I have had several events such as this in my life, the most notable when I was about 17. A friend and I were on a motorcycle, me driving, poking along at about 50 or so. We met an acquaintance driving a 7osih Buick Electra 225, a big car. We did not recognize or take note of him but he had us and had something he needed to see my friend about. He got in behind us and was trying to pass and get in front of us when traffic forced him to retreat.
He was doing better than 70 and his brakes failed, rather than taking the ditch the idiot ran over us. I never even knew he was there, I remember thinking some non nonsensical stuff about groundhog holes in the road as I flipped over the Buick, I remember the sight of the trunk lid coming toward me, thinking "roll I gotta roll", hitting the trunk lid, thinking "roll fuck", and an extended series of flips, sliding, cartwheels down the pavement as I noted the abundance of goldenrod the field and the odd color combination of an on coming pickup. I remember thoughts wondering about my friend on the back of the bike, I remember regretting the loss of my leather bomber jacket as it was peeled from me.
All in all from this and several other events including one very recent one, for me time SEEMS to slow way down DURING one of these events NOT just in recollections after them. I do not have a explanation for the experience but I can tell you the perception of time slowing happens. Gotta go my Australian Shepard-Blue Heeler mix wants to play and is about to pull my leg off.
As my maternal grandfather noted "Life is like roll of toilet paper, the closer you get to the end the faster it goes" At age 51 now I can see he was dead-on.
"Growing up in a small rural area, I knew people just like Clevon. And they were regarded as the alpha males because they were good at sports. Some got a free ride to state college for their physical skills. Unfortunately they didn't complete the first year of college because they treated it like high school..."
Then they came back home and got a job in law enforcement. The few that managed to finish some level of extended education became detectives, the rest became patrol boys with guns. Sad but true at least around here most the cops are ex-jocks, and yes it is scary.
Just last week I was giving someone at democrats.org hell for NOT redistributing clips of Republican candidates via P2P. The basic idea they have is great, stringers are following the Republican candidates around and recording as many public events as possible. The audio/video transcripts are reportedly posted on a publicly accessible server for download. Opposition supporters are supposed to be able to download, purview, cut, mix, remix etc at their will. The damn distribution server has been so bogged down that I gave up on it without a single downloaded file. In an pissy email I whined about that and about their choice of format for content they wished people to be able to edit easily, Flash, of course.
After thinking about it I hope nasty tricks like this Comcast deal, or packet redirection or throttling, and restrictive propriety formats do cause issues for them, maybe the present majority will be less like to kowtow to Hollywood and various software and media corps. These companies need a serious judicial or legislative bitch slappin in the worst kind of way.
"I like rich people. Rich people spend lots of money. I never got a job from a poor person."
I have been in several ventures in my years where I had fairly concurrent contact with people from various fiducial stratas in life while self employed in the construction/service trades or truck farming.
The absolute best customers I have had were people of moderate or lesser means, especially the older folks. They may have cut a hard bargain up front but they almost always paid in full on the spot or in a timely manner as per our agreement, and quite often tried to feed you as well. The next best were other self employed small business folks, who while demanding on the quality and ruthless on the details of the contract usually paid promptly and smoothly.
A few times I had the chance to work for very wealthy persons that owned private enterprises themselves. I found these folks to be very much like myself and other self employed business people, on steroids. Very very smart people, enjoyed a good round of up front haggling on the deal a bit too much, often would drive you insane on the details, devilishly good at using OPM (other peoples money) including mine, but straight up on the payment when the time came.
The ones I had the most trouble with in aspects like slow, or even no pay, disingenuous manipulation or even outright attempts at deception in the details and of course the old 'milking' the job for freebies were nearly always the professionals, bankers, doctors, lawyers (criminal defense lawyers excluded, I had several really good customers from this herd and no bad ones), real estate speculators, CEO/VP level corporate managers and worst of all deals involving contacts with the larger corporate entities themselves.
Of course there are no absolutes here and there were many exceptions to what I noted above, and this is from my admittedly limited experience but it has been generally my experience in my roughly thirty years of adult life involving hundreds of examples.
"You will work for a while, you will be caught, you will confess, and then you will die... There is no possibility that any perceptible change will happen within our own lifetime. We are the dead."
"For the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself."
"Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!"
You know? Personally I think the smarter ones. You know? That, that are capable of detecting our. You know? Noise are probably. You know? Hiding from us. You know? I would, wouldn't you?:) You Think?
Would someone explain to me what the logic is with DXxx versions in Windows. It has been a long time since I stayed that current with the esoteric details of Windows. These posts seem to imply that DX10 capable drivers will never be available to Windows XP. Is it an issue of API changes so extensive that a replacement kernel and a few dlls could not provide backward support?
It sounds to me to an example of intentional obsolescence. This is logical enough I guess from Microsoft's standpoint anyway. It just all seems so wasteful to me. I can see a reason for these expensive OS upgrades as we move up in address space 8-16-32-64-128, or with a transition like moving from 98/NT to 2000 maybe but not for the incremental improvements we have been seeing from Redmond for the 32bit versions of the OS. Anyway, since it does not seem to be working out for them this time does anyone wonder if we might see MS blink and commission an intermediate upgrade step like a non-free service pack for XP?
I'm just happy I am not on that treadmill anymore or IBM's pay through the nose OS/2 Sub Service plan. The openSuse 10.2 install I am posting this from had it roots in Suse 9.0 and has see about six upgrades and countless updates but still works and is my wifes main, if not only, boot OS. I mean everything works as well with it as with a clean 10.2 install. I tend to play a bit with things an have been mostly using another 10.2 install with Beryl at the last SVN version prior to fusion. I have a clean openSuse 10.3 install I am checking out, in addition to Sabayon 3.4 on another clean install. Plus I have scores of so other distros via VMWare, and yes Win98 and NT4, BSD, ReAct, etc. never owned XP or 2000, though I do use both at work.
The Linux community is dynamic, fun, well coded and inexpensive for me. MS would be in a bad place if every third person went so far as give Linux an honest try. But I don't think many ever will, this stuff is just not that important to them. Plus they have been conditioned to expect less and pay more. About the only scenario I see that would work for most of those I know is if gasoline hits $5 per gallon AND they lose or damage their restore CD WHEN they next trash out XP, (every three months to a year, depending on the person).
Uh, how about 'focus', though I will agree that some time critical issues like media burning need other methods, same argument could be made for network apps, oh damn here we go again.
"We should be arguing: If you don't believe in using the wifi spectrum for free, open communication, then you shouldn't be using it. Pay for a license to use your own block of restricted spectrum."
One: the telecos want to define this in a way that allows them to sell the most services and features. Even if everyone in your router range could get all the connection they need without exceeding your bandwidth allocation, remember unlimited does not mean unlimited anyway, the telecos miss the sales of services to them. This is why they have often taken community based projects to court, though I do not know what their legal argument was specifically. Plus there is a chunk of the population that would agree with this on the philosophical ideal of 'mine, mine, all mine' that asserts authority is gold, greed is good and anything that questions authority or is open or free is a pinko liberal communist plot. I suspect this is about 10-15% of the population, or the same percentage that believes Cheney is a patriot and Bush is the messiah.
"But it seems we have a lot of people here who are profoundly anti-open-communication, and think that people who caught communicating openly should be punished"
Two: if every/anyone can access your wireless router this provides a layer of anonymity that does not allow troublemakers to be hounded down, you know the need to 'save the children' from the druggies, perverts, terrorists and their pinko liberal communist enablers. Plus since many of the same people that distrust a society that allows open anonymity are technical Luddites who would be lost configuring a wireless router and thus they are fearful that they may be confused for some of the above distasteful persons and end up sharing a cell with them.
Even for those who do not fit the descriptions above, the population in general seem either too distracted with their fat lazy lives, too busy pilfering someone else's life, or are simply too stupid to comprehend what is actually happening to our world. I look to the left, to the right or right down the middle and I just don't see anyone in leadership REALLY addressing the slaughter of our liberty and very few in the great masses that have a clue what is happening and just why they should be concerned about it.
When hear someone proclaim themselves as a 'progressive' and I grab my wallet and hide my gun. When I hear someone proclaim themselves as a 'conservative' and I grab my wallet and load my gun. When I hear someone proclaim themselves as a liberal, I roll my eyes and think 'oh really?' but still hope maybe, just maybe this one is for real. When I hear someone proclaim themselves as a patriot my first instinct is to shoot the frackin' fascist idiot while I still can.
If there is anyone I did not piss off here, please let me know how I failed you and I will try to correct my mistake next time.
As someone who been inside the health care industry for the last 20 years I can assure you that there is a horrendous percentage of this money spent on things that have no real direct relationship with the delivery of medical care. I happen to work at one of the better managed organizations both from a medical and business view, but it is the exception.
Probably nearly a third of your health care costs go toward bloated administrative costs. How medical care professionals and institutions get paid is a quagmire of private and government plans that requires multiple, confusing and usually duplicated efforts and paperwork. While dealing with the bureaucracy of government programs is indeed a hassle the challenges are often trivial when compared to private insurers that quite frankly do their best to not pay their obligations at all if possible and have evolved slow pay into an art. Then there is the issue of top level management staffing levels and compensation which are both often obscene, all the while lower level managers and staff are run dangerously lean in both salary and staffing levels. The salaries of the insurance executives and staff figure into this in the same manner as far as you and I are concerned even if from the opposite perspective industry-wise.
The next largest black hole involves marketing and the associated 'appearance' issues. Sadly more often that not an organization is bleed pale by advertising and cosmetic 'improvements' to facilities and grounds. Local media is often a player in this. If anything does go wrong, and of course it does far too often what with the typical low staffing levels and money diverted for real needs, then the local media will hound the institution relentlessly. Subsequently or sometimes concurrently the other hand of the media is in the organizations pocket for 'image recovery' advertising.
As for direct medical costs, the areas of emergency care, medical imaging, cancer treatment and surgery often though of as the 'expensive part' of the equation is dwarfed by long term care costs. I guess it is politically incorrect to point out that this more often than not involves a patient who has passed the average lifespan. Many families of of average means or less will see their entire inheritance siphoned away in grandpas or grannies last two months, or maybe weeks, of life.
Finally another huge issue that is a bit harder to quantify with numbers but I believe has the largest impact of all. There is a reason why health care organizations often find themselves in highly litigious circumstances. Simply put the medical care establishment due to some of the reasons stated above along with other equally inexcusable reasons every year manage to kill more people that auto accidents, firearms, and illegal drugs combined. These are deaths caused by misdiagnoses, medication mistakes, equipment failures, simple negligence and the biggest of all infection control failures.
There is a lot of work to be done before we can expect to have reasonable quality health care at a reasonable cost. Many of the entrenched players such as the insurance, medical prosthesis and drug industries have no reason to want change in their part of the camp. With the system so broken medical care professionals, administrators and support staffing are nearly hopelessly beleaguered in most cases where they try to improve things. Every year now for what seems like forever I hear 'you have to work smarter and do more with less' and we do pretty good at it, but the costs keep going up anyway. Hey but aren't those grounds pretty, my look at those Italian marble floors, oohhh you just gotta see the granite fountain in the patrons garden and did you see that new TV spot with Dr so and so....
Wabi-Sabi Matthew
Oh as for the topic of the article, screw Gene Simmons, I say boycott anything he has ever done or will ever do, like any of it was worth listening to anyway.
Heh, you know you can change that, right? We are still talking about open source GNU/Linux aren't we? I will agree that the default openSuse Gnome start menu implementation is horrendous, I am not a SLED customer so I don't know so much about it of course. Then again I am not a Gnome fan anyway, I use KDE on openSuse and have to say I like the new openSuse kicker menu quite well. I feel the same way about most GTK interfaces, I prefer those built from QT. I just installed 10.3 and the GTK based Compiz Fusion manager sux compared what I am pretty sure is a QT based Beryl manager on 10.2.
As for the politics here. I am not fond of anything that involves a deal with MS. However from a pragmatic standpoint I still like Suse or at least openSuse better than any distro I have tried (all the heavy hitters). It may be that in the future I have to move to something else due to this deal, but at this time the deal has very little to do with openSuse and the distro still has the same German engineered feel of a well nitpicked and finely finished quality to it from my perspective. It just works, all of it, not 95% or so like many other distros.
First thanks for the reply, you know the payment for our liberty was made with the blood of our ancestors. As for the loss of liberty caused by conflicts in the world being driven by the availability of oil. There may be some truth in this as there are others in the world that would prefer to see the USA neutered somewhat. Russian and Chinese leaders to be sure as well as many others would for sure prefer to see the USA not as powerful. This is partly simple human nature and partly because of our own behavior. The human nature part is something we have limited control of and simply need to accept and deal with in a logical manner. The issue of our own behavior is something we have much more control of. Preemptive acts of aggression against other nations or detrimental manipulation of other societies out of greed or ignorance is not helpful to say the least. While it may often necessary to act in our own interest in these manners we should be cautious and do so in a logical and ethical manner. The situation I see today seems to me to be driven by the greed of a select few at the expense of almost everyone else, caution and ethics do not seem to part of the equation.
My original post was mostly directed at the issue of violations of American citizens constitutional guaranteed rights in regard to issues such as the unconstitutional wholesale data mining of internet traffic by the government with the assistance of corporate entities. My view on this is that the government officials and corporate officers should be held accountable for these criminal acts perpetrated on the American citizen. Others believe that these should be either ignored or handled by civil suits against the corporate shareholders. I do not think the average shareholder who has little if any influence over the corporate officers should pay for these criminal acts, the corporate officers and government officials directly involved should, in criminal court. As for those who think these issues should be ignored. Well this republic is supposed to be a society based on the rule of law not oligarchical discretion or popular opinion. If the law is not applied to the very powerful who violate it in a very public and disrespectful manner then such inaction will embolden criminals to act even worse and create a cynical distrust in the honest persons that will grow like a cancer and destroy the nation.
As one of mostly European but also some Native American ancestry I view our nations history a bit different from many others. It is all too common for many of todays 'patriots' to place this nation on a pedestal and ignore the genocidal atrocities in our history. It is also true that some of mostly Native American descent tend view their ancestors in the same sort of unrealistic light. Scores if not hundreds of millions of Native Americans died as the direct result of European settlement of the Americas. Most of these deaths happened without undue malicious intent simply due to exposure to disease they had little resistance to. However many were the direct result of greed and malicious intent by the European settlers. Those of Native American lineage would be well served to make themselves knowledgeable about the history of their own ancestors though as most of those societies had a very bloody history as well. There have always been bad persons/societies and even good persons/societies that did bad things out of ignorance or poor judgment.
My point in all this yap is that we should all be very introspective and honest about how we got were we are if we expect to find a true path to what is right. Those that do not understand their history are doomed to repeat it. We should also honor in our actions, not just with words, the sacrifices of those who made our world possible. All I am calling for at this time is for people to stand up and demand lawful and ethical action from our elected officials, I ask for this out of respect for the sacrifices of our ancestors and accept the responsibility for defense of our own liberty and our descendants future.
Not to defend the actions of Yahoo but congress should remove the log from their own eye first. The Bush administration and few bureaucrats that call them selves Judicial branch public servants, possibly even a few 'Legislators' and the people running corporate entities such as AT&T should be held accountable and criminally charged for violating the constitution and the civil liberty of US citizens. From what I can see there appears to be sufficient evidence to impeach, dismiss AND charge these parties.
If we do not act soon our generation may very well be cursed by our descendants as the selfish spineless cowards that pissed away everyones hopes, dreams and liberty. Congress has it within their power, but we must demand it. It's time to plant your feet and raise your voice folks. The very stuff you see happening today are the same types of things that inspired statements like "Don't Tread On Me" and "Live Free Or Die". To allow a oligarchic kleptocracy and a bunch of brain dead country music star 'patriots', bible thumping narrow minded bigots and other assorted chicken hawks to destroy our childrens liberty is a sin if there is indeed such a thing. Hundreds of thousands or maybe millions have already given up their blood, hopes and dreams indeed for many their everything so WE and OUR children could live in a world where these were not simply hollow platitudes. We are committing a horribly sacrilegious act of omission as we allow things to continue as they are.
I prefer the following quote by Thomas Jefferson - "When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny."
Also "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security are deserving of neither." which is attributed to either Jefferson or Franklin, depending on where you find it.
Both are very very applicable to the current state of affairs."
Actually I believe the first quotes origin belongs to another Thomas with the last name of Paine. I do agree they are very applicable to our world today. One of my favorite quotes is by Franklin:
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." Benjamin Franklin
And just in case you may sometimes, possibly in a moment of exhaustion, think we are all wasting our time when we challenge things we see as unjust and detrimental to our liberty I have another favorite:
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.." Samuel Adams
I have listed a few more very interesting quotes at the bottom of my homepage:
AND patriots, to finish the paraphrase of Jefferson. Herein lies the problem today. Despite what a few country music stars and other assorted chicken hawks would lead you to believe there is a bit of a shortage of true patriots these days. We are all still just too comfortable and thus too fearful of losing our soft lives, so far anyway. I do believe there are plenty Americans with the passion and fortitude to evolve into true patriots, if pushed far enough. The question is just how far can these folks be pushed before the break occurs. Anyway as TJ noted form time to time the "tree of liberty must be fed" or it will simply wither and die from neglect.
Sorry I lost my formatting AGAIN, I keep encountering a posting bug where/. or my browser loses my cookie data in the transaction somehow.
I think this has more to do with darknets than most normal P2P file sharing clients. Of course what they want is a undefeatable backdoor. Of course this is impossible to guarantee unless the technology's supporting such networks are banned. This is a battle where the FOSS community will have to take a stand on the side of freedom or loose much of our moral authority. It will be a tough fight since the confluence of serious threat, real malicious intent with the ignorant scared masses and their appointed idiots makes for a frackin' mess.
In most of the western world today complainants about one or more issues of terrorism, illegal content, or copyright have some legitimate right to be critical of darknets. At least from my limited excursions the accusations of misuse seem to have some valid claim. There does not seem to be much real use of the darknets for what I would consider important liberty related stuff as of yet. However in the near future this may not be so, besides at such a time such information would be a threat to those in power so it would be declared illegal anyway. Still I find value in a few quotes that relate here:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" Benjamin Franklin
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." Samuel Adams
"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own." Thomas Jefferson
"When the people fear their Government, there is tyranny. When the Government fears it's people, there is liberty." Thomas Paine
"There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly." Henry David Thoreau
"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last." Winston Churchill
"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." Abraham Lincoln
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." Benjamin Franklin
"We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." Benjamin Franklin
I think this has more to do with darknets than most normal P2P file sharing clients. Of course what they want is a undefeatable backdoor. Of course this is impossible to guarantee unless the technology's supporting such networks are banned. This is a battle where the FOSS community will have to take a stand on the side of freedom or loose much of our moral authority. It will be a tough fight since the confluence of serious threat, real malicious intent with the ignorant scared masses and their appointed idiots makes for a frackin' mess. In most of the western world today complainants about one or more issues of terrorism, illegal content, or copyright have some legitimate right to be critical of darknets. At least from my limited excursions the accusations of misuse seem to have some valid claim. There does not seem to be much real use of the darknets for what I would consider important liberty related stuff as of yet. However in the near future this may not be so, besides at such a time such information would be a threat to those in power so it would be declared illegal anyway. Still I find value in a few quotes that relate here:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"
Benjamin Franklin
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds."
Samuel Adams
"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own."
Thomas Jefferson
"When the people fear their Government, there is tyranny. When the Government fears it's people, there is liberty."
Thomas Paine
"There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly."
Henry David Thoreau
"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."
Winston Churchill
"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."
Abraham Lincoln
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
Benjamin Franklin
"We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." Benjamin Franklin
When the fight comes home where will you stand?
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
"Doesn't a jump straight from squirrel to fly violate Moore's law?"
Flying squirrels, cool... can they pull a wabbit out of their hat as well?
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
"So it comes down to these two options. a. The government of the US can create almost magical technology and then is stupid enough to use it in this manner. or b. Someone at a anti-war protest thinks they see robotic spy bug and tells other like minded people that they saw a spy bug who are then sure they saw a spy bug......"
Lets see we have in option A: The dimwits behind the Iraq war, duct tape personal protection and color coded terrorism alerts. In option B: Quite a few rally attending activist tinfoil hat types. Sorry but it seems to me that both of your options are equally valid.
"While I would like to point out this is not about critical flight control systems (where I doubt any Linux would be certified as it costs a lot to be) and in-flight entertainment machines are OK to crash sometimes, the specific functionality is, probably, a win for Linux distros."
While the link below describes ground based flight control operations rather than in flight aircraft controls it is still pretty damn critical stuff. The implementation described in the article is impressive. From the article:
"DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH developed a radar data-processing system called PHOENIX, which runs on SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server for high availability and performance - helping ensure safety for aircraft across Germany."
"As much as the "well they are breaking the law/what do you have to hide" appeals to me"
"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." Abraham Lincoln
Slashdot Mirror
"Not in an atmosphere, they don't. Unless you think flying droplets of metal and scorched fragments of composites still counts as a "scramjet"."
Uh dude we have a little problem here. Scramjets are air breathers, ie: they require an atmosphere, they would not work at all in a vacuum.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
I have had several events such as this in my life, the most notable when I was about 17.
A friend and I were on a motorcycle, me driving, poking along at about 50 or so. We met an acquaintance driving a 7osih Buick Electra 225, a big car. We did not recognize or take note of him but he had us and had something he needed to see my friend about. He got in behind us and was trying to pass and get in front of us when traffic forced him to retreat.
He was doing better than 70 and his brakes failed, rather than taking the ditch the idiot ran over us. I never even knew he was there, I remember thinking some non nonsensical stuff about groundhog holes in the road as I flipped over the Buick, I remember the sight of the trunk lid coming toward me, thinking "roll I gotta roll", hitting the trunk lid, thinking "roll fuck", and an extended series of flips, sliding, cartwheels down the pavement as I noted the abundance of goldenrod the field and the odd color combination of an on coming pickup. I remember thoughts wondering about my friend on the back of the bike, I remember regretting the loss of my leather bomber jacket as it was peeled from me.
All in all from this and several other events including one very recent one, for me time SEEMS to slow way down DURING one of these events NOT just in recollections after them. I do not have a explanation for the experience but I can tell you the perception of time slowing happens. Gotta go my Australian Shepard-Blue Heeler mix wants to play and is about to pull my leg off.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
As my maternal grandfather noted "Life is like roll of toilet paper, the closer you get to the end the faster it goes" At age 51 now I can see he was dead-on.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
"Growing up in a small rural area, I knew people just like Clevon. And they were regarded as the alpha males because they were good at sports. Some got a free ride to state college for their physical skills. Unfortunately they didn't complete the first year of college because they treated it like high school..."
Then they came back home and got a job in law enforcement. The few that managed to finish some level of extended education became detectives, the rest became patrol boys with guns. Sad but true at least around here most the cops are ex-jocks, and yes it is scary.
Wabi Sabi
Matthew
Just last week I was giving someone at democrats.org hell for NOT redistributing clips of Republican candidates via P2P. The basic idea they have is great, stringers are following the Republican candidates around and recording as many public events as possible. The audio/video transcripts are reportedly posted on a publicly accessible server for download. Opposition supporters are supposed to be able to download, purview, cut, mix, remix etc at their will. The damn distribution server has been so bogged down that I gave up on it without a single downloaded file. In an pissy email I whined about that and about their choice of format for content they wished people to be able to edit easily, Flash, of course.
After thinking about it I hope nasty tricks like this Comcast deal, or packet redirection or throttling, and restrictive propriety formats do cause issues for them, maybe the present majority will be less like to kowtow to Hollywood and various software and media corps. These companies need a serious judicial or legislative bitch slappin in the worst kind of way.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
"I like rich people. Rich people spend lots of money. I never got a job from a poor person."
I have been in several ventures in my years where I had fairly concurrent contact with people from various fiducial stratas in life while self employed in the construction/service trades or truck farming.
The absolute best customers I have had were people of moderate or lesser means, especially the older folks. They may have cut a hard bargain up front but they almost always paid in full on the spot or in a timely manner as per our agreement, and quite often tried to feed you as well. The next best were other self employed small business folks, who while demanding on the quality and ruthless on the details of the contract usually paid promptly and smoothly.
A few times I had the chance to work for very wealthy persons that owned private enterprises themselves. I found these folks to be very much like myself and other self employed business people, on steroids. Very very smart people, enjoyed a good round of up front haggling on the deal a bit too much, often would drive you insane on the details, devilishly good at using OPM (other peoples money) including mine, but straight up on the payment when the time came.
The ones I had the most trouble with in aspects like slow, or even no pay, disingenuous manipulation or even outright attempts at deception in the details and of course the old 'milking' the job for freebies were nearly always the professionals, bankers, doctors, lawyers (criminal defense lawyers excluded, I had several really good customers from this herd and no bad ones), real estate speculators, CEO/VP level corporate managers and worst of all deals involving contacts with the larger corporate entities themselves.
Of course there are no absolutes here and there were many exceptions to what I noted above, and this is from my admittedly limited experience but it has been generally my experience in my roughly thirty years of adult life involving hundreds of examples.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
"You will work for a while, you will be caught, you will confess, and then you will die... There is no possibility that any perceptible change will happen within our own lifetime. We are the dead."
"For the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself."
"Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!"
Eric Blair
You know? Personally I think the smarter ones. You know? That, that are capable of detecting our. You know? Noise are probably. You know? Hiding from us. You know? I would, wouldn't you? :) You Think?
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
Would someone explain to me what the logic is with DXxx versions in Windows. It has been a long time since I stayed that current with the esoteric details of Windows. These posts seem to imply that DX10 capable drivers will never be available to Windows XP. Is it an issue of API changes so extensive that a replacement kernel and a few dlls could not provide backward support?
It sounds to me to an example of intentional obsolescence. This is logical enough I guess from Microsoft's standpoint anyway. It just all seems so wasteful to me. I can see a reason for these expensive OS upgrades as we move up in address space 8-16-32-64-128, or with a transition like moving from 98/NT to 2000 maybe but not for the incremental improvements we have been seeing from Redmond for the 32bit versions of the OS. Anyway, since it does not seem to be working out for them this time does anyone wonder if we might see MS blink and commission an intermediate upgrade step like a non-free service pack for XP?
I'm just happy I am not on that treadmill anymore or IBM's pay through the nose OS/2 Sub Service plan. The openSuse 10.2 install I am posting this from had it roots in Suse 9.0 and has see about six upgrades and countless updates but still works and is my wifes main, if not only, boot OS. I mean everything works as well with it as with a clean 10.2 install. I tend to play a bit with things an have been mostly using another 10.2 install with Beryl at the last SVN version prior to fusion. I have a clean openSuse 10.3 install I am checking out, in addition to Sabayon 3.4 on another clean install. Plus I have scores of so other distros via VMWare, and yes Win98 and NT4, BSD, ReAct, etc. never owned XP or 2000, though I do use both at work.
The Linux community is dynamic, fun, well coded and inexpensive for me. MS would be in a bad place if every third person went so far as give Linux an honest try. But I don't think many ever will, this stuff is just not that important to them. Plus they have been conditioned to expect less and pay more. About the only scenario I see that would work for most of those I know is if gasoline hits $5 per gallon AND they lose or damage their restore CD WHEN they next trash out XP, (every three months to a year, depending on the person).
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
Uh, how about 'focus', though I will agree that some time critical issues like media burning need other methods, same argument could be made for network apps, oh damn here we go again.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
"We should be arguing: If you don't believe in using the wifi spectrum for free, open communication, then you shouldn't be using it. Pay for a license to use your own block of restricted spectrum."
One: the telecos want to define this in a way that allows them to sell the most services and features. Even if everyone in your router range could get all the connection they need without exceeding your bandwidth allocation, remember unlimited does not mean unlimited anyway, the telecos miss the sales of services to them. This is why they have often taken community based projects to court, though I do not know what their legal argument was specifically. Plus there is a chunk of the population that would agree with this on the philosophical ideal of 'mine, mine, all mine' that asserts authority is gold, greed is good and anything that questions authority or is open or free is a pinko liberal communist plot. I suspect this is about 10-15% of the population, or the same percentage that believes Cheney is a patriot and Bush is the messiah.
"But it seems we have a lot of people here who are profoundly anti-open-communication, and think that people who caught communicating openly should be punished"
Two: if every/anyone can access your wireless router this provides a layer of anonymity that does not allow troublemakers to be hounded down, you know the need to 'save the children' from the druggies, perverts, terrorists and their pinko liberal communist enablers. Plus since many of the same people that distrust a society that allows open anonymity are technical Luddites who would be lost configuring a wireless router and thus they are fearful that they may be confused for some of the above distasteful persons and end up sharing a cell with them.
Even for those who do not fit the descriptions above, the population in general seem either too distracted with their fat lazy lives, too busy pilfering someone else's life, or are simply too stupid to comprehend what is actually happening to our world. I look to the left, to the right or right down the middle and I just don't see anyone in leadership REALLY addressing the slaughter of our liberty and very few in the great masses that have a clue what is happening and just why they should be concerned about it.
When hear someone proclaim themselves as a 'progressive' and I grab my wallet and hide my gun. When I hear someone proclaim themselves as a 'conservative' and I grab my wallet and load my gun. When I hear someone proclaim themselves as a liberal, I roll my eyes and think 'oh really?' but still hope maybe, just maybe this one is for real. When I hear someone proclaim themselves as a patriot my first instinct is to shoot the frackin' fascist idiot while I still can.
If there is anyone I did not piss off here, please let me know how I failed you and I will try to correct my mistake next time.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
As someone who been inside the health care industry for the last 20 years I can assure you that there is a horrendous percentage of this money spent on things that have no real direct relationship with the delivery of medical care. I happen to work at one of the better managed organizations both from a medical and business view, but it is the exception.
Probably nearly a third of your health care costs go toward bloated administrative costs. How medical care professionals and institutions get paid is a quagmire of private and government plans that requires multiple, confusing and usually duplicated efforts and paperwork. While dealing with the bureaucracy of government programs is indeed a hassle the challenges are often trivial when compared to private insurers that quite frankly do their best to not pay their obligations at all if possible and have evolved slow pay into an art. Then there is the issue of top level management staffing levels and compensation which are both often obscene, all the while lower level managers and staff are run dangerously lean in both salary and staffing levels. The salaries of the insurance executives and staff figure into this in the same manner as far as you and I are concerned even if from the opposite perspective industry-wise.
The next largest black hole involves marketing and the associated 'appearance' issues. Sadly more often that not an organization is bleed pale by advertising and cosmetic 'improvements' to facilities and grounds. Local media is often a player in this. If anything does go wrong, and of course it does far too often what with the typical low staffing levels and money diverted for real needs, then the local media will hound the institution relentlessly. Subsequently or sometimes concurrently the other hand of the media is in the organizations pocket for 'image recovery' advertising.
As for direct medical costs, the areas of emergency care, medical imaging, cancer treatment and surgery often though of as the 'expensive part' of the equation is dwarfed by long term care costs. I guess it is politically incorrect to point out that this more often than not involves a patient who has passed the average lifespan. Many families of of average means or less will see their entire inheritance siphoned away in grandpas or grannies last two months, or maybe weeks, of life.
Finally another huge issue that is a bit harder to quantify with numbers but I believe has the largest impact of all. There is a reason why health care organizations often find themselves in highly litigious circumstances. Simply put the medical care establishment due to some of the reasons stated above along with other equally inexcusable reasons every year manage to kill more people that auto accidents, firearms, and illegal drugs combined. These are deaths caused by misdiagnoses, medication mistakes, equipment failures, simple negligence and the biggest of all infection control failures.
There is a lot of work to be done before we can expect to have reasonable quality health care at a reasonable cost. Many of the entrenched players such as the insurance, medical prosthesis and drug industries have no reason to want change in their part of the camp. With the system so broken medical care professionals, administrators and support staffing are nearly hopelessly beleaguered in most cases where they try to improve things. Every year now for what seems like forever I hear 'you have to work smarter and do more with less' and we do pretty good at it, but the costs keep going up anyway. Hey but aren't those grounds pretty, my look at those Italian marble floors, oohhh you just gotta see the granite fountain in the patrons garden and did you see that new TV spot with Dr so and so....
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
Oh as for the topic of the article, screw Gene Simmons, I say boycott anything he has ever done or will ever do, like any of it was worth listening to anyway.
Heh, you know you can change that, right? We are still talking about open source GNU/Linux aren't we? I will agree that the default openSuse Gnome start menu implementation is horrendous, I am not a SLED customer so I don't know so much about it of course. Then again I am not a Gnome fan anyway, I use KDE on openSuse and have to say I like the new openSuse kicker menu quite well. I feel the same way about most GTK interfaces, I prefer those built from QT. I just installed 10.3 and the GTK based Compiz Fusion manager sux compared what I am pretty sure is a QT based Beryl manager on 10.2.
As for the politics here. I am not fond of anything that involves a deal with MS. However from a pragmatic standpoint I still like Suse or at least openSuse better than any distro I have tried (all the heavy hitters). It may be that in the future I have to move to something else due to this deal, but at this time the deal has very little to do with openSuse and the distro still has the same German engineered feel of a well nitpicked and finely finished quality to it from my perspective. It just works, all of it, not 95% or so like many other distros.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
First thanks for the reply, you know the payment for our liberty was made with the blood of our ancestors. As for the loss of liberty caused by conflicts in the world being driven by the availability of oil. There may be some truth in this as there are others in the world that would prefer to see the USA neutered somewhat. Russian and Chinese leaders to be sure as well as many others would for sure prefer to see the USA not as powerful. This is partly simple human nature and partly because of our own behavior. The human nature part is something we have limited control of and simply need to accept and deal with in a logical manner. The issue of our own behavior is something we have much more control of. Preemptive acts of aggression against other nations or detrimental manipulation of other societies out of greed or ignorance is not helpful to say the least. While it may often necessary to act in our own interest in these manners we should be cautious and do so in a logical and ethical manner. The situation I see today seems to me to be driven by the greed of a select few at the expense of almost everyone else, caution and ethics do not seem to part of the equation.
My original post was mostly directed at the issue of violations of American citizens constitutional guaranteed rights in regard to issues such as the unconstitutional wholesale data mining of internet traffic by the government with the assistance of corporate entities. My view on this is that the government officials and corporate officers should be held accountable for these criminal acts perpetrated on the American citizen. Others believe that these should be either ignored or handled by civil suits against the corporate shareholders. I do not think the average shareholder who has little if any influence over the corporate officers should pay for these criminal acts, the corporate officers and government officials directly involved should, in criminal court. As for those who think these issues should be ignored. Well this republic is supposed to be a society based on the rule of law not oligarchical discretion or popular opinion. If the law is not applied to the very powerful who violate it in a very public and disrespectful manner then such inaction will embolden criminals to act even worse and create a cynical distrust in the honest persons that will grow like a cancer and destroy the nation.
As one of mostly European but also some Native American ancestry I view our nations history a bit different from many others. It is all too common for many of todays 'patriots' to place this nation on a pedestal and ignore the genocidal atrocities in our history. It is also true that some of mostly Native American descent tend view their ancestors in the same sort of unrealistic light. Scores if not hundreds of millions of Native Americans died as the direct result of European settlement of the Americas. Most of these deaths happened without undue malicious intent simply due to exposure to disease they had little resistance to. However many were the direct result of greed and malicious intent by the European settlers. Those of Native American lineage would be well served to make themselves knowledgeable about the history of their own ancestors though as most of those societies had a very bloody history as well. There have always been bad persons/societies and even good persons/societies that did bad things out of ignorance or poor judgment.
My point in all this yap is that we should all be very introspective and honest about how we got were we are if we expect to find a true path to what is right. Those that do not understand their history are doomed to repeat it. We should also honor in our actions, not just with words, the sacrifices of those who made our world possible. All I am calling for at this time is for people to stand up and demand lawful and ethical action from our elected officials, I ask for this out of respect for the sacrifices of our ancestors and accept the responsibility for defense of our own liberty and our descendants future.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
Not to defend the actions of Yahoo but congress should remove the log from their own eye first. The Bush administration and few bureaucrats that call them selves Judicial branch public servants, possibly even a few 'Legislators' and the people running corporate entities such as AT&T should be held accountable and criminally charged for violating the constitution and the civil liberty of US citizens. From what I can see there appears to be sufficient evidence to impeach, dismiss AND charge these parties.
If we do not act soon our generation may very well be cursed by our descendants as the selfish spineless cowards that pissed away everyones hopes, dreams and liberty. Congress has it within their power, but we must demand it. It's time to plant your feet and raise your voice folks. The very stuff you see happening today are the same types of things that inspired statements like "Don't Tread On Me" and "Live Free Or Die". To allow a oligarchic kleptocracy and a bunch of brain dead country music star 'patriots', bible thumping narrow minded bigots and other assorted chicken hawks to destroy our childrens liberty is a sin if there is indeed such a thing. Hundreds of thousands or maybe millions have already given up their blood, hopes and dreams indeed for many their everything so WE and OUR children could live in a world where these were not simply hollow platitudes. We are committing a horribly sacrilegious act of omission as we allow things to continue as they are.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
"By the people, for the people"?
I prefer the following quote by Thomas Jefferson - "When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny."
Also "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security are deserving of neither." which is attributed to either Jefferson or Franklin, depending on where you find it.
Both are very very applicable to the current state of affairs."
Actually I believe the first quotes origin belongs to another Thomas with the last name of Paine. I do agree they are very applicable to our world today. One of my favorite quotes is by Franklin:
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." Benjamin Franklin
And just in case you may sometimes, possibly in a moment of exhaustion, think we are all wasting our time when we challenge things we see as unjust and detrimental to our liberty I have another favorite:
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.." Samuel Adams
I have listed a few more very interesting quotes at the bottom of my homepage:
hypersynergy.com
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
"Liberty is fed with the blood of tyrants"
AND patriots, to finish the paraphrase of Jefferson. Herein lies the problem today. Despite what a few country music stars and other assorted chicken hawks would lead you to believe there is a bit of a shortage of true patriots these days. We are all still just too comfortable and thus too fearful of losing our soft lives, so far anyway. I do believe there are plenty Americans with the passion and fortitude to evolve into true patriots, if pushed far enough. The question is just how far can these folks be pushed before the break occurs. Anyway as TJ noted form time to time the "tree of liberty must be fed" or it will simply wither and die from neglect.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
Hi Simon,
Welcome to the list.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
hypersynergy.com
Sorry I lost my formatting AGAIN, I keep encountering a posting bug where /. or my browser loses my cookie data in the transaction somehow.
I think this has more to do with darknets than most normal P2P file sharing clients. Of course what they want is a undefeatable backdoor. Of course this is impossible to guarantee unless the technology's supporting such networks are banned. This is a battle where the FOSS community will have to take a stand on the side of freedom or loose much of our moral authority. It will be a tough fight since the confluence of serious threat, real malicious intent with the ignorant scared masses and their appointed idiots makes for a frackin' mess.
In most of the western world today complainants about one or more issues of terrorism, illegal content, or copyright have some legitimate right to be critical of darknets. At least from my limited excursions the accusations of misuse seem to have some valid claim. There does not seem to be much real use of the darknets for what I would consider important liberty related stuff as of yet. However in the near future this may not be so, besides at such a time such information would be a threat to those in power so it would be declared illegal anyway. Still I find value in a few quotes that relate here:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"
Benjamin Franklin
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds."
Samuel Adams
"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own."
Thomas Jefferson
"When the people fear their Government, there is tyranny. When the Government fears it's people, there is liberty."
Thomas Paine
"There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly."
Henry David Thoreau
"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."
Winston Churchill
"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."
Abraham Lincoln
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
Benjamin Franklin
"We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." Benjamin Franklin
When the fight comes home where will you stand?
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
I think this has more to do with darknets than most normal P2P file sharing clients. Of course what they want is a undefeatable backdoor. Of course this is impossible to guarantee unless the technology's supporting such networks are banned. This is a battle where the FOSS community will have to take a stand on the side of freedom or loose much of our moral authority. It will be a tough fight since the confluence of serious threat, real malicious intent with the ignorant scared masses and their appointed idiots makes for a frackin' mess. In most of the western world today complainants about one or more issues of terrorism, illegal content, or copyright have some legitimate right to be critical of darknets. At least from my limited excursions the accusations of misuse seem to have some valid claim. There does not seem to be much real use of the darknets for what I would consider important liberty related stuff as of yet. However in the near future this may not be so, besides at such a time such information would be a threat to those in power so it would be declared illegal anyway. Still I find value in a few quotes that relate here: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" Benjamin Franklin "It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." Samuel Adams "It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own." Thomas Jefferson "When the people fear their Government, there is tyranny. When the Government fears it's people, there is liberty." Thomas Paine "There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly." Henry David Thoreau "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last." Winston Churchill "Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." Abraham Lincoln "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." Benjamin Franklin "We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." Benjamin Franklin When the fight comes home where will you stand? Wabi-Sabi Matthew
Steer them to where?
"Doesn't a jump straight from squirrel to fly violate Moore's law?" Flying squirrels, cool... can they pull a wabbit out of their hat as well? Wabi-Sabi Matthew
"So it comes down to these two options.
a. The government of the US can create almost magical technology and then is stupid enough to use it in this manner.
or
b. Someone at a anti-war protest thinks they see robotic spy bug and tells other like minded people that they saw a spy bug who are then sure they saw a spy bug......"
Lets see we have in option A: The dimwits behind the Iraq war, duct tape personal protection and color coded terrorism alerts. In option B: Quite a few rally attending activist tinfoil hat types. Sorry but it seems to me that both of your options are equally valid.
Wabi Sabi
Matthew
"While I would like to point out this is not about critical flight control systems (where I doubt any Linux would be certified as it costs a lot to be) and in-flight entertainment machines are OK to crash sometimes, the specific functionality is, probably, a win for Linux distros."
While the link below describes ground based flight control operations rather than in flight aircraft controls it is still pretty damn critical stuff. The implementation described in the article is impressive. From the article:
"DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH developed a radar data-processing system called PHOENIX, which runs on SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server for high availability and performance - helping ensure safety for aircraft across Germany."
Link to full article with video:
http://www.novell.com/success/dfs.html
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
Happily running openSuse 10.2 with KDE/Beryl-SVN as my primary OS.
"As much as the "well they are breaking the law/what do you have to hide" appeals to me"
"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." Abraham Lincoln
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew