As much as I'd like to have one, I can't give you one. I don't really like saying 'trust me on this' but you'll just have to take my word on it. I work for an office that deals with immigration related legistlation in DC and most of this was coming out of the congressional office staffers, etc.
The way it boils down was this. Back in November, when they were trying to cram the 9/11 bill through conference before elections, Bush demanded Sensenbrenner had to give up the REAL ID provisions of that reform bill. Sensenbrenner nearly called the Presidents bluff which would have killed the 9/11 bill cold out of conference and waste months of debating and crafting. Instead, House leaders promised to let him move to attach it to the spending bill (i.e. this current war bill).
Sensenbrenner all but threatened the President he'd never get anything through the Judicial committee if he fought him on REAL ID. It's not that the Pres does not like all of REAL ID, but the pro business Bush doesn't like the implications and impacts on the cheap/illegal labor market. Furthermore, seeing as his previous stance was for an amnesty for current illegals (the debate on whether his work for citizenship plan really is or is not an amnesty is yours to take), it's not hard to see his dislike.
REAL ID also prohibits states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal aliens. This makes no sense, and will only result in these illegal aliens driving without licenses -- which isn't going to help anyone's security.
Wrong, it means they can't issue a drivers licence that has any value as an ID card. For example, in TN, there are two forms of licenses available. One that can be issued to undocs that states clearly 'For Driving Only' and is not a valid ID for airports etc. This does not limit whom the states may give a drivers license to but it does limit the value of that license if it does not meet certain minimum standards.
At this point there is nothing that can stop the passage of REAL ID short of a line item veto when it reaches the presidents desk.. and that's simply not going to happen.
It's part of the spending bill, which just so happens to be a war bill, and was passed by some 350-50 margin in the house. If you think the Senate is gonna vote an 80 billion spending bill down you need your head examined.
Bush will sign this into law even tho he doesn't want to, because if he doesn't, he'll never get anything through the Judicial committee. Sensenbrenner pretty much drew a line in the sand after the Pres promished him last November that he would get the opportunity to bring it to the floor after effectively demanding it be removed from the 9/11 bill. In some ways, the white house hopes to use this to leverage the immigration reform Bush has talked about twice.
of course, the proper tools and you can easily bypass that as well (professional data recovery teams wouldn't have much of a job to do if it was easy as you say to lock the data away for good). pull the drive apart and read straight off the platters if need be.
tools tools tools.. sure the NSA could break strong encryption given enough time but so could any determined individual that wanted to read the disk.
I'm sure we'll get enough yahoos that hop up and down about how this is repressing freedom and ignore the fact it's a private company making a decision on what they choose to show. So let's skip that.
I simply don't see the problem here. If you take TFA on face value, and assume that the shows didn't have a very high production value AND they would be playing to audiences that are predominantly in non agreement with the focus.. you just aren't going to make a profit by picking it up and it only makes sense from a business perspective.
Of course, if this had been a story about an IMAX theatre choosing not to show a vid that discussed creationism there would be dancing and 200 comments on how awesome it is. But no one ever accused/. readers of being particularly enlightened on this issue.
I can't begin to mention all of them but there are a couple of very good ones I'd suggest.
Depending on your gaming group size, the near fist game I'd suggest is Diplomacy. No dice, no randomness, and a good chance someone gets punched in the face. The game is exactly as it says. Europe pre WWI and 7 major powers inhabit in the baord. In between each turn you have 15 minutes to discuss your plans. All unit orders are made in secret and all moves resolve at once. There is nothing binding you to anything you say in the in between phases. There are only 3 possible moves a unit can make. Attack, Hold, Support and you may support units not your own.
If you can find a copy of Games-Workshop talisman, give it a spin. It's, in my opinion, one of the best productions GW ever did next to blood bowl. It can kill you a solid evening. It's not as strategic as some of the others.
Now my mind is failing, so I'll give this advice but someone else is going to have to recall the name of the game. There is a space colonization game on the market, been out there a while. The board can support I believe up to 5 players. The board has a central circle, from that circle up to 5 arms spiral off it where your ships start. Each unit piece is a plastic colored shuttle and they stack together. The concept is fairly straight forward, forcefully colonize others space. But you can get aid from friends on the attack or the defense so a good bit of strategy involved.
The only other thing I hesitantly suggest is a classic. If you have the patience and a math degree, try out star fleet battles. Just get the captain's edition and maybe advanced missions. After you start to get all the other modules the rule set bloats up so large you'd need a lawyer to tell you what you can or can't do. It' insanely documented and can get very strategic.
and what exactly is going to happen when a non rooted user executes that worm? about the worst thing that can happen is the home directory to be wiped out.. which amazingly tends to fix the worm problem. with proper backups, you lose a day of work tops? Delete all your home directories, rsync or rdiff your backup in and magically things just work. As long as windows makes admin the default login it will always be less secure and more vulnerable to worms and viruses than *nix.
From a Warhammer Fanatic
on
NYT on Warhammer
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I've followed Warhammer for the better part of 10 years now, and have tested or played nearly every game they(Games Workshop) have created. Blood Bowl, Talisman, Fantasy and 40k, Gorkamorka, Gothic.. the list is pretty large.
The article, I feel, does a remarkable job discussing aspects of the tabletop wargamming industry that makes it so enticing. If you like chess, chances are these productions will probably not fail to interest you. Seems like every week, even after so long, I learn something else, am surprised by the ingenuity of my opponents, think of better strategies to annihilate my adversary. I honestly do not believe you can ever master the game.
But I think that, for the most part, this exists for all highly tactical games. Warhammer is unique however in that along side their decent rules (which change every few years to keep things fresh and interesting), they have a fantastic creative direction. Their monthly publication White Dwarf is filled not just with rules and battle reports, painting primers and strategies; but with a hefty helping of fluff, fiction, heroes, betrayal, victory and all the things that make a good story.
Many players, myself included, choose armies often times as a telling of themselves. The never say die dwarves, the emperors finest space marines, the wildly hillarious skaven (all of their war machines are nearly as risky for the skaven as they are for the opponent), the haughty high elves.
Their lead is simply the best in the industry. It's highly stylized, out of proportion. Orcs wielding high tech weapons in one hand and "Choppas" (mechanical axes) in the other. They have massive vehicles like the Steam Tank and the Land Raider. The game is simply oozing with flavor.
While I've generally no problem with their no advertising mentality, GW has classicly been a bear to deal with if you are a shop owner. If you sell GW merchandise, they want you to buy everything in 6 blister groupings, they want you to meet a certain dollar ammount per week, so a lot of shops turn to groups like Alliance who buys and bulk and acts as a middle man for small stores that don't put through enough sales to keep up with GWs demands.
The only other real complaint is that the cost of entry is high. I've had years to collect, have 6 different armies and would estimate my collection well over $4,000 in value. That is not to mention the time expenditure to paint, base and secure all my models. It makes it very hard for a new player to enter the market, so hunting for new blood is a bit of a chore. They have tried more and more however to become the drug pusher (The first one is always free) and that's helped get interest from those that can afford it but would be hesitant otherwise.
You are greatly confused as to what the states rights are in this matter
As the legistlation is written, it does not step down and say who the state can give licenses to. What it does do, is set a minimum standard in order to state issued IDs to be given validity as a form of federal identification.
For example, TN has a two tiered form of license. A federal ID qualified that is obtainable by legal immigrants, people with work visas and citizens. They have a driver's only version which has no identification value which undocumenteds can obtain to operate a motor vehicle. This will not change with passage of this bill.
Why is this news? Almost every bandwidth provider in the country will house spammers so long as they aren't breaking any laws. Internap, the largest bandwidth provider in the states, houses a good number of spammers even tho it's "against policy" to send unsolicited email. If the almighty dollar is involved don't expect companies to be "moral."
I've lived and worked in DC for a while now (for a non prof lobbying group to boot) and can tell you it's a much different beast than it's made out to be...tho still a beast.
Most congressmen don't interact with the lobby groups directly. An office will have gobs of LAs (Legistlative Assistants) and they will in turn do most of the contacting and oft times a lot of the deal brokering on some issues.
Most lobbying is nothing more than smart manouvering. You get their staffers drunk, pump em for information, then go to their constituents and whip em into a frenzy when you find the dirt.
This was said before we had a G4 power book as well.
And somehow.. it still got done. This is the sentiment that Jobs brought forth in his last keynote address, and that it will be accomplished. Soon? Probably not, but he believes that eventually the engineering ninjas can crack this nut.
I'm not sure where the wired job application stated a doctorate in physics is required. The average (even/.) reader doesn't want the guts and bolts of quantum physics. I just love self inflated "geniuses."
Uh, if you want to talk about local ISPs sure, but these guys aren't using comcast cable is my wager. For example, Internap houses a number of spammers and unless you start really breaking laws they will quite happily turn a blind eye. This is the case for the majority of enterprise bandwidth service providers. It's all about the $$.
After we finish with creationism we will go over the big bang. At it's core, it's nothing more than a best guess scenario that we have no hope of proving either, but don't let that turn you off of believing it's hard science. If you do, the vast right wing conspiracy will have already won.
When all of your legitimate arguments fall apart, you have to resort to playing the racism card. Not because it's true, but because we are all so damn scared of being called a racist. In the US we have pro big business right wing republicans that want to have laborers that will work terrible hours for minimum wage at the cost of native born citizen's jobs. On the other other side there are guild complexed leftist hippies.
Somewhere in the middle we have rational Americans. Moderates on both sides that are tired of being sold out by a government that just doesn't get it. And it has not a damn thing to do about being racist. The largest block of unemployed (by skill) are technology workers, and yet there are more h1b visas being requested than ever. Jobs traditionally held by black have being completely replaced by immigrants, most of which are undocs (read as criminals, entering the us without a visa is still a crime last I checked). The leftist elites are alienating their own black constiuency in the name of diversity.
We are pushing our city infrastructures far beyond their reasonable capacities, because it's too many too fast. Urban sprawl, public services pushed to the breaking point by non tax paying illegals that are here because we'll obviously give them an amnesty if they stay in this country long enough without being caught. Hospitals in Arizona and New Mexico are going bankrupt because they have an obligation to assist those that come through the door, but the federal government won't fund them for the services they provide to anyone but legal residents.
Our government has no concept of middle ground. We want free range libertarianism, with no borders; because of it we have things like the patriot act, attempting to fix a problem of our doing.
Below is a comment by Roy Beck, one of the leading voices for reduced immigration (not anti immigration).
Unfortunately, to write about problems of immigration is to risk seeming to attack immigrants themselves. Even worse is the risk of inadvertently encouraging somebody else to show hostility toward the foreign-born as a group.
I encounter too many immigrants and children of immigrants in daily affairs where I live in northern Virginia to take those risks lightly. From five continents, members of immigrant families have passed through my home, especially in the persons of friends of my sons. They are among the physical therapy patients of my wife; they are participants in youth activities which I lead; they are friends at my church, which has received national recognition for creating local service to new immigrants; they are neighbors; they are business clerks and owners where I trade.
Thus, as is the case for millions of other Americans, I have a very personal stake in not wanting to provoke hostility or discrimination toward the foreign-born who already are living among us.
But our kindly feelings toward immigrants must no longer stifle public discussion about the effects of immigration numbers.
To talk about changing immigration numbers is to say nothing against the individual immigrants in this country. Rather, it is about deciding how many foreign citizens living in their own countries right now should be allowed to immigrate in the future.
None of this is to suggest that no immigrants are scoundrels or contribute to problems of immigration because of their bad personal behavior. It is not unfair, nor does it constitute immigrant bashing, to criticize the behavior of specific immigrants who violate our laws or otherwise behave in a manner unworthy of guests who have been invited into this country.
It IS immigrant bashing, however, to ascribe those bad characteristics to whole groups of people based on their ethnicity or foreign-born status. All of us should be careful of the language we use so as not to inadvertently appear to be making such negative generalizations.
Why do we even give a damn about Grandma? We don't care what she uses. Give her SCO for all I care, she's gonna check email just as easily.
Grandma isn't going to push it into the mainstream. Linux needs to find a way to reach out and capture the winhead power users. There should be a keybind for everything in the UI. Utilities like Expose for Apple needs to find it's way into Linux as more than just rough ports found on kdeapps. And there needs to be some people with real artistic skill making the great linux apps look as great on the screen as anything windows.
But more than anything, it needs to prove there is an alternative and the alternative is good. Apple, in my mind, is "unix on desktop" years before "linux on desktop." Maybe the rumors of a headless mac will come to fruition and more people will willingly make the leap and see what they are missing.
Take a Linux distribution (or BSD, or Darwin, or whatever), place a Windows GUI on it, port their apps so that anyone can buy Office (profit!), inherit stronger security from the UNIX model, and add classic Windows support with their Virtual PC/Virtual Server technology they bought from Connectix.
Slashdot Mirror
As much as I'd like to have one, I can't give you one. I don't really like saying 'trust me on this' but you'll just have to take my word on it. I work for an office that deals with immigration related legistlation in DC and most of this was coming out of the congressional office staffers, etc.
The way it boils down was this. Back in November, when they were trying to cram the 9/11 bill through conference before elections, Bush demanded Sensenbrenner had to give up the REAL ID provisions of that reform bill. Sensenbrenner nearly called the Presidents bluff which would have killed the 9/11 bill cold out of conference and waste months of debating and crafting. Instead, House leaders promised to let him move to attach it to the spending bill (i.e. this current war bill).
Sensenbrenner all but threatened the President he'd never get anything through the Judicial committee if he fought him on REAL ID. It's not that the Pres does not like all of REAL ID, but the pro business Bush doesn't like the implications and impacts on the cheap/illegal labor market. Furthermore, seeing as his previous stance was for an amnesty for current illegals (the debate on whether his work for citizenship plan really is or is not an amnesty is yours to take), it's not hard to see his dislike.
Hope that makes some sense.
Thanks for that reminder .. here's the link if you want to look at that court ruling
http://thomas.loc.gov/home/line_item_veto.html
At this point there is nothing that can stop the passage of REAL ID short of a line item veto when it reaches the presidents desk .. and that's simply not going to happen.
It's part of the spending bill, which just so happens to be a war bill, and was passed by some 350-50 margin in the house. If you think the Senate is gonna vote an 80 billion spending bill down you need your head examined.
Bush will sign this into law even tho he doesn't want to, because if he doesn't, he'll never get anything through the Judicial committee. Sensenbrenner pretty much drew a line in the sand after the Pres promished him last November that he would get the opportunity to bring it to the floor after effectively demanding it be removed from the 9/11 bill. In some ways, the white house hopes to use this to leverage the immigration reform Bush has talked about twice.
I can see how that'd throw you off since it's May 2. :)
how can you blame DST on something that happens every day?
of course, the proper tools and you can easily bypass that as well (professional data recovery teams wouldn't have much of a job to do if it was easy as you say to lock the data away for good). pull the drive apart and read straight off the platters if need be.
.. sure the NSA could break strong encryption given enough time but so could any determined individual that wanted to read the disk.
tools tools tools
I'm sure we'll get enough yahoos that hop up and down about how this is repressing freedom and ignore the fact it's a private company making a decision on what they choose to show. So let's skip that.
.. you just aren't going to make a profit by picking it up and it only makes sense from a business perspective.
/. readers of being particularly enlightened on this issue.
I simply don't see the problem here. If you take TFA on face value, and assume that the shows didn't have a very high production value AND they would be playing to audiences that are predominantly in non agreement with the focus
Of course, if this had been a story about an IMAX theatre choosing not to show a vid that discussed creationism there would be dancing and 200 comments on how awesome it is. But no one ever accused
Considering even Microsoft IE6 does not have a 90% market share anymore that doesn't include them either.
Like "Windows XP"
I can't begin to mention all of them but there are a couple of very good ones I'd suggest.
Depending on your gaming group size, the near fist game I'd suggest is Diplomacy. No dice, no randomness, and a good chance someone gets punched in the face. The game is exactly as it says. Europe pre WWI and 7 major powers inhabit in the baord. In between each turn you have 15 minutes to discuss your plans. All unit orders are made in secret and all moves resolve at once. There is nothing binding you to anything you say in the in between phases. There are only 3 possible moves a unit can make. Attack, Hold, Support and you may support units not your own.
If you can find a copy of Games-Workshop talisman, give it a spin. It's, in my opinion, one of the best productions GW ever did next to blood bowl. It can kill you a solid evening. It's not as strategic as some of the others.
Now my mind is failing, so I'll give this advice but someone else is going to have to recall the name of the game. There is a space colonization game on the market, been out there a while. The board can support I believe up to 5 players. The board has a central circle, from that circle up to 5 arms spiral off it where your ships start. Each unit piece is a plastic colored shuttle and they stack together. The concept is fairly straight forward, forcefully colonize others space. But you can get aid from friends on the attack or the defense so a good bit of strategy involved.
The only other thing I hesitantly suggest is a classic. If you have the patience and a math degree, try out star fleet battles. Just get the captain's edition and maybe advanced missions. After you start to get all the other modules the rule set bloats up so large you'd need a lawyer to tell you what you can or can't do. It' insanely documented and can get very strategic.
and what exactly is going to happen when a non rooted user executes that worm? about the worst thing that can happen is the home directory to be wiped out .. which amazingly tends to fix the worm problem. with proper backups, you lose a day of work tops? Delete all your home directories, rsync or rdiff your backup in and magically things just work. As long as windows makes admin the default login it will always be less secure and more vulnerable to worms and viruses than *nix.
I've followed Warhammer for the better part of 10 years now, and have tested or played nearly every game they(Games Workshop) have created. Blood Bowl, Talisman, Fantasy and 40k, Gorkamorka, Gothic .. the list is pretty large.
The article, I feel, does a remarkable job discussing aspects of the tabletop wargamming industry that makes it so enticing. If you like chess, chances are these productions will probably not fail to interest you. Seems like every week, even after so long, I learn something else, am surprised by the ingenuity of my opponents, think of better strategies to annihilate my adversary. I honestly do not believe you can ever master the game.
But I think that, for the most part, this exists for all highly tactical games. Warhammer is unique however in that along side their decent rules (which change every few years to keep things fresh and interesting), they have a fantastic creative direction. Their monthly publication White Dwarf is filled not just with rules and battle reports, painting primers and strategies; but with a hefty helping of fluff, fiction, heroes, betrayal, victory and all the things that make a good story.
Many players, myself included, choose armies often times as a telling of themselves. The never say die dwarves, the emperors finest space marines, the wildly hillarious skaven (all of their war machines are nearly as risky for the skaven as they are for the opponent), the haughty high elves.
Their lead is simply the best in the industry. It's highly stylized, out of proportion. Orcs wielding high tech weapons in one hand and "Choppas" (mechanical axes) in the other. They have massive vehicles like the Steam Tank and the Land Raider. The game is simply oozing with flavor.
While I've generally no problem with their no advertising mentality, GW has classicly been a bear to deal with if you are a shop owner. If you sell GW merchandise, they want you to buy everything in 6 blister groupings, they want you to meet a certain dollar ammount per week, so a lot of shops turn to groups like Alliance who buys and bulk and acts as a middle man for small stores that don't put through enough sales to keep up with GWs demands.
The only other real complaint is that the cost of entry is high. I've had years to collect, have 6 different armies and would estimate my collection well over $4,000 in value. That is not to mention the time expenditure to paint, base and secure all my models. It makes it very hard for a new player to enter the market, so hunting for new blood is a bit of a chore. They have tried more and more however to become the drug pusher (The first one is always free) and that's helped get interest from those that can afford it but would be hesitant otherwise.
You are greatly confused as to what the states rights are in this matter
As the legistlation is written, it does not step down and say who the state can give licenses to. What it does do, is set a minimum standard in order to state issued IDs to be given validity as a form of federal identification.
For example, TN has a two tiered form of license. A federal ID qualified that is obtainable by legal immigrants, people with work visas and citizens. They have a driver's only version which has no identification value which undocumenteds can obtain to operate a motor vehicle. This will not change with passage of this bill.
Yeah, linking it on /. is a great way to help out their "increasing bandwidth" problem
Why is this news? Almost every bandwidth provider in the country will house spammers so long as they aren't breaking any laws. Internap, the largest bandwidth provider in the states, houses a good number of spammers even tho it's "against policy" to send unsolicited email. If the almighty dollar is involved don't expect companies to be "moral."
I've lived and worked in DC for a while now (for a non prof lobbying group to boot) and can tell you it's a much different beast than it's made out to be...tho still a beast.
Most congressmen don't interact with the lobby groups directly. An office will have gobs of LAs (Legistlative Assistants) and they will in turn do most of the contacting and oft times a lot of the deal brokering on some issues.
Most lobbying is nothing more than smart manouvering. You get their staffers drunk, pump em for information, then go to their constituents and whip em into a frenzy when you find the dirt.
This was said before we had a G4 power book as well.
.. it still got done. This is the sentiment that Jobs brought forth in his last keynote address, and that it will be accomplished. Soon? Probably not, but he believes that eventually the engineering ninjas can crack this nut.
And somehow
I'm not sure where the wired job application stated a doctorate in physics is required. The average (even /.) reader doesn't want the guts and bolts of quantum physics. I just love self inflated "geniuses."
Uh, if you want to talk about local ISPs sure, but these guys aren't using comcast cable is my wager. For example, Internap houses a number of spammers and unless you start really breaking laws they will quite happily turn a blind eye. This is the case for the majority of enterprise bandwidth service providers. It's all about the $$.
After we finish with creationism we will go over the big bang. At it's core, it's nothing more than a best guess scenario that we have no hope of proving either, but don't let that turn you off of believing it's hard science. If you do, the vast right wing conspiracy will have already won.
Somewhere in the middle we have rational Americans. Moderates on both sides that are tired of being sold out by a government that just doesn't get it. And it has not a damn thing to do about being racist. The largest block of unemployed (by skill) are technology workers, and yet there are more h1b visas being requested than ever. Jobs traditionally held by black have being completely replaced by immigrants, most of which are undocs (read as criminals, entering the us without a visa is still a crime last I checked). The leftist elites are alienating their own black constiuency in the name of diversity.
We are pushing our city infrastructures far beyond their reasonable capacities, because it's too many too fast. Urban sprawl, public services pushed to the breaking point by non tax paying illegals that are here because we'll obviously give them an amnesty if they stay in this country long enough without being caught. Hospitals in Arizona and New Mexico are going bankrupt because they have an obligation to assist those that come through the door, but the federal government won't fund them for the services they provide to anyone but legal residents.
Our government has no concept of middle ground. We want free range libertarianism, with no borders; because of it we have things like the patriot act, attempting to fix a problem of our doing.
Below is a comment by Roy Beck, one of the leading voices for reduced immigration (not anti immigration).
is this long enough?
Why do we even give a damn about Grandma? We don't care what she uses. Give her SCO for all I care, she's gonna check email just as easily.
Grandma isn't going to push it into the mainstream. Linux needs to find a way to reach out and capture the winhead power users. There should be a keybind for everything in the UI. Utilities like Expose for Apple needs to find it's way into Linux as more than just rough ports found on kdeapps. And there needs to be some people with real artistic skill making the great linux apps look as great on the screen as anything windows.
But more than anything, it needs to prove there is an alternative and the alternative is good. Apple, in my mind, is "unix on desktop" years before "linux on desktop." Maybe the rumors of a headless mac will come to fruition and more people will willingly make the leap and see what they are missing.
Isn't this called OS X?