Since global warming has everything to do with trend analysis, I think an economist is the perfect person to evaluate the data.
Couldn't disagree more. The reason economists are useful in analyzing global warming is that they understand economics. They actually have half a clue what will happen to the economy if we impose massive regulations on it.
PJ O'Rourke was writing about his experiences in a number of countries with major famines. He observed that there was always plenty of food around but that the thugs in charge didn't allow it to get to starving people. Nature, in a nutshell, doesn't cause famines, people do.
So if the science is settled, fine, but also realize that it's a historical fact that we could easily kill more of ourselves than global warming if we screw up the solution. So we need a debate about the economics and we need proper economists to weigh in.
Look, I'm not even saying that kids have it easy nowadays, far from it. I remember learning to program on a C-64. You could memorize all the important addresses. Your languages were BASIC and assembler. You had a grand total of 3 registers. You had no endian issues, no Unicode, nothing to install, nothing to configure. You just bought a subscription to Run magazine and started by copying the programs from it.
Things are different now, and I think it's better that it's harder and that the upcoming generation will adapt just as we did. All these guys are saying is that what made sense then doesn't make sense now, that much should be obvious, but kids are still idiots.
You may not be able to X in your current country, but you can in country Y, next year, country Y is fairly likely to also not permit X, in the name of security, terrorism, whatever.
So you're basically saying that if country X bans porn but country Y doesn't, say, allow women to vote or go to school, it's just six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Of course, IMO, 'freer' is only a relative term.
Your opinion is evidence that you don't understand what real oppression is.
One simple rule that imperial powers tend to forget is that people are nearly always divided against their own government but nearly always united against a foreign invader.
"Nearly always" is your way of acknowledging that a lot of people, including Obama, have a whole lot of egg on their face about Iraq, and that you know damned well there's a big difference between "invader" and "aggressor."
So help was your weasel word to pretend to be saying something without having to defend it.
It's more defensible than you think, though.
The fact is that Twitter is designed to be a fun thing for people to use in a relatively non-oppressive society. As such, it's designed under the assumption that they don't *want* criminals or terrorists on their network. So their design works in a free country but can be used against a populace or simply suppressed in an oppressive country.
The problem here, really, is that overthrowing a government is not a trivial exercise and the populace of Iran needs the proper tools. Seriously, is anyone surprised that something called "Twitter" isn't exactly military grade?
Flip on a TV. Watch some touchy-feely story and you'll inevitably see women doing all kinds of crap. Now, this is partly because the camera crew knows that they are easy on the eyes, but they're there.
If you're religious, even mildly, or even somewhat anti-religious, church is outstanding. Think about it from their point of view: making babies is the #1 means of recruitment.
If you like animals, you are set. Just go to your local animal shelter. If you're a little loopy, try PETA. Likewise, environmentalist groups are a dime a dozen and the less you know about the environment, the better.
If you're political, there are plenty of girls on both the right and left. I'd recommend sticking with campaigns for major candidates to avoid nutters, but if you're a nutter, go for it.
If you can teach _anything_ do that. People need job skills and fscking around with Office is a job skill. Volunteering at a local school is great; so many teachers are women that men actually benefit from affirmative action in the public school system.
If you can play an instrument, join a band. Avoid the drugs.
And even if you have absolutely no talent, you can always volunteer at a homeless shelter.
One caveat: go in with a plan. Say you'll stick with whatever you choose for a few months. If you don't meet anyone, try something else. Don't feel obligated to whoever you're volunteering with, and most of all, realize that wanting a relationship is a perfectly good reason to do this stuff.
And, ahem, the U.S. Army has way way more than 150 people:).
However... the typical company (or troop or battery) has approximately 100 people. You can spend as much as 10 years working at the company level before you reach Sergeant Major or Major. Some jobs, e.g. Adjutant General (which is essentially HR) are tied more closely to Big Army, but others, e.g. combat arms, are more insulated. Even now the traditional terms "troop" and "battery" are retained, even though there's some OCD bureaucrat who is waiting for the chance to wipe them out and call everything a "company."
I was a Cavalry Scout and we were aware that they were trying to wipe out personality and make us all fit neatly in to their org charts. All the (arguably stupid looking) emblems the units had painted on their HQs were painted over, they banned profanity, and of course our various alcohol sodden rituals were always causing problems for our CO, but for the most part we just ignored them and did whatever we wanted. The flip side of "don't be an individual" is that the Army also demands that you take pride in your unit.
We're talking about a guy who _shredded_ dissenters in a giant machine here.
That's propaganda.
The best we've got was some eyewitness accounts, and plenty of eyewitness accounts by Iraqis have turned out to be false. (I can't help but notice a pattern in which eyewitnesses the antiwar crowd chooses to believe.) So I'd agree skepticism is in order, but by calling it propaganda you're insinuating that it was invented by the US administration, which is flatly untrue.
That act still wouldn't justify our treatment of the man.
Our treatment of the guy was entirely humane and doesn't need justifying.
There is no excuse for adding unnecessarily to the sum of human misery.
We don't need excuses. We have the rule of law and if the Mari^H^H^H^Hsoldiers had behaved unlawfully, they would have been punished. In every single instance throughout this war and every other, when our people misbehaved they were subject to the rule of law. It's the deliberate and inexcusable ignorance of this fact that makes the antiwar argument utterly morally bankrupt.
Do you endorse rape in our own prisons by any chance? I know plenty of people who do, and quite frankly, it's disturbing as hell.
Complete, 100%, total, absolute agreement with you there.
I take it you're being a bit sarcastic, but in humid climates at dawn it's often impossible to keep windows from fogging up without turning the AC on and the heat up. (With only AC, you'd get ice crystals on your windshield.) I used to live in southwestern Louisiana, and between 4 and 7 it was impossible to drive without it.
Wow, all the trolls have come out of the woodwork.
Just because someone disagrees with/. orthodoxy, even on the odd occasions when that orthodoxy is right, doesn't make them a troll. I've only read a few responses on this thread, but it hardly seems to have more troll content than usual.
The GPL does not, in any way, restrict your use of the licensed code. It only restricts the way you redistribute that code (if you should choose to do so).
And redistribution is a kind of use which is precisely why there are so many issues with GPL'd libraries.
Look, the GPL is dealing with the same fundamental issue that DRM is dealing with, which is that producers need an incentive to continue producing. Mind you, the GPL's model is realistic enough to acknowledge that not every product can be immediately traded for cash.
They deserve to be bashed over this. Consumers have a an obligation to demand that companies make stuff that doesn't suck. Likewise, we ought to ridicule corps when they are hopelessly out of touch.
I agree. The major change I noticed was that now I can see what's in my other tabs, which actually makes them useful.
The stuff that I find really bizarre is people who whine about screen "real estate". I mean, the top third of the screen is dedicated to a one-line text box.
And it's poseurs who spout off random shit when they have no clue what they're talking about.
If a free man of any decency must kill to defend his community
You're even a poseur when it comes to isolationism. After all, even the early militia was instituted to defend the entire nation, not simply communities.
Actually I took ROTC in high school. They covered illegal orders and UCMJ. They would go as far as to give you simple "illegal" order like calling at ease from a parade rest. The correct response was not to do it without question but to respond with "As you where sir!"
Okay, this is drill and ceremony so it's supposed to be highly formalized, and we don't do this stuff on a day to day basis. You're wrong on several counts. First of all, it's perfectly valid to go from parade rest to at ease. You go from looking straight ahead to following the speaker. Second, when you're at parade rest, you really not supposed to speak. Third, it's were, not where.
To understand "as you were" you have to know that in D&C a command is made up of the preparatory command and command of execution. (It actually has to do with rhythm, believe it or not.) If you issue an incorrect preparatory command, you can "cancel" it with "as you were." If you issue an incorrect command of execution, you have to issue another command entirely.
For example, since the person controlling a formation is facing the formation, it's quite common to get your left and right mixed up. So you'll often hear "Left... as you were... right, face!"
If you ever want to go into the military, I strongly recommend that you do not do JROTC. It's a load of crap. I'd even avoid ROTC... sign up for three years and you can do ROTC if the military is right for you. Officers with no enlisted experience tend to suck a lot.
Yes, you can't get in trouble for refusing to obey an order that is not technically correct. However, at least from a combat arms perspective, what I teach my soldiers is that often the needs of the mission and common sense override technicalities. So long as they communicate with their leadership, they'll be fine.
And if you think about it, the big problem with robots is usually not following orders to the letter, but not doing anything when not told. Not surprisingly, the NCO Creed expressly states: "I will exercise initiative by taking appropriate action in the absence of orders." I think it's rather badly written, but there are many good points in it all the same.
I was an early Netscape user but I switched to IE because it was better.
That's absolutely true. I recall coding for IE 4 vs. NS 4. There was no comparison, you could actually *do* things with IE 4. NS 2 and 3 were great but the engine assumed the page would load in a linear manner. NS's own hacks blew this model up and they never reworked it. By the time the layer and ilayer tags came around, the engine was collapsing under its own weight.
Digital rights management means a third-party limits what actions a consuming device will perform on certain digital media.
The cryptographical and economic consequences of implementing DRM mean that you can identify like so: A company C sells digital media M to consumer A who saves M on device D. M is encrypted by a symmetric cipher S with key K. K is hidden somewhere on D and the playing software P will go through a convoluted process to retrieve K.
The secret to find K and execute S are there in P for anyone to retrieve, provided they have a suitable disassembler. You will *always* see that pattern in DRM. Further, for each additional company that collaborates, more potentially untrustworthy individuals must learn how K is hidden.
Look at the term. Passwords are a form of DRM. CHMOD is a form of DRM.
No, in both cases there is no C. A owns D and A knows exactly what K is, and A can probably get the source to S and P.
Go ask all those people who claim that information wants to be free what their social security number is if they have one and, if they don't, then ask for their local equivalent.
I know exactly what my SSN is, having been through university and the military where it was used as a primary key. Of course information wants to be free, that's a rule of nature not some ideal anyone aspires to. It's inevitable that SSNs were going to leak. So I don't care if it's public, I just don't want idiots in banks or the government to assume that anyone who stole a copy of my SSN must be me.
Restricting access to digitized social security numbers is, in fact, digital rights management.
No, it's not. I haven't hidden the key to decrypt my SSN on any government computers. They would throw me in jail if I tried.
Somewhere someone got fucking retarded and used the term DRM as their fighting words without actually doing any research.
No, you're the one who hasn't done any research. You really have no clue what you're talking about.
Is Apple's combination HW/SW package a better deal than buying the HW and SW separately?
It's not about which is cheaper, and hasn't been for a long time.
It's about price points and configurations. If you want a dirt cheap headless, the mini is right up your alley. If you want a reasonably priced all-in-one, the iMac is great. If you want a ridiculously powerful workstation, the Mac Pro is all over it.
Psystar and Open Tech are both offering mid-range / prosumer generic boxes. It's the buttons and doodads and stickers and stupid neon lights market that Jo^H^HApple hates with a passion. Apple does not want your business and simply is not offering an option if you're in this market.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, the PEBKAC of the people who invented the protocol, and all the other data destroying protocols (SMTP, etc) on the net.
Couldn't disagree more. The reason economists are useful in analyzing global warming is that they understand economics. They actually have half a clue what will happen to the economy if we impose massive regulations on it.
PJ O'Rourke was writing about his experiences in a number of countries with major famines. He observed that there was always plenty of food around but that the thugs in charge didn't allow it to get to starving people. Nature, in a nutshell, doesn't cause famines, people do.
So if the science is settled, fine, but also realize that it's a historical fact that we could easily kill more of ourselves than global warming if we screw up the solution. So we need a debate about the economics and we need proper economists to weigh in.
Yeah, I remember, when I was a child I actually had to walk to a library to borrow an actual book.
Sounds familiar.
Look, I'm not even saying that kids have it easy nowadays, far from it. I remember learning to program on a C-64. You could memorize all the important addresses. Your languages were BASIC and assembler. You had a grand total of 3 registers. You had no endian issues, no Unicode, nothing to install, nothing to configure. You just bought a subscription to Run magazine and started by copying the programs from it.
Things are different now, and I think it's better that it's harder and that the upcoming generation will adapt just as we did. All these guys are saying is that what made sense then doesn't make sense now, that much should be obvious, but kids are still idiots.
So you're basically saying that if country X bans porn but country Y doesn't, say, allow women to vote or go to school, it's just six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Your opinion is evidence that you don't understand what real oppression is.
"Nearly always" is your way of acknowledging that a lot of people, including Obama, have a whole lot of egg on their face about Iraq, and that you know damned well there's a big difference between "invader" and "aggressor."
So help was your weasel word to pretend to be saying something without having to defend it.
It's more defensible than you think, though.
The fact is that Twitter is designed to be a fun thing for people to use in a relatively non-oppressive society. As such, it's designed under the assumption that they don't *want* criminals or terrorists on their network. So their design works in a free country but can be used against a populace or simply suppressed in an oppressive country.
The problem here, really, is that overthrowing a government is not a trivial exercise and the populace of Iran needs the proper tools. Seriously, is anyone surprised that something called "Twitter" isn't exactly military grade?
"How about all you HARDWARE manufacturers sell me HARDWARE and stay the fuck out of the SOFTWARE business."
Right on! You listening, Apple?!
Flip on a TV. Watch some touchy-feely story and you'll inevitably see women doing all kinds of crap. Now, this is partly because the camera crew knows that they are easy on the eyes, but they're there.
If you're religious, even mildly, or even somewhat anti-religious, church is outstanding. Think about it from their point of view: making babies is the #1 means of recruitment.
If you like animals, you are set. Just go to your local animal shelter. If you're a little loopy, try PETA. Likewise, environmentalist groups are a dime a dozen and the less you know about the environment, the better.
If you're political, there are plenty of girls on both the right and left. I'd recommend sticking with campaigns for major candidates to avoid nutters, but if you're a nutter, go for it.
If you can teach _anything_ do that. People need job skills and fscking around with Office is a job skill. Volunteering at a local school is great; so many teachers are women that men actually benefit from affirmative action in the public school system.
If you can play an instrument, join a band. Avoid the drugs.
And even if you have absolutely no talent, you can always volunteer at a homeless shelter.
One caveat: go in with a plan. Say you'll stick with whatever you choose for a few months. If you don't meet anyone, try something else. Don't feel obligated to whoever you're volunteering with, and most of all, realize that wanting a relationship is a perfectly good reason to do this stuff.
And, ahem, the U.S. Army has way way more than 150 people :).
However... the typical company (or troop or battery) has approximately 100 people. You can spend as much as 10 years working at the company level before you reach Sergeant Major or Major. Some jobs, e.g. Adjutant General (which is essentially HR) are tied more closely to Big Army, but others, e.g. combat arms, are more insulated. Even now the traditional terms "troop" and "battery" are retained, even though there's some OCD bureaucrat who is waiting for the chance to wipe them out and call everything a "company."
I was a Cavalry Scout and we were aware that they were trying to wipe out personality and make us all fit neatly in to their org charts. All the (arguably stupid looking) emblems the units had painted on their HQs were painted over, they banned profanity, and of course our various alcohol sodden rituals were always causing problems for our CO, but for the most part we just ignored them and did whatever we wanted. The flip side of "don't be an individual" is that the Army also demands that you take pride in your unit.
"Would you then claim its acceptable as most people seem to to enjoy killing thousands of people in a war simulator?"
In a war simulator, they shoot back...
The best we've got was some eyewitness accounts, and plenty of eyewitness accounts by Iraqis have turned out to be false. (I can't help but notice a pattern in which eyewitnesses the antiwar crowd chooses to believe.) So I'd agree skepticism is in order, but by calling it propaganda you're insinuating that it was invented by the US administration, which is flatly untrue.
Our treatment of the guy was entirely humane and doesn't need justifying.
We don't need excuses. We have the rule of law and if the Mari^H^H^H^Hsoldiers had behaved unlawfully, they would have been punished. In every single instance throughout this war and every other, when our people misbehaved they were subject to the rule of law. It's the deliberate and inexcusable ignorance of this fact that makes the antiwar argument utterly morally bankrupt.
Complete, 100%, total, absolute agreement with you there.
I take it you're being a bit sarcastic, but in humid climates at dawn it's often impossible to keep windows from fogging up without turning the AC on and the heat up. (With only AC, you'd get ice crystals on your windshield.) I used to live in southwestern Louisiana, and between 4 and 7 it was impossible to drive without it.
The end result is a mud-brown for black paint.
Hey, it worked for the Zune, right?
A/C compressers in cars don't use much power, though. Maybe 5hp, at most.
Yeah, you can get that much power back with some VTEC decals, brok^H^H^H^Hracing muffler and a flame paint job.
Just because someone disagrees with /. orthodoxy, even on the odd occasions when that orthodoxy is right, doesn't make them a troll. I've only read a few responses on this thread, but it hardly seems to have more troll content than usual.
The best trolls left a long time ago.
And redistribution is a kind of use which is precisely why there are so many issues with GPL'd libraries.
Look, the GPL is dealing with the same fundamental issue that DRM is dealing with, which is that producers need an incentive to continue producing. Mind you, the GPL's model is realistic enough to acknowledge that not every product can be immediately traded for cash.
They deserve to be bashed over this. Consumers have a an obligation to demand that companies make stuff that doesn't suck. Likewise, we ought to ridicule corps when they are hopelessly out of touch.
I agree. The major change I noticed was that now I can see what's in my other tabs, which actually makes them useful.
The stuff that I find really bizarre is people who whine about screen "real estate". I mean, the top third of the screen is dedicated to a one-line text box.
And it's poseurs who spout off random shit when they have no clue what they're talking about.
If a free man of any decency must kill to defend his community
You're even a poseur when it comes to isolationism. After all, even the early militia was instituted to defend the entire nation, not simply communities.
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my
contempt.
If you can come up with a better way to get a thousand people from point a to point b without vehicles, I'd love to hear it.
And why can't we sing? Are you some kind of fascist?
Actually I took ROTC in high school. They covered illegal orders and UCMJ. They would go as far as to give you simple "illegal" order like calling at ease from a parade rest. The correct response was not to do it without question but to respond with "As you where sir!"
Okay, this is drill and ceremony so it's supposed to be highly formalized, and we don't do this stuff on a day to day basis. You're wrong on several counts. First of all, it's perfectly valid to go from parade rest to at ease. You go from looking straight ahead to following the speaker. Second, when you're at parade rest, you really not supposed to speak. Third, it's were, not where.
To understand "as you were" you have to know that in D&C a command is made up of the preparatory command and command of execution. (It actually has to do with rhythm, believe it or not.) If you issue an incorrect preparatory command, you can "cancel" it with "as you were." If you issue an incorrect command of execution, you have to issue another command entirely.
For example, since the person controlling a formation is facing the formation, it's quite common to get your left and right mixed up. So you'll often hear "Left... as you were... right, face!"
If you ever want to go into the military, I strongly recommend that you do not do JROTC. It's a load of crap. I'd even avoid ROTC... sign up for three years and you can do ROTC if the military is right for you. Officers with no enlisted experience tend to suck a lot.
Yes, you can't get in trouble for refusing to obey an order that is not technically correct. However, at least from a combat arms perspective, what I teach my soldiers is that often the needs of the mission and common sense override technicalities. So long as they communicate with their leadership, they'll be fine.
And if you think about it, the big problem with robots is usually not following orders to the letter, but not doing anything when not told. Not surprisingly, the NCO Creed expressly states: "I will exercise initiative by taking appropriate action in the absence of orders." I think it's rather badly written, but there are many good points in it all the same.
I was an early Netscape user but I switched to IE because it was better.
That's absolutely true. I recall coding for IE 4 vs. NS 4. There was no comparison, you could actually *do* things with IE 4. NS 2 and 3 were great but the engine assumed the page would load in a linear manner. NS's own hacks blew this model up and they never reworked it. By the time the layer and ilayer tags came around, the engine was collapsing under its own weight.
DRM is DRM. Understand the term.
Digital rights management means a third-party limits what actions a consuming device will perform on certain digital media.
The cryptographical and economic consequences of implementing DRM mean that you can identify like so: A company C sells digital media M to consumer A who saves M on device D. M is encrypted by a symmetric cipher S with key K. K is hidden somewhere on D and the playing software P will go through a convoluted process to retrieve K.
The secret to find K and execute S are there in P for anyone to retrieve, provided they have a suitable disassembler. You will *always* see that pattern in DRM. Further, for each additional company that collaborates, more potentially untrustworthy individuals must learn how K is hidden.
Look at the term. Passwords are a form of DRM. CHMOD is a form of DRM.
No, in both cases there is no C. A owns D and A knows exactly what K is, and A can probably get the source to S and P.
Go ask all those people who claim that information wants to be free what their social security number is if they have one and, if they don't, then ask for their local equivalent.
I know exactly what my SSN is, having been through university and the military where it was used as a primary key. Of course information wants to be free, that's a rule of nature not some ideal anyone aspires to. It's inevitable that SSNs were going to leak. So I don't care if it's public, I just don't want idiots in banks or the government to assume that anyone who stole a copy of my SSN must be me.
Restricting access to digitized social security numbers is, in fact, digital rights management.
No, it's not. I haven't hidden the key to decrypt my SSN on any government computers. They would throw me in jail if I tried.
Somewhere someone got fucking retarded and used the term DRM as their fighting words without actually doing any research.
No, you're the one who hasn't done any research. You really have no clue what you're talking about.
Sounds like the Zune.
Which HW platform is cheaper?
Is Apple's combination HW/SW package a better deal than buying the HW and SW separately?
It's not about which is cheaper, and hasn't been for a long time.
It's about price points and configurations. If you want a dirt cheap headless, the mini is right up your alley. If you want a reasonably priced all-in-one, the iMac is great. If you want a ridiculously powerful workstation, the Mac Pro is all over it.
Psystar and Open Tech are both offering mid-range / prosumer generic boxes. It's the buttons and doodads and stickers and stupid neon lights market that Jo^H^HApple hates with a passion. Apple does not want your business and simply is not offering an option if you're in this market.