Regardless, some people's strong feelings and zealous campaigning on the subject hardly rate global warming as a "religion"
Religion? No, since so far as I'm aware no-one of any importance is claiming that an angry Greenhouse God is behind it all... but global warming has certainly achieved cult status, even amongst those within the scientific community who should know better. And "strong feelings" and "zealous campaigning" are, actually, a big part of the problem because they are frequently irrational and tend to preclude any intelligent discourse on what may (or may not) be an issue of vital importance to us all. But we'll never know the truth until A. global warming kills off a few billion of us or B. doesn't kill off a few billion of us or C. the leadership of the industrialized nations suddenly become rational, logical creatures that take whatever steps (if any) are required to bring the problem under control. Personally, I'm voting for option "A": I'm not holding my breath waiting for "C", that's for sure.
No, the Democrats have always been just as power-hungry, and when they are once again in power they will use the same tired excuses to leverage their hold over the citizenry. Matter of fact, historically the Democrats have been for higher taxes and bigger government, ostensibly to provide more services to the "disadvantaged" so that they will continue to vote Democratically. The current massive extension of government power simply plays even more directly into their hands than it does the traditional Republican party (and I mean "traditional" as in "well before the Bush administration".) This isn't going to get better soon, and I certainly would not expect Democrats to come to our rescue, civil-liberty-wise. We're in the midst of a bi-partisan rabies party: they're ALL nuts.
A good open-source client that you can get off SourceForge is Phex. Limewire-like GUI (better in some ways) and you can also disable any sharing activity.
No, the real question is how to convince the wife (who already knows you're not working) that you're at the pub and not with the girl you met at the pub.
I agree with you pretty much (you have my perspective a little wrong but that's okay.) Boiled down to the nub, this is all about sour grapes. Everybody and his uncle around the whole damn planet jumped on the Internet bandwagon and invested trillions in economic development dependent upon a functioning global network. Then, and only then, did some governmental types decide that oh, gee, maybe we put too many eggs in one basket, so let's see if we can't convince the U.S. to give us those thirteen eggs. No? Okay, we'll just take them then! Uh, right, act of war, theft of national assets and all that... okay. We'll just build our DNS system then! What, that would cause major economic dislocation and supply-chain disruption? Uh, well.. fuck. And that's your answer, because if they could have pulled off replacing DNS in a hurry, they'd have done it already.
Political leaders in other countries are looking for a short-term solution to what they see as a potential threat, and have resorted to posturing and threats in an effort to get their way. That's fine and dandy, but their current thinking is a mistake. They should be looking for a long-term solution, because replacing DNS, even only at a national level, is not something to be taken lightly. Things have gone too far, we're too heavily vested in the existing system to change it on a dime. Simultaneously entering a pissing contest with the United States is also not smart, particularly because the United States hasn't done any of the things that they are claiming we could.
It would also be interesting if one could take an international poll just to see how many people would really want DNS placed under U.N. control, say. Or simply taken away from the U.S. entirely and given the their own country's government.
So I guess it looks censored because it is censored, and the only question that remains is: why do news organizations allowed themselves to be co-opted by the Big Lie so easily?
Because money+money=more money, and ethics+ethics=less money.
In other words, it would require all name-resolving equipment that communicates via the Internet to support both the existing Domain Name System and whatever technologies the rest of the world comes up with to replace it, in order for said devices to access the entire Internet. That's just stupid from a technological and functional perspective, but is just the kind of "solution" that power-hungry governments would like to implement. As you say, it would pretty much Balkanize the Internet and make it much less useful (to individuals and businesses... it would be much more useful to governments.) I'm surprised that nations such as China haven't already outlawed access to the existing root servers and substituted their own.
I wish the EU and other countries that would like to wrest "control of the Internet" (ha) from the United States would just come right out and say it: "we want what you have and we'll take it by force if we have to". That's what this all comes down to... not control of the entire Internet (which is impossible, really) but control of easy access to information. A lot of people (including some poorly-informed Americans, I'm sorry to say) seem to think that a global network should be under international control. Just because. And in an ideal world, that would be true, but in this world I'd say to such people: be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.
I don't think you can call one position "Democrat", or "Republican", or "Conservative", or "Liberal".
Very true. Next time, try inserting the words "Crook" and "Traitor" instead of "Democrat" and "Republican". I think you'll find they're pretty much interchangeable at this point.
The terrorists who now threaten our freedom and way of life are not abroad hiding in mosques
Oh yes they are, and not just abroad, they're here as well. We, as a society, must be able to come to grips with more than one issue at a time... as it is, whatever is on the menu as the "crisis of the month" is all we bother to point any brain cells at. At this point in history, America is dealing with more simultaneous threats than it has ever faced before. Don't focus on one to the exclusion of the others, because one of them may sneak up and stab you in the back.
That said... the United States Federal Government has, by its actions over the past half century or so (Congress, are you listening?) caused much of the current crop of crises. You can blame Bush and Clinton all you want, and yes they both handle a lot of things very badly, but they simply inherited a legacy of mismanagement and malfeasance. However, it is equally true that the only real defense we have against that legacy is that self-same government. Such a conundrum is not easy to resolve.
Oh, I know, and as a software engineer I'm well aware of the nature and purpose of jargon. In the context to which you are referring it serves as form of verbal shorthand, so that workers in a given area of expertise can interact efficiently. Nothing intrinsically wrong with that, of course. However... people in one field are largely unaffected by the jargon used by those in another. I sincerely doubt that your average doctor cares much about how his car mechanics communicate amongst themselves: he just wants his car fixed. On the other hand, it is true that if he did understand their lingo, he'd be more likely to know when he was being ripped off.
and frequently those meanings are spelled out within the laws themselves
And just as frequently they are not. The use of jargon in lawmaking is different from other disciplines in that it affects us all, and our inability to readily understand the law has ongoing negative consequences. I still maintain the much of the "jargon" that attorneys and lawmakers use has as much to do with maintaining their status in our society as it does with inter-attorney communications.
I accept that lawyers have as much right to use professional jargon as the rest of us, but in many respects it has been carried to an extreme. Besides, legal language sure doesn't improve communications with the rest of us, and when you need a highly-trained someone to interpret your own laws for you, you have a problem. Yes, there are legal dictionaries, but the fact that we need them makes much of our legal system effectively unintelligible to the bulk of the population. "By, Of and For the People", remember?
If you've ever been in court, and discovered that you had absolutely no idea what the people around you were talking about until they explained in plain English, in the same tone of voice you would use on a small child asking a stupid question... well. It's all the more frightening when you realize that the outcome of those deliberations that you only dimly comprehend will have a significant impact on your life. Near-death experiences can have a similar effect, and both involve elevated fear and a loss of control. You don't leave that room the same person, no matter what the outcome.
It's probably similar to how a person that barely knows how to turn on their computer feels when hearing a couple of service techs casually discuss the fate of all their hard-earned data: "Maybe it's the IDE port", "Nah, probably a bad RAM", "I dunno... maybe the BIOS has the CACHE timings set incorrectly." All that person can do is hope those techs know what they're doing, and that they care enough to do the right thing.
When it comes to our legal system that's about all we can do anymore: hope, and maybe pray, if that's your thing.
True... but it's also true the the Democrats haven't been able to field any credible competition to the Republican presidential picks either. Clinton was a disaster in oh-so-many ways and Bush, unbelievably, was worse. It would be nice if at least one party were required, by law, to have quality material available for election purposes. That way, even if your party puts forth a numbskull there'd still be someone worth casting a vote for. This idea that they can just shove one corrupt cretin after another down our throats is really starting to piss me off.
Doesn't matter. I don't even think the FBI much cares if they win or lose the case, or if it even goes to trial. What does matter is that they've terrified some other potential geeks from publishing anything else negative about the TSA or other government organ. It's a win-win from their perspective. Pretty much a lose-lose from where I'm sitting... free speech takes another hit. This is exactly the kind of situation the Founders envisioned when they came up with free speech and plugged it into the Constitution. Here's someone that saw something wrong with government, and wanted the rest of us to know about it. So, of course, in true Constitutional spirit the FBI raids his place and charges him with a crime. Doesn't matter what crime, so long as the kid is terrorized sufficiently. I mean, there are so many laws on the books nowadays that everyone, and I mean everyone, is guilty of something and can be nailed to a cross for little reason, or no reason at all.
I remember reading Shakespeare in high school... so many words had changed their meanings over the intervening centuries that the text was peppered with footnotes explaining what a particular word meant back in the Bard's time. I found it very hard to get into the flow, since I was constantly referring to the bottom of each page.
The law is much the same, only worse given the near-unintelligibility (to the layperson) of what our esteemed misrepresentatives sign into law every day. That, in and of itself, ought to be illegal. The virtual encryption of such documents has allowed a state of affairs resembling the ancient Egyptian priesthood to control our legal system. In truth, it is very much harder to use the law (or fight it) when one can barely understand it, and must pay dearly for a priest/professional to "interpret" it properly.
In any event, dictionary definitions of words may have little or no relevance to the same words as used by lawyers.
Of course, the problem with some counterfeit products is that they aren't always just knockoffs of a purse, or a watch, sometimes they're substandard industrial components fradulently labeled as originals. That can and does cause death and injury (follow the origins of the Fastener Quality Act... an admittedly misguided piece of legislation that was trying to take on a real problem) that was rooted in problems caused by poor-quality foreign-made bolts and other parts deliberately labeled as high-strength. Buildings falling down, that sort of thing. So government does have a legitimate interest in some aspects of that issue.
I believe that a "pre-trash" inspection is when someone goes through all your possessions looking for evidence of {something} before you've decided that said possessions are actually trash. In other words, they sneak into your your house, go through your all your stuff, and if that doesn't work then they look through your dumpster.
Today, the population figure is mired in the divisive politics of immigration
More correctly, it's the divisive politics of illegal immigration. I don't know too many people that are up-in-arms about legal immigrants from, say, Sweden. Well, okay. There's the whole H1B visa thing, but that's not so much a matter of raw numbers as it is selective economic displacement of American tech workers.
Slashdot Mirror
I do admit I am far below the pay rate of anyone that matters though.
Yeah. Me too.
Regardless, some people's strong feelings and zealous campaigning on the subject hardly rate global warming as a "religion"
... but global warming has certainly achieved cult status, even amongst those within the scientific community who should know better. And "strong feelings" and "zealous campaigning" are, actually, a big part of the problem because they are frequently irrational and tend to preclude any intelligent discourse on what may (or may not) be an issue of vital importance to us all. But we'll never know the truth until A. global warming kills off a few billion of us or B. doesn't kill off a few billion of us or C. the leadership of the industrialized nations suddenly become rational, logical creatures that take whatever steps (if any) are required to bring the problem under control. Personally, I'm voting for option "A": I'm not holding my breath waiting for "C", that's for sure.
Religion? No, since so far as I'm aware no-one of any importance is claiming that an angry Greenhouse God is behind it all
Microsoft is pulling out of China.
A frustrated China could not be reached for comment.
but at essence it is basically 21st century blackface minstrel stuff.
Yes, and people laughed at that too.
No, the Democrats have always been just as power-hungry, and when they are once again in power they will use the same tired excuses to leverage their hold over the citizenry. Matter of fact, historically the Democrats have been for higher taxes and bigger government, ostensibly to provide more services to the "disadvantaged" so that they will continue to vote Democratically. The current massive extension of government power simply plays even more directly into their hands than it does the traditional Republican party (and I mean "traditional" as in "well before the Bush administration".) This isn't going to get better soon, and I certainly would not expect Democrats to come to our rescue, civil-liberty-wise. We're in the midst of a bi-partisan rabies party: they're ALL nuts.
A good open-source client that you can get off SourceForge is Phex. Limewire-like GUI (better in some ways) and you can also disable any sharing activity.
No, the real question is how to convince the wife (who already knows you're not working) that you're at the pub and not with the girl you met at the pub.
What could be more important than violent chemical reactions?
Physical reactions, involving members of the opposite sex.
They really should avoid that nickname...
Well, it's better than "sticky wicket", eh, what?
a feast of nationalistic dick-swinging
... okay. We'll just build our DNS system then! What, that would cause major economic dislocation and supply-chain disruption? Uh, well .. fuck. And that's your answer, because if they could have pulled off replacing DNS in a hurry, they'd have done it already.
Great turn of phrase.
I agree with you pretty much (you have my perspective a little wrong but that's okay.) Boiled down to the nub, this is all about sour grapes. Everybody and his uncle around the whole damn planet jumped on the Internet bandwagon and invested trillions in economic development dependent upon a functioning global network. Then, and only then, did some governmental types decide that oh, gee, maybe we put too many eggs in one basket, so let's see if we can't convince the U.S. to give us those thirteen eggs. No? Okay, we'll just take them then! Uh, right, act of war, theft of national assets and all that
Political leaders in other countries are looking for a short-term solution to what they see as a potential threat, and have resorted to posturing and threats in an effort to get their way. That's fine and dandy, but their current thinking is a mistake. They should be looking for a long-term solution, because replacing DNS, even only at a national level, is not something to be taken lightly. Things have gone too far, we're too heavily vested in the existing system to change it on a dime. Simultaneously entering a pissing contest with the United States is also not smart, particularly because the United States hasn't done any of the things that they are claiming we could.
It would also be interesting if one could take an international poll just to see how many people would really want DNS placed under U.N. control, say. Or simply taken away from the U.S. entirely and given the their own country's government.
So I guess it looks censored because it is censored, and the only question that remains is: why do news organizations allowed themselves to be co-opted by the Big Lie so easily?
Because money+money=more money, and ethics+ethics=less money.
Elmer, is that you?
In other words, it would require all name-resolving equipment that communicates via the Internet to support both the existing Domain Name System and whatever technologies the rest of the world comes up with to replace it, in order for said devices to access the entire Internet. That's just stupid from a technological and functional perspective, but is just the kind of "solution" that power-hungry governments would like to implement. As you say, it would pretty much Balkanize the Internet and make it much less useful (to individuals and businesses ... it would be much more useful to governments.) I'm surprised that nations such as China haven't already outlawed access to the existing root servers and substituted their own.
... not control of the entire Internet (which is impossible, really) but control of easy access to information. A lot of people (including some poorly-informed Americans, I'm sorry to say) seem to think that a global network should be under international control. Just because. And in an ideal world, that would be true, but in this world I'd say to such people: be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.
I wish the EU and other countries that would like to wrest "control of the Internet" (ha) from the United States would just come right out and say it: "we want what you have and we'll take it by force if we have to". That's what this all comes down to
I don't think you can call one position "Democrat", or "Republican", or "Conservative", or "Liberal".
Very true. Next time, try inserting the words "Crook" and "Traitor" instead of "Democrat" and "Republican". I think you'll find they're pretty much interchangeable at this point.
The terrorists who now threaten our freedom and way of life are not abroad hiding in mosques
... as it is, whatever is on the menu as the "crisis of the month" is all we bother to point any brain cells at. At this point in history, America is dealing with more simultaneous threats than it has ever faced before. Don't focus on one to the exclusion of the others, because one of them may sneak up and stab you in the back.
... the United States Federal Government has, by its actions over the past half century or so (Congress, are you listening?) caused much of the current crop of crises. You can blame Bush and Clinton all you want, and yes they both handle a lot of things very badly, but they simply inherited a legacy of mismanagement and malfeasance. However, it is equally true that the only real defense we have against that legacy is that self-same government. Such a conundrum is not easy to resolve.
Oh yes they are, and not just abroad, they're here as well. We, as a society, must be able to come to grips with more than one issue at a time
That said
Jargon happens.
... people in one field are largely unaffected by the jargon used by those in another. I sincerely doubt that your average doctor cares much about how his car mechanics communicate amongst themselves: he just wants his car fixed. On the other hand, it is true that if he did understand their lingo, he'd be more likely to know when he was being ripped off.
... well. It's all the more frightening when you realize that the outcome of those deliberations that you only dimly comprehend will have a significant impact on your life. Near-death experiences can have a similar effect, and both involve elevated fear and a loss of control. You don't leave that room the same person, no matter what the outcome.
... maybe the BIOS has the CACHE timings set incorrectly." All that person can do is hope those techs know what they're doing, and that they care enough to do the right thing.
Oh, I know, and as a software engineer I'm well aware of the nature and purpose of jargon. In the context to which you are referring it serves as form of verbal shorthand, so that workers in a given area of expertise can interact efficiently. Nothing intrinsically wrong with that, of course. However
and frequently those meanings are spelled out within the laws themselves
And just as frequently they are not. The use of jargon in lawmaking is different from other disciplines in that it affects us all, and our inability to readily understand the law has ongoing negative consequences. I still maintain the much of the "jargon" that attorneys and lawmakers use has as much to do with maintaining their status in our society as it does with inter-attorney communications.
I accept that lawyers have as much right to use professional jargon as the rest of us, but in many respects it has been carried to an extreme. Besides, legal language sure doesn't improve communications with the rest of us, and when you need a highly-trained someone to interpret your own laws for you, you have a problem. Yes, there are legal dictionaries, but the fact that we need them makes much of our legal system effectively unintelligible to the bulk of the population. "By, Of and For the People", remember?
If you've ever been in court, and discovered that you had absolutely no idea what the people around you were talking about until they explained in plain English, in the same tone of voice you would use on a small child asking a stupid question
It's probably similar to how a person that barely knows how to turn on their computer feels when hearing a couple of service techs casually discuss the fate of all their hard-earned data: "Maybe it's the IDE port", "Nah, probably a bad RAM", "I dunno
When it comes to our legal system that's about all we can do anymore: hope, and maybe pray, if that's your thing.
Somehow I don't think that will be enough.
True ... but it's also true the the Democrats haven't been able to field any credible competition to the Republican presidential picks either. Clinton was a disaster in oh-so-many ways and Bush, unbelievably, was worse. It would be nice if at least one party were required, by law, to have quality material available for election purposes. That way, even if your party puts forth a numbskull there'd still be someone worth casting a vote for. This idea that they can just shove one corrupt cretin after another down our throats is really starting to piss me off.
Doesn't matter. I don't even think the FBI much cares if they win or lose the case, or if it even goes to trial. What does matter is that they've terrified some other potential geeks from publishing anything else negative about the TSA or other government organ. It's a win-win from their perspective. Pretty much a lose-lose from where I'm sitting ... free speech takes another hit. This is exactly the kind of situation the Founders envisioned when they came up with free speech and plugged it into the Constitution. Here's someone that saw something wrong with government, and wanted the rest of us to know about it. So, of course, in true Constitutional spirit the FBI raids his place and charges him with a crime. Doesn't matter what crime, so long as the kid is terrorized sufficiently. I mean, there are so many laws on the books nowadays that everyone, and I mean everyone, is guilty of something and can be nailed to a cross for little reason, or no reason at all.
Cripes.
I remember reading Shakespeare in high school ... so many words had changed their meanings over the intervening centuries that the text was peppered with footnotes explaining what a particular word meant back in the Bard's time. I found it very hard to get into the flow, since I was constantly referring to the bottom of each page.
The law is much the same, only worse given the near-unintelligibility (to the layperson) of what our esteemed misrepresentatives sign into law every day. That, in and of itself, ought to be illegal. The virtual encryption of such documents has allowed a state of affairs resembling the ancient Egyptian priesthood to control our legal system. In truth, it is very much harder to use the law (or fight it) when one can barely understand it, and must pay dearly for a priest/professional to "interpret" it properly.
In any event, dictionary definitions of words may have little or no relevance to the same words as used by lawyers.
Of course, the problem with some counterfeit products is that they aren't always just knockoffs of a purse, or a watch, sometimes they're substandard industrial components fradulently labeled as originals. That can and does cause death and injury (follow the origins of the Fastener Quality Act ... an admittedly misguided piece of legislation that was trying to take on a real problem) that was rooted in problems caused by poor-quality foreign-made bolts and other parts deliberately labeled as high-strength. Buildings falling down, that sort of thing. So government does have a legitimate interest in some aspects of that issue.
No kidding ... besides, this is a Communist state where it would be Soylent Red anyway.
I believe that a "pre-trash" inspection is when someone goes through all your possessions looking for evidence of {something} before you've decided that said possessions are actually trash. In other words, they sneak into your your house, go through your all your stuff, and if that doesn't work then they look through your dumpster.
that having only read the summary this seems genuinely cool. Of course, it's also genuinely scary, but that's the price of progress I suppose.
No missing link here, we already have the troll-like humans to prove it.
Yes, we do and collectively they're known as "Congress" here in the United States. No need to take a page from their book.
Today, the population figure is mired in the divisive politics of immigration
More correctly, it's the divisive politics of illegal immigration. I don't know too many people that are up-in-arms about legal immigrants from, say, Sweden. Well, okay. There's the whole H1B visa thing, but that's not so much a matter of raw numbers as it is selective economic displacement of American tech workers.