When (other than 'never') will the legal profession (particularly judges) admit that their lack of technical expertise is doing damage to the rest of us?
About ten minutes after geeks admit that their lack of legal expertise disqualifies most of their legal commentary.;)
There's a (biological) virus to which humans are either immune, or not - just like any other virus.
The people who catch it, however, are turned into attack zombies primed to attack specifically the immune humans.
Heh... sounds kind of like rabies, except a rabid (whatever) will attack pretty much anything. There was a cute SF novel where some guy travels back in time to medieval times, and kills a "vampire" that was haunting a village; turns out the guy had rabies.
Re:Batman vs. Superman: By A Religious Fundamental
on
Superhero Smackdown
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· Score: 1
The same goes for "Jesus Christ" too... not that I have ever seen a depiction that shows him as non-white.
Note that in a nod to the Levant they never make Him blonde.;) I have seen pictures of African churches where He's portrayed as black. I'm sure He doesn't mind either way.
If only we could pound that into a lot of thick heads down here, eh?
But Lex Luthor is just an ordinary human like you or I. Superman has all the advantages, but Lex still almost wins. Lex Luthor is a modern-day Prometheus, and Superman is a capricious god.
From your description, you make Lex sound like an Ayn Rand hero. I can just imagine...
"Who is Lex Luthor?"
That is the enigmatic catchphrase muttered in alleys and on streetcorners as one by one, the greatest villains disappear, exposing the vicious fraud of the Superheroes by depriving them of victims.
How soon before that system is cracked and you're walking down the street with a picture of a guy f%^king a chicken on your back?
LOL, it would certainly have to be a multithreaded attack.
The problem will be very bad, with war-garbers probing for ports on your pants. Soon enough we'll see signs like this:
No shoes, yes shirt, no service.
See, therein lies the problem. The paradigm has changed, and the military needs to change with it.
Who cares if your chobham armour can shrug off 120 mm rounds, if the attack isn't coming from a T-80, but rather from a child who is willing to sacrifice their life to smuggle a small container
There are a couple of things going on here...
1. The U.S. Army is so ferocious that cell-based terror attacks are the only way to fight America. The Army has obsoleted itself in a sense. A good sense, because nobody even bothers dreaming about invading New Jersey anymore.
2. Nationalism has made it impossible to occupy a hostile country. Sure you can smear their army, but a hostile, sullen populace will make the occupation cost more than whatever you gain from conquest. Only genocidal maniacs can benefit from territorial conquest anymore.
Why not use it for something a little bit more useful then repairing corrosion on tanks, like cure cancer(and that would be possible with that kind of electronics).
I think you're forgetting that this is the Army. God bless 'em, but they're just not that interested in tending to the sick. That's someone else's job. The Army's angle is twofold:
-- To find ways of beating up the enemy with verve and vigor
-- To build the coolest damn gadgets ever. There is a certain overlap with the geek crowd here.
Remember the 1970's custom van craze, with elaborate Frazetta-looking airbrush murals? Now imagine the same kitschy artwork, only animated. Are you having flashbacks? No, the Greatful Dead skeleton on that guy's van really is waving at you.
If they can really do this, maybe, just maybe, they can get rid of the turn indicator lights and have the nano-goomies blink on and off.
would also repair micro-cracks and fractures without the need for service
...? Does this sound... not right? I meen, yes, cosmeticly it would be repaired. But it would create structual week points.
... unless the stuff actually works, in which case the microcracks would be fixed. Unfortunately, the exit hatch might also get "fixed" shut. Whoops...
Wearing a tie in these conditions is life threatening even. What if your tie snags while you fall off something? You'd have yourself a hanging in the server room...
That's a great way to go out, sez I, for an IT guy. If you have a tie, you always have your tie handy as a ready-made noose. Saves the embarrassment of being ready for ritual self-murder, but being unable to locate sufficient coax cable to string yourself up (that probably being the reason you're so depressed anyway).
The differences come after improvements occur. If those improvements are licensed and protected by patents and copyright then the improved version is only usable by corporations and "customers". That is the public code has become effectively private.
Note that someone had to go and *make* those improvements. They should be able to privatize those improvements; the base version is still public, and can be improved & released under BSD (heck, or public domain) by anyone who wishes.
The problem with the GPL is that it's whole point is to divide programs into two worlds -- the "Free" world, and the "Non-Free", and never the twain shall meet. The net result of Free-as-in-speech software is Free-as-in-beer, as anyone who buys it can post the source for free (look in the gnu gpl faq). Over time, this will happen.
GPLing gov't code will essentially make it impossible for anyone to make a profit on it, ever. That makes it less than great for industry, and it's really industry who needs the code. What does a private citizen need weather modeling software for, anyway?
Go ahead - try to find a place where I can live the good life for US$1/day. Just don't try too hard because there is no such place. Nobody is going to suggest that these workers should receive the same pay and benefits that we in the first world receive. But they are certainly entitled to a living wage that permits them to feed, house, and clothe their families.
Given the time budget I have allocated for this discussion;) I wasn't able to get great data, but here is a link suggesting the gross national income per capita is $680 in Indonesia in 2001, and $480 for "low-income".
CorpWatch.org also weighs in, saying minimum wage in Jakarta is about $60/month.
What we still don't have, and I was unable to find, is how much money does one need in Indonesia to be in poverty, lower class, middle class, etc. Can some Indonesians pitch in here?
There's an interesting question here about the US or Indonesia or anywhere... what is the minimum wage for? That is, is it supposed to be enough to support one person? Two? A family? A big family? In what kind of style?
If you were to remove these so-called "sweatshops", do you really think life would suddenly improve for those working there?
So... we are doing these workers a favour by exploiting them?
Who knew that the multi-nationals are just trying help out! What humanitarians!
In the best Slashdot tradition, I must start by saying that you're both wrong! Ha!
These so-called "sweatshops" really are sweatshops, they really do pay low wages, and they really do suck.
HOWEVER... before the factory came in, these people were doing something that they enjoyed even less. That is, subsistence farming, starving, or some even lower-paying job.
The corps don't really care about the workers in the sense that you care about your family, but they must pay wages that are competitive in the local market. So they pay $1 per day... do you have any idea how much $1 US buys in (wherever)? Until you do, it makes no sense to complain about how low the wages are.
Given current events, are you really sure that you prefer the mainstream Islamic doctrine?
What current events are the result of mainstream Islamic doctrine?
Wow... this is pretty old material, but I'll clarify anyway.
A couple posts up, a poster quotes NoI doctrine: "That we who declare ourselves to be righteous Muslims, should not participate in wars which take the lives of humans." This doctrine, methinks, is primarily in place to allow NoI'ers to be consciencious objectors to serving in the military, but the point remains that they aggressively eschew violence.
Mainstream Islamic doctrine is, regrettably, a lot more... fuzzy... on the subject of when it is allowed to go to war. Islam started as a warrior religion -- Mohammed himself was a fine general -- and strong echoes of that remain today. If you look into it, the mainstream (in the sense of non-NoI) Muslim intellectual community is split on issues of whether violence and terrorism are allowed. In that sense, there is actually a struggle going on to define the mainstream.
If you look in the Koran, the earlier Suras talk a lot about tolerance towards Jews and Christians (let's not mention what is said about pagans), but the later ones, written as the earliest Muslims gained strength, are more combative in tone.
So really I was being facetious in the original post, as the NoI is really... weird, but I do appreciate their declarations that Muslims should not take the lives of humans. (If you look into NoI, you might be surprised in who makes the cut as "human" and who is just a zombie robot.) The point I was making is that there really is no pacifist tradition in Sunni or Shia Islam.
Actually, w.r.t Eskimos... maybe. Haven't those guys just renamed some territories Nunavut, and mandated that Eskimo people get a certain percentage of all government jobs, and that Inuit be taught in the schools?
It's cute and funny now, but just wait 50 years... Race-based caste systems really, *really* suck. At first for the people on the downside, eventually for everyone. Oh well, when they have their civil war, at least the state will pick up the tab on the casualties!
Say a bunch of like-minded whatevers try to move to BF South Dakota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming. If they keep thier business to themselves it's cool, but if they start to rouse rable, it'll get ugly.
[... examples of Rocky Mountain/Great Plains shennanigans... End-times folks... low-intensity conflict N/S Dakota... guns & bobwire crowd there already...]
Just because there are few people there, doesn't mean any of them will be easy to take over.
Slashdot Mirror
That was a joke son. -- F. Leghorn
"The butlerian in the no-room with the crysknife"
Is that once the robot's unconquerable might is proven in Mathematica, it becomes unnecessary to actually build the device.
;)
"An excercise for the student", I believe they call it.
We have heard this way too often. I suggest a moratorium on this analogy, whether it fits or not.
If only we could pound that into a lot of thick heads down here, eh?
"Who is Lex Luthor?"
That is the enigmatic catchphrase muttered in alleys and on streetcorners as one by one, the greatest villains disappear, exposing the vicious fraud of the Superheroes by depriving them of victims.
Is this a denial-of-service attack?
1. The U.S. Army is so ferocious that cell-based terror attacks are the only way to fight America. The Army has obsoleted itself in a sense. A good sense, because nobody even bothers dreaming about invading New Jersey anymore.
2. Nationalism has made it impossible to occupy a hostile country. Sure you can smear their army, but a hostile, sullen populace will make the occupation cost more than whatever you gain from conquest. Only genocidal maniacs can benefit from territorial conquest anymore.
-- To find ways of beating up the enemy with verve and vigor
-- To build the coolest damn gadgets ever. There is a certain overlap with the geek crowd here.
The problem with the GPL is that it's whole point is to divide programs into two worlds -- the "Free" world, and the "Non-Free", and never the twain shall meet. The net result of Free-as-in-speech software is Free-as-in-beer, as anyone who buys it can post the source for free (look in the gnu gpl faq). Over time, this will happen.
GPLing gov't code will essentially make it impossible for anyone to make a profit on it, ever. That makes it less than great for industry, and it's really industry who needs the code. What does a private citizen need weather modeling software for, anyway?
CorpWatch.org also weighs in, saying minimum wage in Jakarta is about $60/month.
What we still don't have, and I was unable to find, is how much money does one need in Indonesia to be in poverty, lower class, middle class, etc. Can some Indonesians pitch in here?
There's an interesting question here about the US or Indonesia or anywhere
These so-called "sweatshops" really are sweatshops, they really do pay low wages, and they really do suck.
HOWEVER... before the factory came in, these people were doing something that they enjoyed even less. That is, subsistence farming, starving, or some even lower-paying job.
The corps don't really care about the workers in the sense that you care about your family, but they must pay wages that are competitive in the local market. So they pay $1 per day
A couple posts up, a poster quotes NoI doctrine: "That we who declare ourselves to be righteous Muslims, should not participate in wars which take the lives of humans." This doctrine, methinks, is primarily in place to allow NoI'ers to be consciencious objectors to serving in the military, but the point remains that they aggressively eschew violence.
Mainstream Islamic doctrine is, regrettably, a lot more
If you look in the Koran, the earlier Suras talk a lot about tolerance towards Jews and Christians (let's not mention what is said about pagans), but the later ones, written as the earliest Muslims gained strength, are more combative in tone.
So really I was being facetious in the original post, as the NoI is really
(gasp)
Anyway, that's about it.
It's cute and funny now, but just wait 50 years... Race-based caste systems really, *really* suck. At first for the people on the downside, eventually for everyone. Oh well, when they have their civil war, at least the state will pick up the tab on the casualties!