccache and distcc?
You mean x264, don't you?
XviD/DivX: The MP3 of video codecs.
Since a pin is only 4 characters it's trivial to remember.
That's the problem. 4 NUMBERS. Come on. That is i total failure in today's society.
2. Many transactions don't use the pin - the local supermarket auto checkout doesn't require a pin, only the card. Also all the cities car parks are the same.
Try that in Germany. They will laugh at you. And maybe call the cops.
Nearly every business has PIN-input terminals. And those who don't, require the usual signature. Which you can later appeal against. They than have to show you the receipt with the same signature as on your debit card or id card.
3. When you're paying for something how do you know they aren't skimming the card (90% of shops still take the card off you an scan it through the till, even though apparently they're not supposed to any more) and storing the pin in a computer under the till
Good point. But by law, they are required, to use class 3 pin entry devices. Those devices use a secure, highly encrypted, connection (eg via modem), right to the bank. Because of this, they have their own display, to show the amount you are about to pay, and their own keys to input the PIN and payment OK.
Of course, it would be your job, to check, if that device actually is a class 3 one. (Usually, you can't simply modify them. They are built in a way, that this is (in theory) impossible.)
I guess this is where the last problem still lies. And where in reality, there was not a single case that I ever heard of, of someone using a fake reader.
IMO the pin should be a string of beetween 10 and 20 digits. Much harder to for someone to shoulder surf. All transactions should require the pin, otherwise the transaction isn't valid.
I don't think digits alone are enough. Something more complex is needed. But something that nobody can take from you (like someone would take a fingerprint or eye). So a code in some more efficient form than entering 10 special characters into a full-sized keyboard, at the checkout. ;)
Please explain -- which was my first point -- how anyone can use a debit card without also having my PIN (or signature and appearance)?
At least is Germany, this is impossible. You have to tell someone your PIN and get your card stolen, and not instantly call the card locking phone number [that is printed on every ATM here], for this to happen. Which is so stupid, that you -- in my eyes -- would deserve to lose a ton of money. ^^
The real reason we're told not to use debit cards in the UK is because banks can make less off of them as there's always the hope they'll get people to spend beyond their means and then try and rack in the interest. It's certainly not for consumer protection.
Yeah. That's the main reason, why I will never ever in my life touch any credit card, or bank account with credit, ever again.
Also I do not put my money in saving accounts or something similar. Because they only give that money to some fund manager. But they take most of the money first. I think I can do that without giving them most of the money for doing nothing. ^^
Wait. A debit card is useless without the PIN code, isn't it? Sure, you sometimes can calculate the code. But normally...?
Of course, if you let them get your PIN, that was your failure. In that case, I would not give you a cent, if I were a bank.
As such a bank, I would only pay, if I had not fulfilled the contract, by using bad security systems, or not fixing security holes.