Definitely. It was ridiculous in Vietnam. Every single Vietnamese national on base was probably a spy for the Cong. They were EVERYWHERE on base.
The US is I believe the ONLY country that allows foreign nationals to work in its embassies and other national facilities in other countries. Every other country is amazed that we're that stupid.
You're right about the printers. Some printers and networked attached printers have 20GB hard drives. I saw a video presentation yesterday by Adrian Crenshaw ("IronGeek") who demonstrated that you can manipulate a network printer to store porn and warez and serve it up to anywhere in the world with a Web browser with NO password or anything. Seriously scary from a security standpoint.
I remember one problem the Navy had at one of their sites was someone manipulated a network switch to reroute all print jobs to the networked printer to some place in Russia, then back to the printer.
It's a "reliable" OS if it isn't doing anything but that one thing - and there isn't a bug that allows the Registry to hose itself at some point...
I don't how many times I've seen XP simply stop functioning (in some respect - not a complete systems crash - just some particular feature no longer works) without ANY possible clue as to what caused it. A system restore solves the problem - proving that it was indeed some sort of Registry screwup or some important DLL file got mangled. Without a system restore...good luck finding out what went wrong.
"To win a national election, you need to be closer to the middle of the road than your opponent."
Uhm, as far as I know, the entire consensus of the entire planet - besides you, apparently - was that Kerry was indistinguishable from Bush on most issues and THAT'S why he lost. If your opponent is supporting all your positions - including the war on Iraq - why bother voting him in?
You don't know anyone who voted for Bush? Does the phrase "fifty-five million fundamentalists" mean anything to you? Granted, there was Ohio vote fraud, but the rest of the votes DID count...
This is one of the more uninformed and ignorant posts I've seen here.
Here's another SAS soldier described as first-rate who has refused to return to Iraq:
An SAS soldier has resigned from the army, describing the military intervention in Iraq as a "war of aggression" and "morally wrong". The soldier said he witnessed "dozens of illegal acts" by US forces there.
Ben Griffin, 28, who left after three months in Baghdad, is believed to be the first SAS soldier to refuse to go into combat and to leave the army on moral grounds. His decision comes at a time of growing disenchantment among British soldiers about their presence in Iraq.
This week, pre-trial hearings are due to start into the court martial of Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith, an RAF doctor who is refusing to return to Iraq on the grounds that the war is illegal. Mr Kendall-Smith's lawyer, Justin Hugheston-Roberts, said yesterday: "We will be arguing that he has no case to answer because, without a UN mandate, the invasion of Iraq was manifestly unlawful and any subsequent order was therefore unlawful."
Mr Griffin told the Sunday Telegraph yesterday that he had expected to face a court martial for leaving the SAS. Instead, he was discharged with a glowing testimonial.
When he was on leave in March last year he told his commanding officer he had no intention of returning to Iraq. He said he was very angry "at the way the politicians have lied to the British public about the war. But most importantly, I didn't join the British army to conduct American foreign policy."
He said he had witnessed dozens of illegal acts by US fighters who viewed Iraqis as "sub-human". Mr Griffin said: "I saw a lot of things in Baghdad that were illegal or just wrong. The Americans were doing things like chucking farmers into Abu Ghraib, or handing them over to the Iraqi authorities, knowing full well they were going to be tortured."
This isn't the first time British soldiers have seriously criticized US tactics in Iraq. A number of officers have done so as well. This goes back the last couple of years.
Your statement that SOME of the culprits are doing hard time is partly correct (doubtful that much of it is what we would actually call "hard time" - long time, maybe, but not "hard" time.)
The rest of the culprits got off or were never charged - including those who ordered it in the first place.
Pictures of THAT would have been nice. But the media failed to print them, preferring instead to hawk government statements that were clearly lies.
Lies sell papers, too - in fact, more so than the truth.
You're correct to some degree. Certainly that was the case back in the '60's during Vietnam when I was in. And that was with the draft, which got everybody. I wouldn't say there were all actual criminals, but there was certainly a high percentage of assholes. Then again, most human populations have a high percentage of assholes.
People forget that most of their wonderful "boys over there" were assholes when they were over HERE.
It's no surprise to me that US troops are behaving like war criminals in Iraq, given that most of the "new, modern Army" consists of ghetto blacks, ghetto Hispanics, green-card Hispanics, and rural rednecks who can't get a job in the real world. And with the stretching of the US military in pointless adventurism, now the military has to hire the bottom of the barrel that they used to reject.
People claiming all these guys have college degrees must think everyone else is an idiot. If they have a college degree, they got it while they were IN the military.
Anybody enlisting in the military is either an idiot who doesn't realize he is putting his life on the line at someone else's command (the definition of idiocy), or a psycho who wants the power to put someone else's life on the line (either his subordinates or the enemy's.)
Granted, there are probably quite a few people who really think it's "patriotic" to enlist - which makes them idiots by definition. And probably a few smart people join just for the action and adventure - until they realize what bone-deadening stupidity and boredom exists in the military life. There's nothing glamorous about it. There might even be a few classic "warrior" types who go in because they feel it's the only way to live a warrior life - THEY are the ones you really NEED in the military. Sadly, they're few and far between - especially on the officer level, as Colonel David Hackworth used to complain.
Add "Lightspeed" to the search string - he comes up immediately. This name as connected with Lightspeed porn is clearly well known in the industry, if not outside it.
Add "Lightspeed" and "porn" to the search string and he comes up immediately. The name as connected to porn is widely used, appearing in articles in AVN and numerous times on porn Web sitemaster boards.
But, yet, just plain "Steve Jones" gets you nothing useful as one would expect. It'd be like asking for "John Smith".
In fact, the Sex Pistols Steve Jones comes up a lot.
The only people who care about global warming are those who stand to make money or reputations from it - just like every other issue.
With the march of technology, global warming will be a non-issue in several decades.
This is just a rehash of the crap being spewed about "population bombs" in the 1970's. By now, the whole world was supposed to be starving with half a billion dying every year. Never happened. The solution proposed by Ehrlich was kill off 80 percent of the population in order to prevent ten percent from starving - brilliant...
Fucking morons. Concentrate your efforts on nanotech and fuck climate change.
"When the software you use is a tool and not your life...Now you take them into an enviroment where nothing is familiar and you'll have morale problems and decreased productivity."
What's contradictory about these statements?
The issue is quite simple: motivation and training - neither of which corporations do worth a squat, admittedly.
First of all, it is a known fact that ANY change in a working environment INCREASES productivity, not decreases it. This has been known in industry for the last seventy-five years. Even painting the walls increases productivity - for a short time.
Any company can make the switch - it's been done. The only problem is how to make it with the least agony. That's a business problem like any other.
People saying NO change is permitted are just itching to go out of business - but business processes change ALL THE TIME in any common business in reaction to new business goals, competitor actions, new regulations, the economy, etc., ad nauseum.
I work for City College of San Francisco - the epitome of "we will never change no matter what". Still, they do, occasionally, when enough pain is applied to make it happen. Usually this requires external regulatory activity or internal politics - but it does happen.
It's bullshit that people can't be made to change or that this reluctance inevitably means that one way of doing things will always remain on top. It's simply counter to the entire thrust of human history and is a really stupid concept.
Web apps that rely on a browser like IE suck. Nothing more.
This will change.
SCT Banner - which is a HUGE application that runs universities - runs off Oracle Java stuff. Yes, the app itself sucks - but considering that it started out as a mainframe app, got shrunk down to client/server, then further shrunk down to the Web, that's not surprising.
But there is little about it that doesn't do the exact same thing it did with a client/server GUI native on Windows. Yes, you have to install WebStart and JInitiator and download Oracle Forms crap and all that, so it's more client/server than pure Web, but it still runs in a browser - even in Firefox. Cut out the expensive Oracle cruft, and the whole thing could be in LAMP with Java.
Until five minutes later when someone decides to replicate its functionality...
This isn't rocket science. People are assuming this crap is somehow magical software that can't be reproduced.
Maybe Adobe PhotoShop is tough to reproduce, as the GIMP isn't doing it (yet), but especially business software is usually pathetically easy to reproduce since all it does is shuffle dollars and cents around. Any decent programmer could reproduce QuickBooks in six months using modern software tools and libraries. It's the marketing end that would slow adoption - in other words, how long would it take the moron in charge of buying QuickBooks to realize there was a better alternative.
Until someone with an itch sits down and scratces it and replaces your two banking clients with one Linux client that does both...I could probably replace your export documentation package in a couple months using modern software.
There's nothing rocket science about any of this. It's merely a matter of someone deciding to do the software. After that, it's a matter of when the moron in charge of using the software realizes that free and updateable is better than expensive and fixed.
Nobody said it was easy, given the morons in charge of using the software. But "not easy" is different from "never".
It's pathetic how few people can comprehend any change.
"Put all that together and it's going to be very difficult for any one company to justify the extra expense of developing for a new OS....Eventually we'll reach the stage where it breaks that catch 22 and there's a big enough market to attract the traditional software houses."
You don't get OSS, do you?
"Ok, I'll admit it: in time it may be possible for Linux to break into this market, but this is going to be a long, slow process."
Okay, maybe you do. Just remember there's a difference between "long, slow" and "never."
You're correct about PhotoShop and AutoCAD - until someone finally developes the equivalent on Linux, which is inevitable at some point (and not that many years from now.)
As for the crap bought at CompUSA, that stuff will eventually disappear as more developers realize they can do the same crap as OSS or shareware and distribute over the Net.
Hardware drivers are an issue, but s declining one except for wireless devices and of course the latest and greatest video cards most people actually don't buy unless they're gamers. In fact, the gaming issue is probably the biggest holdback for Linux. That will fold too eventually.
without conceptual processing, data is just so much bits and bytes. Some of it can be analyzed as such, but much of it cannot without some conceptual comprehension on the part of the software (if not the analyst - which is the other problem).
A decent (read, relatively effective and efficient) simulation of conceptual processing would change the entire world of computer use from development to databases to computer education to robotics. It is THE world-class issue that needs to be resolved and soon.
Re:When will modern dentists stop using flint?
on
Stone Age Dentists
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· Score: 1
As far as I know, ultrasonic picks have been used for several years. I think they were even used in the Federal joints where I was. However, the worst and most incompetent (from the point of view of pain) cleaning I ever had was in the Federal joint using an ultrasonic pick.
I can see the difficulty of using lasers in an environment with a lot of soft tissue, but since it's used on eyes, I can't imagine they can't figure out a way to do it. Of course, in the eye case, you're immobilized and they still have a significant percentage probability of screwing it up. On the other hand, the eye is a much more sensitive and important tissue than the teeth and gums.
What I'm complaining about is the need for picks at all. There should be a chemical way to remove plague and bacteria or to prevent it from forming at all. As long as dentists rely on physical methods, it will be inefficient and expensive. And I think that's the way they like it.
Why am I not surprised? Plus his company is invested in by Walden Israel, a VC division of Walden International. Walden Israel is headed by a guy who spent five years with a company developing optics for the ISRAELI MILITARY.
Why am I not surprised?
First, an Israeli company in charge of Federal wiretapping gets caught selling wiretapping info to drug dealers in LA and the FBI gets upset over their access to Federal wiretaps.
Now this - an NSA guy and an Israeli running the company sucking data into the NSA - and the Mossad?
As I've said before, Israel has figured out that the best way to spy on people is to be the country making all the telecommo hardware and software all the other countries use to spy on people. Brilliant strategy - and it's working.
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Mustard gas isn't that fatal.
Try nerve gas. The Japanese cults can show you how to make it.
Definitely. It was ridiculous in Vietnam. Every single Vietnamese national on base was probably a spy for the Cong. They were EVERYWHERE on base.
The US is I believe the ONLY country that allows foreign nationals to work in its embassies and other national facilities in other countries. Every other country is amazed that we're that stupid.
You're right about the printers. Some printers and networked attached printers have 20GB hard drives. I saw a video presentation yesterday by Adrian Crenshaw ("IronGeek") who demonstrated that you can manipulate a network printer to store porn and warez and serve it up to anywhere in the world with a Web browser with NO password or anything. Seriously scary from a security standpoint.
I remember one problem the Navy had at one of their sites was someone manipulated a network switch to reroute all print jobs to the networked printer to some place in Russia, then back to the printer.
It's a "reliable" OS if it isn't doing anything but that one thing - and there isn't a bug that allows the Registry to hose itself at some point...
I don't how many times I've seen XP simply stop functioning (in some respect - not a complete systems crash - just some particular feature no longer works) without ANY possible clue as to what caused it. A system restore solves the problem - proving that it was indeed some sort of Registry screwup or some important DLL file got mangled. Without a system restore...good luck finding out what went wrong.
Kerry was an "anti-military pacifist"?
Uhm, which election was this?
"To win a national election, you need to be closer to the middle of the road than your opponent."
Uhm, as far as I know, the entire consensus of the entire planet - besides you, apparently - was that Kerry was indistinguishable from Bush on most issues and THAT'S why he lost. If your opponent is supporting all your positions - including the war on Iraq - why bother voting him in?
You don't know anyone who voted for Bush? Does the phrase "fifty-five million fundamentalists" mean anything to you? Granted, there was Ohio vote fraud, but the rest of the votes DID count...
This is one of the more uninformed and ignorant posts I've seen here.
Excellent point.
Here's another SAS soldier described as first-rate who has refused to return to Iraq:
An SAS soldier has resigned from the army, describing the military intervention in Iraq as a "war of aggression" and "morally wrong". The soldier said he witnessed "dozens of illegal acts" by US forces there.
Ben Griffin, 28, who left after three months in Baghdad, is believed to be the first SAS soldier to refuse to go into combat and to leave the army on moral grounds. His decision comes at a time of growing disenchantment among British soldiers about their presence in Iraq.
This week, pre-trial hearings are due to start into the court martial of Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith, an RAF doctor who is refusing to return to Iraq on the grounds that the war is illegal. Mr Kendall-Smith's lawyer, Justin Hugheston-Roberts, said yesterday: "We will be arguing that he has no case to answer because, without a UN mandate, the invasion of Iraq was manifestly unlawful and any subsequent order was therefore unlawful."
Mr Griffin told the Sunday Telegraph yesterday that he had expected to face a court martial for leaving the SAS. Instead, he was discharged with a glowing testimonial.
When he was on leave in March last year he told his commanding officer he had no intention of returning to Iraq. He said he was very angry "at the way the politicians have lied to the British public about the war. But most importantly, I didn't join the British army to conduct American foreign policy."
He said he had witnessed dozens of illegal acts by US fighters who viewed Iraqis as "sub-human". Mr Griffin said: "I saw a lot of things in Baghdad that were illegal or just wrong. The Americans were doing things like chucking farmers into Abu Ghraib, or handing them over to the Iraqi authorities, knowing full well they were going to be tortured."
This isn't the first time British soldiers have seriously criticized US tactics in Iraq. A number of officers have done so as well. This goes back the last couple of years.
How about raping Iraqi women and children?
Does that qualify?
And, yes, according to all serious reports, that was done. They simply haven't dared to release the photos and videos yet.
Or do you think the Congressmen who have seen them and described them as "disturbing" are lying?
Your statement that SOME of the culprits are doing hard time is partly correct (doubtful that much of it is what we would actually call "hard time" - long time, maybe, but not "hard" time.)
The rest of the culprits got off or were never charged - including those who ordered it in the first place.
Pictures of THAT would have been nice. But the media failed to print them, preferring instead to hawk government statements that were clearly lies.
Lies sell papers, too - in fact, more so than the truth.
You're correct to some degree. Certainly that was the case back in the '60's during Vietnam when I was in. And that was with the draft, which got everybody. I wouldn't say there were all actual criminals, but there was certainly a high percentage of assholes. Then again, most human populations have a high percentage of assholes.
People forget that most of their wonderful "boys over there" were assholes when they were over HERE.
It's no surprise to me that US troops are behaving like war criminals in Iraq, given that most of the "new, modern Army" consists of ghetto blacks, ghetto Hispanics, green-card Hispanics, and rural rednecks who can't get a job in the real world. And with the stretching of the US military in pointless adventurism, now the military has to hire the bottom of the barrel that they used to reject.
People claiming all these guys have college degrees must think everyone else is an idiot. If they have a college degree, they got it while they were IN the military.
Anybody enlisting in the military is either an idiot who doesn't realize he is putting his life on the line at someone else's command (the definition of idiocy), or a psycho who wants the power to put someone else's life on the line (either his subordinates or the enemy's.)
Granted, there are probably quite a few people who really think it's "patriotic" to enlist - which makes them idiots by definition. And probably a few smart people join just for the action and adventure - until they realize what bone-deadening stupidity and boredom exists in the military life. There's nothing glamorous about it. There might even be a few classic "warrior" types who go in because they feel it's the only way to live a warrior life - THEY are the ones you really NEED in the military. Sadly, they're few and far between - especially on the officer level, as Colonel David Hackworth used to complain.
"Sure, the US sells "demilitarized scrap". In the US. To US citizens."
Ahem - to spies POSING as US citizens - or US citizens bribed to buy the stuff, then turn it over to spies. You think US citizens can't be bribed?
Add "Lightspeed" to the search string - he comes up immediately. This name as connected with Lightspeed porn is clearly well known in the industry, if not outside it.
Add "Lightspeed" and "porn" to the search string and he comes up immediately. The name as connected to porn is widely used, appearing in articles in AVN and numerous times on porn Web sitemaster boards.
But, yet, just plain "Steve Jones" gets you nothing useful as one would expect. It'd be like asking for "John Smith".
In fact, the Sex Pistols Steve Jones comes up a lot.
The only people who care about global warming are those who stand to make money or reputations from it - just like every other issue.
With the march of technology, global warming will be a non-issue in several decades.
This is just a rehash of the crap being spewed about "population bombs" in the 1970's. By now, the whole world was supposed to be starving with half a billion dying every year. Never happened. The solution proposed by Ehrlich was kill off 80 percent of the population in order to prevent ten percent from starving - brilliant...
Fucking morons. Concentrate your efforts on nanotech and fuck climate change.
"When the software you use is a tool and not your life...Now you take them into an enviroment where nothing is familiar and you'll have morale problems and decreased productivity."
What's contradictory about these statements?
The issue is quite simple: motivation and training - neither of which corporations do worth a squat, admittedly.
First of all, it is a known fact that ANY change in a working environment INCREASES productivity, not decreases it. This has been known in industry for the last seventy-five years. Even painting the walls increases productivity - for a short time.
Any company can make the switch - it's been done. The only problem is how to make it with the least agony. That's a business problem like any other.
People saying NO change is permitted are just itching to go out of business - but business processes change ALL THE TIME in any common business in reaction to new business goals, competitor actions, new regulations, the economy, etc., ad nauseum.
I work for City College of San Francisco - the epitome of "we will never change no matter what". Still, they do, occasionally, when enough pain is applied to make it happen. Usually this requires external regulatory activity or internal politics - but it does happen.
It's bullshit that people can't be made to change or that this reluctance inevitably means that one way of doing things will always remain on top. It's simply counter to the entire thrust of human history and is a really stupid concept.
Uhm, Linux Terminal Services Project...
Troll.
Web apps that rely on a browser like IE suck. Nothing more.
This will change.
SCT Banner - which is a HUGE application that runs universities - runs off Oracle Java stuff. Yes, the app itself sucks - but considering that it started out as a mainframe app, got shrunk down to client/server, then further shrunk down to the Web, that's not surprising.
But there is little about it that doesn't do the exact same thing it did with a client/server GUI native on Windows. Yes, you have to install WebStart and JInitiator and download Oracle Forms crap and all that, so it's more client/server than pure Web, but it still runs in a browser - even in Firefox. Cut out the expensive Oracle cruft, and the whole thing could be in LAMP with Java.
"Lots of accountants rely on macros that are hard to port over."
For whom? The accountant? Any programmer who knows any macro language can probably do it in minutes.
This is why the real issue is IT policies. Mission-critical stuff should not be done in macros on a proprietary platform. It's just fucking stupid.
Until five minutes later when someone decides to replicate its functionality...
This isn't rocket science. People are assuming this crap is somehow magical software that can't be reproduced.
Maybe Adobe PhotoShop is tough to reproduce, as the GIMP isn't doing it (yet), but especially business software is usually pathetically easy to reproduce since all it does is shuffle dollars and cents around. Any decent programmer could reproduce QuickBooks in six months using modern software tools and libraries. It's the marketing end that would slow adoption - in other words, how long would it take the moron in charge of buying QuickBooks to realize there was a better alternative.
Until someone with an itch sits down and scratces it and replaces your two banking clients with one Linux client that does both...I could probably replace your export documentation package in a couple months using modern software.
There's nothing rocket science about any of this. It's merely a matter of someone deciding to do the software. After that, it's a matter of when the moron in charge of using the software realizes that free and updateable is better than expensive and fixed.
Nobody said it was easy, given the morons in charge of using the software. But "not easy" is different from "never".
It's pathetic how few people can comprehend any change.
"Put all that together and it's going to be very difficult for any one company to justify the extra expense of developing for a new OS....Eventually we'll reach the stage where it breaks that catch 22 and there's a big enough market to attract the traditional software houses."
You don't get OSS, do you?
"Ok, I'll admit it: in time it may be possible for Linux to break into this market, but this is going to be a long, slow process."
Okay, maybe you do. Just remember there's a difference between "long, slow" and "never."
You're correct about PhotoShop and AutoCAD - until someone finally developes the equivalent on Linux, which is inevitable at some point (and not that many years from now.)
As for the crap bought at CompUSA, that stuff will eventually disappear as more developers realize they can do the same crap as OSS or shareware and distribute over the Net.
Hardware drivers are an issue, but s declining one except for wireless devices and of course the latest and greatest video cards most people actually don't buy unless they're gamers. In fact, the gaming issue is probably the biggest holdback for Linux. That will fold too eventually.
The only issue on all this is when, not if.
without conceptual processing, data is just so much bits and bytes. Some of it can be analyzed as such, but much of it cannot without some conceptual comprehension on the part of the software (if not the analyst - which is the other problem).
A decent (read, relatively effective and efficient) simulation of conceptual processing would change the entire world of computer use from development to databases to computer education to robotics. It is THE world-class issue that needs to be resolved and soon.
As far as I know, ultrasonic picks have been used for several years. I think they were even used in the Federal joints where I was. However, the worst and most incompetent (from the point of view of pain) cleaning I ever had was in the Federal joint using an ultrasonic pick.
I can see the difficulty of using lasers in an environment with a lot of soft tissue, but since it's used on eyes, I can't imagine they can't figure out a way to do it. Of course, in the eye case, you're immobilized and they still have a significant percentage probability of screwing it up. On the other hand, the eye is a much more sensitive and important tissue than the teeth and gums.
What I'm complaining about is the need for picks at all. There should be a chemical way to remove plague and bacteria or to prevent it from forming at all. As long as dentists rely on physical methods, it will be inefficient and expensive. And I think that's the way they like it.
No, everyone does not know about the consequences.
This NSA data mining thing might unravel the whole thing, as the wiretapping issue didn't quite.
Why am I not surprised? Plus his company is invested in by Walden Israel, a VC division of Walden International. Walden Israel is headed by a guy who spent five years with a company developing optics for the ISRAELI MILITARY.
Why am I not surprised?
First, an Israeli company in charge of Federal wiretapping gets caught selling wiretapping info to drug dealers in LA and the FBI gets upset over their access to Federal wiretaps.
Now this - an NSA guy and an Israeli running the company sucking data into the NSA - and the Mossad?
As I've said before, Israel has figured out that the best way to spy on people is to be the country making all the telecommo hardware and software all the other countries use to spy on people. Brilliant strategy - and it's working.