For the Japanese? It is one factor. But WWII started with Germany invading Poland. Japan had re-invented itself from a feudal country without any real punch to its power into a force to be reckoned with. Unlike China, which got a later start in converting from swords, bows & arrows, and other such items - Japan embraced western technology once they saw just how effective it really was. China was playing catch-up to Japan when Hitler began WWII. Japan saw this as a way to justify their extermination of the people of China, and began an all-out war against China. Germany, for its part, pleaded with Japan not to attack America (the so-called Sleeping Giant) but Japan wanted the Hawaiian islands because they felt the islands belonged to them. Thus Pearl Harbor. The irony of it all is that Russia and China were actually thinking about joining Hitler in his bid to take over the world. However, Hitler (or the Nazis) knew that there were huge Jewish sects in Russia and the Chinese - Japan hatred made Hitler have to choose between the two. He chose Japan but regretted it later when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because it brought America into the war. Since America had been fed a diet of rapist, murders, druggies, and insane people for years by the Europeans (and everyone else in the world) - we were feared not only because of how powerful we were as a nation, but because they had no idea exactly what we were like except that we were brutal or barbaric in battle. We were (and still are) the crazy nation of the world. Further, since the "Wild West" was still pretty young, America enlisted the aid of American Indians. My father was grouped with some commanches in WWII and they were under direct orders to teach the rest of the guys commanche war cries. The blood curdling cries would, on their own, cause the Germans to run away (or become demoralized) because according to the movies - the Indians scalped everyone and the Germans were very much afraid that they would be scalped. Further, once things got to going it was the American Indians who would talk over the walkie-talkies because they were talking in their own language and no one except the other American Indians knew what they were saying. This is because it wasn't like code breaking. The entire language would have to be learned in order to know what was being said.
That may be - but you noticed that Japan did release the captain and his ship. I think you will shortly see China reduce or remove the export restrictions.
This has a lot to do with loosing face. Whoever backs down first looses not only face but the integrity to demand certain things as well. Like the island Japan is claiming. If they back down on the fishing captain they will probably lose the island because China's next move is to demand that Japan recognize China's right to the island. Most likely China would use the same tactics it is employing now.
Here are some other things to think about in this conflict:
1. While it is true Japan does not have a large land mass with extensive resources, Japan is a master at trading with other countries. Japan also has extensive investments in other countries (such as the US) and they own and operate companies in those other countries. Thus, by doing what China has done, it could backfire on China because other countries (such as the US) will be prodded by the Japanese to intervene.
2. Japan has a very large extension to their land into the ocean on the eastern side of the island. As far as I know, Japan has never tried to harvest minerals from the ocean. This is because it is harder to do this than to buy the minerals from a country that can mine it readily. However, if the Japanese are driven to it - I believe they will begin making investments in mining minerals directly from the ocean's floor.
3. Africa holds many exotic minerals in its land and within the past few years, Japan has been buying in to the mineral rights in Africa (as has China). So I believe that although China's blockade will hurt Japan, I do not think it will hurt it as much as many think it will.
As for the "Nukem til they glow!" mentality - A chinese friend of mine told me, back in the 1970s, that one of the major the Chinese prophecies states that the US (the eagle from the west) attacks China and there is a tremendous war that ensues which decimates the US. Whether or not this is true (as the Bible also states that the great nations are all at war [bear, eagle, and many headed dragon]) remains to be seen.
The truth, as far as I can see it, is that China and Japan need to sit down, at a table, across from each other, and talk things out. China itself is a massive country and a few small islands really are not worth their time or effort. The life of the fishing captain is. Japan should also have released the fishing captain and his boat. Possibly after taking all of the fish (since they would spoil anyway) and giving the captain a percentage of the money gained through their sale. China is still lving with World War II in mind where the Japanese killed millions of Chinese. The Chinese need to remember that they have killed millions of Japanese in the past also. Like the countries in the Middle East, where hatreds go all the way back to when the Egyptians were building their pyramids, the world needs to grow up, become adults, and stop acting like bratty children. But then - you'd also have to stop some of those brats from continuing to push the other children's buttons. Like the Iraelis continuing to build on land that was never given to them in the original treaty. Of course, then you'd have to also recognize that Israel was founded without the consent of the people who were living in the Middle East at the time it was created. The land was just taken away from them and given to the Israelis. But enough of that. The mantra should be "Grow-up, play-nice, and stop acting like you are SO offended." We only have one sandbox to play in - let's try to get along.
A year after D&D came out I had bought the 3 Book set. I played hard, died a lot, and even allowed my GPA in college go down the drain. D&D was like a drug and I couldn't get enough of it. A small toy company called Nan's Toy Shop put on a small D&D get together and Frank called up the fledgling TSR, Inc. game company and asked if some of the people could come down to Houston and chat with the fans. Surprisingly enough Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, and a couple of other people came to Houston. I got to talk to everyone and even got my 3-Book set signed by both Gary and Dave. Over the years, no matter what else went on I have kept hold of those books because they really are a piece of history.
With the advent of games like EverQuest, GuildWars, and WOW - people have forgotten that all of these games have their basis in the original Chainmail and 3-Book set of rules produced by Gary, Dave, and others. Those simple rules were the first and helped to show the way for everyone else. I'll miss knowing that somewhere out there Dave and Gary were working to bring something new to the world....
I have sat here now, for a while, looking at those old books thinking of what else I could say but I think I'm going to put them back up now. After all, I wouldn't want them to get wet.
I can most readily agree that it would be badly administered. But then - that is a part of the problem as well. And you may not like the methods I suggest - but doing nothing is worse than doing something. Which is what is happening presently. Slaps on hands are not what are needed. We need laws in the same vein as those which were passed after the last great depression. When companies then, as now, ran amuck, did as they pleased, and caused great hardship for the people of America.
Also, I would not say private or public monopolies are supposed to even exist. They are, IMHO, an aberration to the natural order of things. That is to say - the more we have monopolies, the less we have freedoms. For the two can not exist together. Like the cast system of feudal times, kings never liked their subjects to be well read nor to exert their freedoms. Subjugation is the motto of monopolies. It is the small company who says they want people to have the freedom to choose. (Usually for their product - true.)
As I have said - I do not believe in having monopolies. You are saying they should exist. Can you give good examples of why monopolies are something we need and/or want? Can you name a company which is in existence today that hasn't done something terrible to people someplace in the world? I'd be interested in knowing about such a company.
You are very correct in what you are saying about our tax system. However, there is one thing which I would add to your last statement and that is "so long as no one cares." Because that is the basis of many problems with our country presently. The "I don't care," attitude which I hear from many different people. Young, old, or even in between. As if whatever our government decides to do no one has any control over.
Not true. There are certain business practices that are illegal if employed by a company with monopoly power.
Isn't that what I said? If you don't think so maybe you should read my message again.
So you're basically against economies of scale? Pro work-duplication? I suppose this would be great for middle managers, but for everyone else it would suck. It would actually hobble competition because it would remove the incentive to grow.
Never said that. Either the economies of scale nor the Pro work-duplication. Companies can work together which would allow for the economies of scale. Nor should (or would) two companies sell exactly the same item. Both of them would make their widgets unique to differentiate themselves from each other. Try again please.:-)
One could go on, but I think the main idea is that radical anti-corporate action is neither as justified or as desirable as might seem to those who fear the power of big business. The saying is that Democracy is the absolute worst political system, except for all the others. Similarly, one should think carefully about the alternatives before assuming that some nice-sounding idea would be superior to what we already have, economically and socially speaking.
You have me all wrong. I'm not anti-corporate - I'm anti-monopolistic. There is a difference. Nor do I fear the power of big business. I just loath the misuse of power that big business constantly is doing. Like the things Microsoft does and which are reported here all of the time. Or maybe you'd like to defend HP's executives and the things they have been doing to their own employees? Enron anyone? You only have to go to the DOJ's website to find hundreds of companies both large and small which engage in felonius persuits. So don't sit over there and say how great these criminals are - because they they are no where near pristine in their actions. Far from it. But the larger the corporation gets - the worse they get in breaking the law, overstepping the rights we all are supposed to enjoy, and so forth.
Or do you like that Microsoft, with Windows Media Player 11 is now enforcing what they see as DRM? Well, if so - then pucker right up because if we do not do something soon we are all going to be smooching Bill's behind.
Congress, back in the 1980s, decided to help itself to more of the American people's money. They crafted a law which made it so that when a Congressman retired he continued to be paid at the same salary that he was being paid when he retired. Further, every time Congress had a pay increase - the retired people also get a pay increase.
Now, let's see.....
First, there are two senators to each state. So we have 50 people there. Then, there are an equal number of Congressmen as there are people living in a given state, divided by a certain number of people. All in all there are probably around 400 Congressmen. So our grand total is around 450 people. Minimum salary averaged over the years is (off the top of my head) somewhere around $75,000.00. So 450 * $75,000.00 is $33,750,000.00 each year that is paid to the members of both houses just to start being a congressman.
Most Congressmen have at least one pay raise while in office and this pay raise is usually around 10% so after one year they would be making around $83,000.00 or $37,350,000.00.
Now let's say that every four years there is a complete turnover of both houses (elections are every two years so everyone gets two terms in office before leaving). So 2006-1980 = 26 years / 4 = 6.5 years. So both houses have completely turned over for at least six times.
But we have to recalculate the salaries because instead of them just being there for two years - they get to stay for four years. So 1=$75K, 2=$83.5K, 3=$91,851.00, and 4=$101,035.00.
So after four years we have paid: $33,750,000.00 + $37,350,000.00 + $41,332,950.00 + $45,465,750.00 = $117,898,700.00 dollars. But wait! There's more! Even if all of the people in Congress in 1984 left - they still get paid with raises each year. So doing a little math (or more likely writing a small Perl script) we have the following:
Year 1980 = 402238458.148294 Year 1981 = 365671325.589358 Year 1982 = 332428477.808508 Year 1983 = 302207707.098643 Year 1984 = 274734279.180585 Year 1985 = 249758435.618713 Year 1986 = 227053123.289739 Year 1987 = 206411930.263399 Year 1988 = 187647209.330363 Year 1989 = 170588372.118512 Year 1990 = 155080338.289556 Year 1991 = 140982125.717778 Year 1992 = 128165568.834344 Year 1993 = 116514153.485767 Year 1994 = 105921957.714334 Year 1995 = 96292688.8312126 Year 1996 = 87538808.0283751 Year 1997 = 79580734.5712501 Year 1998 = 72346122.3375 Year 1999 = 65769202.125 Year 2000 = 59790183.75 Year 2001 = 54354712.5 Year 2002 = 49413375 Year 2003 = 44921250 Year 2004 = 40837500 Year 2005 = 37125000 Year 2006 = 33750000 Total = 4087123039.63123
So by the year 2006 we are paying out somewhere around $4,087,123,039.63 dollars a year just to past members of Congress while you will probably be paid only around $1,700.00 a month via Social Security (or $20,400.00 a year). Fixed. Never to go up except maybe at 3% every year or so. And that is where the money is going. Not into retirement funds but into retired Congressional member's pockets at an increasing rate of around 10% per year.
Is it any wonder why Congress can't make a balanced budget or even keep its spending in check?
That is what happened with some people. They didn't do the erase first and so supposedly important government information was allowed to leave NASA. Having worked there since the 1980's I can tell you first hand that A LOT of the software at NASA is, well, from the 1980's. (Or as they said in Eragon: I was expecting something.....well....more.:-) )
Although updated on something like a yearly basis, many of the people who are in management at NASA do not like it when change comes along and they fight it tooth and nail. This means that NASA (and I suppose most of the US Government) drags behind everyone else.
As an interesting side note: My wife (who is a teacher) went to a seminar where the teachers were told that they were actually curators of museums. The person explained it in this way: "I have a pen, bought in Japan. If I set up the pen like so..." here he twisted the pen in two and it split into three parts forming a tripod - "I can push this button on the pen and..." and it displayed a virtual screen on the wall and a keyboard on the table top. The man smiled at all of the teachers in the room. "You will probably never see this device again until you retire. Because our government won't buy them and allow your students to use them. These pens act like dumb terminals and only require a USB cable to plug into any computer. You could use cheap cardboard to display the video and keyboard anywhere and these things aren't that expensive - if you buy it in Japan." The museum barb is accurate. Teachers still use overhead projectors instead of having projectors attached to computers. Very badly written software does a poor job of teaching students how to do things. Grading software creeps along. (I know because I've helped to enter grades and it can take up to a minute to enter one grade.)
Until we rein in big business we will never get anywhere. I have advocated, for many years, a cap to the size of businesses in the US (and anywhere else for that matter). Too much power consolidated down to any one business is just asking for trouble because it is the nature of business people to do the same things that Microsoft, AT&T, and other businesses do - which is to drive your competition out of business so you have a monopoly and once you've established yourself as a monopoly to mistreat anyone who goes against you in a most unjust manner.
Our government is supposed to be absolutely, positively, without remorse, without regard to anyone - against allowing monopolies to exist. They are NEVER supposed to exist unless they are government run monopolies (like the US Mail originally was). Yet here we are, not much more than 200 years after these rules and regulations were set down on paper - with monopolies and our government is too much of a sissy to put them in their place.
Forget all of the other problems. Forget all of the other laws, the Sonny Bono act - all of it. If we split up our monopolies into multiple companies, then those other companies would fight to repeal most of the stupid laws because they wouldn't be able to exist with them in place. Which is to say that ALL of the major laws written in the last twenty to thirty years have been geared towards one thing - the creation of monopolies.
The idea is - if a company makes X number of dollars a year, then it must split up into two companies to maintain competition. From where I sit - the amount would be a billion dollars a year GROSS. Not net - gross. If this were done we would not have the problems we have now because all of the business people would be too busy fighting for market share to muck around with the government like they do now. The law would also have to be made so that it would require a 3/4 majority of everyone in the United States in order to modify and/or repeal the law.
There are two parts to any problem which infects a society. These are: 1)symptoms, and 2)causes. Everyone is being misdirected to look only at the symptoms and to try to fix the symptoms. Like a bad doctor who doesn't know how to treat an illness, the patient is saying "my head hurts" and so the doctor gives the patient some aspirin not knowing that the person actually has a tumor growing in their brain. The symptom is the headache but the cause is the tumor and if all you do is to try to fix the symptoms, then all you are going to get are more symptoms. Further, it is so much easier to fix a symptom than it is to fix a cause. That is why our government is working the way it does. The members of both houses are just slapping patches on to old problems in an attempt to make the symptom go away. But they do not address the cause of the problem and so the problems never get truly fixed.
It is why our tax system is so complex. It is why the books on taxation here in America takes up entire libraries. Because our government can't bring itself to fix the cause of the problem. Instead, they just keep slapping new laws on to the older ones in the hopes that it will make everything alright. The actual cause is that Congress just needs to say "Everyone has to pay X amount of what they make each year." One, simple rule without any clauses, subclauses, or hidden agendas. But they can't do it because they would rather fixate on the symptoms.
The problems with the net are no different. It isn't that the net has a problem; it is that the corporations want to own everything. That's because our government has said that businesses must make a profit every three out of five years or they are not considered a business. But businesses don't just want to make a profit - they want to make huge profits at your expense. They want you to pay for the water your drink, the air you breath, your usage of the net - everything. From birth to death. But there should be a limit and that (the fact that there are no limitations bein
When I first started at NASA the methodology was to use something like Norton's Erase, put it on Government Erase (three passes of writing first all ones, then all zeros, then all ones again, then doing half tracks). When Windows 98 came along we still used Norton's Erase but it had a different algorithm which was quite good too. When Windows 2000 came along we were no longer trusted to erase everything properly and we had to send the disk drives to a centralized location where they were wiped before being sold. When Windows XP came along we were told to just take a hammer to them. This was because the government had made so many cutbacks that there wasn't any money to properly erase the disk drives.
On a side note: When I first started working at NASA we had a budget of well over a million dollars. We got rid of all of the really big mainframes, and minis, and went to micros. Our budget was reduced to somewhere around $500,000.00 a year (about a third of what we originally were given each year). What I'd like to know is - whatever happened to all of that money? We certainly never go pay raises which equaled the amount of money lost. So where did it go? The answer might be a bit more surprising than anyone really wants to know about.:-/
Didn't anyone notice that the paragraph said "mouth, trotters(feet), and tongue" were flourescent yet the entire pig was flourescent in the picture? This is more like a picture taken with a green light. Here is why:
What we call a black light doesn't make an area black - it causes things which are flourescent in nature to glow. White objects look purple, reds take on more of an orange glow, and greens really look saturated. Pigs are not the cleanest of creatures and biological refuse (such as blood, offal, urine, and such) glow under flourescent lights as well. Even the cleanest creature will glow somewhat due to the various substances which are brushed up against or contained within the skin. None of that shows up in the picture.
The picture is a circular area which shows the backs and tops of the pig's head, it's shoulders, and ears. None of which are the mouths, feet, or tongue. Had the picture had dim outlines of the pigs with their mouth's glowing and their feet glowing - it would have been believe-able. Because it would have matched what was said. But this picture does not.
Let me first say that I have worked at NASA since about 1986. So I've watched and been a part of what has gone on at NASA for quite a while.
NASA, when it switched to the Space Shuttle, missed the boat. This is not to say that it is not doing great things; because it is doing great things. But when the Space Shuttle was first proposed, all those many years ago, there were many people against it yet it became a reality anyway. Why?
1. Speed. NASA wanted a faster way to get people into orbit so they could speed things up. The Space Shuttle was thought to do just that. You set it up, you launch it, you get into space several people at once, and then it lands, and you repeat the process as quickly as you can.
2. Cost. The Space Shuttle was pitched to the people of the United States that it would cost a lot of money up front to create the Space Shuttle but that after they were built it would cost less than the rocket launches to send up the Space Shuttle. Obviously at (if I remember correctly) $3 Billion dollars a whack - the Space Shuttle costs a lot more than if we just sent up rockets. Rocket launches cost about $500 Million dollars a launch (again, if I remember correctly).
There were other reasons also. The people of the United States were high on StarTrek, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, and others. The general feeling was that if you went into space you could zoom around like crazy, do wild and crazy things, and be heros. The reality is - it is no where near that easy to dock one vehicle with another when every single thing has the potential to make you go spinning off into who knows where. Further, when you are travelling at extremely high velocities - even a flake of paint can kill. (As an example, on one of the missions the Space Shuttle returned to ear with a hole in one of the front windows. The hole reached about 3/4 of the way through the protective glass. Had the fragment been bigger it would have punched a hole in the window which would most probably have caused the window to shatter thus sucking all of the astronauts into space and death. This, of course, never made it to TV but I tell you about it here because I was working at NASA when it happened.)
To get back on track though - why the Space Shuttle and not rockets? Money. People need work. Rockets were a done deal. We knew how to build them. We knew what they could and could not do. We needed something else to carry NASA forwards. Thus, the Space Shuttle. It provided thousands of new jobs, created the need for hundreds if not thousands of different research projects, and made it so people could dream of a day when maybe they would be able to ride a Space Shuttle into orbit like a vacation dream. The important thing was though - is that it gave hundreds of thousands of people work to do, helped us to move forwards technologically, and brought the world together. (After all, the arm is made by Canada, parts of the Space Station are made by the various countries as well as some of the parts on the Space Shuttle itself are from other countries.)
Whereas the biggest thing that came out of the rocket era was Tang, the Space Shuttle has given us new beds, toothpaste, nutrient bars, ways to increase bone mass (because bone mass is lost if extended periods in space happen), better and faster computers, and a myraid array of other inventions. So that is the good side of things. The bad side is though - that having the government run the space agency is like trying to drive a bus with a steering wheel for each person on the bus. All of them are trying to make the bus go in a certain direction. Sometimes forwards, but usually at a slight angle. So when the bus hits the curb - everyone on the bus screams at everyone else saying it is their fault for the problem when, in reality, it is everyone's fault.
So yeah, maybe NASA doesn't have its priorities straight. But it is only because there are so many people trying to make NASA do something that a project gets started, then stopped, th
Already gone through and renamed some files, restricted the rights to others, and changed Apache from root to nobody with no privileges other than the standard user type privileges, etc... It is amazing - even with all of the presets everyone puts into their Linux distributions now; there are still a lot of things you have to do in order to ensure your computer is safe now-a-days.:-) I guess hackers are just very inventive people.:-)
They probably won't. They'll just call you terrorists and prosecute you for what you've said. Even though you haven't done anything.
No - the best thing to do IMHO is to just say that you have found a problem with their product but that due to the litigious nature of the company(ies) you can not explain how the problem comes about nor will you provide any details because you have destroyed all evidence in accordance with the company's wishes that all problems remain just that - unresolved problems. Further, since you have found these problems and could verify that they existed if the company would allow you to do so; you must - in the future - deny any request from the company for information (since you had to destroy it and it is illegal to have such information in your possession) and - you must also, from that day forwards, recommend that this company's products be barred from consideration in future purchases for the university and/or any companies with which you are going to be working with until the problem has been fixed.
Remember - hit them in their pocketbook. If everyone gangs up against the company and refuses to buy their products and boycotts them, they will go out of business and you won't have to deal with them anymore - or - they will stop trying to enforce rules and regulations which are detrimental to the overall health of the (and their) economy.
The alternative is for the person to send the information out to every other university in the United States and all of them declare the same findings at the same time so there isn't just one person the company can sue. They would have to sue everyone which makes them a persona non grata in the academic world. The great thing about this idea is that it would definitely draw the attention of the press if such a thing occurred. Which, I believe, is not something any company wants to do. (Be on TV across the nation in a bad light.)
Just my $0.02 worth.:-)
PS: Remember - they can't make you perjure yourself in court. So when they ask what you did you just say "I can not answer that under the rules and regulations of the 5th admendment." And if asked to explain you just look at the judge and say it is a catch-22 situation. You are damned if you answer and damned if you do not. Sort of like the Spanish Inquisition where they'd ask questions like "Did you enjoy consorting with the devil the last time you did it?" and then only allow you to answer yes or no. Either answer makes it look as if you enjoyed consorting with the devil at some point.
I only hope that they took into consideration hackers trying to break into websites. I've been getting lately:
Drupal: Someone trying to see if I am running Drupal. Mambo: Someone trying to see if I am running Mambo. phpmyadmin: Same as above. xmlrpc.php: Used (or it used to be used) by both Drupal and Mambo. index.php and index2.php: Used by both Drupal and Mambo. cmd.gif: Four different sites configured to help hackers deface your site.
and lots of others. So my input would be to run a test site annonymously as Boxxet and see if the hackers can breach the site before releasing it for people to use. Otherwise - it looks like it might be a nice kind of program to use.
PS to whoever is running Slashdot: The "Sections" area is doing some strange things and gave me an error once about SectionPrefs(???).
I still go with the age old adage of "You have to learn how to crawl before you can walk" or maybe it's walk before you run, look before you leap? Whatever....
Anyway, I'd say someone should start small and work their way up to the more modern languages. So my suggestion would be:
1a. Learn Applesoft and maybe some DOS 3.3 or ProDOS assembly. This will make you thank god someone came up with floating point math processors and disk drives that don't require knowledge of how to time when to read/write something to a disk drive.
3a. And ask yourself why Apple, after going all the way to the//gs with color suddenly decided that black and white was all the rage. You can also learn a lot about structured programming, handles, Pascal, C, FORTRAN, COBOL, and lots of other useful information.
4. Then try Linux and you will go - why didn't everyone go with this to begin with? You can also then learn OOP, C++, Ruby, Python, PHP, and everything else.
If you give six months to each of the above you will be a lot better off knowing why some of the things that are still drawbacks to OSs are still in there. Some are just carry-overs from yesteryear. The important thing though - is that you will at least have a grasp of the "why" certain things happen like they do. (Or maybe at least you'd have a hint as to the why.)
For languages I'd say Applesoft Basic first, then maybe QBasic (which I hear is now free from Microsoft), then FORTRAN (to learn the separation of variables into float, int, etc...), then Pascal (to help with the structuring), then C, then C++, then into Python, Ruby, whatever.
The thing is - if you do not get the basics, then you wind up like the System Programmer I once met. Didn't even know how to make a cursor move on the screen. "Duh....the terminal does that. I can't control what it does." Ever hear of ASCII control codes? "Nope. What are they?" Ever hear of the curses routines? "Nope. What are they?" Yeah. System's Programmer.
Or you get the System Operators who were running the computer at a company I used to work with. They were running a program that slowly but surely gobbled up all of the memory on the system and then the computer would crash. (This was a mainframe system with something like 10GB of memory on it back in the late 1980's! Although at the time I think they referred to it as 10,000MB of memory. Each person on the computer gobbled up 100MB each because of the program they were running and there were 300 people who kept trying to use the program.) I went over, looked at what they were doing and told them to run a program (which was in their manuals) that would recover the memory let go by programs. "We can't do that," they said, "it might crash the system." I looked at them and said "And the alternative is....?" They wouldn't do it and so I just went "Well, it's not my system so crash away!" They did - on a daily basis. Sometimes two or three times a day. Their solution? "WE NEED MORE MEMORY!"
Actually, I would have to disagree with you on several points.
1. Originally, when the Olympics were restarted, they were specifically regulated to amateur athletics.
2. As the years rolled by and people became greedier, money began to replace the actual basis for having the Olympics. Which was for everyone to have a way to get together, compete against each other, and have a good time instead of getting together and going to war.
3. The Soviets read the rules of the Olympics and were just smarter in how they went about supporting their amateurs. The Olympic committee should have, at the start, stepped in and said one way or the other if the Soviet's methodology of supporting their atheletes was correct. Then, it would have been stupid of everyone else to not follow their example. After all, people do have to eat, sleep, and have a home.
4. Once TV was well established, the Olympic committee realized that the TV stations were making a lot of money by telecasting the Olympics. That was when greed in the Olympics began. Like many cases of greed it started small and got a lot bigger quickly until we have the problems we have today where cities and countries fall all over themselves pledging all sorts of money and perks which just about bankrupts the city or country. Personally, I think nothing should go to the Olympic committee or they should have a set fee instead of a bidding war. Anyone who wants to host the Olympics should be allowed to enter and then the location is randomly drawn. You may think that this would be absurd because everything could wind up in a swamp, top of a mountain, or what-not. But the truth is - as long as the place can show that they have the capability to create the Olympic stadiums, hotels and such, then they should be allowed to compete for the right to hold the Olympics. Basically, remove the money and you will remove the greed. (And yes! They will probably fight tooth and nail to prevent that from happening. But that's just an outward sign of the greed within.)
5. If you haven't seen it on TV yet - the number of people attending the Olympics this year is way down. Almost down to 50% of the stadiums being empty. Does this tell you something? It does to me. The Olympics are fast becoming an elitis organization where the haves can come but the have nots can't because it is too expensive. Further, why pay all that money to fly to wherever when you can see it on TV. Oh yeah - that's right: If you don't go the country/city will lose money. Well, see, if they didn't have to pay the Olympic committee so much money up front (and if they didn't have to build all of those nice new stadiums, hotels, and such) they wouldn't be in such debt in the first place - would they?
The problem is - our society no longer frowns upon liars, cheaters, and greedy individuals. We actually hold them up as role models. We give them jobs like the president of Enron, KMart, MCI, Sears, and Montgomery Wards. We idolize them by putting them on the cover of Time, USA Today, and the like. And if they are caught? Why we just replace them with someone else who does the same thing. Only they do promise not to do what the previous person did. (There, there now...mommy's gonna make it all better. See? The bad man has had his hand slapped and he's gone now.) Yeah. Right. We are - to all intents and purposes - acting like Feringies. And the more money they embezzele, squander, or throw away - the more we seem to like it. Were the Olympic committee truly oriented towards helping countries hold the Olympic games - don't you think they'd be the ones paying people to work at the Olympics? After all - where does all of that money they get - go?
You are absolutely right (both in name and Pro status). My wife beat me over the head with my misquote. Although I have seen her in many competitions I had incorrectly associated her with being a professional. More power to Ms. Kwan.:-)
Also, on the subject of "amateurs", you can't be a "professional" in the sport you're competing in.
Ummmmmmm....I do not think so. Pro-Basketball stars compete in the Basketball tournaments as do Pro-Ice Skaters (Michelle Quan?) Which is a bit sad since the Pros have already made it and it is the newbies that made the Olympics great. I understand that, as professionals, the people who compete have a chance to actually make some money while they are still young - but it used to be the atheletes competed to get the recognition. Now it's more like they compete to show off their backers. Almost like horses at a race track where the jockies have various brand names on their jackets (and I even saw a brand name on the blanket under the saddle once). Too much commercialism.
<On a side tangent>In the Bible Jesus threw the merchants out of the church saying churches were a place of worship and not for the selling of wares. Should the Olympic committee take a hint from him and throw the merchants out of the Olympics because it is a place for amateurs and not professionals? (By this I mean the merchants are basically buying their way in to the Olympics whereas before no blatant displays were allowed and now they are allowed.)</side tangent>
After all, what's the difference between watching the Indy 500, the WWW, or even a boxing match at Ceasar's Palace and the Olympics? None - if they keep going the way they are going.
Going back to the original topic though, being Spyware King has nothing to do with being a "professional" athelete. Nor would having gained a traffic ticket (so long as said ticket doesn't land you in jail). It is not yet against the law to create Spyware although a lot of people (myself included) do not like or want Spyware. So until that is changed - whether or not this person creates Spyware has nothing to do with whether or not they should or could compete in the Olympics.
I own a copy of Atari's "Dungeons & Dragnons: The Temple of Elemental Evil". I had played it when it first came out, and not really played it again.
You do always have the choice of taken them to small claims court for deceptive marketing practices. Since they sell globally and have a 1-800 number they have to come to your city/town/whatever's courthouse to defend themselves. When they don't - you can place a lien on their business. This stops them from getting any new loans from a bank until the lien has been removed. Liens last up to ten years and can be reset to continue on indefinitely. Courts assign interest to liens as well. So over the years your lien will become worth quite a lot.:-)
This is not to mention the fact that you can also file for class action suits (need lots of people though to do this), triple damages, so on and so forth. Read your Federal, state, and local laws for all things. IANAL - just have done a lot of reading on the legal laws of my state because I had to go to court over some things and that is where I've gotten my knowledge from.
Also, go to small claims court. You don't need a lawyer, just bring all of the documentation you downloaded from the net on this matter. Highlight the passages you wish to use. Write everything down because in that way you can just read your answers off to the judge. And most important - don't be afraid to speak up. Even if the other guy is speaking - if he misquotes a law you have to speak up and say something. Otherwise, the lawyer will walk all over you. You should always start your sentences off with the shortest version of what you want to say and then expand upon your statement. Such as "I believe that is incorrect your honor. The law, which I have here to show you, specifically states...." In reality there are so many laws that it is almost impossible for any judge or lawyer to keep them all straight in their heads (which is why there are so many people who specialize in one aspect of the law).
In your case - you have tried to work with the people at Atari and they have placed what, are to you, unreasonable restrictions on the usage of their software. Your choices will probably be to return the software to the manufacturer or put up with the problems. But! If they are refusing to give you back your money and they won't fix the problems - then you should have a very good case.
I learned about the above the hard way - having to take someone to court and never getting paid by them. But I do have liens against them and I check on these liens every year to make sure they are still in effect. So far - so good.
PS: Don't forget to ask for your court fees as well. No need for you to have to pay good money for what these people are doing.
What law did he or his staff violate that no one else has?
Ummmmmm.....misuse of public funds for private gain?
As the article says:
But the sheer breadth of changes emanating from the House reflects an abuse of public time and equipment, said Potter, now chairman of the Ethics Resource Center.
"That kind of usage, plus the fact that they're changing one person's material, is certainly wrong and ought to be at a minimum the focus of some disciplinary action," he said.
Recently, where I work, we ran into this changing of the guard. Note that it says that Potter (Harry?) is now the chairman of the Ethics Resource Center. The government does this (switching people in and out) so that no one person gets to the point of cronyism. In our case, the person in the position was telling everyone that they wouldn't accept procurement papers until the month prior to when we were going to purchase the items. Then the person got switched out and the new person says we have to wait eighteen months to two years after we submit the papers in order to be able to upgrade our systems. What stupidity on the part of the first person! To think that they are above the rules and regulations. Now we are stuck for the next two years with the equipment we already have in place. (Which is a bit outdated now.) Had the first person just gone ahead and allowed us to give them our paperwork we would have already been set to upgrade everything. As it is - we now have to wait the two years. I know it's a good thing (to keep everyone honest), but gack!
Still, by changing out whomever they had originally, this Potter person will probably do a major house cleaning. Who knows? Maybe we will soon be hearing about charges being brought against many of the people who's IP address was used to make these changes. And if not - then we might soon be hearing about Mr. Potter being replaced by someone who will.
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For the Japanese? It is one factor. But WWII started with Germany invading Poland. Japan had re-invented itself from a feudal country without any real punch to its power into a force to be reckoned with. Unlike China, which got a later start in converting from swords, bows & arrows, and other such items - Japan embraced western technology once they saw just how effective it really was. China was playing catch-up to Japan when Hitler began WWII. Japan saw this as a way to justify their extermination of the people of China, and began an all-out war against China. Germany, for its part, pleaded with Japan not to attack America (the so-called Sleeping Giant) but Japan wanted the Hawaiian islands because they felt the islands belonged to them. Thus Pearl Harbor. The irony of it all is that Russia and China were actually thinking about joining Hitler in his bid to take over the world. However, Hitler (or the Nazis) knew that there were huge Jewish sects in Russia and the Chinese - Japan hatred made Hitler have to choose between the two. He chose Japan but regretted it later when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because it brought America into the war. Since America had been fed a diet of rapist, murders, druggies, and insane people for years by the Europeans (and everyone else in the world) - we were feared not only because of how powerful we were as a nation, but because they had no idea exactly what we were like except that we were brutal or barbaric in battle. We were (and still are) the crazy nation of the world. Further, since the "Wild West" was still pretty young, America enlisted the aid of American Indians. My father was grouped with some commanches in WWII and they were under direct orders to teach the rest of the guys commanche war cries. The blood curdling cries would, on their own, cause the Germans to run away (or become demoralized) because according to the movies - the Indians scalped everyone and the Germans were very much afraid that they would be scalped. Further, once things got to going it was the American Indians who would talk over the walkie-talkies because they were talking in their own language and no one except the other American Indians knew what they were saying. This is because it wasn't like code breaking. The entire language would have to be learned in order to know what was being said.
That may be - but you noticed that Japan did release the captain and his ship. I think you will shortly see China reduce or remove the export restrictions.
This has a lot to do with loosing face. Whoever backs down first looses not only face but the integrity to demand certain things as well. Like the island Japan is claiming. If they back down on the fishing captain they will probably lose the island because China's next move is to demand that Japan recognize China's right to the island. Most likely China would use the same tactics it is employing now.
Here are some other things to think about in this conflict:
1. While it is true Japan does not have a large land mass with extensive resources, Japan is a master at trading with other countries. Japan also has extensive investments in other countries (such as the US) and they own and operate companies in those other countries. Thus, by doing what China has done, it could backfire on China because other countries (such as the US) will be prodded by the Japanese to intervene.
2. Japan has a very large extension to their land into the ocean on the eastern side of the island. As far as I know, Japan has never tried to harvest minerals from the ocean. This is because it is harder to do this than to buy the minerals from a country that can mine it readily. However, if the Japanese are driven to it - I believe they will begin making investments in mining minerals directly from the ocean's floor.
3. Africa holds many exotic minerals in its land and within the past few years, Japan has been buying in to the mineral rights in Africa (as has China). So I believe that although China's blockade will hurt Japan, I do not think it will hurt it as much as many think it will.
As for the "Nukem til they glow!" mentality - A chinese friend of mine told me, back in the 1970s, that one of the major the Chinese prophecies states that the US (the eagle from the west) attacks China and there is a tremendous war that ensues which decimates the US. Whether or not this is true (as the Bible also states that the great nations are all at war [bear, eagle, and many headed dragon]) remains to be seen.
The truth, as far as I can see it, is that China and Japan need to sit down, at a table, across from each other, and talk things out. China itself is a massive country and a few small islands really are not worth their time or effort. The life of the fishing captain is. Japan should also have released the fishing captain and his boat. Possibly after taking all of the fish (since they would spoil anyway) and giving the captain a percentage of the money gained through their sale. China is still lving with World War II in mind where the Japanese killed millions of Chinese. The Chinese need to remember that they have killed millions of Japanese in the past also. Like the countries in the Middle East, where hatreds go all the way back to when the Egyptians were building their pyramids, the world needs to grow up, become adults, and stop acting like bratty children. But then - you'd also have to stop some of those brats from continuing to push the other children's buttons. Like the Iraelis continuing to build on land that was never given to them in the original treaty. Of course, then you'd have to also recognize that Israel was founded without the consent of the people who were living in the Middle East at the time it was created. The land was just taken away from them and given to the Israelis. But enough of that. The mantra should be "Grow-up, play-nice, and stop acting like you are SO offended." We only have one sandbox to play in - let's try to get along.
A year after D&D came out I had bought the 3 Book set. I played hard, died a lot, and even allowed my GPA in college go down the drain. D&D was like a drug and I couldn't get enough of it. A small toy company called Nan's Toy Shop put on a small D&D get together and Frank called up the fledgling TSR, Inc. game company and asked if some of the people could come down to Houston and chat with the fans. Surprisingly enough Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, and a couple of other people came to Houston. I got to talk to everyone and even got my 3-Book set signed by both Gary and Dave. Over the years, no matter what else went on I have kept hold of those books because they really are a piece of history.
With the advent of games like EverQuest, GuildWars, and WOW - people have forgotten that all of these games have their basis in the original Chainmail and 3-Book set of rules produced by Gary, Dave, and others. Those simple rules were the first and helped to show the way for everyone else. I'll miss knowing that somewhere out there Dave and Gary were working to bring something new to the world....
I have sat here now, for a while, looking at those old books thinking of what else I could say but I think I'm going to put them back up now. After all, I wouldn't want them to get wet.
Peace to all.
Audacious
I can most readily agree that it would be badly administered. But then - that is a part of the problem as well. And you may not like the methods I suggest - but doing nothing is worse than doing something. Which is what is happening presently. Slaps on hands are not what are needed. We need laws in the same vein as those which were passed after the last great depression. When companies then, as now, ran amuck, did as they pleased, and caused great hardship for the people of America.
Also, I would not say private or public monopolies are supposed to even exist. They are, IMHO, an aberration to the natural order of things. That is to say - the more we have monopolies, the less we have freedoms. For the two can not exist together. Like the cast system of feudal times, kings never liked their subjects to be well read nor to exert their freedoms. Subjugation is the motto of monopolies. It is the small company who says they want people to have the freedom to choose. (Usually for their product - true.)
As I have said - I do not believe in having monopolies. You are saying they should exist. Can you give good examples of why monopolies are something we need and/or want? Can you name a company which is in existence today that hasn't done something terrible to people someplace in the world? I'd be interested in knowing about such a company.
Yes, I can see by your answer that you didn't. Too bad really, but then - that is your decision - not mine.
And yes, we can rein in both our government and big business.
You are very correct in what you are saying about our tax system. However, there is one thing which I would add to your last statement and that is "so long as no one cares." Because that is the basis of many problems with our country presently. The "I don't care," attitude which I hear from many different people. Young, old, or even in between. As if whatever our government decides to do no one has any control over.
Isn't that what I said? If you don't think so maybe you should read my message again.
Never said that. Either the economies of scale nor the Pro work-duplication. Companies can work together which would allow for the economies of scale. Nor should (or would) two companies sell exactly the same item. Both of them would make their widgets unique to differentiate themselves from each other. Try again please.
You have me all wrong. I'm not anti-corporate - I'm anti-monopolistic. There is a difference. Nor do I fear the power of big business. I just loath the misuse of power that big business constantly is doing. Like the things Microsoft does and which are reported here all of the time. Or maybe you'd like to defend HP's executives and the things they have been doing to their own employees? Enron anyone? You only have to go to the DOJ's website to find hundreds of companies both large and small which engage in felonius persuits. So don't sit over there and say how great these criminals are - because they they are no where near pristine in their actions. Far from it. But the larger the corporation gets - the worse they get in breaking the law, overstepping the rights we all are supposed to enjoy, and so forth.
Or do you like that Microsoft, with Windows Media Player 11 is now enforcing what they see as DRM? Well, if so - then pucker right up because if we do not do something soon we are all going to be smooching Bill's behind.
Some. The answer is this:
Congress, back in the 1980s, decided to help itself to more of the American people's money. They crafted a law which made it so that when a Congressman retired he continued to be paid at the same salary that he was being paid when he retired. Further, every time Congress had a pay increase - the retired people also get a pay increase.
Now, let's see.....
First, there are two senators to each state. So we have 50 people there.
Then, there are an equal number of Congressmen as there are people living in a given state, divided by a certain number of people. All in all there are probably around 400 Congressmen.
So our grand total is around 450 people.
Minimum salary averaged over the years is (off the top of my head) somewhere around $75,000.00.
So 450 * $75,000.00 is $33,750,000.00 each year that is paid to the members of both houses just to start being a congressman.
Most Congressmen have at least one pay raise while in office and this pay raise is usually around 10% so after one year they would be making around $83,000.00 or $37,350,000.00.
Now let's say that every four years there is a complete turnover of both houses (elections are every two years so everyone gets two terms in office before leaving). So 2006-1980 = 26 years / 4 = 6.5 years. So both houses have completely turned over for at least six times.
But we have to recalculate the salaries because instead of them just being there for two years - they get to stay for four years. So 1=$75K, 2=$83.5K, 3=$91,851.00, and 4=$101,035.00.
So after four years we have paid: $33,750,000.00 + $37,350,000.00 + $41,332,950.00 + $45,465,750.00 = $117,898,700.00 dollars.
But wait! There's more! Even if all of the people in Congress in 1984 left - they still get paid with raises each year. So doing a little math (or more likely writing a small Perl script) we have the following:
Year 1980 = 402238458.148294
Year 1981 = 365671325.589358
Year 1982 = 332428477.808508
Year 1983 = 302207707.098643
Year 1984 = 274734279.180585
Year 1985 = 249758435.618713
Year 1986 = 227053123.289739
Year 1987 = 206411930.263399
Year 1988 = 187647209.330363
Year 1989 = 170588372.118512
Year 1990 = 155080338.289556
Year 1991 = 140982125.717778
Year 1992 = 128165568.834344
Year 1993 = 116514153.485767
Year 1994 = 105921957.714334
Year 1995 = 96292688.8312126
Year 1996 = 87538808.0283751
Year 1997 = 79580734.5712501
Year 1998 = 72346122.3375
Year 1999 = 65769202.125
Year 2000 = 59790183.75
Year 2001 = 54354712.5
Year 2002 = 49413375
Year 2003 = 44921250
Year 2004 = 40837500
Year 2005 = 37125000
Year 2006 = 33750000
Total = 4087123039.63123
So by the year 2006 we are paying out somewhere around $4,087,123,039.63 dollars a year just to past members of Congress while you will probably be paid only around $1,700.00 a month via Social Security (or $20,400.00 a year). Fixed. Never to go up except maybe at 3% every year or so. And that is where the money is going. Not into retirement funds but into retired Congressional member's pockets at an increasing rate of around 10% per year.
Is it any wonder why Congress can't make a balanced budget or even keep its spending in check?
That is what happened with some people. They didn't do the erase first and so supposedly important government information was allowed to leave NASA. Having worked there since the 1980's I can tell you first hand that A LOT of the software at NASA is, well, from the 1980's. (Or as they said in Eragon: I was expecting something.....well....more. :-) )
Although updated on something like a yearly basis, many of the people who are in management at NASA do not like it when change comes along and they fight it tooth and nail. This means that NASA (and I suppose most of the US Government) drags behind everyone else.
As an interesting side note: My wife (who is a teacher) went to a seminar where the teachers were told that they were actually curators of museums. The person explained it in this way: "I have a pen, bought in Japan. If I set up the pen like so..." here he twisted the pen in two and it split into three parts forming a tripod - "I can push this button on the pen and..." and it displayed a virtual screen on the wall and a keyboard on the table top. The man smiled at all of the teachers in the room. "You will probably never see this device again until you retire. Because our government won't buy them and allow your students to use them. These pens act like dumb terminals and only require a USB cable to plug into any computer. You could use cheap cardboard to display the video and keyboard anywhere and these things aren't that expensive - if you buy it in Japan." The museum barb is accurate. Teachers still use overhead projectors instead of having projectors attached to computers. Very badly written software does a poor job of teaching students how to do things. Grading software creeps along. (I know because I've helped to enter grades and it can take up to a minute to enter one grade.)
Until we rein in big business we will never get anywhere. I have advocated, for many years, a cap to the size of businesses in the US (and anywhere else for that matter). Too much power consolidated down to any one business is just asking for trouble because it is the nature of business people to do the same things that Microsoft, AT&T, and other businesses do - which is to drive your competition out of business so you have a monopoly and once you've established yourself as a monopoly to mistreat anyone who goes against you in a most unjust manner.
Our government is supposed to be absolutely, positively, without remorse, without regard to anyone - against allowing monopolies to exist. They are NEVER supposed to exist unless they are government run monopolies (like the US Mail originally was). Yet here we are, not much more than 200 years after these rules and regulations were set down on paper - with monopolies and our government is too much of a sissy to put them in their place.
Forget all of the other problems. Forget all of the other laws, the Sonny Bono act - all of it. If we split up our monopolies into multiple companies, then those other companies would fight to repeal most of the stupid laws because they wouldn't be able to exist with them in place. Which is to say that ALL of the major laws written in the last twenty to thirty years have been geared towards one thing - the creation of monopolies.
The idea is - if a company makes X number of dollars a year, then it must split up into two companies to maintain competition. From where I sit - the amount would be a billion dollars a year GROSS. Not net - gross. If this were done we would not have the problems we have now because all of the business people would be too busy fighting for market share to muck around with the government like they do now. The law would also have to be made so that it would require a 3/4 majority of everyone in the United States in order to modify and/or repeal the law.
There are two parts to any problem which infects a society. These are: 1)symptoms, and 2)causes. Everyone is being misdirected to look only at the symptoms and to try to fix the symptoms. Like a bad doctor who doesn't know how to treat an illness, the patient is saying "my head hurts" and so the doctor gives the patient some aspirin not knowing that the person actually has a tumor growing in their brain. The symptom is the headache but the cause is the tumor and if all you do is to try to fix the symptoms, then all you are going to get are more symptoms. Further, it is so much easier to fix a symptom than it is to fix a cause. That is why our government is working the way it does. The members of both houses are just slapping patches on to old problems in an attempt to make the symptom go away. But they do not address the cause of the problem and so the problems never get truly fixed.
It is why our tax system is so complex. It is why the books on taxation here in America takes up entire libraries. Because our government can't bring itself to fix the cause of the problem. Instead, they just keep slapping new laws on to the older ones in the hopes that it will make everything alright. The actual cause is that Congress just needs to say "Everyone has to pay X amount of what they make each year." One, simple rule without any clauses, subclauses, or hidden agendas. But they can't do it because they would rather fixate on the symptoms.
The problems with the net are no different. It isn't that the net has a problem; it is that the corporations want to own everything. That's because our government has said that businesses must make a profit every three out of five years or they are not considered a business. But businesses don't just want to make a profit - they want to make huge profits at your expense. They want you to pay for the water your drink, the air you breath, your usage of the net - everything. From birth to death. But there should be a limit and that (the fact that there are no limitations bein
When I first started at NASA the methodology was to use something like Norton's Erase, put it on Government Erase (three passes of writing first all ones, then all zeros, then all ones again, then doing half tracks). When Windows 98 came along we still used Norton's Erase but it had a different algorithm which was quite good too. When Windows 2000 came along we were no longer trusted to erase everything properly and we had to send the disk drives to a centralized location where they were wiped before being sold. When Windows XP came along we were told to just take a hammer to them. This was because the government had made so many cutbacks that there wasn't any money to properly erase the disk drives.
:-/
On a side note: When I first started working at NASA we had a budget of well over a million dollars. We got rid of all of the really big mainframes, and minis, and went to micros. Our budget was reduced to somewhere around $500,000.00 a year (about a third of what we originally were given each year). What I'd like to know is - whatever happened to all of that money? We certainly never go pay raises which equaled the amount of money lost. So where did it go? The answer might be a bit more surprising than anyone really wants to know about.
Didn't anyone notice that the paragraph said "mouth, trotters(feet), and tongue" were flourescent yet the entire pig was flourescent in the picture? This is more like a picture taken with a green light. Here is why:
What we call a black light doesn't make an area black - it causes things which are flourescent in nature to glow. White objects look purple, reds take on more of an orange glow, and greens really look saturated. Pigs are not the cleanest of creatures and biological refuse (such as blood, offal, urine, and such) glow under flourescent lights as well. Even the cleanest creature will glow somewhat due to the various substances which are brushed up against or contained within the skin. None of that shows up in the picture.
The picture is a circular area which shows the backs and tops of the pig's head, it's shoulders, and ears. None of which are the mouths, feet, or tongue. Had the picture had dim outlines of the pigs with their mouth's glowing and their feet glowing - it would have been believe-able. Because it would have matched what was said. But this picture does not.
Let me first say that I have worked at NASA since about 1986. So I've watched and been a part of what has gone on at NASA for quite a while.
NASA, when it switched to the Space Shuttle, missed the boat. This is not to say that it is not doing great things; because it is doing great things. But when the Space Shuttle was first proposed, all those many years ago, there were many people against it yet it became a reality anyway. Why?
1. Speed. NASA wanted a faster way to get people into orbit so they could speed things up. The Space Shuttle was thought to do just that. You set it up, you launch it, you get into space several people at once, and then it lands, and you repeat the process as quickly as you can.
2. Cost. The Space Shuttle was pitched to the people of the United States that it would cost a lot of money up front to create the Space Shuttle but that after they were built it would cost less than the rocket launches to send up the Space Shuttle. Obviously at (if I remember correctly) $3 Billion dollars a whack - the Space Shuttle costs a lot more than if we just sent up rockets. Rocket launches cost about $500 Million dollars a launch (again, if I remember correctly).
There were other reasons also. The people of the United States were high on StarTrek, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, and others. The general feeling was that if you went into space you could zoom around like crazy, do wild and crazy things, and be heros. The reality is - it is no where near that easy to dock one vehicle with another when every single thing has the potential to make you go spinning off into who knows where. Further, when you are travelling at extremely high velocities - even a flake of paint can kill. (As an example, on one of the missions the Space Shuttle returned to ear with a hole in one of the front windows. The hole reached about 3/4 of the way through the protective glass. Had the fragment been bigger it would have punched a hole in the window which would most probably have caused the window to shatter thus sucking all of the astronauts into space and death. This, of course, never made it to TV but I tell you about it here because I was working at NASA when it happened.)
To get back on track though - why the Space Shuttle and not rockets? Money. People need work. Rockets were a done deal. We knew how to build them. We knew what they could and could not do. We needed something else to carry NASA forwards. Thus, the Space Shuttle. It provided thousands of new jobs, created the need for hundreds if not thousands of different research projects, and made it so people could dream of a day when maybe they would be able to ride a Space Shuttle into orbit like a vacation dream. The important thing was though - is that it gave hundreds of thousands of people work to do, helped us to move forwards technologically, and brought the world together. (After all, the arm is made by Canada, parts of the Space Station are made by the various countries as well as some of the parts on the Space Shuttle itself are from other countries.)
Whereas the biggest thing that came out of the rocket era was Tang, the Space Shuttle has given us new beds, toothpaste, nutrient bars, ways to increase bone mass (because bone mass is lost if extended periods in space happen), better and faster computers, and a myraid array of other inventions. So that is the good side of things. The bad side is though - that having the government run the space agency is like trying to drive a bus with a steering wheel for each person on the bus. All of them are trying to make the bus go in a certain direction. Sometimes forwards, but usually at a slight angle. So when the bus hits the curb - everyone on the bus screams at everyone else saying it is their fault for the problem when, in reality, it is everyone's fault.
So yeah, maybe NASA doesn't have its priorities straight. But it is only because there are so many people trying to make NASA do something that a project gets started, then stopped, th
Already gone through and renamed some files, restricted the rights to others, and changed Apache from root to nobody with no privileges other than the standard user type privileges, etc... It is amazing - even with all of the presets everyone puts into their Linux distributions now; there are still a lot of things you have to do in order to ensure your computer is safe now-a-days. :-) I guess hackers are just very inventive people. :-)
They probably won't. They'll just call you terrorists and prosecute you for what you've said. Even though you haven't done anything.
:-)
No - the best thing to do IMHO is to just say that you have found a problem with their product but that due to the litigious nature of the company(ies) you can not explain how the problem comes about nor will you provide any details because you have destroyed all evidence in accordance with the company's wishes that all problems remain just that - unresolved problems. Further, since you have found these problems and could verify that they existed if the company would allow you to do so; you must - in the future - deny any request from the company for information (since you had to destroy it and it is illegal to have such information in your possession) and - you must also, from that day forwards, recommend that this company's products be barred from consideration in future purchases for the university and/or any companies with which you are going to be working with until the problem has been fixed.
Remember - hit them in their pocketbook. If everyone gangs up against the company and refuses to buy their products and boycotts them, they will go out of business and you won't have to deal with them anymore - or - they will stop trying to enforce rules and regulations which are detrimental to the overall health of the (and their) economy.
The alternative is for the person to send the information out to every other university in the United States and all of them declare the same findings at the same time so there isn't just one person the company can sue. They would have to sue everyone which makes them a persona non grata in the academic world. The great thing about this idea is that it would definitely draw the attention of the press if such a thing occurred. Which, I believe, is not something any company wants to do. (Be on TV across the nation in a bad light.)
Just my $0.02 worth.
PS: Remember - they can't make you perjure yourself in court. So when they ask what you did you just say "I can not answer that under the rules and regulations of the 5th admendment." And if asked to explain you just look at the judge and say it is a catch-22 situation. You are damned if you answer and damned if you do not. Sort of like the Spanish Inquisition where they'd ask questions like "Did you enjoy consorting with the devil the last time you did it?" and then only allow you to answer yes or no. Either answer makes it look as if you enjoyed consorting with the devil at some point.
I always wondered if the Mac was gay, but I never thought the //gs was! ;-)
:-) )
(Actually, I have six Macs at home.
I only hope that they took into consideration hackers trying to break into websites. I've been getting lately:
Drupal: Someone trying to see if I am running Drupal.
Mambo: Someone trying to see if I am running Mambo.
phpmyadmin: Same as above.
xmlrpc.php: Used (or it used to be used) by both Drupal and Mambo.
index.php and index2.php: Used by both Drupal and Mambo.
cmd.gif: Four different sites configured to help hackers deface your site.
and lots of others. So my input would be to run a test site annonymously as Boxxet and see if the hackers can breach the site before releasing it for people to use. Otherwise - it looks like it might be a nice kind of program to use.
PS to whoever is running Slashdot: The "Sections" area is doing some strange things and gave me an error once about SectionPrefs(???).
I still go with the age old adage of "You have to learn how to crawl before you can walk" or maybe it's walk before you run, look before you leap? Whatever....
//gs, Atari, or Amiga.
//gs with color suddenly decided that black and white was all the rage. You can also learn a lot about structured programming, handles, Pascal, C, FORTRAN, COBOL, and lots of other useful information.
Anyway, I'd say someone should start small and work their way up to the more modern languages. So my suggestion would be:
1. First learn something like the Apple ][+.
1a. Learn Applesoft and maybe some DOS 3.3 or ProDOS assembly. This will make you thank god someone came up with floating point math processors and disk drives that don't require knowledge of how to time when to read/write something to a disk drive.
2. Then learn something like the Apple
2a. So you can learn that color really makes a difference. Here you can learn Pascal, about compilers, and the like.
3. Then try the Macintosh and try out Windows.
3a. And ask yourself why Apple, after going all the way to the
4. Then try Linux and you will go - why didn't everyone go with this to begin with? You can also then learn OOP, C++, Ruby, Python, PHP, and everything else.
If you give six months to each of the above you will be a lot better off knowing why some of the things that are still drawbacks to OSs are still in there. Some are just carry-overs from yesteryear. The important thing though - is that you will at least have a grasp of the "why" certain things happen like they do. (Or maybe at least you'd have a hint as to the why.)
For languages I'd say Applesoft Basic first, then maybe QBasic (which I hear is now free from Microsoft), then FORTRAN (to learn the separation of variables into float, int, etc...), then Pascal (to help with the structuring), then C, then C++, then into Python, Ruby, whatever.
The thing is - if you do not get the basics, then you wind up like the System Programmer I once met. Didn't even know how to make a cursor move on the screen. "Duh....the terminal does that. I can't control what it does." Ever hear of ASCII control codes? "Nope. What are they?" Ever hear of the curses routines? "Nope. What are they?" Yeah. System's Programmer.
Or you get the System Operators who were running the computer at a company I used to work with. They were running a program that slowly but surely gobbled up all of the memory on the system and then the computer would crash. (This was a mainframe system with something like 10GB of memory on it back in the late 1980's! Although at the time I think they referred to it as 10,000MB of memory. Each person on the computer gobbled up 100MB each because of the program they were running and there were 300 people who kept trying to use the program.) I went over, looked at what they were doing and told them to run a program (which was in their manuals) that would recover the memory let go by programs. "We can't do that," they said, "it might crash the system." I looked at them and said "And the alternative is....?" They wouldn't do it and so I just went "Well, it's not my system so crash away!" They did - on a daily basis. Sometimes two or three times a day. Their solution? "WE NEED MORE MEMORY!"
Actually, I would have to disagree with you on several points.
1. Originally, when the Olympics were restarted, they were specifically regulated to amateur athletics.
2. As the years rolled by and people became greedier, money began to replace the actual basis for having the Olympics. Which was for everyone to have a way to get together, compete against each other, and have a good time instead of getting together and going to war.
3. The Soviets read the rules of the Olympics and were just smarter in how they went about supporting their amateurs. The Olympic committee should have, at the start, stepped in and said one way or the other if the Soviet's methodology of supporting their atheletes was correct. Then, it would have been stupid of everyone else to not follow their example. After all, people do have to eat, sleep, and have a home.
4. Once TV was well established, the Olympic committee realized that the TV stations were making a lot of money by telecasting the Olympics. That was when greed in the Olympics began. Like many cases of greed it started small and got a lot bigger quickly until we have the problems we have today where cities and countries fall all over themselves pledging all sorts of money and perks which just about bankrupts the city or country. Personally, I think nothing should go to the Olympic committee or they should have a set fee instead of a bidding war. Anyone who wants to host the Olympics should be allowed to enter and then the location is randomly drawn. You may think that this would be absurd because everything could wind up in a swamp, top of a mountain, or what-not. But the truth is - as long as the place can show that they have the capability to create the Olympic stadiums, hotels and such, then they should be allowed to compete for the right to hold the Olympics. Basically, remove the money and you will remove the greed. (And yes! They will probably fight tooth and nail to prevent that from happening. But that's just an outward sign of the greed within.)
5. If you haven't seen it on TV yet - the number of people attending the Olympics this year is way down. Almost down to 50% of the stadiums being empty. Does this tell you something? It does to me. The Olympics are fast becoming an elitis organization where the haves can come but the have nots can't because it is too expensive. Further, why pay all that money to fly to wherever when you can see it on TV. Oh yeah - that's right: If you don't go the country/city will lose money. Well, see, if they didn't have to pay the Olympic committee so much money up front (and if they didn't have to build all of those nice new stadiums, hotels, and such) they wouldn't be in such debt in the first place - would they?
The problem is - our society no longer frowns upon liars, cheaters, and greedy individuals. We actually hold them up as role models. We give them jobs like the president of Enron, KMart, MCI, Sears, and Montgomery Wards. We idolize them by putting them on the cover of Time, USA Today, and the like. And if they are caught? Why we just replace them with someone else who does the same thing. Only they do promise not to do what the previous person did. (There, there now...mommy's gonna make it all better. See? The bad man has had his hand slapped and he's gone now.) Yeah. Right. We are - to all intents and purposes - acting like Feringies. And the more money they embezzele, squander, or throw away - the more we seem to like it. Were the Olympic committee truly oriented towards helping countries hold the Olympic games - don't you think they'd be the ones paying people to work at the Olympics? After all - where does all of that money they get - go?
I feel I have to respond to this:
:-)
You are absolutely right (both in name and Pro status). My wife beat me over the head with my misquote. Although I have seen her in many competitions I had incorrectly associated her with being a professional. More power to Ms. Kwan.
Also, on the subject of "amateurs", you can't be a "professional" in the sport you're competing in.
Ummmmmmm....I do not think so. Pro-Basketball stars compete in the Basketball tournaments as do Pro-Ice Skaters (Michelle Quan?) Which is a bit sad since the Pros have already made it and it is the newbies that made the Olympics great. I understand that, as professionals, the people who compete have a chance to actually make some money while they are still young - but it used to be the atheletes competed to get the recognition. Now it's more like they compete to show off their backers. Almost like horses at a race track where the jockies have various brand names on their jackets (and I even saw a brand name on the blanket under the saddle once). Too much commercialism.
<On a side tangent>In the Bible Jesus threw the merchants out of the church saying churches were a place of worship and not for the selling of wares. Should the Olympic committee take a hint from him and throw the merchants out of the Olympics because it is a place for amateurs and not professionals? (By this I mean the merchants are basically buying their way in to the Olympics whereas before no blatant displays were allowed and now they are allowed.)</side tangent>
After all, what's the difference between watching the Indy 500, the WWW, or even a boxing match at Ceasar's Palace and the Olympics? None - if they keep going the way they are going.
Going back to the original topic though, being Spyware King has nothing to do with being a "professional" athelete. Nor would having gained a traffic ticket (so long as said ticket doesn't land you in jail). It is not yet against the law to create Spyware although a lot of people (myself included) do not like or want Spyware. So until that is changed - whether or not this person creates Spyware has nothing to do with whether or not they should or could compete in the Olympics.
I own a copy of Atari's "Dungeons & Dragnons: The Temple of Elemental Evil". I had played it when it first came out, and not really played it again.
:-)
You do always have the choice of taken them to small claims court for deceptive marketing practices. Since they sell globally and have a 1-800 number they have to come to your city/town/whatever's courthouse to defend themselves. When they don't - you can place a lien on their business. This stops them from getting any new loans from a bank until the lien has been removed. Liens last up to ten years and can be reset to continue on indefinitely. Courts assign interest to liens as well. So over the years your lien will become worth quite a lot.
This is not to mention the fact that you can also file for class action suits (need lots of people though to do this), triple damages, so on and so forth. Read your Federal, state, and local laws for all things. IANAL - just have done a lot of reading on the legal laws of my state because I had to go to court over some things and that is where I've gotten my knowledge from.
Also, go to small claims court. You don't need a lawyer, just bring all of the documentation you downloaded from the net on this matter. Highlight the passages you wish to use. Write everything down because in that way you can just read your answers off to the judge. And most important - don't be afraid to speak up. Even if the other guy is speaking - if he misquotes a law you have to speak up and say something. Otherwise, the lawyer will walk all over you. You should always start your sentences off with the shortest version of what you want to say and then expand upon your statement. Such as "I believe that is incorrect your honor. The law, which I have here to show you, specifically states...." In reality there are so many laws that it is almost impossible for any judge or lawyer to keep them all straight in their heads (which is why there are so many people who specialize in one aspect of the law).
In your case - you have tried to work with the people at Atari and they have placed what, are to you, unreasonable restrictions on the usage of their software. Your choices will probably be to return the software to the manufacturer or put up with the problems. But! If they are refusing to give you back your money and they won't fix the problems - then you should have a very good case.
I learned about the above the hard way - having to take someone to court and never getting paid by them. But I do have liens against them and I check on these liens every year to make sure they are still in effect. So far - so good.
PS: Don't forget to ask for your court fees as well. No need for you to have to pay good money for what these people are doing.
What law did he or his staff violate that no one else has?
Ummmmmm.....misuse of public funds for private gain?
As the article says:
But the sheer breadth of changes emanating from the House reflects an abuse of public time and equipment, said Potter, now chairman of the Ethics Resource Center.
"That kind of usage, plus the fact that they're changing one person's material, is certainly wrong and ought to be at a minimum the focus of some disciplinary action," he said.
Recently, where I work, we ran into this changing of the guard. Note that it says that Potter (Harry?) is now the chairman of the Ethics Resource Center. The government does this (switching people in and out) so that no one person gets to the point of cronyism. In our case, the person in the position was telling everyone that they wouldn't accept procurement papers until the month prior to when we were going to purchase the items. Then the person got switched out and the new person says we have to wait eighteen months to two years after we submit the papers in order to be able to upgrade our systems. What stupidity on the part of the first person! To think that they are above the rules and regulations. Now we are stuck for the next two years with the equipment we already have in place. (Which is a bit outdated now.) Had the first person just gone ahead and allowed us to give them our paperwork we would have already been set to upgrade everything. As it is - we now have to wait the two years. I know it's a good thing (to keep everyone honest), but gack!
Still, by changing out whomever they had originally, this Potter person will probably do a major house cleaning. Who knows? Maybe we will soon be hearing about charges being brought against many of the people who's IP address was used to make these changes. And if not - then we might soon be hearing about Mr. Potter being replaced by someone who will.
Hah! :-P That almost made me fall out of my chair! :-)