I go to that site and it's a rant about "GI Joe" from somebody who probably hasn't read the goddamn comic for thirty years!
GI Joe has been a multi-gender, multi-national (Japanese ninjas, for Christsticks) force for years now! They've even worked with - horrors! - their RUSSIAN counterparts!
Somebody clue this guy in. Nobody gives a shit about "WWII GI Joe"!
Go rent "Kelly's Heroes" if you want to see who "GI Joe" REALLY was!
That was suggested by some people. However, others have pointed out that the Marines and Army aircraft will still be up and running, and also that Air Force jets undergoing review will still be tasked and available for any emergencies.
Of course, that won't matter much if Cheney is running the show...just as it didn't on 9/11...
I DO expect some sort of "causus belli" for the war on Iran coming up - and I expect it relatively soon. So it doesn't surprise me that we're seeing another phony "bin Laden tape" today to set it up. The FBI is looking for certain "Middle Eastern-looking men" (FBI code for Israelis) wandering around the Pacific Northwest setting something up.
Of course, we get these rumors every year at this time, so one can never be sure what, if anything, will happen.
The point of relational theory is to do exactly that: correctly model the real world in data - subject to the technological limitations of computers, as I said. If you have AI, you can do better. We don't, so we use relational theory.
I also didn't address the application of relational theory. If you study Date and others, you realize that there isn't a completely relational database anywhere on the market. All of them make serious compromises with the theory, either because of perceived performance needs or simple lack of understanding of the theory. This doesn't mean these databases are of no use - it just means that in certain data modeling situations, they will not correctly represent the real world and the gaps will have to be adjusted by procedural code or other fixes that reflect their incomplete implementation of the theory - or you just have to accept the occasional wrong answer to a query.
Object orientation has no mathematical theory behind it, so it flails. It's less likely to accurately model real-world data than relational theory. It may be fine for applications, but not for databases. Date and others have covered these issues in some detail.
And I don't know of any other technology that aims to compete with relational theory other than OO - except Stonebraker's concepts. I'll admit I haven't studied his stuff closely, but Date and others have complained about his concepts before, so I think I'm safe to say it's unlikely he's made any new breakthroughs.
"On September 6, 2007 - 7:12am thepeoplechoose said:
I find this hard to believe. That is, I agree with Larry that this isn't something that could occur very easily through oversight. The procedures that are established for weapons loads on aircraft are very rigid with all manner of checks. I find it hard to believe they were all overlooked. The number of screwups that would have to occur stretches the likelihood of probability to the breaking point. There are manuals and checklists for this type of thing that have to be rigidly followed and the process requires signatures for multiple discrete steps from qualified weapons teams etc. I just can't see where all the controls on this were violated. If this really happened as described we have some very big problems. And I know because I was an NCOIC for NAV/Weapons avionics computers in the USAF for 12 years. The workcenter / personnel I supervised serviced the on board computers that controlled the in flight release / launch of weaponry. I've been out for twenty years but it was very serious business then and it can't have changed in that sense. The screwup implies weapons load team and weapons load supervisor, ground crew personnel, line chief and air crew all screwed up. The sheer number of violations of discrete procedures that had to be violated is a stretch. And the aircraft was likely on alert status to have been loaded with said weapons. To make the transit to Barksdale it would first have to come off alert status. Coming off alert status automatically means the weapons would have to be off loaded. Flight (Wing) ops initiates the status change. Maintenance ops is informed and then has to dispatch a weapons team to off load the weapons payload. Until that happens the aircraft can't be released back to flight ops for flight. This entire process is controlled like crazy. It makes no sense. Statistically this is possible, but it is right up there with winning one of the multi-state lotteries. In fact, the number of controls probably makes it an even greater statistical improbability. One thing for sure. A lot of people will be standing tall in front of the 'old man' and they'll be hard pressed to answer his questions. If it even happened as stated."
Another poster offers another scenario:
"On September 6, 2007 - 8:52am Amyfw said:
I've never seen so many people who know so very, very little about nuclear weapons say so much of so very little consequence. I'd try to correct all the errors and misperceptions in these threads, but it would take all day and I have real work to do. Just a few comments related to a bunch of posts. First, the missiles in question, the Advanced Cruise missiles, are slated for retirement, and will be transported to Barksdale for that purpose. You can't tell by looking (from the outside) whether the missile is equipped with a warhead or not (so the bomber crew, even if it did a walk-around, could not tell). This is an error in the weapons-handling process, not an error of the bomber crew. This missile does not have a conventional variant (that would be the older, Air-launched cruise missile, which does look very different), so it was not a conventional/nuclear mix-up. Someone asked about the IMF Treaty. No such thing. Its the INF Treaty (Intermediate NUCLEAR Forces). It had nothing to do with air-launched cruise missiles, they are strategic, not intermediate, so its not relevant. As was noted, the warheads on the ACM are W-80s. Someone asked about the warhead size. Using the 15kt of Hiroshima to judge the size of this missile's warhead is irrelevant; we've long deployed warheads much larger than the Hiroshima warhead, and, yes, 140kt is the standard, unclassified size for the W-80. So there's no consp
This sort of crap was dug up when "object-oriented databases" were invented,
Every little while somebody who doesn't even understand relational theory suggests that relational databases aren't "necessary", "efficient", "legacy", or some other crap.
Here are the facts: short of some sort of AI conceptual processing being developed, relational databases are the ONLY known method to CORRECTLY reflect the realities of modeling the real world as data (and even then there are problems.)
Go talk to C. J. Date or Fabian Pascal - they'll set you straight on that nonsense.
"Don't use software-as-a-service for any application your company cannot do business without - unless you're sure the vendor can support it better than you. "You shouldn't get SaaS for any application where your entire company is depending on that application running successfully all the time, and you feel that you could not get the reliability or the performance that you require except by controlling it yourself," says consultant Amy Wohl."
The fact that companies are providing SaaS doesn't mean it's WORKING.
A lot of stuff gets offered and then in a couple years we hear in the trade press that "CIOs are 'dissatified'" or the market never developed as expected.
A few years ago the ASP market was going to take over everything and put shrink-wrapped software out of business - never happened.
Now they call it "SaaS - and make the same predictions.
Nobody in their right mind would trust mission-critical data to the Internet - not without a) having a dedicated line; and b) KNOWING that the servers and bandwidth on the other end were adequately provisioned, usually via a QoS contract.
When those two things are done, it is possible to use SaaS reliably.
I'm not saying it can't be done IF it's done right. I'm saying the Internet in general is NOT reliable enough to trust it with mission-critical applications without further considerations.
"most other religions understand that their old stories are mythology"
Bullshit. While SOME of the stories are considered mythology by the more liberal of religious scholars, this is not the attitude each religion wants its laity to take. They want the laity to believe these stories in toto.
As an example, you have the Catholics. Back in the late 19th Century, the Pope, concerned that the new sciences of archaeology and mythology were eroding the faith, ordered the top Catholic scholars to dig up proof that the Catholic dogma about Jesus was correct. The scholars labored long and hard.
They came back and told the Pope that not only couldn't they prove anything, as far as they could tell, it was all bullshit - though of course they didn't use that term!
So the Pope had them all declared heretics and excommunicated them, then promulgated a doctrine that Catholics were forbidden to believe anything they read or hear that conflicts with Catholic dogma.
We're not talking five centuries ago - this was in the last one hundred years.
And the current Pope was previously in charge of the office once known as the Inquisition - they changed the name in the 19th Century, but it's the same office.
When "Holy Blood, Holy Grail", the book by Baigent and Leigh came out, the Church attacked it, but couldn't actually refute any of its historical claims (as opposed to the conspiracy theory, which even the authors didn't say was actually true.) When the second book came out, the authors pointed out that most of the facts in their books were well known to the church hierarchy - but not to the laity. And the church hierarchy means to keep it that way.
The Scientologists are not seriously more cynical about this process than any Catholic Cardinal or any other senior member of any religion.
The only difference between Scientologists who extort money from their followers and your average church is the degree of actual extortion and the pettiness of the money involved. Look at the finances of any major Christian denomination and see how much money is rolling in - and what's done with it.
As for poor treatment of their followers, compare how much Scientology has paid out in legal judgements vs how much the Catholic Church has paid out for sexual abuse of children. Of course, percentage-wise it might be the same, given how small the Scientology fraud is compared to the Catholic fraud. More likely, considering the wealth of the Catholic Church, their payouts are even smaller than Scientology's.
As for people dying in Scientology, well, at least most of them have been Scientology members at one point or another. The Christians have been killing millions of people for centuries who aren't even their members. Not being a Christian is a quick way to get killed by a Christian, as the Muslims are finding out these days.
Don't bother arguing with these people - Mormons are nearly on a par with Zionists as being intellectually dishonest. The only difference is that Mormons tend to argue more subtly, while Zionists act like thugs.
I've seen Mormons arguing over at Talking Points Memo - they all sound alike. And their arguments all boil down to the same thing: cover up their flaws, argue their virtues and argue that their religion is no different than others (which from my standpoint as an atheist is probably true - it's all bullshit - the only different is the degree of fanaticism.)
Yes, it's clear to me that the sole reason this product exists is to ease migration from the original Eudora to Thunderbird/"New" Eudora for Eudora users - of whom there are probably millions.
It's a good move for the Thunderbird engine, in that context - get millions of new users who don't have to change their ways.
is a good idea. Do we know their servers can keep up with the load of every Opera user syncing their bookmarks?
Being able to sync with any service would be better. Is that available?
I frequently consider dumping Firefox for Opera, as I'm getting really tired of random Firefox bugs and performance problems with heavy JavaScript sites. Today I tried to upload some images to ImageShack - first, Firefox wouldn't do the login properly, then after an image or two it insisted on trying to open the PHP page instead of returning the updated page to me. I don't know if this was strictly a problem with Firefox or a problem with the ImageShack server, but a reboot eliminated the problem. It would seem Firefox simply got confused about the JavaScript involved somehow.
I do appreciate some of the extensions to Firefox such as DownThemAll and ImageHost Grabber. But they really need to concentrate more on making it rock solid rather than adding features. Opera has had its problems, too - I've had issues with downloads failing if I'm browsing in Firefox at the same time - probably some sort of timeout issue.
A quick Google found this overview of what is allowed, not allowed and recommended in the case of shoplifting detention.
Basically, they can't simply "suspect" someone or complain if he refuses to show a receipt. They need to SEE the suspect take the property. More details about "probable cause" are here. Details on the issue of false arrest are here.
It's about fucking time somebody in the IT industry realized that the answer to a problem is not just a fucking unintelligible error message - or crashing.
Japanese historians and the Japanese government, that's who. Apparently both recognize Togakure's lineage, although there may be historians who dispute it. Hatsumi has scrolls depicting the lineage. The rest of the bozos claiming to be ninjas have nothing but vague stories.
A video of Grandmaster Hatsumi demonstrating technigues at an American martial arts gathering is here. Note that the WMV format video does not play well in Kaffeine or VLC on Linux, but MPlayer handles it okay.
This stuff is the ONLY legitimate ninjutsu presently in existence. There ARE other teachers who have their own schools who were originally trained by one of the above masters, however, and therefore could be considered legitimate within the limits of their accomplishment.
All the "Frank Dux" and "Ashida Kim" crap and much of the rest is bullshit put out by people who have no legitimate training or authorization by original Japanese ryus. Of course, some of what is in that material may actually be usable, but it is not presented in a coherent manner based on the original principles of the ninjutsu ryu.
You're off by about twenty years - oh, wait, you did say "over a decade", so technically you're correct.
Read any bio of Bill Gates.
He NEVER cared about the users or the industry or advancing the use of computers - only his customers money. And he'd tell them any bullshit he could come up with to get it - "Just wait, the next version will be AWESOME! You'll see!" (Always reminds me of John Belushi in "The Blues Brothers".)
Slashdot Mirror
Anything these people say is a lie.
They could just as easily have captured these guys without listening in to any US citizens' phone calls.
Their goal is to be able to listen in on anybody's calls for their own purposes. It has ZERO to do with "terrorism".
Period.
End of story.
But I thought "Reduced Functionality Mode" was the NORMAL operating mode for any version of Windows!
Bwaahahahahahahaha!!!
Little pissants! Is that all you've got, huh? Are you nuts? Come at me!
I go to that site and it's a rant about "GI Joe" from somebody who probably hasn't read the goddamn comic for thirty years!
GI Joe has been a multi-gender, multi-national (Japanese ninjas, for Christsticks) force for years now! They've even worked with - horrors! - their RUSSIAN counterparts!
Somebody clue this guy in. Nobody gives a shit about "WWII GI Joe"!
Go rent "Kelly's Heroes" if you want to see who "GI Joe" REALLY was!
Ignore that - Fabian Pascal is not noted for being "user friendly".
The articles there also presuppose a considerable knowledge of relational theory.
It's a good site, nonetheless - a lot of good stuff there from CJ Date.
Persevere - it's worth it.
That was suggested by some people. However, others have pointed out that the Marines and Army aircraft will still be up and running, and also that Air Force jets undergoing review will still be tasked and available for any emergencies.
Of course, that won't matter much if Cheney is running the show...just as it didn't on 9/11...
I DO expect some sort of "causus belli" for the war on Iran coming up - and I expect it relatively soon. So it doesn't surprise me that we're seeing another phony "bin Laden tape" today to set it up. The FBI is looking for certain "Middle Eastern-looking men" (FBI code for Israelis) wandering around the Pacific Northwest setting something up.
Of course, we get these rumors every year at this time, so one can never be sure what, if anything, will happen.
The point of relational theory is to do exactly that: correctly model the real world in data - subject to the technological limitations of computers, as I said. If you have AI, you can do better. We don't, so we use relational theory.
I also didn't address the application of relational theory. If you study Date and others, you realize that there isn't a completely relational database anywhere on the market. All of them make serious compromises with the theory, either because of perceived performance needs or simple lack of understanding of the theory. This doesn't mean these databases are of no use - it just means that in certain data modeling situations, they will not correctly represent the real world and the gaps will have to be adjusted by procedural code or other fixes that reflect their incomplete implementation of the theory - or you just have to accept the occasional wrong answer to a query.
Object orientation has no mathematical theory behind it, so it flails. It's less likely to accurately model real-world data than relational theory. It may be fine for applications, but not for databases. Date and others have covered these issues in some detail.
And I don't know of any other technology that aims to compete with relational theory other than OO - except Stonebraker's concepts. I'll admit I haven't studied his stuff closely, but Date and others have complained about his concepts before, so I think I'm safe to say it's unlikely he's made any new breakthroughs.
them to the Air Force base in question (Barksdale) because that is where the Iran war is being tasked out of for the Air Force.
See his article and resulting posts - some from knowledgeable people - here.
Money quotes:
"On September 6, 2007 - 7:12am thepeoplechoose said:
I find this hard to believe. That is, I agree with Larry that this isn't something that could occur very easily through oversight. The procedures that are established for weapons loads on aircraft are very rigid with all manner of checks. I find it hard to believe they were all overlooked. The number of screwups that would have to occur stretches the likelihood of probability to the breaking point. There are manuals and checklists for this type of thing that have to be rigidly followed and the process requires signatures for multiple discrete steps from qualified weapons teams etc. I just can't see where all the controls on this were violated. If this really happened as described we have some very big problems. And I know because I was an NCOIC for NAV/Weapons avionics computers in the USAF for 12 years. The workcenter / personnel I supervised serviced the on board computers that controlled the in flight release / launch of weaponry. I've been out for twenty years but it was very serious business then and it can't have changed in that sense. The screwup implies weapons load team and weapons load supervisor, ground crew personnel, line chief and air crew all screwed up. The sheer number of violations of discrete procedures that had to be violated is a stretch. And the aircraft was likely on alert status to have been loaded with said weapons. To make the transit to Barksdale it would first have to come off alert status. Coming off alert status automatically means the weapons would have to be off loaded. Flight (Wing) ops initiates the status change. Maintenance ops is informed and then has to dispatch a weapons team to off load the weapons payload. Until that happens the aircraft can't be released back to flight ops for flight. This entire process is controlled like crazy. It makes no sense. Statistically this is possible, but it is right up there with winning one of the multi-state lotteries. In fact, the number of controls probably makes it an even greater statistical improbability. One thing for sure. A lot of people will be standing tall in front of the 'old man' and they'll be hard pressed to answer his questions. If it even happened as stated."
Another poster offers another scenario:
"On September 6, 2007 - 8:52am Amyfw said:
I've never seen so many people who know so very, very little about nuclear weapons say so much of so very little consequence. I'd try to correct all the errors and misperceptions in these threads, but it would take all day and I have real work to do. Just a few comments related to a bunch of posts. First, the missiles in question, the Advanced Cruise missiles, are slated for retirement, and will be transported to Barksdale for that purpose. You can't tell by looking (from the outside) whether the missile is equipped with a warhead or not (so the bomber crew, even if it did a walk-around, could not tell). This is an error in the weapons-handling process, not an error of the bomber crew. This missile does not have a conventional variant (that would be the older, Air-launched cruise missile, which does look very different), so it was not a conventional/nuclear mix-up. Someone asked about the IMF Treaty. No such thing. Its the INF Treaty (Intermediate NUCLEAR Forces). It had nothing to do with air-launched cruise missiles, they are strategic, not intermediate, so its not relevant. As was noted, the warheads on the ACM are W-80s. Someone asked about the warhead size. Using the 15kt of Hiroshima to judge the size of this missile's warhead is irrelevant; we've long deployed warheads much larger than the Hiroshima warhead, and, yes, 140kt is the standard, unclassified size for the W-80. So there's no consp
This sort of crap was dug up when "object-oriented databases" were invented,
Every little while somebody who doesn't even understand relational theory suggests that relational databases aren't "necessary", "efficient", "legacy", or some other crap.
Here are the facts: short of some sort of AI conceptual processing being developed, relational databases are the ONLY known method to CORRECTLY reflect the realities of modeling the real world as data (and even then there are problems.)
Go talk to C. J. Date or Fabian Pascal - they'll set you straight on that nonsense.
Go to the Database Debunkings site and learn something.
I'll add to that. Thirty seconds of Google provides this caveat article:
w are-as-a-service-12-things.html
12 issues you need to know about software-as-a-service
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/073107-soft
What's the first one?
"Don't use software-as-a-service for any application your company cannot do business without - unless you're sure the vendor can support it better than you. "You shouldn't get SaaS for any application where your entire company is depending on that application running successfully all the time, and you feel that you could not get the reliability or the performance that you require except by controlling it yourself," says consultant Amy Wohl."
What did I say?
The fact that companies are providing SaaS doesn't mean it's WORKING.
A lot of stuff gets offered and then in a couple years we hear in the trade press that "CIOs are 'dissatified'" or the market never developed as expected.
A few years ago the ASP market was going to take over everything and put shrink-wrapped software out of business - never happened.
Now they call it "SaaS - and make the same predictions.
Nobody in their right mind would trust mission-critical data to the Internet - not without a) having a dedicated line; and b) KNOWING that the servers and bandwidth on the other end were adequately provisioned, usually via a QoS contract.
When those two things are done, it is possible to use SaaS reliably.
I'm not saying it can't be done IF it's done right. I'm saying the Internet in general is NOT reliable enough to trust it with mission-critical applications without further considerations.
"most other religions understand that their old stories are mythology"
Bullshit. While SOME of the stories are considered mythology by the more liberal of religious scholars, this is not the attitude each religion wants its laity to take. They want the laity to believe these stories in toto.
As an example, you have the Catholics. Back in the late 19th Century, the Pope, concerned that the new sciences of archaeology and mythology were eroding the faith, ordered the top Catholic scholars to dig up proof that the Catholic dogma about Jesus was correct. The scholars labored long and hard.
They came back and told the Pope that not only couldn't they prove anything, as far as they could tell, it was all bullshit - though of course they didn't use that term!
So the Pope had them all declared heretics and excommunicated them, then promulgated a doctrine that Catholics were forbidden to believe anything they read or hear that conflicts with Catholic dogma.
We're not talking five centuries ago - this was in the last one hundred years.
And the current Pope was previously in charge of the office once known as the Inquisition - they changed the name in the 19th Century, but it's the same office.
When "Holy Blood, Holy Grail", the book by Baigent and Leigh came out, the Church attacked it, but couldn't actually refute any of its historical claims (as opposed to the conspiracy theory, which even the authors didn't say was actually true.) When the second book came out, the authors pointed out that most of the facts in their books were well known to the church hierarchy - but not to the laity. And the church hierarchy means to keep it that way.
The Scientologists are not seriously more cynical about this process than any Catholic Cardinal or any other senior member of any religion.
The only difference between Scientologists who extort money from their followers and your average church is the degree of actual extortion and the pettiness of the money involved. Look at the finances of any major Christian denomination and see how much money is rolling in - and what's done with it.
As for poor treatment of their followers, compare how much Scientology has paid out in legal judgements vs how much the Catholic Church has paid out for sexual abuse of children. Of course, percentage-wise it might be the same, given how small the Scientology fraud is compared to the Catholic fraud. More likely, considering the wealth of the Catholic Church, their payouts are even smaller than Scientology's.
As for people dying in Scientology, well, at least most of them have been Scientology members at one point or another. The Christians have been killing millions of people for centuries who aren't even their members. Not being a Christian is a quick way to get killed by a Christian, as the Muslims are finding out these days.
Don't bother arguing with these people - Mormons are nearly on a par with Zionists as being intellectually dishonest. The only difference is that Mormons tend to argue more subtly, while Zionists act like thugs.
I've seen Mormons arguing over at Talking Points Memo - they all sound alike. And their arguments all boil down to the same thing: cover up their flaws, argue their virtues and argue that their religion is no different than others (which from my standpoint as an atheist is probably true - it's all bullshit - the only different is the degree of fanaticism.)
the female employees notice him when he's ogling them...
Put a zoom lens on his camera, and I'd have some fun with that. Close-up cleavage views!
Yeah, yeah, nerd humor! Sue me!
Yes, it's clear to me that the sole reason this product exists is to ease migration from the original Eudora to Thunderbird/"New" Eudora for Eudora users - of whom there are probably millions.
It's a good move for the Thunderbird engine, in that context - get millions of new users who don't have to change their ways.
Huh? Eudora IS (was? Is again?) an email client!
Isn't that all Microsoft makes?
I've never seen production level code from Microsoft since DOS.
[The Plague impersonation code on]
Okay, Microsoft shills - you want a piece of me? Huh? Is that the best you can do? Huh? Are you nuts? Come at me!
Little piss-ants...You're not good enough to beat me!
[The Plague impersonation code off]
is a good idea. Do we know their servers can keep up with the load of every Opera user syncing their bookmarks?
Being able to sync with any service would be better. Is that available?
I frequently consider dumping Firefox for Opera, as I'm getting really tired of random Firefox bugs and performance problems with heavy JavaScript sites. Today I tried to upload some images to ImageShack - first, Firefox wouldn't do the login properly, then after an image or two it insisted on trying to open the PHP page instead of returning the updated page to me. I don't know if this was strictly a problem with Firefox or a problem with the ImageShack server, but a reboot eliminated the problem. It would seem Firefox simply got confused about the JavaScript involved somehow.
I do appreciate some of the extensions to Firefox such as DownThemAll and ImageHost Grabber. But they really need to concentrate more on making it rock solid rather than adding features. Opera has had its problems, too - I've had issues with downloads failing if I'm browsing in Firefox at the same time - probably some sort of timeout issue.
I'll post this here.
A quick Google found this overview of what is allowed, not allowed and recommended in the case of shoplifting detention.
Basically, they can't simply "suspect" someone or complain if he refuses to show a receipt. They need to SEE the suspect take the property. More details about "probable cause" are here. Details on the issue of false arrest are here.
Abut fucking time!
Okay, three words.
It's about fucking time somebody in the IT industry realized that the answer to a problem is not just a fucking unintelligible error message - or crashing.
Hopefully Microsoft will steal THIS idea...
That's not what WinDizUpdate is - reread the post.
Japanese historians and the Japanese government, that's who. Apparently both recognize Togakure's lineage, although there may be historians who dispute it. Hatsumi has scrolls depicting the lineage. The rest of the bozos claiming to be ninjas have nothing but vague stories.
Anybody wanting a clue about modern day ninjutsu should be visiting Stephen Hayes' site or the Genbukan Dojo site of Master Shoto Tanemura or the Bujinkan Dojo site of Grandmaster Masaaki Hatsumi.
A video of Grandmaster Hatsumi demonstrating technigues at an American martial arts gathering is here. Note that the WMV format video does not play well in Kaffeine or VLC on Linux, but MPlayer handles it okay.
Bujinkan Wikipedia Entry
Togakure-Ryu Wikipedia Entry
Genbukan Wikipedia Entry.
This stuff is the ONLY legitimate ninjutsu presently in existence. There ARE other teachers who have their own schools who were originally trained by one of the above masters, however, and therefore could be considered legitimate within the limits of their accomplishment.
All the "Frank Dux" and "Ashida Kim" crap and much of the rest is bullshit put out by people who have no legitimate training or authorization by original Japanese ryus. Of course, some of what is in that material may actually be usable, but it is not presented in a coherent manner based on the original principles of the ninjutsu ryu.
He's way fatter than I am!
Uma Thurman's father Robert Thurman - that was interesting. Rather odd that a top Buddhist was there. I would have preferred Uma myself.
And what the hell was Gwyneth Paltrow doing there? That would make my day!
"Microsoft stopped caring over a decade ago."
You're off by about twenty years - oh, wait, you did say "over a decade", so technically you're correct.
Read any bio of Bill Gates.
He NEVER cared about the users or the industry or advancing the use of computers - only his customers money. And he'd tell them any bullshit he could come up with to get it - "Just wait, the next version will be AWESOME! You'll see!" (Always reminds me of John Belushi in "The Blues Brothers".)
"If someone keeps coming back for more abuse, they deserve that abuse."
Can't disagree with that, no matter how much I hate Microsoft.
People get the government they deserve - and the products and companies they deserve.
The problem for the rest of us is that we end up getting dismembered in the process quite frequently.