Sounds like a good idea but doesn't solve the basic problem. They're installing an orwellian surveillance system which could be used in any other way. We just can't close our eyes and pray that the system won't be abused. With our current advances in automated image recognicion it won't be a problem in 20,40,60 years to control the entire population with low effort and there is just no way to make sure that this won't happen other than not installing such a surveillance infrastructure in the first place.
> People can be motivated to kill by just about any ideology, religious or otherwise.
No doubt. But there are way more people who kill *because* of religion than poeple who killed because they are atheists. Stalin was atheist but he did what he did not because of that. He also ate bread, doesn't make bread a dangerous substance
> After this it is all a matter of semantics, but the facts are hardly disputed as you are trying to imply.
First of all there are plenty of people who would not accept what you claim as facts. Google for "turkey armenian genocide lie" and you will find some sites which promote this (same can be done with the holocaust). Second thing is that semantics matter a great deal. Read Orwell, Chomsky,... for more on this (think of "operation iraqi liberation" which was not used but is a nice example for a euphemism which shapes how we think).
And most important: Just because i point out that such people exist doesn't mean that i agree with them. I don't intend to defend their position because what i want to say is: Either there is freedom of speech or there is not. If you're not free to believe in whichever history you want and talk about it you're not free because "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." [ O'Brien in 1984 ]
This doen't imply that you as a person (and especially people who suffered in those horiffic events) have to be tolerant against such people but if you legislate what is historic "fact" you go down a very dangerous road. With the laws as framework and such practices accepted by society tomorrow your belief that there were those events can be punished.
And to the argument in the other posts that you can't say something like that because you insult people: This is the price we have to pay for free speech. If we make "don't insult anyone" the bar then we better shape our whole society to the strictest wishes of the religous fundamentalists.
There are no facts in history, just a consensus of the majority.
The Armenian genocide for example. In western circles you won't find many people who disagree with this "fact". So people accept it as one. In turkey it is for the majority something that didn't ever happen and so for them there is no such event in the past.
I just want to clarify that there is no doubt in my mind that the holocaust happened (i live in germany and the memory is present here). But when we start to punish people for doubting historic "facts" we're no better than the people who persecuted Galileo because he just wouldn't accept the "facts". Let them be ignorant. Don't do business with them, isolate them socialy, do whatever you can in your *private* power to punish them. But as soon as you use the state to persecute those poeple you get on dangerous grounds.
Mods who modded this flaimbait really don't know what they're doing. I live in germany and it is exactly this way. Don't believe in the holocaust and express it publicly? You can go to prison. Say "heil hitler" in public? A fine, possibly prison. It seems to most people a polite oppression since the opinions oppressed are those of a group who many people don't like
> For example, maybe an armored ball (kind of like those hamster balls)
God this is boring. Me want cool flying hornets. Imaging a cool warfilm with swarms of attacking killerhornets. Now the same with balls rolling around. See?
"And - since they have financing secured in this manner, their programming is actually informative, educational, partially critical, of higher quality and very often a pleasure to watch"
That's right. But the downside is that starting with 2007 every internet connected computers is seen as a reciever and one has to pay a monthly fee because you can access the websites of the broadcasting stations with it. So while you could get around this fee in the past by not possessing a tv now virtually everyone is forced to pay it (and yes, your pc at work does count. And you have to pay for every location extra) no matter if you really use their services
This is probably the best idea in the whole thread. The main problem is that *users* don't care if their computer is controlled by anyone else as long as it doesn't impact them. With new botnets you get exactly this behaviour. I've spoken to countless people who just did not care if their pc wan't fully controlled by them. As long as you don't find a way to put some pessure onto the users you won't be able to beat this problem.
Make keybindings as easy and complete as in opera. There is an extension which lets you configure some keybindings but there is nothing even close to what you can do in opera. I like vim movement in all my apps and i can do most of what i want with the extension but i think that's a feature which should be possible without extension (there is not even a real need for a gui for this, a config file would be fine. currently everything is spread over multiple files in xml iirc)
"And if your wife asks, "Why would they show up up the front door? Give me exact examples." what would you say? It's not that people are that willfully ignorant, it's just that those raising the issue are not succeeding in making the threat seem real enough."
That's a very real problem. But it's not necessarily the fault of the person raising the issue. I often discover that even if you give people quite concrete examples they disregard them because they think that it's too farfetched. And that's mainly because they don't understand the technological changes that took place.
I live in germany and some of you will remember germany was parted into the BRD (nice USA loving part) and the DDR (bad evil communists). One of the main instruments to hold their power in the DDR was the Stasi ("Staatsicherheit", one could translate this to ministry of state (homeland;) security). In the end there were 1 people out of 7 deployed by the stasi (not all full time, most of them only as snitches). So it was a really enourmous effort to get the information needed to control those with dissenting views.
What people don't get is the power of correlating databases. One datasource by itself might not seem so bad but if you start to combine several you get information out of them which is way more interesting than just the sum of those databases. The instruments used by the stasi are nothing against what someone could do if he got access to the different databases we're currently creating. And all of this almost instantly and with way less people.
If i tell people about this most of them just don't get it. Maybe it's because i can't make my point but i think that it is because they never worked with databases and really can't comprehend what's possible. I didn't realize it fully until i was at a congress of the CCC (http://www.ccc.de/) where someone demonstrated what you can do in 30 minutes with public databases. I'm convinced that people see us as paranoid because they just don't know whats possible and so it's very hard to give examples which seem relevant/plausible to them.
Not a problem for me, i download the stuff i want and get it with every comfort i want (e.g. pre-cracked, accepting every serial, playable everywhere,...). If i like the game/movie then i'll buy it but there is no way i'm going to accept treatment like this if i pay. It's not like computers are so easy and uncomplicated that it really doesn't matter if you add another problem or two...
... here we can get 16 mbit dsl for ~60 euro together with a telefon flatrate. But it's of little use since your upload is 1 mbit. You can't really use your big pipe since most servers won't give out data that fast. And distributed networks which could saturate this pipe won't work because one is not able to feed back that fast and so you're stuck on 1-2 mbit down (e.g. bittorrent).
So it's great that they're testing new technologies but the real bottleneck isn't bandwith to the costumer but their ability to send data.
As long as they're not using special hardware to secure the check of those signatures this doesn't help at all. If you don't have drm on a hardware level all that's left is step 1 (which is easy)
Which windowmanager do you use? I use ion and i remember something on its mailinglist about firefox and problems with keyboard focus. IIRC then it was a problem with gtk and not firefox
"The reason that the "invade canada" joke annoys you is because of the element of truth- Canada has one of the world's weakest militaries, next to the world's strongest. But that's Canada's choice."
Yeah, not investing insane amounts of money in a institution designed to kill people instead of a good health-care system. How stupid are they?
"The reality is, you need to have an army to defend you"
no, you don't. Iraq is currently doing a good job in showing how you can kick a big armys ass with little means. They are occupied but at which price? How long do you think will the USA be able to afford this (politically and monetary)?
"Who's going to fuck with the next door neighbor of the biggest, meanest, toughest kid on the block?"
If the USA wouldn't protect Canada other states would be all over them immediately, i can see it.
After reading the parent and the grandparent post it seems more likely that someone knows how to go onto a killing spree after reading slashdot than after playing gta (you can get your frustration here to. Die trolls, die!)
Slashdot Mirror
This is very neat. Is there a way to get the same functionality in linux?
> It is scientific fact that embryos, from conception onward, are living human organisms
It is not a scientific fact because it is not a question which can be answered in the scientific realm since it is a question of value
Sounds like a good idea but doesn't solve the basic problem. They're installing an orwellian surveillance system which could be used in any other way. We just can't close our eyes and pray that the system won't be abused. With our current advances in automated image recognicion it won't be a problem in 20,40,60 years to control the entire population with low effort and there is just no way to make sure that this won't happen other than not installing such a surveillance infrastructure in the first place.
> People can be motivated to kill by just about any ideology, religious or otherwise.
No doubt. But there are way more people who kill *because* of religion than poeple who killed because they are atheists. Stalin was atheist but he did what he did not because of that. He also ate bread, doesn't make bread a dangerous substance
> After this it is all a matter of semantics, but the facts are hardly disputed as you are trying to imply.
... for more on this (think of "operation iraqi liberation" which was not used but is a nice example for a euphemism which shapes how we think).
First of all there are plenty of people who would not accept what you claim as facts. Google for "turkey armenian genocide lie" and you will find some sites which promote this (same can be done with the holocaust). Second thing is that semantics matter a great deal. Read Orwell, Chomsky,
And most important: Just because i point out that such people exist doesn't mean that i agree with them. I don't intend to defend their position because what i want to say is: Either there is freedom of speech or there is not. If you're not free to believe in whichever history you want and talk about it you're not free because "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." [ O'Brien in 1984 ]
This doen't imply that you as a person (and especially people who suffered in those horiffic events) have to be tolerant against such people but if you legislate what is historic "fact" you go down a very dangerous road. With the laws as framework and such practices accepted by society tomorrow your belief that there were those events can be punished.
And to the argument in the other posts that you can't say something like that because you insult people: This is the price we have to pay for free speech. If we make "don't insult anyone" the bar then we better shape our whole society to the strictest wishes of the religous fundamentalists.
There are no facts in history, just a consensus of the majority.
The Armenian genocide for example. In western circles you won't find many people who disagree with this "fact". So people accept it as one. In turkey it is for the majority something that didn't ever happen and so for them there is no such event in the past.
I just want to clarify that there is no doubt in my mind that the holocaust happened (i live in germany and the memory is present here). But when we start to punish people for doubting historic "facts" we're no better than the people who persecuted Galileo because he just wouldn't accept the "facts". Let them be ignorant. Don't do business with them, isolate them socialy, do whatever you can in your *private* power to punish them. But as soon as you use the state to persecute those poeple you get on dangerous grounds.
Mods who modded this flaimbait really don't know what they're doing. I live in germany and it is exactly this way. Don't believe in the holocaust and express it publicly? You can go to prison. Say "heil hitler" in public? A fine, possibly prison.
It seems to most people a polite oppression since the opinions oppressed are those of a group who many people don't like
Can you give us an impression of the performance? I found nothing in the docs on this page
> For example, maybe an armored ball (kind of like those hamster balls)
God this is boring. Me want cool flying hornets. Imaging a cool warfilm with swarms of attacking killerhornets. Now the same with balls rolling around. See?
Gee, always those people and their feasibility
it's really a bad time when posts like this get rated insightful instead of funny
"And - since they have financing secured in this manner, their programming is actually informative, educational, partially critical, of higher quality and very often a pleasure to watch"
That's right. But the downside is that starting with 2007 every internet connected computers is seen as a reciever and one has to pay a monthly fee because you can access the websites of the broadcasting stations with it. So while you could get around this fee in the past by not possessing a tv now virtually everyone is forced to pay it (and yes, your pc at work does count. And you have to pay for every location extra) no matter if you really use their services
This is probably the best idea in the whole thread. The main problem is that *users* don't care if their computer is controlled by anyone else as long as it doesn't impact them. With new botnets you get exactly this behaviour. I've spoken to countless people who just did not care if their pc wan't fully controlled by them. As long as you don't find a way to put some pessure onto the users you won't be able to beat this problem.
Only that with information the latter is the sensible option
Make keybindings as easy and complete as in opera. There is an extension which lets you configure some keybindings but there is nothing even close to what you can do in opera. I like vim movement in all my apps and i can do most of what i want with the extension but i think that's a feature which should be possible without extension (there is not even a real need for a gui for this, a config file would be fine. currently everything is spread over multiple files in xml iirc)
To do this you would need a shitload of RAM. I somehow doubt that that's an option for a machine ~100$
"And if your wife asks, "Why would they show up up the front door? Give me exact examples." what would you say? It's not that people are that willfully ignorant, it's just that those raising the issue are not succeeding in making the threat seem real enough."
;) security). In the end there were 1 people out of 7 deployed by the stasi (not all full time, most of them only as snitches). So it was a really enourmous effort to get the information needed to control those with dissenting views.
That's a very real problem. But it's not necessarily the fault of the person raising the issue. I often discover that even if you give people quite concrete examples they disregard them because they think that it's too farfetched. And that's mainly because they don't understand the technological changes that took place.
I live in germany and some of you will remember germany was parted into the BRD (nice USA loving part) and the DDR (bad evil communists). One of the main instruments to hold their power in the DDR was the Stasi ("Staatsicherheit", one could translate this to ministry of state (homeland
What people don't get is the power of correlating databases. One datasource by itself might not seem so bad but if you start to combine several you get information out of them which is way more interesting than just the sum of those databases. The instruments used by the stasi are nothing against what someone could do if he got access to the different databases we're currently creating. And all of this almost instantly and with way less people.
If i tell people about this most of them just don't get it. Maybe it's because i can't make my point but i think that it is because they never worked with databases and really can't comprehend what's possible. I didn't realize it fully until i was at a congress of the CCC (http://www.ccc.de/) where someone demonstrated what you can do in 30 minutes with public databases. I'm convinced that people see us as paranoid because they just don't know whats possible and so it's very hard to give examples which seem relevant/plausible to them.
Not a problem for me, i download the stuff i want and get it with every comfort i want (e.g. pre-cracked, accepting every serial, playable everywhere, ...). If i like the game/movie then i'll buy it but there is no way i'm going to accept treatment like this if i pay. It's not like computers are so easy and uncomplicated that it really doesn't matter if you add another problem or two ...
... here we can get 16 mbit dsl for ~60 euro together with a telefon flatrate. But it's of little use since your upload is 1 mbit. You can't really use your big pipe since most servers won't give out data that fast. And distributed networks which could saturate this pipe won't work because one is not able to feed back that fast and so you're stuck on 1-2 mbit down (e.g. bittorrent).
So it's great that they're testing new technologies but the real bottleneck isn't bandwith to the costumer but their ability to send data.
"Cryptographically secure signatures?"
As long as they're not using special hardware to secure the check of those signatures this doesn't help at all. If you don't have drm on a hardware level all that's left is step 1 (which is easy)
With your logic i could show that the space shuttle is unmaintainable. I don't have the skills to maintain it, don't have the time or money.
See some problem with that? Just because you can't do it doesn't mean others can't do it.
One word: alcohol
Which windowmanager do you use? I use ion and i remember something on its mailinglist about firefox and problems with keyboard focus. IIRC then it was a problem with gtk and not firefox
Which means that 30% are being held by other countries. He didn't say "all their debt" as you pseudo-quoted.
But it's clearly not a problem for a country if 30% of a neglectable sum is under control of other countrys.
"The reason that the "invade canada" joke annoys you is because of the element of truth- Canada has one of the world's weakest militaries, next to the world's strongest. But that's Canada's choice."
Yeah, not investing insane amounts of money in a institution designed to kill people instead of a good health-care system. How stupid are they?
"The reality is, you need to have an army to defend you"
no, you don't. Iraq is currently doing a good job in showing how you can kick a big armys ass with little means.
They are occupied but at which price? How long do you think will the USA be able to afford this (politically and monetary)?
"Who's going to fuck with the next door neighbor of the biggest, meanest, toughest kid on the block?"
If the USA wouldn't protect Canada other states would be all over them immediately, i can see it.
After reading the parent and the grandparent post it seems more likely that someone knows how to go onto a killing spree after reading slashdot than after playing gta (you can get your frustration here to. Die trolls, die!)