People often misquote Winston Churchill as having said that we can judge the level of civilisation in a society by the way it treats its prisoners. In fact, it was Fyodor Dostoyevsky who said: "The degree of civilisation in a society is revealed by entering its prisons." Winston Churchill actually said that a society's attitude to its prisoners, its "criminals", is the measure of "the stored up strength of a nation".
Seems to me that there are elements in this country who want to make sure that the terrible allegations the terrorists make against us become, and stay, true. And there are people who remember one of the reasons this country was founded, to be able to have fair trials.
We cannot allow ourselves to become the things and people we hate. We cannot become a nation that approves of torture, approves of lawless legal system, a nation that will treat others, no matter how heinous, as they would treat us.
We cannot hope to be a beacon of light in a dark sea by covering ourselves in the same darkness. Either you do the moral thing, or the immoral thing. There is a battle in this country, between those who would have us give up our morality for naught, and those who stand against them. I've been wondering about this too, why is it so necessary that America keep these as peace time powers. Can't they still declare war, get wartime powers and "protect the children"? It seems like the U.S. military is looking for a way to standardize winning both military and Hearts and Mind combats. For the first they are trusting automation, for the second they are trying to torture to find intellectual leaders and dissidents and remove them from the population.
Many detainees are probably political figures who spoke out against the occupation in an effective manner, now they're in prison.
Sure if America is/should/can pursue a policy of subjugating dissedent nations with minor military action (no war declaration, no major impact on U.S. civilians) then such policy may be necessary to win the hearts and minds.
I understand that under war things get out of control, I'm divided on allies firebombing Germany and Japan. I don't understand why we need a "system" to suppress small dissenting states and ideologies.
In battles of conquest rules can be broken, but in the battle for hearts and minds breaking these rules provides nothing.
"Yes, there is no reason why these services could not be provided by private organizations, and in fact all of these services are and have been provided by private organizations."
Fire Victim : "Hmmmm put new roof over my family's head or pay back fire department.... hmmmmmm.."
I think the government might actually let you do this... they might regulate you so your employees are safe and you don't start fires/steal things but you could go ahead... dumbest business model ever but go ahead.
Actually you did give me an idea! I'll start a work camp company for parapeligics, they should work off their debt to the hospital.
Sure you... if you know something about what you're....... at.
They analyse the data properties of the camera and see what data is rejected and where data is averaged, this is very intensive and esoteric research and not something that's obvious.
Bush's "With us or against us" makes those instances pretty difficult to find I must admit.
While he doesn't have a track record of making fundamentalist war criminals see sense as you requested there is some debate that he did some good in Nigeria.
I'm sure there are other more positive sources but this one is quite fox newsy:)
The "moderates," are less numerous than you seem to think.
85-90% of Americans haven't changed their vote since 2000 Probably less than 20% have even examined their vote, why? Dems don't bother to try and imagine a reason for Bush's actions. Reps think fox news is correct, even when it says Obama eats babies and Bush is Jesus come again.
That's just Americans, seeing the other side is difficult when you use liberalism like a hammer and CNN is shiney.
Actually I'm not sure that there is anything Obama can do to rally the American nation, while the division between Hillary and Obama has been getting a lot of press, aside from a few rabid supporters most American Dems. seem to accept both as viable candidates.
To appeal to Republicans Obama needs to get through the Republican divisions that lead to a three way race with McCain, Huckabee and that other guy.
I really hope he doesn't go for the fundamentalist christian vote, it wouldn't be outside his stated mission to bring people together but those guys have a nasty way of infiltrating and influencing policy in scary ways.
Dr.: " I need a loan." Bank: "Why?" Dr.: "I killed someone and they're suing me I don't have insurance but if you lend me the money I can settle, $5,000,000 should do it." Bank: "Cough..."
The billion dollar figure refers to the last mile myth, the COPPER infrastructure we already have provides more than 10x our current use ( Vdsl )
They can rent or buy existing fiber to provide bandwidth from the dlsams to the backbone.
Backbone infrastructure IS expensive, laying oceanic fibre in particular... it's also getting cheaper by orders of magnitude... basically every 15-20 years the telecos need to lay 3-4 Billion in underwater cables... these costs (since they have been keeping up on this part of it) are spread across all ISPS commerical and residential from both ends of the pipe, these pipes are shared by all the tier 1 isps.
So where is the problem? Once installed these things require very little maintenance, you wouldn't accept not having enough power or water for your house and those are MUCH more expensive to provide, and while yes they are metered the rate (at least here in Canada) is negligible (people use water and electricity whenever they feel a need) and there is no shortage (disclaimer: Situation may not apply in corrupt first world nations o_o).
And ALL of this assumes that they don't bother using moore's law and ever cheaper transistors to invest in revolutionary technologies like: caching (Gasp!), multi-casting, local p2p, wireless internet distribution or IPv6 (teh horror!).
Basically teleco's have forgotten how to license technology and infrastructure because they've been monopolies for so long... they've forgotten how to play: "lower costs", "provide better service", "examine new technologies", spend money on R & D instead of marketing, sales and support (no quotes because this is a debatable business practice) and "have better products."
In other words they're terrible, any examination of their practices and the available technologies makes you realize how out of hand the situation has become. At some point regulators will decouple the various pipes, force sane line rental charges on bandwidth ( these numbers are obviously high for cost and low for bandwidth but... meh).
It depends on how deep you look into such information. Knowing the order of the books of the bible (Which are vaguely like chapters) does give insight into the mindset of its writers and through them its readers, both those they intended and the actual people who have read the book.
Extremely intelligent people are better off not worrying about what others think as that will normalize them but for most people being able to relate to other people will help them grasp concepts more quickly.
That being said I hate knowledge as a benchmark of intelligence... I have a crappy memory which may have something to do with that.
For me,though the pure spacial, pattern, and problem solving aspects of intelligence are vitally important, the main criteria is knowing which facts will produce a large increase in useful knowledge and problem generation. (+2 I.Q. if you can decode the prior sentence, +3 if you did it on the first read through:) ).
People who ask interesting questions and know which questions are worth resolving have instinctual intelligence of a type that machines won't be able to replicate.
Otherwise, once I finish my anagram and shape pattern software (written in Visual Basic out of spite), I will be the greatest man in the world (/joke).
Many many aspects of linux are difficult for a power user switching over.
Configuring and initializing servers, setting up complex apps with system calls, etc. Sometimes they work fine with make/make-install sometimes they are in synaptic and sometimes they are a total pain in the ass.
Each time something is a pain in the ass you learn but its slow and my OS isn't doing everything you/I need.
For all the irc help out there it never seems to work out, once you want to do something specific that few people have done before you're SOL unless you want to code it youself, if you want to install dozens of apps to try them out and combine them you're SOL.
I guess this sounds like a windows preach, but it shouldn't take hours to install ANY APPLICATION EVER.
Also where is the gui based configuration file application...
Application variables have ranges and values, make them talk to the OS, be consistent and coherent inside a GUI, with no perl scripting needed.
something at a great distance with only an energy beam, if we find a fairly regular atomic shape (like a diamond but more diverse) can we create cohesive distortions in it or use it to cohesively distort a particle stream?
Might be kinda cool if we could build something using naturally occuring distortions over long distances...
If we could make a bacteria that would be so badass.
Phoning ET would be a lot fun if we could destroy his world with a virus.
With ASUS's new bios, the game could boot and install while you play.
What's OpenGL running now, 200 megs or so? No problem for a DVD or some flash...
PuppyLinux + OpenGL + route to HD (for real install) = the win.
If you take microsoft out of the equation it isn't "a pain in the ass."
Dual core CPUs aren't that good for gaming, but they'd be useful for decompressing for installation/play concurrently.
While the OS is there to provide drivers it also provides a lot of overhead and functionality that games don't require, games don't use paint, gedit etc. They run a (usually) 3D environment and self contained logic.
Get grpahics, sound, mouse + keyboard working and you're good to go, you don't need networking (right away, if it installs in the background it doesn't slow down insta boot).
Consoles have taken many of the great things and adapted them (poorly?), though PCs are harder to get standardized it shouldn't be impossible to get insta boot working and it would be useful for say, bringing a game to a friend's house or putting it in his mythTV box.
I'm not sure you can go to university and read slashdot without coming up with several "it's so obvious, someone else must be working on it" ideas.
The question of whether fourty something's that think in industry terms or 20 somethings with a compiler and a dream will be more successful is dependant on the economics in your area.
Spam is making people much less receptive to "genius" ideas developed and distributed over the interwebs... people want microsoft certification on software, pretty shiney interfaces and so on.
I'm positive that 90% of what consultants do is duplicated with little VB scripts that have never been consolodated... unfortunately VB apps don't wear suits.
I asked my boss if I'd be paid less if I left university and he said "definitely." Like the mispreception that continued work makes something more valuable people don't seem to be able to deal with the fact that there really isn't a hole in creativity, management knowhow, or dedication that appears between graduation and being fourty-five with a wife and kids.
Given that nine out of ten tech startups fail, it seems to me that it's a game for basement dwellers.
Web2.0 and the "host everything centrally" mentality is going to kill small software startups, it's one thing to write a voip application that does something creative... it's quite another to try and get POTS connections and server space to handle thousands of simulataneous users downloading their messages.
He's suggesting that video games with drm could be rented based on a netflix like system. Of course the reason studios deal with netflix is because people buy movies after renting them... the people who would be served by an alternative to individual liscence games and current DRM would not buy games after a service like netflix was started.
There are a few game services like this (there is one that got the tomb raider games and a bunch of abandonware to do it)... but they don't seem to be able to embrace a major niche.
Subscription based gaming exists and is growing but it doesn't seem to be threatening other areas, when all AAA PC games start being subscription it seems likely people will change their buying habits.
Agreed, take the price of the game donate it to a mod or ther free development group and attach a note that says that you dfonated because you're pissed off with spore drm. At the end of the uyear all these little companies can send a note to EA thanking them with a little $ value attached.
Upsides we get more open games, DRM get's a kick in the fking ass, and you don't feel like a pirate.
Imagining all pirates doing this made me pee myself... just a tiny little bit.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems like the U.S. military is looking for a way to standardize winning both military and Hearts and Mind combats.
For the first they are trusting automation, for the second they are trying to torture to find intellectual leaders and dissidents and remove them from the population.
Many detainees are probably political figures who spoke out against the occupation in an effective manner, now they're in prison.
Sure if America is/should/can pursue a policy of subjugating dissedent nations with minor military action (no war declaration, no major impact on U.S. civilians) then such policy may be necessary to win the hearts and minds.
I understand that under war things get out of control, I'm divided on allies firebombing Germany and Japan. I don't understand why we need a "system" to suppress small dissenting states and ideologies.
In battles of conquest rules can be broken, but in the battle for hearts and minds breaking these rules provides nothing.
BSD code is more forkable, until it's not.
You can close BSD code or has that changed?
"Yes, there is no reason why these services could not be provided by private organizations, and in fact all of these services are and have been provided by private organizations."
Fire Victim : "Hmmmm put new roof over my family's head or pay back fire department.... hmmmmmm.."
I think the government might actually let you do this... they might regulate you so your employees are safe and you don't start fires/steal things but you could go ahead... dumbest business model ever but go ahead.
Actually you did give me an idea! I'll start a work camp company for parapeligics, they should work off their debt to the hospital.
When the free market reigned you could buy cocaine and heroin over the counter.
Regulation costs money, certification costs money, not letting people buy placebos... costs money.
Buying drugs from Mexico or Canada where they're cheaper... costs money.
Agreed, is this Nvidia/ATI shenanigans or is there some reason that pixel shader 2.0 can't be done in software...
Spore doesn't seem likely to need uber framerates...
A bunch of Nazi doctors/forensic scientists performed biopsies/autopsies on inmate at Aushwitz their research was destroyed and banned.
So yea some research gets banned.
Publisher: Port this for Europe!
Coder: Violence--; Sex++;
Publisher: $++;
Sure you ... if you know something about what you're ....... at.
They analyse the data properties of the camera and see what data is rejected and where data is averaged, this is very intensive and esoteric research and not something that's obvious.
Bush's "With us or against us" makes those instances pretty difficult to find I must admit.
:)
While he doesn't have a track record of making fundamentalist war criminals see sense as you requested there is some debate that he did some good in Nigeria.
I'm sure there are other more positive sources but this one is quite fox newsy
The "moderates," are less numerous than you seem to think.
85-90% of Americans haven't changed their vote since 2000
Probably less than 20% have even examined their vote, why? Dems don't bother to try and imagine a reason for Bush's actions. Reps think fox news is correct, even when it says Obama eats babies and Bush is Jesus come again.
That's just Americans, seeing the other side is difficult when you use liberalism like a hammer and CNN is shiney.
Hoard for the win?!
Actually I'm not sure that there is anything Obama can do to rally the American nation, while the division between Hillary and Obama has been getting a lot of press, aside from a few rabid supporters most American Dems. seem to accept both as viable candidates.
To appeal to Republicans Obama needs to get through the Republican divisions that lead to a three way race with McCain, Huckabee and that other guy.
I really hope he doesn't go for the fundamentalist christian vote, it wouldn't be outside his stated mission to bring people together but those guys have a nasty way of infiltrating and influencing policy in scary ways.
Well at some point you stop being able to pay,
Dr.: " I need a loan."
Bank: "Why?"
Dr.: "I killed someone and they're suing me I don't have insurance but if you lend me the money I can settle, $5,000,000 should do it."
Bank: "Cough..."
The billion dollar figure refers to the last mile myth, the COPPER infrastructure we already have provides more than 10x our current use ( Vdsl )
They can rent or buy existing fiber to provide bandwidth from the dlsams to the backbone.
Backbone infrastructure IS expensive, laying oceanic fibre in particular... it's also getting cheaper by orders of magnitude... basically every 15-20 years the telecos need to lay 3-4 Billion in underwater cables... these costs (since they have been keeping up on this part of it) are spread across all ISPS commerical and residential from both ends of the pipe, these pipes are shared by all the tier 1 isps.
So where is the problem? Once installed these things require very little maintenance, you wouldn't accept not having enough power or water for your house and those are MUCH more expensive to provide, and while yes they are metered the rate (at least here in Canada) is negligible (people use water and electricity whenever they feel a need) and there is no shortage (disclaimer: Situation may not apply in corrupt first world nations o_o).
And ALL of this assumes that they don't bother using moore's law and ever cheaper transistors to invest in revolutionary technologies like: caching (Gasp!), multi-casting, local p2p, wireless internet distribution or IPv6 (teh horror!).
Basically teleco's have forgotten how to license technology and infrastructure because they've been monopolies for so long... they've forgotten how to play: "lower costs", "provide better service", "examine new technologies", spend money on R & D instead of marketing, sales and support (no quotes because this is a debatable business practice) and "have better products."
In other words they're terrible, any examination of their practices and the available technologies makes you realize how out of hand the situation has become. At some point regulators will decouple the various pipes, force sane line rental charges on bandwidth ( these numbers are obviously high for cost and low for bandwidth but... meh).
Rant over.
But your insurance goes up when you call them in... over the long term it makes sense to pay for it youself.
Qwerty is hostile and mocks your inefficiency...
Dvorak hates newbies and people who look at the keyboard, it's also an efficiency supremacist.
Be a "scientist"!, I love this discussion. So many oportunities for devil's advocacy!
It depends on how deep you look into such information. Knowing the order of the books of the bible (Which are vaguely like chapters) does give insight into the mindset of its writers and through them its readers, both those they intended and the actual people who have read the book.
:) ).
Extremely intelligent people are better off not worrying about what others think as that will normalize them but for most people being able to relate to other people will help them grasp concepts more quickly.
That being said I hate knowledge as a benchmark of intelligence... I have a crappy memory which may have something to do with that.
For me,though the pure spacial, pattern, and problem solving aspects of intelligence are vitally important, the main criteria is knowing which facts will produce a large increase in useful knowledge and problem generation. (+2 I.Q. if you can decode the prior sentence, +3 if you did it on the first read through
People who ask interesting questions and know which questions are worth resolving have instinctual intelligence of a type that machines won't be able to replicate.
Otherwise, once I finish my anagram and shape pattern software (written in Visual Basic out of spite), I will be the greatest man in the world (/joke).
Many many aspects of linux are difficult for a power user switching over.
Configuring and initializing servers, setting up complex apps with system calls, etc. Sometimes they work fine with make/make-install sometimes they are in synaptic and sometimes they are a total pain in the ass.
Each time something is a pain in the ass you learn but its slow and my OS isn't doing everything you/I need.
For all the irc help out there it never seems to work out, once you want to do something specific that few people have done before you're SOL unless you want to code it youself, if you want to install dozens of apps to try them out and combine them you're SOL.
I guess this sounds like a windows preach, but it shouldn't take hours to install ANY APPLICATION EVER.
Also where is the gui based configuration file application...
Application variables have ranges and values, make them talk to the OS, be consistent and coherent inside a GUI, with no perl scripting needed.
something at a great distance with only an energy beam, if we find a fairly regular atomic shape (like a diamond but more diverse) can we create cohesive distortions in it or use it to cohesively distort a particle stream?
Might be kinda cool if we could build something using naturally occuring distortions over long distances...
If we could make a bacteria that would be so badass.
Phoning ET would be a lot fun if we could destroy his world with a virus.
With ASUS's new bios, the game could boot and install while you play.
What's OpenGL running now, 200 megs or so? No problem for a DVD or some flash...
PuppyLinux + OpenGL + route to HD (for real install) = the win.
If you take microsoft out of the equation it isn't "a pain in the ass."
Dual core CPUs aren't that good for gaming, but they'd be useful for decompressing for installation/play concurrently.
While the OS is there to provide drivers it also provides a lot of overhead and functionality that games don't require, games don't use paint, gedit etc. They run a (usually) 3D environment and self contained logic.
Get grpahics, sound, mouse + keyboard working and you're good to go, you don't need networking (right away, if it installs in the background it doesn't slow down insta boot).
Consoles have taken many of the great things and adapted them (poorly?), though PCs are harder to get standardized it shouldn't be impossible to get insta boot working and it would be useful for say, bringing a game to a friend's house or putting it in his mythTV box.
I'm not sure you can go to university and read slashdot without coming up with several "it's so obvious, someone else must be working on it" ideas.
The question of whether fourty something's that think in industry terms or 20 somethings with a compiler and a dream will be more successful is dependant on the economics in your area.
Spam is making people much less receptive to "genius" ideas developed and distributed over the interwebs... people want microsoft certification on software, pretty shiney interfaces and so on.
I'm positive that 90% of what consultants do is duplicated with little VB scripts that have never been consolodated... unfortunately VB apps don't wear suits.
I asked my boss if I'd be paid less if I left university and he said "definitely." Like the mispreception that continued work makes something more valuable people don't seem to be able to deal with the fact that there really isn't a hole in creativity, management knowhow, or dedication that appears between graduation and being fourty-five with a wife and kids.
Given that nine out of ten tech startups fail, it seems to me that it's a game for basement dwellers.
Web2.0 and the "host everything centrally" mentality is going to kill small software startups, it's one thing to write a voip application that does something creative... it's quite another to try and get POTS connections and server space to handle thousands of simulataneous users downloading their messages.
He's suggesting that video games with drm could be rented based on a netflix like system. Of course the reason studios deal with netflix is because people buy movies after renting them... the people who would be served by an alternative to individual liscence games and current DRM would not buy games after a service like netflix was started.
There are a few game services like this (there is one that got the tomb raider games and a bunch of abandonware to do it)... but they don't seem to be able to embrace a major niche.
Subscription based gaming exists and is growing but it doesn't seem to be threatening other areas, when all AAA PC games start being subscription it seems likely people will change their buying habits.
Route high throughput users onto seperate system, route high throughput users of that system into this thing... kill them.
Pirate Hotel: They check in they don't check out.
It does provide security against your users getting uppity and using what they paid for.
God I hate trying to stick up for ISPs, I'm going back to beig a devil's advocate for Bush and Hitler.
Agreed, take the price of the game donate it to a mod or ther free development group and attach a note that says that you dfonated because you're pissed off with spore drm. At the end of the uyear all these little companies can send a note to EA thanking them with a little $ value attached.
Upsides we get more open games, DRM get's a kick in the fking ass, and you don't feel like a pirate.
Imagining all pirates doing this made me pee myself... just a tiny little bit.
When copy protection totally works PC gaming will be dead.
I was starting to be wary of Spore... I just wanted it to succeeed too badly so I knew it would fail.